Gen Kanai of Mozilla Japan has a really interesting article on the state of the Internet in South Korea.
Information Systems and Decision Sciences
When I first applied to LSU, my major was Computer Science. I swapped a few times between Computer Science and Computer Engineering before my first semester even started, but as soon as it did start I went with Information Systems and Decision Sciences. I didn’t know much about it, but I liked the idea. I had heard bad things about LSU Computer Science from everyone, and the business part of ISDS appealed to me because I don’t know much about it and am interested in learning, whereas I already know a lot about programming and I don’t intend to be a code monkey my whole life.
Tonight, I became sure of my decision to major ISDS with the first class period of ISDS 3100, which is the first real course relating to the major. It’s a bit of an unorthodox course in that it’s from 6-9pm on Thursdays and there is a corporate IT guest speaker each class. The content of the course is very exciting, as are the real life examples of what we’re talking about that I use every day.
I’m also taking ISDS 3075 this semester, which is an internship class that allows me to get credit for my work with Mozilla. My other classes are various business requirements from 7:30am-10:30am Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as well as another night class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:00-7:30pm.
Firefox Flicks
If you’ve never been to Firefox Flicks, I recommend you check it out. It’s got some great user-submitted Firefox commercials – some of them are hilarious. 4 of them (Billy’s Browser, This is Hot, Web for All, and Daredevil) are going to air a bit in Boston and San Francisco on cable networks. See the full press release here.
Also, I don’t think I mentioned it before, but my name is in the Firefox 2 credits. It’s over a minute into them, so I took a screenshot for you because you’re impatient. Yes, you. It’s sorta interesting that I actually know who most of the people in that long list are and met many of them at the summit.
I have some other stuff to talk about, but I’ll make a different post on that later.
Reviewing the Review Process
This is my first planet.mozilla.org post, so you might not know who I am. I’m Justin Scott (fligtar) and I’m an AMO developer, currently working on the developer/admin pages of the Remora project.
Recently, there’s been a lot of feedback through various channels on the AMO reskinning, “spyware” toolbars, and other issues, and I get the feeling that users think their comments are falling upon deaf ears, or not even falling in audible range. This is not the case. AMO 1.0/2.0 is frozen so that our development efforts can be focused on Remora, which you may confuse with us not caring about fixing problems with it. Issues brought up in bug reports, IRC, and other channels are definitely being considered and implemented in Remora.
Last week at the Firefox 2 Summit, we came up with a solution to many of these problems that will raise the quality bar and also increase the transparency of the add-on review process. This new system will divide addons.mozilla.org into two sections: a public area (similar to the current AMO) and a sandbox area. The graphic below is a basic summary of how it will work.
We hope that this process will:
- Eliminate approval delays for updates to trusted extensions
- Keep add-ons that are not ready for prime-time out of the general public area
- Automatically run security checks on all submitted add-on code and flag for security review if triggered
- Provide a home for Mozilla Labs creations not ready for mass use
While in the sandbox, regular users will be able to install and test the add-ons and then write reviews as to whether the add-on works and should be pushed to the public site. After several of these reviews, an AMO editor will review the add-on and the public reviews and make a decision to send it to the public area or keep it in the sandbox. We expect that some add-ons will stay in the sandbox forever, such as those automatically generated by certain websites.
Please see our meeting notes in the Meeting Notepad or append to the Idea Dump for any ideas you may have regarding the development of Remora.
Firefox Summit, Days 3 and 4
Continuing from the Day 2 entry, the Remora meeting Thursday tied up some loose ends on what we had decided the day before. It turns out we will be completely changing the way addons.mozilla.org works as far as getting your add-on on the site, but I’m not going into it now. The details make my brain hurt and we all concluded that what we decided on would literally be impossible to have come up with on IRC or on the phone.
After the Remora meeting, shaver drove sancus and I back to the hotel where I caught the bus for the 40 minute ride to Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. It was a pretty interesting experience. It was a stand-while-waiters-bring-trays-of-stuff-around-to-you type event. When they closed around 11pm, we went to another bar next door and when that one closed, I took the bus to the hotel but others went to still another bar.
Friday morning started at 10am with a bus ride to San Jose to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. It was my first James Bond movie, and I liked it. We rented out the theater. After that, we went to Gordon Biersch for lunch and then had a scavenger hunt in San Jose. It was surprisingly fun and took 2 hours and I learned far more about how to get around downtown San Jose that I’d ever wanted to know. I thought we did really well but we didn’t win.
After that, Mike Beltzner drove shaver and I back to MoCo where I snacked and watch shaver dissect his blackberry that fell into the fountain when he was looking for a 1971 penny. When the bus got there, we had an extremely short closing session and then beltzner drove sancus and I to pavlov’s house where others later joined us and we had an excellent dinner. We played Lego Star Wars on XBOX… it was so fun I think I’m actually going get it and add it to the list of things I don’t have time for.
Around 12:30am, shaver drove us back to the hotel. The car service is picking me up at 5:30am for my 7:00am flight. I should arrive in Baton Rouge around 4pm (and really tired, as I probably won’t sleep tonight).
Final photos added to the gallery.