Category: General

MarketWatch / UserZoom promote Google Chrome Monopoly

While reading an article on MarketWatch using Firefox Nightly I was prompted to fill out a user survey. I’ve stopped responding to most of these types of requests since they have become more of a data gathering exercise about me rather than actually attempting to find out what I think of the site itself. Since I like MarketWatch and haven’t seen this request before, I accepted the prompt this time and prepared to see what they wanted to know. Unfortunately, I was blocked by the following:

Unfortunately, the study owner or the system has restricted this device/browser for this study. In order to participate in the study please open this page from one of the following options: Desktop / Laptop * Google Chrome. Thank you for your cooperation.

Needless to say, I didn’t switch to Chrome to fill out their survey and now have a negative opinion of MarketWatch and UserZoom.

Update January 21

I did send in feedback to MarketWatch regarding the situation but did not receive a reply. Just now I visited again and received another prompt for a user survey and accepted in order to see if they had fixed the situation.

Close but no cigar.

I guess detecting Firefox is just too hard. For the record, my user agent string is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:86.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/86.0

I recommend Browser detection using the user agent if you really must block browsers.

Autophone Status Update 2013-11-02

  • 7:15 AM PT – Swapped Kingston Class 4 4G sdcards for 00_23_76_96_cc_6f_nexus-one and c8_aa_21_ac_0c_b5_droid-pro after repeated failures checking for the device root.

  • 19:00 PM PT – Both 00_23_76_96_cc_6f_nexus-one and c8_aa_21_ac_0c_b5_droid-pro showed an inability to properly detect and use the external sdcard. I cycled through most of the previously used sdcards attempting to find ones that worked. After checking almost all of the remaining older cards, I found one that worked in the droid-pro but could not find a card that would work with the nexus-one. In my attempt to get a working patch for bug 933842 – Add ability to specify test root in SUTAgent.ini, I realized that mozdevice’s devicemanager.getDeviceRoot() caches the reported value of the test root. Since the autophone workers survive the rebooting of a device, the cached test root value is reused until the device’s worker is restarted. This means that once an incorrect test root is detected, it will not be corrected by rebooting the device. I am testing an preliminary version of the patch for bug 933842 on the nexus one which forces the test root to /mnt/sdcard. I have resubmitted all builds from 2013-10-31 to now for both nexus ones and the droid pro. Hopefully the devices will be more reliable. It may also be the case that the older sdcards are not as unreliable as initially thought.

    I also noticed that Autophone’s workers use devicemanager’s getDeviceRoot() to determine if a device is still responsive. Since the value is cached, this test is ineffective in determining if a device is still responding.

    Before
    phonedash results prior to re-testing nexus one and droid pro
    phonedash results prior to re-testing nexus one and droid pro

Autophone Inventory



Autophone Inventory

The following phones are under test at Haxxor Virginia.

Autophone Haxxor Virginia Inventory
Device Name Serial Device Name IP Mac Android GPU Notes
Motorola Atrix HD atrix-1 ta300018fe 80_96_b1_ee_55_e0_atrix 192.168.1.16 80:96:b1:ee:55:e0 4.0.4 Adreno 225  
Motorola Atrix 4G MB860 atrix-4g-1 ta20709vkh 40_fc_89_4c_95_3f_atrix-4g 192.168.1.28 40:fc:89:4c:95:3f 2.3.7 ULP GeForce Cyanogen Mod 7, SanDisk Pro
Motorola Droid droid-1 040373c41800b021 a4_ed_4e_59_6c_b2_droid 192.168.1.38 a4:ed:4e:59:6c:b2 2.1 PowerVR SGX 530 SanDisk Pro
Motorola Droid Pro droid-pro-1 015f13050c03201f c8_aa_21_ac_0c_b5_droid-pro 192.168.1.3 c8:aa:21:ac:0c:b5 2.3.3 PowerVR SGX530 Kingston class 4 4G
Motorola Droid Pro droid-pro-2 0a3aa1fd1402e01d 98_4b_4a_2c_e4_89_droid-pro 192.168.1.18 98:4b:4a:2c:e4:89 2.3.4 PowerVR SGX530 Dead
Motorola Droid Pro droid-pro-3 0a3a86d70a010012 f8_7b_7a_8b_12_84_droid-pro 192.168.1.19 f8:7b:7a:8b:12:84 2.2.1 PowerVR SGX530 Dead
Motorola Droid Pro droid-pro-4 0a3a8eb60d02201d 98_4b_4a_13_01_84_droid-pro 192.168.1.39 98:4b:4a:13:01:84 2.3.3 PowerVR SGX530 SanDisk Pro
HTC Sensation 4G htc-sensation-4g-1 sh1apt506663 18_87_96_a7_89_70_htc-sensation-4g 192.168.1.30 18:87:96:a7:89:70 2.3.4 Adreno 220 SanDisk Pro, SUTAgent rebt does not work.
HTC Sensation 4G htc-sensation-4g-2 sh1cft502258 c0_3f_0e_ba_5f_34_htc-sensation-4g 192.168.1.31 c0:3f:0e:ba:5f:34 2.3.4 Adreno 220 SanDisk Pro
LG Revolution lg-revolution-1 99000044157141 44_a7_cf_ea_f9_73_lg-revolution 192.168.1.7 44:a7:cf:ea:f9:73 2.3.4 Adreno 205  
Google Nexus One nexus-one-1 ht018p800097 00_23_76_b1_92_39_nexus-one 192.168.1.9 00:23:76:b1:92:39 2.3.6 Adreno 200  
Google Nexus One nexus-one-2 ht9cpp809750 00_23_76_96_cc_6f_nexus-one 192.168.1.27 00:23:76:96:cc:6f 2.3.6 Adreno 200  
Google Nexus One nexus-one-3 ht09ap802284 90_21_55_09_87_95_nexus-one 192.168.1.40 90:21:55:09:87:95 2.3.7 Adreno 200 SanDisk Pro
Google Nexus S nexus-s-1 32318e41c58f00ec 78_d6_f0_cf_d2_17_nexus-s 192.168.1.11 78:d6:f0:cf:d2:17 2.3.6 PowerVR SGX540  
Google Nexus S nexus-s-2 3833f770946f00ec 78_d6_f0_cf_8d_11_nexus-s 192.168.1.15 78:d6:f0:cf:8d:11 2.3.6 PowerVR SGX540  
Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 samsung-gs2-1 304d19d2c307be8e 98_0c_82_33_ec_8d_samsung-gs2 192.168.1.4 98:0c:82:33:ec:8d 2.3.6 Mali-400 MP4  
Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 samsung-gs2-2 304d097f6e5add6f 20_64_32_4f_e9_4f_samsung-gs2 192.168.1.6 20:64:32:4f:e9:4f 4.0.3 Mali-400 MP4  
Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 samsung-gs2-3 0009cfb9411b4f 20_64_32_21_35_70_samsung-gs2 192.168.1.5 20:64:32:21:35:70 4.0.4 Mali-400 MP4 Not rooted
Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 samsung-gs2-4 304d19c38653ed7e 14_7d_c5_af_c8_e3_samsung-gs2 192.168.1.26 14:7d:c5:af:c8:e3 2.3.5 Mali-400 MP4  
Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 samsung-gs2-5 304d19fec32a7f9e 04_46_65_fd_2f_e1_samsung-gs2 192.168.1.41 04:46:65:fd:2f:e1 2.3.4 Mali-400 MP4  
Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH 0I535 samsung-gs3-1 b313b945 5c_0a_5b_b4_31_32_samsung-gs3 192.168.1.14 5c:0a:5b:b4:31:32 4.0.4 Mali-400 MP  
Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH 0I535 samsung-gs3-2 98095208 38_aa_3c_1e_a8_ee_samsung-gs3 192.168.1.12 38:aa:3c:1e:a8:ee 4.0.4 Mali-400 MP  
Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH 0I535 samsung-gs3-3 501a2aa7 38_aa_3c_1c_f6_94_samsung-gs3 192.168.1.42 38:aa:3c:1e:a8:ee 4.0.4 Mali-400 MP  


Building Python 2.7.3 on RHEL6

bug 804865 recently introduced the requirement to use Python 2.7 when building Firefox Nightly (Firefox 21). Since only Python 2.6 is available on Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6) you will need to build Python. A working version can be built by:

cd ~/Downloads
sudo yum install bzip2-devel sqlite-devel ncurses-devel openssl-devel readline-devel tkinter tk-devel
curl -O http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.3/Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2
if ! md5sum Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2 | grep c57477edd6d18bd9eeca2f21add73919; then
    echo "Failed md5sum check"
else
    tar xjvf Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2 && \
    cd Python-2.7.3 && \
    ./configure && \
    make && \
    sudo make altinstall
fi

This will produce a working version of Python that can be used to build Firefox Nightly though the following modules will not be built.

  • _bsddb
  • bsddb185
  • dbm
  • gdbm
  • sunaudiodev

See Python 2.7.3 Release for more details.