Zac Bowling’s Mind

Latest MSVC 7 built GRE and gtkembedmoz.dll:

Testing: Mozilla v.1.7.5 - 6.1 mb
- built on January 26th, 2005
- almost identical to the code from the Firefox 1.0 tree
- stable build but untested

Unstable: Mozilla 1.7.6 - 6.5 mb
- Mozilla CVS - “MOZILLA_1_7_BRANCH” as of 02-21-2005
- built on February 21st, 2005
- Includes a beta support for SSL and Mozilla Plugins

Stable:
This version is maintained offsite by my good friend Paco (Fransico Martinez), the official maintainer of the WIN32 installers for Mono. His version of my code is more widely tested and better packaged for deployment. If you are planing on doing any Gecko# development on WIN32 or distrubuting any code that uses gtkembedmoz on WIN32, I recommend his over any other GRE. My version is better taylored for those developing with gtkmozembed directly in C/C++ and for those needing features in Gecko# not yet available in his builds. Versions include a GRE standalone build and a full Mozilla suite (both compiled under MSVC 7.1) and both include the Gecko# 0.7 binaries.
Stable Downloads - 4.4 - 6.5 mb

Alernative method: * UNSUPPORTED *
Ironicly, since the NVU editor (a standalone version of the Mozilla editor) is built with MSVC 7.0, it’s GRE is binarly compatable with our gtkembedmoz.dll. By downloading an installing NVU and just dropping the just the required files into your NVU install directory, you will have a fully working version of gtkembedmoz. Have fun.

Install Instructions

Install Instructions for testing/unstable. Note of warning. It says that you can use your own Mozilla GRE from your existing install, but this is untrue. You must use the version on this site! Use the links above and not the ones in the install file.

Binary Compatablity Issues

Part of the reason why I’m maintain a GRE for Mozilla is the fact that the official Mozilla’s GRE is built with MSVC 6.0 and the one I build with is 7.1. While normaly this isn’t an issue, Mozilla uses a library called libIDL which is used for code generation while building Mozilla. The version that is released for people building with MSVC 6 is incompatable with MSVC 7.0 or 7.1 so we must use a later version. Unfortunately, the libIDL for MSVC 6.0, generates code somewhere down deep that is incompatable with MSVC 7.1, and I’m not able to find exactly where its at. The only other alternatives are to install MSVC 6.0 and build gtkembedmoz.dll that way (unfortunetly MSVC 6.0 will not install on Windows XP SP2 without some major hacking) or search around for what causes the incompatablity errors while continuing to build my own GRE. NVU appears to have the same issues, and its why they include an entire GRE for Windows because they build with MSVC 7.0 and also why the alternative method works above.

Extras

All gtkembedmoz and Gecko# source files, patches, downloads, and screenshots.

This is a republishing of a previous blog entry I did 4 months ago with some updates. Enjoy.

I’ve thrown a list of simple things you can install and do to help you understand the common products and systems in Linux better and use the tools that Linux users use everyday. It help any Windows user better understand Linux. It can also make it easy just to work with other Linux people at your office. Who knows. Here is what you need to do:

STEP 1:

Download and install the following apps (*optional):

1. Paco’s (Fransico Martinez) WIN32 installer for Mono
   http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/index.html - Free
2. Cygwin is a full package of tools, applications, and compliable libraries that all work under windows using a unix emulation layer.
   http://www.cygwin.com/ - Free
3. Apache and PHP for your web server.
   http://httpd.apache.org/ - Free
   http://www.php.net/ - Free
4. ActivePerl, ActiveTcl, ( and maybe ActivePython)
   http://www.activestate.com/Products/Language_Distributions/ - Free
5. *MinGW (maybe MSYS) for compiling those linux based apps. (You can use -mno-cygwin but I prefer MinGW straight up. Seems to play more friendly that way)
   http://www.mingw.org/ - Free
6. *Windows Services for UNIX from Microsoft is nice for the command line utilities and setting up a Windows based NFS server (but is hard to find at a good price)
   http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/ - $$$
7. *Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla suite are the best web browsers (not really needed but it can help with your window’s struggles)
   http://www.mozilla.org/ - Free
8. *Subversion and TortoiseSVN
   http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ - Free
9. *CVSNT for a great NT based CVS
   http://www.cvsnt.org/ - Free
10. *VNC for remote desktop.
    http://www.realvnc.com/ - Free
11. *Putty for SSH. (Cygwin SSH is nice but Putty has better graphics support but don’t try to tie putty to subverison.)
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ - Free
12. *NMAP is great for scanning open ports (some virus scanners think this is a virus though)
    http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ - Free
13. *UCD-SNMP (or if you want to play with NET-SNMP, but its not as stable on windows) for SNMP
    http://www.net-snmp.org - Free
14. *Ethereal for packet sniffing
    http://www.ethereal.org/ - Free
15. *Gaim for instant messaging (Works with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, ICQ, Jabber, Novell Groupwise, Napster and more)
    http://gaim.sf.net/ - Free

STEP 2:

After you install Cygwin, make sure you add the X:\cygwin\bin (and X:\cygwin\usr\autotools\stable\bin if you installed the autotools package) to the end of path variable (Windows Control Panel -> System Settings -> Environment Variables -> Path). ActivePerl will do this for you for your perl libs. If you plan to use MinGW go ahead and add X:\mingw\bin to your path before the cygwin bin folder.

STEP 3:

Enjoy!

Showtime wants to cancel one of my favorite shows. Yes, I know it s a little corny but I really liked that show. Grr on you MGM + Showtime … http://www.deadlikeme.tv/

Sprint, Nextel merger to close gap with larger rivals - Dec. 15, 2004

This is where I can really have a good opinion. I work as a 3rd party application developer for Nextel based solutions and I’m a indirect dealer for Nextel. So what do I think? I don’t know.

The merger between AT&T Wireless and Cingular was a good one. They both use the same technology. Sprint and Nextel is a little bit scarier. Nextel uses the iDEN protocol, which is an old two way technology that Motorola designed in the early 90s and uses the 800-900mhz band. Sprint uses PCS technology which runs in the 2.1-2.5ghz band (depending on if you have a dual band, first gen, or second gen phone). Nextel also can only purchase phones from Motorola since Motorola owns all the patents on iDEN protocol.

Nextel has been feeling the burn of no competition over their protocol from multiple venders. I has been hurting them. Phones from Nextel cost four times more then similar GSM phones and Motorola not being pressured by competition has been long on development. Nextel just now got a camera phone.

Nextel hated it so they even tried to merge with Motorola but where shot down because of other iDEN carriers in Canada, Brazil, and other countries thought it would be to much of a competition issue.

Nextel has been stuck as Motorola’s b**ch for a long time and they hate staying there. They even went out and did some illegal messing with their signal in the 800-900mhz band to force the government to give them a band in the 2.4ghz range so they could use the more industry wide GSM protocols and buy phones from more manufactures. Traditionally 800-900mhz was used for private radio operators, but now mostly used by Nextel and emergency services systems. Nextel fiddled with the filters on their towers so their customers would overlap over the emergency service bands and cause interference. That is why the FCC didn’t want any cell phone carriers in that band but since Nextel evolved into cell phones they let them stay. The government gave Nextel a few 2.4 ghz bands in some cities but not anything near what they need to cover the US like their ~800 mhz bands did.

Nextel in a bind and the merge between AT&T and Cingular being such a big pressing deal, they went out in search of a partner to help them coupe. Here comes Sprint to the rescue. With the value of both companies about the same and good overlapping coverage areas, it was a good choice.

What’s the problem? Incompatible protocols. You can’t “dual band” over iDEN and PCS. You would need chips in the phone to handle both protocols. iDEN is completely different from PCS. They will need to choose which protocol is best or they will have a big engineering feat to overcome. Its going to be interesting.

The funny part about all of this is my position. I write GPS tracking software for Nextel phones. Remember back in the 90s when all the E911 laws were being passed? Well one rule said that any cell phone sold by 2005 must be able to be located if that phone goes into emergency mode (someone dials 911). This was something the GSM carriers could solve by doing tower locates and triangulation. For Nextel this wasn’t really possible. Remember how I told you that GSM and PCS run between 2.1 and 2.5 ghz? Well the 2.1 to 2.5ghz bands suck on distance and doesn’t pass through walls very easily, so the carriers have to put lots of towers within just a few miles of each other. Nextel runs in 800-900mhz. This is awesome for distance and passing through almost anything, so Nextel only had to put up a fraction of the towers that the other guys did. This makes triangulation an issue.

So what did Nextel do? They had Motorola install a GPS chip in every phone. This little change was huge for people like me. I can write software that runs on these phones to relay the current position of the phone back all through-out the day.

These means I’m waiting to see Nextel’s next move. Will they still keep the commitment to allow tracking on the up and coming PCS/iDEN hybrid models?

oh me oh my.

– UPDATE –
Read the rest of this entry »

This is just amazing. With the Mono project making .NET possible on Linux and Mac, the ablity of .NET just went up a bunch. Since the Linux guys couldn’t really wrap Windows.Forms they decided to wrap GTK since it can work on an OS on its own. Out born GTK#. Now Windows developers can take advantage of GTK by just installing GTK# devel. It will even intergrate into Visual Studio to give you a much more powerful graphics and gui system then what standard Windows Forms provide. Check it out at:
http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net/

I’ve been busy.

First off. I’ve been working on the nasty but widely used subset of popular technologies that Microsoft thinks it has a right to call a protocol, and to which I say “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”.

I’ve learned this bloated, nasty, retarded, dumber then shit so called “protocol”. Microsoft wants every device to impliement this “protocol” so that XP can auto detect devices on your network and software companies can write generic software to control anyone of these Microsoft conforming devices with only a few lines of code only if they are running in Windows further propogating the Microsoft control on the world.

Everyone knows it. However, since the most significant devices to released on the market are consumer routers, most of them are starting to support the Internet Gateway Device specification for UPnP. The great part is that its a standarization of doing common functions between these devices. Thats it. I know there is a better way this could be done, but this works good enough. You can call some the basic functions provided by most of these devices, like port forwarding through your NAT, quering your external IP, and getting a callback when your ISP connection fails.

What I’m getting at is that I’ve reversed engineered what it takes to support these devices with this functions in your code. I’ve sumbited this documenation to various places in the hopes that software will start to implimenet these interfaces to allow NAT transversal automaticly while behind these devices so that people can make client to client connections (like some type of direct file transfer system or allow Direct Connections in your AIM communications).

You can read more about this here.
sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=6059000&forum_id=9587

FlashFlashRevolution.com Your Flash Flash Revolution Source :: R2 Public Beta .11 Released

Check this out.

Been about a week since my last post. Been busy. I have few posts but they are marked hidden right now. I got a new source forge project. Its called libwp for short or by the better name WordPress Manager. I’ve had to mix PHP and C# (Mono) more then anyone I know, so I decided to mix the two things I love, Mono and PHP to create a very customizable tool to manage, edit, and post and to your WordPress blog. In the process I hope to build a class library to easily be configured to post to any WordPress blog (going through the libwp remote blogging extention of WordPress or using my WordPress libraries directly).
FUN FUN!

Zac Bowling

Here some thing cool to look at:
http://zacbowling.com/TouchPadArt/

I made everything using my touchpad on my laptop with a program I wrote to read the exact position of my finger on the touch pad and not just using the relative movement on my finger. That means I can draw on the pad using the pad as my canvas.

I never post the funny stuff I find so I think I’m going to change that right here.
Prepare to laugh:
http://newsfly.org/humormedia/richardsimmons1.htm

For the record, I don’t think Richard Simmons is funny but I have to admit this is really funny right here.