Re: [gentoo-user] chrome and everything

Re: [gentoo-user] chrome and everything

[Indi]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 11:30:02AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 10:49 on Thursday 02 June 2011, András Csányi 
> did opine thusly:
> 
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Something strange happen here. I have seen few things in Linux world
> > but this is very new for me!
> > 
> > I have this fantastic browser called Chromium (12.0.742.68) and I
> > really like it. But, sometimes, when I see flash videos on different
> > sites (youtube, cnn, bbc) the whole chromium become frozen and basicly
> > impossible to kill it. (The comfortable way is left click on the
> > taskbar and choose "Close" and KDE takes care of to kill the
> > application. ) I'm aware of I'm using Linux and the Linux desktop and
> > the flash are not the best friends ever. So my usual activity if my
> > browser become frozen by flash is the next: (1), start a konsole, (2),
> > start htop, (3) and kill the process, (4) restart the browser, (5)
> > happy.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > While I wrote this letter Chromium become crazy again - thanks the
> > automatic save few words has lost this letter - and I know that the
> > root cause the Chromium itself and the flash isn't matter. Flash just
> > make faster that process when Chromium become crazy.
> 
> No, you are probably wrong here.
> 
> Chromium is not the problem, Flash is the problem.
> 

That's what I'd have thought if it were any other browser, but my 
experience with chromium is that it's actually quite unstable.

> Flash is a piece of shit that has never worked right and Adobe are a bunch of 
> fools that cannot code properly or securely. I can comfortably say this based 
> on long hard bitter experience by the entire Linux community.
> 
> If you choose to use Flash, you get to put up with the resulting problems.
> 

Maybe before throwing out the baby with the bathwater he should do some 
more testing in another browser. In the past I've seen behavior not
unlike that described due to flash, but if flash is the culprit it will 
show up using firefox or konqueror or whatever.

-- 
caveat utilitor
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ 

Re: [gentoo-user] chrome and everything

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 15:47 on Thursday 02 June 2011, Indi did opine 
thusly:

> Maybe before throwing out the baby with the bathwater he should do some 
> more testing in another browser. In the past I've seen behavior not
> unlike that described due to flash, but if flash is the culprit it will 
> show up using firefox or konqueror or whatever.

I've seen various combinations of flash-replacements, browsers and hackery 
(nspluginwrapper comes to mind) do similar things - send a machine haywire and 
sometimes even lock it up solid. But in each case it's been a new commit to 
the tree, many more than 1 user was affected and we heard about it here almost 
right away.

That isn't the case this time. Woth checking, I just don't hold out much hope 
it's anything other than flash itself (especially given it's track record).



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Indi]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 09:20:01AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 
> Compare how Google goes about doing things with how Adobe does it.
> 
> The Google Chromium team appears to take security seriously and are open and 
> up-front about what they do.
> 
> Adobe likes to stonewall on issues and create an aura of how sekrit stuff is.
> 
> Which one inspires confidence in fellow geeks?
> 

Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil 
and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.

Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.

-- 
caveat utilitor
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 13:12 on Friday 03 June 2011, Indi did opine 
thusly:

> On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 09:20:01AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Compare how Google goes about doing things with how Adobe does it.
> > 
> > The Google Chromium team appears to take security seriously and are open
> > and up-front about what they do.
> > 
> > Adobe likes to stonewall on issues and create an aura of how sekrit stuff
> > is.
> > 
> > Which one inspires confidence in fellow geeks?
> 
> Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil
> and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.
> 
> Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.

I think of it more a case of there being no viable alternative to Flash[1] 
whereas Chrom{e,ium} is just one more browser amongst many.

I use Flash myself even though I hate the way it performs.

[1] There are flash alternatives, but by and large only support out of date 
features, so they are not really "viable".

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Indi]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 10:20:02PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 18:22 on Friday 03 June 2011, Indi did opine 
> thusly:
> 
> > > > Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil
> > > > and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.
> > > >
> > > > 
> > > >
> > > > Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.
> > >
> > > 
> > >
> > > I think of it more a case of there being no viable alternative to
> > > Flash[1]  whereas Chrom{e,ium} is just one more browser amongst many.
> > >
> > > 
> > >
> > > I use Flash myself even though I hate the way it performs.
> > >
> > > 
> > >
> > > [1] There are flash alternatives, but by and large only support out of
> > > date  features, so they are not really "viable".
> > >
> > > 
> > 
> > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded to
> > replace  flash, but I think perhaps the biggest reason for the success of
> > flash is its sneakiness in tracking users and ability to enforce DRM. Big
> > Business just loves that sort of thing.
> 
> Compare skype. Someone just reverse-engineered critical bits of v1.4, I'll bet 
> money that Skype's (now MS) response will be to tweak the app so that any 
> open-source implementation gets no response from Skype infrastructure when 
> used. Same possibility of sneaky shit going on under the surface.
> 

Just about everythng Microsoft touches goes bad.
R.I.P Skype.

-- 
caveat utilitor
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Indi]

On Sat, Jun 04, 2011 at 12:50:02AM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Friday 03 June 2011 22:50:28 Mick wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded
> > > > to
> > > > replace  flash,
> > 
> > I do hope that html5 will do away with it altogether.
> 
> you can easily block flash.
> 
> You won't be able to block all that moving add crap in html5. Why do you think 
> the ad-slingers (google the biggest among them) push for h5?

With privoxy and noscript there isn't much that can't be blocked.

-- 
caveat utilitor
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Friday 03 June 2011 19:49:40 Indi wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 04, 2011 at 12:50:02AM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > On Friday 03 June 2011 22:50:28 Mick wrote:
> > > > > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably
> > > > > well coded
> > > > > to
> > > > > replace  flash,
> > > 
> > > I do hope that html5 will do away with it altogether.
> > 
> > you can easily block flash.
> > 
> > You won't be able to block all that moving add crap in html5. Why do you
> > think the ad-slingers (google the biggest among them) push for h5?
> 
> With privoxy and noscript there isn't much that can't be blocked.

you are going to be surprised.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Indi]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 06:10:02PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 13:12 on Friday 03 June 2011, Indi did opine 
> thusly:
> 
> > On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 09:20:01AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > > Compare how Google goes about doing things with how Adobe does it.
> > > 
> > > The Google Chromium team appears to take security seriously and are open
> > > and up-front about what they do.
> > > 
> > > Adobe likes to stonewall on issues and create an aura of how sekrit stuff
> > > is.
> > > 
> > > Which one inspires confidence in fellow geeks?
> > 
> > Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil
> > and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.
> > 
> > Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.
> 
> I think of it more a case of there being no viable alternative to Flash[1] 
> whereas Chrom{e,ium} is just one more browser amongst many.
> 
> I use Flash myself even though I hate the way it performs.
> 
> [1] There are flash alternatives, but by and large only support out of date 
> features, so they are not really "viable".
> 

Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded to replace 
flash, but I think perhaps the biggest reason for the success of flash
is its sneakiness in tracking users and ability to enforce DRM. Big Business 
just loves that sort of thing.

-- 
caveat utilitor
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 18:22 on Friday 03 June 2011, Indi did opine 
thusly:

> > > Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil
> > > and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.
> > >
> > > 
> > >
> > > Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.
> >
> > 
> >
> > I think of it more a case of there being no viable alternative to
> > Flash[1]  whereas Chrom{e,ium} is just one more browser amongst many.
> >
> > 
> >
> > I use Flash myself even though I hate the way it performs.
> >
> > 
> >
> > [1] There are flash alternatives, but by and large only support out of
> > date  features, so they are not really "viable".
> >
> > 
> 
> Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded to
> replace  flash, but I think perhaps the biggest reason for the success of
> flash is its sneakiness in tracking users and ability to enforce DRM. Big
> Business just loves that sort of thing.

Compare skype. Someone just reverse-engineered critical bits of v1.4, I'll bet 
money that Skype's (now MS) response will be to tweak the app so that any 
open-source implementation gets no response from Skype infrastructure when 
used. Same possibility of sneaky shit going on under the surface.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 1686 bytes --]

On Friday 03 Jun 2011 21:07:36 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 18:22 on Friday 03 June 2011, Indi did
> opine
> 
> thusly:
> > > > Neither. Adobe is utterly incompetent and apathetic, google is evil
> > > > and wants to sell ad space for h3rb41 v14gr4 in your brain.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Flash is a necessary evil for a lot of us, chrome(ium) is not.
> > > 
> > > I think of it more a case of there being no viable alternative to
> > > Flash[1]  whereas Chrom{e,ium} is just one more browser amongst many.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I use Flash myself even though I hate the way it performs.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > [1] There are flash alternatives, but by and large only support out of
> > > date  features, so they are not really "viable".
> > 
> > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded to
> > replace  flash, 

I do hope that html5 will do away with it altogether.


> > but I think perhaps the biggest reason for the success of
> > flash is its sneakiness in tracking users and ability to enforce DRM. Big
> > Business just loves that sort of thing.

Thankfully, rtmpdump and friends do away with such issues.  


> Compare skype. Someone just reverse-engineered critical bits of v1.4, I'll
> bet money that Skype's (now MS) response will be to tweak the app so that
> any open-source implementation gets no response from Skype infrastructure
> when used. Same possibility of sneaky shit going on under the surface.

I'm looking forward to using it - especially if it will allow me to stop Skype 
using my machine (and bandwidth) as a proxy node.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Friday 03 June 2011 22:50:28 Mick wrote:
> > > 
> > > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded
> > > to
> > > replace  flash,
> 
> I do hope that html5 will do away with it altogether.

you can easily block flash.

You won't be able to block all that moving add crap in html5. Why do you think 
the ad-slingers (google the biggest among them) push for h5?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 03 June 2011 22:50:28 Mick wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Agreed. I do wish we'd get something open and reasonably well coded
>> > > to
>> > > replace  flash,
>>
>> I do hope that html5 will do away with it altogether.
>
> you can easily block flash.
>
> You won't be able to block all that moving add crap in html5. Why do you think
> the ad-slingers (google the biggest among them) push for h5?
>

12 days to Chromebook...

[gentoo-user] chrome and everything

[András Csányi]

Hi All,

Something strange happen here. I have seen few things in Linux world
but this is very new for me!

I have this fantastic browser called Chromium (12.0.742.68) and I
really like it. But, sometimes, when I see flash videos on different
sites (youtube, cnn, bbc) the whole chromium become frozen and basicly
impossible to kill it. (The comfortable way is left click on the
taskbar and choose "Close" and KDE takes care of to kill the
application. ) I'm aware of I'm using Linux and the Linux desktop and
the flash are not the best friends ever. So my usual activity if my
browser become frozen by flash is the next: (1), start a konsole, (2),
start htop, (3) and kill the process, (4) restart the browser, (5)
happy.
But, in this case, htop doesn't start. I can see the prompt and the
command "htop" but the cursor is disappeared and nothing. Just waiting
for something. The konsole doesn't react CTRL-c. I've tried this in
xterm terminal and the result was the same. In normal case I examine
the htop process by strace but I can't figure out what is the PID
number because of ps aux (see below). Usually I'm using strace from
htop.

I thought "ok, no problem, I'm well experienced linux user and I know
there always is another way to kill a process". So, I typed "ps aux |
grep chrom" command and the result was the same as htop. I could see
the prompt and my command and nothing. The cursor is disappeared and
nothing. We waited for something. Here I thought that the X server
could be the root cause. I pushed CTRL-DEL-F1 and I thought that "here
is my little console and I'm able to do everything". But the result
was the same when I wanted to start htop.

Here was the point when I became angry and restarted my machine. The
restarting process stopped at "Terminating processes" and my machine
didn't restart just wait for something for minutes! I had to push
reset button after 5 minutes.

Strange, isn't?

Has anybody any thought, idea what the hell happen?

While I wrote this letter Chromium become crazy again - thanks the
automatic save few words has lost this letter - and I know that the
root cause the Chromium itself and the flash isn't matter. Flash just
make faster that process when Chromium become crazy.

My plan is the next:
- rebuild my whole system because it's necessary. This is a very fresh
install and gcc has changed.
- step back to earlier version of chromium
- try to reproduce this error with another browser
- pray to God :)
- switch off the computer and read The Wheel of Time series from
Robert Jordan :)

-- 
- -
--  Csanyi Andras (Sayusi Ando)  -- http://sayusi.hu --
http://facebook.com/andras.csanyi
--  ""Trust in God and keep your gunpowder dry!" - Cromwell

Re: [gentoo-user] chrome and everything

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 10:49 on Thursday 02 June 2011, András Csányi 
did opine thusly:

> Hi All,
> 
> Something strange happen here. I have seen few things in Linux world
> but this is very new for me!
> 
> I have this fantastic browser called Chromium (12.0.742.68) and I
> really like it. But, sometimes, when I see flash videos on different
> sites (youtube, cnn, bbc) the whole chromium become frozen and basicly
> impossible to kill it. (The comfortable way is left click on the
> taskbar and choose "Close" and KDE takes care of to kill the
> application. ) I'm aware of I'm using Linux and the Linux desktop and
> the flash are not the best friends ever. So my usual activity if my
> browser become frozen by flash is the next: (1), start a konsole, (2),
> start htop, (3) and kill the process, (4) restart the browser, (5)
> happy.

[snip]

> While I wrote this letter Chromium become crazy again - thanks the
> automatic save few words has lost this letter - and I know that the
> root cause the Chromium itself and the flash isn't matter. Flash just
> make faster that process when Chromium become crazy.

No, you are probably wrong here.

Chromium is not the problem, Flash is the problem.

Flash is a piece of shit that has never worked right and Adobe are a bunch of 
fools that cannot code properly or securely. I can comfortably say this based 
on long hard bitter experience by the entire Linux community.

If you choose to use Flash, you get to put up with the resulting problems.

> My plan is the next:
> - rebuild my whole system because it's necessary. This is a very fresh
> install and gcc has changed.
> - step back to earlier version of chromium
> - try to reproduce this error with another browser
> - pray to God :)
> - switch off the computer and read The Wheel of Time series from
> Robert Jordan :)

Waste of time, won't fix anything.

Flash is a bundled binary and recompiling world will not recompile Flash.

Adobe fixing Flash is what will fix Flash.




-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[walt]

On 06/02/2011 02:21 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> Flash is a piece of shit that has never worked right and Adobe are a bunch of 
> fools that cannot code properly or securely.

I agree 100%.  My question is why they continue to be so successful in spite
of such a history.  And they don't seem to be improving -- Flash shows up
regularly on the monthly security bulletin from sans.org with yet another
buffer overflow exploit.  It never gets better :(

OTOH, chromium gets security fixes from google every *week*, so they don't
inspire much confidence either.

Which is safer:  an insecure program that gets fixed every month, or one that
gets fixed every week?  The answer is not obvious to me...

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 02:07 on Friday 03 June 2011, walt did opine 
thusly:

> On 06/02/2011 02:21 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Flash is a piece of shit that has never worked right and Adobe are a
> > bunch of fools that cannot code properly or securely.
> 
> I agree 100%.  My question is why they continue to be so successful in
> spite of such a history.  

That's easy to answer, but it has nothing to do with code and everything to do 
with human nature.

Flash is New!Improved!Shiny! shit full of bling and looks cool to the 
consumer. Web devs develop flashy shiny sites and users think it's awesome. We 
look at flash and think "OMFG, how can anyone release crap code like that?"

Well, the web dev is hooked into the user's mindset, providing something the 
user likes and that is real to him. So the user will use it regardless of any 
issues it may have. The user does not understand our mindset (coders and code 
quality) so we get no traction with users, we might as well speak Martian


> And they don't seem to be improving -- Flash
> shows up regularly on the monthly security bulletin from sans.org with yet
> another buffer overflow exploit.  It never gets better :(
> 
> OTOH, chromium gets security fixes from google every *week*, so they don't
> inspire much confidence either.
> 
> Which is safer:  an insecure program that gets fixed every month, or one
> that gets fixed every week?  The answer is not obvious to me...

Compare how Google goes about doing things with how Adobe does it.

The Google Chromium team appears to take security seriously and are open and 
up-front about what they do.

Adobe likes to stonewall on issues and create an aura of how sekrit stuff is.

Which one inspires confidence in fellow geeks?


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: chrome and everything

[András Csányi]

On 2 June 2011 10:49, András Csányi <sayusi.ando@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All,

Just for the record. It looks like this problem is solved. I switched
back to gentoo-sources and I haven't experienced such problems which
is described in my first letter. I have used ck kernel. I would like
to emphasize that this doesn't mean that the ck kernel is bad. It
means that I have to make some tests and figure out what was the
problem and report it.

András

-- 
- -
--  Csanyi Andras (Sayusi Ando)  -- http://sayusi.hu --
http://facebook.com/andras.csanyi
--  ""Trust in God and keep your gunpowder dry!" - Cromwell