x marks the low spot
Eventually fairing becomes a process of elimination.
i don’t need no stinkin’ extension
RMD history buffs will probably recall that the Remember Mismatched Domains extension was born out of my red-faced frustration with constantly having to accept the domain mismatch when checking my Dreamhost hosted email.
Knowing that, you’ll appreciate how thrilled I was to see that last week Dreamhost made some changes that promised to properly resolve my domain mismatch errors once and for all. No extension required.
As I was reading through the comments on the Dreamhost post announcing the changes however, my elation soon turned to… I don’t know, I still can’t find words for how ridiculous this has all become.
The bottom line? Uninstall RMD! As of last week, if you’re using a current version of Thunderbird you can now use your Dreamhost hosted email without having to accept a domain name mismatch error each time. Just follow the “Another way to get rid of the Domain Name Mismatch error” instructions on the Dreamhost wiki. (Atleast until Thunderbird is updated to actually comply with the X.509 spec).
The long story? Anybody know the current measurement for irony these days? If it were still measured by the foot I’d say we have atleast 10 feet of irony in this story… From my point of view here’s the lay of the land:
- I wrote an extension that works around a problem in Mozilla’s implementation of the SSL specification.
- Some of the Mozilla SSL folks feel that said extension is just plain wrong as it circumvents the SSL standard and the problem should really be solved by the owner of the SSL certificate.
- When renewing their SSL certificate Dreamhost, (who own the SSL certificate), changed things so that the mismatch is no longer presented – (in current versions of Mozilla Thunderbird).
- Mozilla’s implementation of the SSL specification is wrong and should probably be changed.
- When that change is made, the changes made by Dreamhost will be in vain.
- A bunch of geeks look really intelligent but this shit is still frustrating.
The only proper reaction to all of this? Laugh. (Or if you’re in need of an excuse, drink).
rmd 1.4.5 – osx remembers
This has been a long time coming.
Michael Baltaks has provided compiles of RMD’s XPCOM components that are compatible with both Intel and PowerPC versions of OSX. Which means that Mac users can once again use the Remember Mismatched Domains extension.
I know this is good news for some and I suggest you heap the usual new RMD release praises on Michael. Here I’ll start: Michael, thank you sooo much for quelling the Mac lynch mob that was assembling outside. ;-)
A bit of other significant RMD news is that the source for RMD is now being hosted in Google Code. Now that RMD contains binary components I think that it is important that anyone who wishes to do so is able to easily review the code and compile it themselves if they so wish. This is even more important as those components are user contributed. The RMD project can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/rmd/
Finally, I think this version of RMD should work with the Thunderbird 3 alpha. (I’ve only tested on my Linux install so it would be great if anyone who tries it could report on their success in the comments).
