I've been suffering from those terrible pauses for years, now. Since version 3.0, in fact. When the browser pauses, it only peaks on one core. In fact, anything Firefox does peaks only one core.
I can't take an web browser seriously as an "OS" until they can do fucking thread management properly.
Seriously, what's the point of making a car if it doesn't have some kind of canopy to protect from the weather (even a convertable), and its crash-worthiness is that of a go-kart? Might as well make a trike out of it.
It's funny that people attack RMS, and fail to acknowledge that the powers-that-be are pushing in, and succeeding in getting to, the polar opposite of his stance.
Geeks have never had compelling marketing skills. Politicians specialize in manipulation. This is why the good guys lose.
I like the idea of FOSS and I write plenty of my own open software, but I can't help but visualize the community as a whole being a bunch of spoiled, self-entitled children. I'm rational enough to understand what RMS is actually saying, but the image of the bratty hippie still dances in my head whenever I hear him talk. There's a reason why he's so famous and yet still has relatively little influence on public opinion, and even knowledgeable people on Slashdot can't figure out if he's a progressive visionary or just a plain loony.
I find it hard to believe that absolutely everything in our garbage dumps or oceans could be collected and destroyed with such precision and effectiveness. These days, reading and writing isn't a skill belonging only to the elite, so it would be fairly easy for ordinary people to keep a large cache of information preserved against the will of the rulers for quite a few generations. If there's a cataclysmic event that kills most of humanity, the "cleanup" will be next to impossible given the tons of stuff that simply washes up on the beach every year.
Of course, I'm assuming more than a few thousand people from a 1st world country will survive. The higher the death toll, the more likely people will be valuing food and shelter over the preservation of history.
Apple took the same guts in their aging, severely uncompetitive beige boxes, and packaged in into a candy-colored gumdrop. Instant smash hit. The sad thing is, Apple didn't even design the iMac. Remember the Cube? It was a total piece of shit that had a horrible failure rate due to overheating. People cared more about the "cracks" in the injection molded case then they did about the fried parts. OSX? It was a dog when it was released. Slowest piece of junk I ever used, and it wouldn't even run on most of the older Macs. Apple sure did croon about the whole UNIX thing, though, even though nobody in the Mac community even had a command line in the previous OS. Do I even need to mention the hockey puck? Everybody hated it so much on the iMac, that Apple ignored the community's cries and made it standard on the PowerMac -- their flagship workstation. That's okay, though... just throw it out and use a bog standard PC mouse.
You can say what you want about knowing a good product when they see one, so even if they just bought out a product and repackaged it, they're still geniuses. However, but there's a reason why people see Apple as lucky and getting by on shiny and pretty. That's exactly what saved them from the brink of disaster, and once they understood that format, they went full steam ahead.
Their competitors think it's all down to luck and fanaticism.
Apple banked on gadgets, not computers. They made their fortune on the iPad and its infrastructure, not the Mac. The failure of the companies in the PC market was... staying in the PC market.
Opera lags a lot after a page refresh, thanks to some kind of graphics issue with the progress indicator. The browser feels fast as hell until it tries to clear the progress bar and print the word "Done".
Firefox, of course, pauses whenever it damn well feels like.
Agreed. Ever since 3.6, every time I've updated Firefox it only gets slower and the regular freezes keep getting longer. Extensions like Session Manager don't seem to work at all for me, despite many claims to the contrary.
Forget memory usage and leaks. It's the memory manager that needs an overhaul, and in that department, they seem to be doing nothing.
Thankfully I never became addicted to tabs and use an old-fashioned HTML file as my homepage instead. Regularly restarting Firefox makes the browser usable. I can't imagine keeping the browser open for days on end like other people do.
A recent example of this is Death Rally. While the game wasn't actually open-sourced, someone did offer to make a native Windows port of the title, and Remedy Entertainment gave the port the green flag. The ported game was then released as freeware. It was very well-received.
A couple years later, an all-new Death Rally became available as an iPhone/Android game, which was also well-received.
I believe the reason the game wasn't open-sourced is because they were using a proprietary video player for the movies, and some other code was only available as binaries.
Yay. More minimalist UI experts telling us to remove everything not used by the lowest common denominator.
Back in my Amiga days, people ranted endlessly about the machines custom chips, the games, the graphics, the multimedia, and some forward-thinking people actually even mentioned the multitasking. But to me, the greatest feature of the Amiga was the seamless coexistence of the GUI and CLI in one environment, without forcing one or the other upon people. At least once OS 2.0 came out, you never needed to use the CLI unless you were messing around with public domain software. A huge number of GUI-driven applications had tons of command-line options without needing a separate executable. Granted, the Amiga's shell wasn't anywhere near as powerful as a typical UN*X terminal, but it was powerful enough for everyday use. With some exceptions, there never was a war between CLI and GUI fanatics.
I was always wondering when Windows and UN*X would get their stuff together and finally learn that the GUI and CLI don't have to be separate environments designed for totally different people. Ironically, the Mac, which always treated the CLI as evil, comes the closest today.
The fact that you have to ask is the problem (even if you were just joking).
Even where Linux is concerned, what's so hard about having a "cheat sheet" available in an obvious location? Over the last 25 years, manuals gave way to pamphlets, which gave way to online documentation, and now interfaces are so supremely well-designed *cough* that even a list of hotkeys requires you to do a web search on online fan clubs.
Quick Launch, introduced in 1998... and I think it was ripped off from Linux or something.
Back in my MacOS days at college, I always wondered when the Mac would get a window manager that didn't suck. The dock was just Apple's way of finally getting the taskbar they were too proud to rip off.
What's really amazing is that it took them billions of dollars and countless man-hours to make Windows what it is today, and yet, the things that pisses me off the most is the location of one or two buttons, or one badly designed menu.
Why take a month and a shoestring budget to make a more flexible Explorer.exe and give people just a few extra options (such as built-in PowerToys), when you can spend years and millions working on stupid experimental features that nobody asked for?
Software design in a nutshell.
Remember the fuss Apple made over "Stacks"? That was a blatantly obvious feature that I've been waiting for Microsoft to introduce since forever. I've been doing it on Windows with TrueLauchBar for years. How much effort and money did that feature take to hack up?
App nothing. This encompasses both the "ribbon" and "dynamic menu" paradigms.
Stop moving everything around unexpectedly. Stop hiding things. Stop making me search using keywords. Stop making suggestions. Just give me a goddamn list!
I still use XP and its wonderful Quick Launch toolbar. I don't have to type anything.
I already dislike Windows 7 and the pinned toolbar. It makes it so much harder to make quick launches and move them around in the order I want, and the icons are so damn big I can't put as many icons on the taskbar.
It's bad enough I can't get my Quick Launch toolbar back and have to rely on 3rd party tools, like TrueLauchBar. Now Microsoft wants to eliminate pretty much everything that made sense over the last 15 years.
Right now, tech manufacturing is feeding the demand to do things like upgrade computers and phones every 18 months.
I was under the impression that tech marketing was doing that. Planned obsolescence.
I tend to use a computer for over 6 years before getting a new one. I'm still using XP because I don't like 7, though I've already bought 7 and will be updating soon... on my now 5-year-old PC.
When I bought a Mac Mini a while ago, Apple cut me off from OSX version updates after 2 years, despite the fact that they charge money for updates and they have so little hardware to support. Every piece of Mac software out there always requires the latest version of OSX. People look at me like I have 5 heads when I bitch about Apple dumping all support for my system, telling me I can't expect them to make OSX work on hardware 4 years old. Why not? All of my PCs did! You know, the PCs that are used in businesses where compatibility matters, rather than those consumer toys where you are expected to throw it out once the new model is released.
They're not admitting that there are any flaws. Apple's way of handling trojan and malware outbreaks thus far has been to keep as quiet as possible, pretend the problem doesn't exist, slip out a patch as inconspicuously as possible when things finally get out of hand, and remind people that Macs are practically bombproof because they are based on UNIX (not that they are UNIX, just based on it). The Apple community will handle damage control on their own... provided they are even aware that there is an issue at all. Sounds like keeping their head in the sand to me.
Hell, their site said, "Immune to Windows viruses, thanks to built-in defenses." Not being compatible with Windows software is a built-in defense? As if, they had to work at it?
Given that this software is designed for corporate networks, I don't see this as bad as all the "safe browsing" stuff that's being put into web browsers these days. Automated blocking isn't really something we should be pushing with regards to things like gambling. Save the blocking (with overrides) for malware sites.
Also, do corporations have to use Microsoft's Reputation Service, or are they able to add/remove sites themselves? The comment from the FSF about the proprietary nature of Microsoft's software make it sound like any level of manual control is impossible. Is it?
One thing that isn't mentioned in the article is whether this security suite is meant for use by ISPs. Does it only work on corporate servers on their own intranet, or is this something that could potentially block people's home computers from accessing the FSF donation site? If it only affects corporate networks, claiming it could prevent people from making donations to the FSF is unnecessary and sounds like attention whoring to me.
I hate to sound like a devil's advocate, but I'd like more facts and less bashing.
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I've been suffering from those terrible pauses for years, now. Since version 3.0, in fact. When the browser pauses, it only peaks on one core. In fact, anything Firefox does peaks only one core.
I can't take an web browser seriously as an "OS" until they can do fucking thread management properly.
Doesn't every language have it's own special term for "hash map", but they all use the same term for "array?"
Don't have to leave computer science to over-think an analogy, either. :)
Seriously, what's the point of making a car if it doesn't have some kind of canopy to protect from the weather (even a convertable), and its crash-worthiness is that of a go-kart? Might as well make a trike out of it.
It's funny that people attack RMS, and fail to acknowledge that the powers-that-be are pushing in, and succeeding in getting to, the polar opposite of his stance.
Geeks have never had compelling marketing skills. Politicians specialize in manipulation. This is why the good guys lose.
I like the idea of FOSS and I write plenty of my own open software, but I can't help but visualize the community as a whole being a bunch of spoiled, self-entitled children. I'm rational enough to understand what RMS is actually saying, but the image of the bratty hippie still dances in my head whenever I hear him talk. There's a reason why he's so famous and yet still has relatively little influence on public opinion, and even knowledgeable people on Slashdot can't figure out if he's a progressive visionary or just a plain loony.
I find it hard to believe that absolutely everything in our garbage dumps or oceans could be collected and destroyed with such precision and effectiveness. These days, reading and writing isn't a skill belonging only to the elite, so it would be fairly easy for ordinary people to keep a large cache of information preserved against the will of the rulers for quite a few generations. If there's a cataclysmic event that kills most of humanity, the "cleanup" will be next to impossible given the tons of stuff that simply washes up on the beach every year.
Of course, I'm assuming more than a few thousand people from a 1st world country will survive. The higher the death toll, the more likely people will be valuing food and shelter over the preservation of history.
Mountain Lion kernel is 64-bit only, and requires 64-bit EFI firmware.
Some people call that a commitment to clean architecture. I call that lazy.
But, we are talking about a company that says one USB port on a $3,000 machine ought to be enough for anyone.
Why doesn't that logic work when I'm playing my banjo?
Cue stories about e-books being forcibly deleted from readers due to copyright issues and legal squabbles between publishers.
Unfortunately, it's not the patent system that's broken, it's the whole IP system.
Apple took the same guts in their aging, severely uncompetitive beige boxes, and packaged in into a candy-colored gumdrop. Instant smash hit. The sad thing is, Apple didn't even design the iMac. Remember the Cube? It was a total piece of shit that had a horrible failure rate due to overheating. People cared more about the "cracks" in the injection molded case then they did about the fried parts. OSX? It was a dog when it was released. Slowest piece of junk I ever used, and it wouldn't even run on most of the older Macs. Apple sure did croon about the whole UNIX thing, though, even though nobody in the Mac community even had a command line in the previous OS. Do I even need to mention the hockey puck? Everybody hated it so much on the iMac, that Apple ignored the community's cries and made it standard on the PowerMac -- their flagship workstation. That's okay, though... just throw it out and use a bog standard PC mouse.
You can say what you want about knowing a good product when they see one, so even if they just bought out a product and repackaged it, they're still geniuses. However, but there's a reason why people see Apple as lucky and getting by on shiny and pretty. That's exactly what saved them from the brink of disaster, and once they understood that format, they went full steam ahead.
Their competitors think it's all down to luck and fanaticism.
Apple banked on gadgets, not computers. They made their fortune on the iPad and its infrastructure, not the Mac. The failure of the companies in the PC market was... staying in the PC market.
Opera lags a lot after a page refresh, thanks to some kind of graphics issue with the progress indicator. The browser feels fast as hell until it tries to clear the progress bar and print the word "Done".
Firefox, of course, pauses whenever it damn well feels like.
Agreed. Ever since 3.6, every time I've updated Firefox it only gets slower and the regular freezes keep getting longer. Extensions like Session Manager don't seem to work at all for me, despite many claims to the contrary.
Forget memory usage and leaks. It's the memory manager that needs an overhaul, and in that department, they seem to be doing nothing.
Thankfully I never became addicted to tabs and use an old-fashioned HTML file as my homepage instead. Regularly restarting Firefox makes the browser usable. I can't imagine keeping the browser open for days on end like other people do.
A recent example of this is Death Rally. While the game wasn't actually open-sourced, someone did offer to make a native Windows port of the title, and Remedy Entertainment gave the port the green flag. The ported game was then released as freeware. It was very well-received.
A couple years later, an all-new Death Rally became available as an iPhone/Android game, which was also well-received.
I believe the reason the game wasn't open-sourced is because they were using a proprietary video player for the movies, and some other code was only available as binaries.
You are paying for Facebook -- just not with dollar bills.
Me, I never had a Facebook account at all, and I don't think I'm missing out.
Yay. More minimalist UI experts telling us to remove everything not used by the lowest common denominator.
Back in my Amiga days, people ranted endlessly about the machines custom chips, the games, the graphics, the multimedia, and some forward-thinking people actually even mentioned the multitasking. But to me, the greatest feature of the Amiga was the seamless coexistence of the GUI and CLI in one environment, without forcing one or the other upon people. At least once OS 2.0 came out, you never needed to use the CLI unless you were messing around with public domain software. A huge number of GUI-driven applications had tons of command-line options without needing a separate executable. Granted, the Amiga's shell wasn't anywhere near as powerful as a typical UN*X terminal, but it was powerful enough for everyday use. With some exceptions, there never was a war between CLI and GUI fanatics.
I was always wondering when Windows and UN*X would get their stuff together and finally learn that the GUI and CLI don't have to be separate environments designed for totally different people. Ironically, the Mac, which always treated the CLI as evil, comes the closest today.
The fact that you have to ask is the problem (even if you were just joking).
Even where Linux is concerned, what's so hard about having a "cheat sheet" available in an obvious location? Over the last 25 years, manuals gave way to pamphlets, which gave way to online documentation, and now interfaces are so supremely well-designed *cough* that even a list of hotkeys requires you to do a web search on online fan clubs.
Quick Launch, introduced in 1998... and I think it was ripped off from Linux or something.
Back in my MacOS days at college, I always wondered when the Mac would get a window manager that didn't suck. The dock was just Apple's way of finally getting the taskbar they were too proud to rip off.
You say that as if it's our fault Microsoft can't do research properly. Software development shouldn't be a damned soap opera.
What's really amazing is that it took them billions of dollars and countless man-hours to make Windows what it is today, and yet, the things that pisses me off the most is the location of one or two buttons, or one badly designed menu.
Why take a month and a shoestring budget to make a more flexible Explorer.exe and give people just a few extra options (such as built-in PowerToys), when you can spend years and millions working on stupid experimental features that nobody asked for?
Software design in a nutshell.
Remember the fuss Apple made over "Stacks"? That was a blatantly obvious feature that I've been waiting for Microsoft to introduce since forever. I've been doing it on Windows with TrueLauchBar for years. How much effort and money did that feature take to hack up?
App nothing. This encompasses both the "ribbon" and "dynamic menu" paradigms.
Stop moving everything around unexpectedly. Stop hiding things. Stop making me search using keywords. Stop making suggestions. Just give me a goddamn list!
I still use XP and its wonderful Quick Launch toolbar. I don't have to type anything.
I already dislike Windows 7 and the pinned toolbar. It makes it so much harder to make quick launches and move them around in the order I want, and the icons are so damn big I can't put as many icons on the taskbar.
It's bad enough I can't get my Quick Launch toolbar back and have to rely on 3rd party tools, like TrueLauchBar. Now Microsoft wants to eliminate pretty much everything that made sense over the last 15 years.
Fuck Windows 8.
So, with all the gimmicks in the aftermarket PC cooling industry, why haven't I seen neutral-charge fans?
Right now, tech manufacturing is feeding the demand to do things like upgrade computers and phones every 18 months.
I was under the impression that tech marketing was doing that. Planned obsolescence.
I tend to use a computer for over 6 years before getting a new one. I'm still using XP because I don't like 7, though I've already bought 7 and will be updating soon... on my now 5-year-old PC.
When I bought a Mac Mini a while ago, Apple cut me off from OSX version updates after 2 years, despite the fact that they charge money for updates and they have so little hardware to support. Every piece of Mac software out there always requires the latest version of OSX. People look at me like I have 5 heads when I bitch about Apple dumping all support for my system, telling me I can't expect them to make OSX work on hardware 4 years old. Why not? All of my PCs did! You know, the PCs that are used in businesses where compatibility matters, rather than those consumer toys where you are expected to throw it out once the new model is released.
They're not admitting that there are any flaws. Apple's way of handling trojan and malware outbreaks thus far has been to keep as quiet as possible, pretend the problem doesn't exist, slip out a patch as inconspicuously as possible when things finally get out of hand, and remind people that Macs are practically bombproof because they are based on UNIX (not that they are UNIX, just based on it). The Apple community will handle damage control on their own... provided they are even aware that there is an issue at all. Sounds like keeping their head in the sand to me.
Hell, their site said, "Immune to Windows viruses, thanks to built-in defenses." Not being compatible with Windows software is a built-in defense? As if, they had to work at it?
Given that this software is designed for corporate networks, I don't see this as bad as all the "safe browsing" stuff that's being put into web browsers these days. Automated blocking isn't really something we should be pushing with regards to things like gambling. Save the blocking (with overrides) for malware sites.
Also, do corporations have to use Microsoft's Reputation Service, or are they able to add/remove sites themselves? The comment from the FSF about the proprietary nature of Microsoft's software make it sound like any level of manual control is impossible. Is it?
One thing that isn't mentioned in the article is whether this security suite is meant for use by ISPs. Does it only work on corporate servers on their own intranet, or is this something that could potentially block people's home computers from accessing the FSF donation site? If it only affects corporate networks, claiming it could prevent people from making donations to the FSF is unnecessary and sounds like attention whoring to me.
I hate to sound like a devil's advocate, but I'd like more facts and less bashing.
Well, in the 90's, Apple did license their OS to clone makers. It didn't work out too well for them.
That's because MacOS was crap, and Copland wasn't materializing. From what I remember, some of those Mac clones were pretty amazing.