Luckily you told me not to take the post personally, because I would. Alas, you seem to have overseen one crucial point of my post: desk space. The case I described was where a 19" LCD monitor is the maximum size allowed. 19" at a 5:4 ratio translates a width of 14,84" inches. With the modern "standard" of 16:9, this translates to 17" diagonal. Try finding anything close to 1280x1024 in that size class and tell me where to find it and at what price.
Don't also simply assume that I haven't known the better times. In 1999, the CRTs with the resolutions you tout were indeed getting in the "payable" range. However, keep in mind they were real huge "fishtanks", as I like to call them. I had one on my desk at work (doing development back at a bank) and it was an insanely great 1600x1200 screen. I loved it, but it wouldn't have fit on my desk at home, if I wanted to. Which brings us back at space constraints. Back then, I opted for LCD screen that became payable by then. That was a 15" 1024x768 LCD screen which was great and I still have today. It's attached to my parents server for the occasional console work.
So, yes, I am fully aware we lost resolution over the years and I think that was implicit in my post. Why can't I get a 19" screen with a 2560x2048 resolution? Now that would be great. To understand what happened, we must look back at the history of monitors. Back in the CRT days of TV (and for the record, I still have a 16:9 CRT TV, as I'm not a fan of useless upgrading), the pixels were not square. The pixels of CRT TVs were rectangles. This was not so with computer monitors where the pixels were square. Basically, the devices were each a class of their own. There was no relation between the two devices except for the fact they both used phosphorous substances and an electron beam. Then laptops came out, and let's ignore the initial days of grayscale LCD (the kind you still find on calculators) and suddenly colour LCD screens were mass produced and became cheaper. Cheap enough to start making standalone flat screen monitors. The economics of scale started to work. The resolutions surely weren't up to what CRTs offered, but they gave other advantages, mainly in the physical space used and (my guess) for the manufacturers reduced construction price. (Compare the complexity of a cathode ray tube to the simplicity of an LCD screen... Especially in the number of components required)
In the same time-frame, the TV industry started the concept of HDTV. As you may recall, the first HDTV sets were CRT and had rectangular pixels. They were also insanely expensive. What happened next is logical: the TV Industry saw the economies of scale made by monitor manufacturers and decided they could use that as a platform for their future sets. Go and look at your HDTV set, which is most likely LCD. The pixels are square. The technology had become one and the same. At this point, the economies of scale kicked in harder. Guess what: more TVs are sold than monitors and the maximum resolution was defined (1080p), but the physical size basically had no upper bound and on a TV, it makes sense. After all you don't sit with your nose in front of the TV.
So, demand is mostly for large panels at a resolution of 1080p and consumers don't want to pay. The monitor manufacturers on their side jumped on the higher volume and basically said "screw the consumer", and made 1080p the "standard". We're stuck with this. This is why, when I bought a new monitor for my mom, I went with the 149€ 23" monitor at 1080p (which basically is a HDTV without tuner) than with some smaller monitor (saving space) but much more expensive. Both me and my sister do not have the luxury of space.
I might have expected to much, but I guessed that every self proclaimed geek would know about this history and when we talk about "HD" (The term I didn't even use in my original post... I did use 1080p, though) understand that the market has chosen for the cheap low-res, instead for the "bit more expensive, but
Something like this Foxconn NT535. It's my primary "desktop" (Mounted to the back of a 19" 1280x1024 monitor) Granted, it's only an Atom and that's probably not going to do it depending on your work. For normal office work, it suffices though and it's so cheap I considered stopping dumpster diving. With machines like this, a dumpster sourced 5 year old computer pales.
The only problem I see with this is that there would be a weight imbalance and might cause the laptop to tip over. You'd have to counterbalance with weights in the palm rests. Which would be a major downside because it would add (useless, when carrying) weight.
I have 1080p on my Dell L502x (I really should start using it one of these days. It arrived nearly three weeks ago) and that's a 15" laptop. I'm looking forward to 1080p on 11" laptops or so.
With monitors (non-laptop), the sizes are becoming insane to get decent resolution. My desktop any my sisters desktop (different machines, just in case you wonder) both have 19" LCDs at 1280x1024, which is perfect. Thing is, we both have limited desk space and in the case of my sister, 19" is the largest monitor possible. Try finding a 19" monitor with at least 1280x1024 resolution. It's very hard, because you usually get robbed in the vertical direction and otherwhise you have to settle for less screen real estate. So when her 19" monitor died, we had to find a 19" replacement which turned out to be a pain in the ass and expensive (Compare to other larges screens with more resolution).
23" Full HD monitors can be had for cheap, but that's because of the economies of scale due to HDTVs. At a certain point the monitors become too bulky to use as monitors on a desk. My wifes 27" iMac really is at the maximum size for a desktop usage monitor. It is awesomely huge... Sometimes, I feel it's too huge for her small desk.
I know, slightly offtopic, but I always thought the best way to implement a multiple monitor setup on a laptop would be to use three screens: the standard size in the middle and two half-sizes clapping open left and right. A bit like a Triptych. Probably just me...
ROM means Read Only Memory. Flash definitely isn't ROM in that sense: it is EEPROM, Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. The most common use of this before the SSD craze was the storage of BIOS settings. RAM means Random Access Memory, which typically is writeable (but doesn't have to be) as ROM usually is also RAM.
RAM and ROM are as such not mutually exclusive and mean different things. They don't even have to be silicon. Take a CD-ROM, which is read-only memory, but also random access (it's a block device when used as data. Music CDs are not random access) and they are not chips made from silicon.
Weird... I have done that too. Asus EEE 704 4G, with a swap space. I installed other operating systems a few times (Reset the original a few times, Debian Sid, Ubuntu 10.10/Netbook edition, Debian Squeeze which is what it's currently running) It's still going strong. My wife was in hospital for a full 8 months and it was her (only) computer during that time and she used it every day to email/surf/watch movies/listen to music. During that time it did have a small swap partition (By now, I switched to swap files as they are easier to change when running out of disk space).
The only difference I might see is that I installed a 2GB module the day I got it. From what I've seen it rarely to never passes the 512MB usage mark with the above mentioned systems So, with only 512MB RAM, it might hit the swap space occasionally. To kill it? Probably not enough.
You don't need to illustrate how those warnings look. I am intimately familiar with them.
Do you get a similar "untrusted certificate" warning when running self-signed Windows applications?
If it doesn't, that a gaping security hole right there. Hell would have been raised by everyone and his cousin by now. Even Microsoft isn't that dumb.
Assuming that users ARE prompted with a warning similar to the above, won't they typically just click through the dialogs and install/run the app?
Knowing users... Sure... However, you can't make users to read warnings, can you? You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink. At that point it really is their fault. Those users would just as well install an application that gets a warning when the application is unsigned. (Which is already the case for important packages like drivers) I guess an unsigned application will raise *less* eyebrows than a self-signed one. Still, saying "the users would do it anyway" remains no argument.
Thing is, a correct package management would do this all transparently for you. This is the strength of aptitude and co, and in a certain sense also of the "App Store". Microsoft sorely lacks something like that.
Can't you just sign applications and installers with a self-signed certificate?
No, and it shows that you don't really understand what a self-signed certificate is. The whole certificate system is based on three entities, namely, the "certificate authority", the "sender" (software provider/signer) and "receiver". The idea is to certify that the "sender"'s authenticity. In laymans terms, the "certificate authority" tells the "receiver" that the "sender" is who he claims he is. The premise is that the "receiver" trusts the "certificate authority". So basically, A trust C. C certifies that B is really B. So A can trust B.
With a self signed certificate, you merge C and B in one and the same entity. Of course, that's akin to believing me that I'm Bill Gates because I say that I'm Bill Gates. (I'm not, just in case you wonder). The self-signed certificate is basically a shortcut which hides the whole "Certificate Authority" business, but comes down to "trust me, or trust me not... it's up to you".
That said, you can trust any Certificate Authority you want. You can set up your own: I am one for me and my family. Anyone who trusts me, can trust me that I can certify that -for example- my brother is who he says he is. It's useless outside of your controlled environment, because by default the Certificate Authorities that are in your browser/operating system are those that are trusted and be sure, my Certificate Authority root certificate isn't in your browser (it's in mine, of course... I trust me;-) ). So if you trust me, you can import my Certificate Authority root certificate and then your browser/operating system won't complain about the fact that the software I signed (using my own CA), is untrustworthy, because suddenly it is.
So a self-signed authority is by definition useless, because nobody can really trust it. You can self-sign a binary, but it will issue a warning. That's the correct thing to do.
Read for more information (Not mine, but I only found out how to do this stuff by googling around and IIRC this was one of the main articles that helped me)
My primary desktop for home use is based on a foxconn NT535. Alternate.de sells it for 199â with 2GB RAM and a 320GB HDD. It's a Dual-Core Atom D525. That's obviously without OS, keyboard, mouse and monitor, but I had those already. Given, you can count 1USD=1EUR for tech stuff, I must assume a $199 computer with reasonable specifications must exist.
My main problem is that back five years ago, if you had a lucky find you could refurbish it and make someone with lesser funds a happy computer owner. Now? Heck, I'm even typing this on a 199€ machine, which has 2GB RAM and a 320GB HDD... Bought new. While back in the day, it was perhaps not financially viable to put time in it and sell the computer (which I never did), but to do good it made sense. Now, computers are so cheap, you really need to have an insanely lucky find. Who is going to take this AMD Athlon 2800+ laptop (Got it a month ago, prime condition), I have lying here? I upgraded it to 2GB with a 160GB HDD? It even has a Windows XP Home license sticker. I'll tell you who it will take: nobody, because it makes no sense to reuse it. Yes, I'm a bit bitter;-)
I stopped the "preserving" a few years ago. I donated anything exotic I had to a teacher who was collecting for a museum. (Nice finds were a Sinclair QL and a Sun SparcClassic)
Yes, I know that were usualy configs back then. 512MB was high-end machines. I took 512MB as something that would be "unacceptable" these days. I'm a dumpster diver, but if a machine can't support 1GB RAM, it's not worth my time. It will be impossible to refurbish for anyone.
If you want under the hood changes, XP did know about Hyperthreading and acted accordingly. 2000 would consider the machind tn have two CPUs, which could result in reduced peformance because of the (incorrect) assumptions made.
That's not entirely true. XP did add wireless support out of the box, even though every wireless driver seems to come with it's own crappy interface, but on Windows 2000 you had to use the crappy interfaces while on XP you can avoid them entirely. Also, there is fast user switching which is invaluable on home systems. Furthermore you neglect the compatibility layer added for older games. Windows 2000 was often a hassle to install (older) games on. Most of them worked, but you had to jump though hoop.
Sure, there is no reason Windows 2000 couldn't have had these improvements, but it didn't get them.
Well, in some cases, the extra requirements even come within the release. Consider Windows XP pre-SP2. It would run easily on a 512MB machine. After SP2, 512MB became low-end, you needed 1GB to run smoothly (beyond 1GB, the advantage became less visible. I've rarely had a XP machine use up more than 2GB, unless you ran a shebang of development programs on it. For normal use, 1GB was enough).
Now, I still am very fond of XP and it runs well on pretty much all hardware in use today. (Just use Administrator/Limited User separation and you'll be fine... and no, that's not hard) I use a dumpster diven P-IV-Mobile 1.6GHz, which I upgraded to 2GB RAM. XP runs very well. I wouldn't dare to run Vista on it, 7 would probably be a joke too. Sure, it is not "current" hardware... but current hardware even on the low end, we're talking multi-core madness and at least 3GB RAM, but often more. Unless we're talking Netbooks: the aforementioned P-IV-Mobile, ranks about the same as a Atom Z515, and let's be frank.... That's an "old" netbook processor. What's modern these days? Atom N570 or so?
So that Windows 8 will "run" on hardware of today? No surprise, as we already know what "run" means for Microsoft....
I had Firefox freeze up on my Ubuntu 10.04LTS machine regularly. Firefox turns "gray" when it happens, I can use the rest of the system. I first thought it was Flash-related, so I disabled it. That didn't fix it to my surprise. Googling a bit, some people suggested killing the profile. I did one step less, I cleared everything that is cached (Tools-Clear Recent History-Everything). That fixed it. The freezing is totally gone now.
I must admit that I have moved this profile from computer to computer, within different versions of Firefox (and probably even from when it was called Phoenix) and never bother to clean cookies or cache.
My guess is thus, that it is possible under certain conditions that the cached items are corrupted and impact on the performance of Firefox. It also makes it extremely hard to find, as basically, someone with the problem should sumbit their profile to the developers so they can look into it. That's surely not going to be me.
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Luckily you told me not to take the post personally, because I would. Alas, you seem to have overseen one crucial point of my post: desk space. The case I described was where a 19" LCD monitor is the maximum size allowed. 19" at a 5:4 ratio translates a width of 14,84" inches. With the modern "standard" of 16:9, this translates to 17" diagonal. Try finding anything close to 1280x1024 in that size class and tell me where to find it and at what price.
Don't also simply assume that I haven't known the better times. In 1999, the CRTs with the resolutions you tout were indeed getting in the "payable" range. However, keep in mind they were real huge "fishtanks", as I like to call them. I had one on my desk at work (doing development back at a bank) and it was an insanely great 1600x1200 screen. I loved it, but it wouldn't have fit on my desk at home, if I wanted to. Which brings us back at space constraints. Back then, I opted for LCD screen that became payable by then. That was a 15" 1024x768 LCD screen which was great and I still have today. It's attached to my parents server for the occasional console work.
So, yes, I am fully aware we lost resolution over the years and I think that was implicit in my post. Why can't I get a 19" screen with a 2560x2048 resolution? Now that would be great. To understand what happened, we must look back at the history of monitors. Back in the CRT days of TV (and for the record, I still have a 16:9 CRT TV, as I'm not a fan of useless upgrading), the pixels were not square. The pixels of CRT TVs were rectangles. This was not so with computer monitors where the pixels were square. Basically, the devices were each a class of their own. There was no relation between the two devices except for the fact they both used phosphorous substances and an electron beam. Then laptops came out, and let's ignore the initial days of grayscale LCD (the kind you still find on calculators) and suddenly colour LCD screens were mass produced and became cheaper. Cheap enough to start making standalone flat screen monitors. The economics of scale started to work. The resolutions surely weren't up to what CRTs offered, but they gave other advantages, mainly in the physical space used and (my guess) for the manufacturers reduced construction price. (Compare the complexity of a cathode ray tube to the simplicity of an LCD screen... Especially in the number of components required)
In the same time-frame, the TV industry started the concept of HDTV. As you may recall, the first HDTV sets were CRT and had rectangular pixels. They were also insanely expensive. What happened next is logical: the TV Industry saw the economies of scale made by monitor manufacturers and decided they could use that as a platform for their future sets. Go and look at your HDTV set, which is most likely LCD. The pixels are square. The technology had become one and the same. At this point, the economies of scale kicked in harder. Guess what: more TVs are sold than monitors and the maximum resolution was defined (1080p), but the physical size basically had no upper bound and on a TV, it makes sense. After all you don't sit with your nose in front of the TV.
So, demand is mostly for large panels at a resolution of 1080p and consumers don't want to pay. The monitor manufacturers on their side jumped on the higher volume and basically said "screw the consumer", and made 1080p the "standard". We're stuck with this. This is why, when I bought a new monitor for my mom, I went with the 149€ 23" monitor at 1080p (which basically is a HDTV without tuner) than with some smaller monitor (saving space) but much more expensive. Both me and my sister do not have the luxury of space.
I might have expected to much, but I guessed that every self proclaimed geek would know about this history and when we talk about "HD" (The term I didn't even use in my original post... I did use 1080p, though) understand that the market has chosen for the cheap low-res, instead for the "bit more expensive, but
IR can do gigabits?!?
Something like this Foxconn NT535. It's my primary "desktop" (Mounted to the back of a 19" 1280x1024 monitor) Granted, it's only an Atom and that's probably not going to do it depending on your work. For normal office work, it suffices though and it's so cheap I considered stopping dumpster diving. With machines like this, a dumpster sourced 5 year old computer pales.
Why IR? Wouldn't Bluetooth be a more logical choice?
Clever... I clearly have shown that I'm not an engineer :-)
Perhaps... The centre of gravity is different though.
The only problem I see with this is that there would be a weight imbalance and might cause the laptop to tip over. You'd have to counterbalance with weights in the palm rests. Which would be a major downside because it would add (useless, when carrying) weight.
I have 1080p on my Dell L502x (I really should start using it one of these days. It arrived nearly three weeks ago) and that's a 15" laptop. I'm looking forward to 1080p on 11" laptops or so.
With monitors (non-laptop), the sizes are becoming insane to get decent resolution. My desktop any my sisters desktop (different machines, just in case you wonder) both have 19" LCDs at 1280x1024, which is perfect. Thing is, we both have limited desk space and in the case of my sister, 19" is the largest monitor possible. Try finding a 19" monitor with at least 1280x1024 resolution. It's very hard, because you usually get robbed in the vertical direction and otherwhise you have to settle for less screen real estate. So when her 19" monitor died, we had to find a 19" replacement which turned out to be a pain in the ass and expensive (Compare to other larges screens with more resolution).
23" Full HD monitors can be had for cheap, but that's because of the economies of scale due to HDTVs. At a certain point the monitors become too bulky to use as monitors on a desk. My wifes 27" iMac really is at the maximum size for a desktop usage monitor. It is awesomely huge... Sometimes, I feel it's too huge for her small desk.
I know, slightly offtopic, but I always thought the best way to implement a multiple monitor setup on a laptop would be to use three screens: the standard size in the middle and two half-sizes clapping open left and right. A bit like a Triptych. Probably just me...
Are you implying that other operating systems don't prefer RAM over swap space? Who comes up with such silly architectures?
ROM means Read Only Memory. Flash definitely isn't ROM in that sense: it is EEPROM, Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. The most common use of this before the SSD craze was the storage of BIOS settings. RAM means Random Access Memory, which typically is writeable (but doesn't have to be) as ROM usually is also RAM.
RAM and ROM are as such not mutually exclusive and mean different things. They don't even have to be silicon. Take a CD-ROM, which is read-only memory, but also random access (it's a block device when used as data. Music CDs are not random access) and they are not chips made from silicon.
Weird... I have done that too. Asus EEE 704 4G, with a swap space. I installed other operating systems a few times (Reset the original a few times, Debian Sid, Ubuntu 10.10/Netbook edition, Debian Squeeze which is what it's currently running) It's still going strong. My wife was in hospital for a full 8 months and it was her (only) computer during that time and she used it every day to email/surf/watch movies/listen to music. During that time it did have a small swap partition (By now, I switched to swap files as they are easier to change when running out of disk space).
The only difference I might see is that I installed a 2GB module the day I got it. From what I've seen it rarely to never passes the 512MB usage mark with the above mentioned systems So, with only 512MB RAM, it might hit the swap space occasionally. To kill it? Probably not enough.
Ouch, indeed. I blame copy/paste.
Assuming a 7000.000.000 world population, your 99.999999999% would be 7 individuals. You really think only 7 people care about open drivers?
You don't need to illustrate how those warnings look. I am intimately familiar with them.
If it doesn't, that a gaping security hole right there. Hell would have been raised by everyone and his cousin by now. Even Microsoft isn't that dumb.
Knowing users... Sure... However, you can't make users to read warnings, can you? You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink. At that point it really is their fault. Those users would just as well install an application that gets a warning when the application is unsigned. (Which is already the case for important packages like drivers) I guess an unsigned application will raise *less* eyebrows than a self-signed one. Still, saying "the users would do it anyway" remains no argument.
Thing is, a correct package management would do this all transparently for you. This is the strength of aptitude and co, and in a certain sense also of the "App Store". Microsoft sorely lacks something like that.
No, and it shows that you don't really understand what a self-signed certificate is. The whole certificate system is based on three entities, namely, the "certificate authority", the "sender" (software provider/signer) and "receiver". The idea is to certify that the "sender"'s authenticity. In laymans terms, the "certificate authority" tells the "receiver" that the "sender" is who he claims he is. The premise is that the "receiver" trusts the "certificate authority". So basically, A trust C. C certifies that B is really B. So A can trust B.
With a self signed certificate, you merge C and B in one and the same entity. Of course, that's akin to believing me that I'm Bill Gates because I say that I'm Bill Gates. (I'm not, just in case you wonder). The self-signed certificate is basically a shortcut which hides the whole "Certificate Authority" business, but comes down to "trust me, or trust me not... it's up to you".
That said, you can trust any Certificate Authority you want. You can set up your own: I am one for me and my family. Anyone who trusts me, can trust me that I can certify that -for example- my brother is who he says he is. It's useless outside of your controlled environment, because by default the Certificate Authorities that are in your browser/operating system are those that are trusted and be sure, my Certificate Authority root certificate isn't in your browser (it's in mine, of course... I trust me ;-) ). So if you trust me, you can import my Certificate Authority root certificate and then your browser/operating system won't complain about the fact that the software I signed (using my own CA), is untrustworthy, because suddenly it is.
So a self-signed authority is by definition useless, because nobody can really trust it. You can self-sign a binary, but it will issue a warning. That's the correct thing to do.
Read for more information (Not mine, but I only found out how to do this stuff by googling around and IIRC this was one of the main articles that helped me)
You're probably even right. I must admit I wasn't 100% certain.
Close enough? Sure, Windows 7 Starter, and only an Atom, but the N455 is roughly on par with a Intel Pentium IV 2.40GHz.
My primary desktop for home use is based on a foxconn NT535. Alternate.de sells it for 199â with 2GB RAM and a 320GB HDD. It's a Dual-Core Atom D525. That's obviously without OS, keyboard, mouse and monitor, but I had those already. Given, you can count 1USD=1EUR for tech stuff, I must assume a $199 computer with reasonable specifications must exist.
My main problem is that back five years ago, if you had a lucky find you could refurbish it and make someone with lesser funds a happy computer owner. Now? Heck, I'm even typing this on a 199€ machine, which has 2GB RAM and a 320GB HDD... Bought new. While back in the day, it was perhaps not financially viable to put time in it and sell the computer (which I never did), but to do good it made sense. Now, computers are so cheap, you really need to have an insanely lucky find. Who is going to take this AMD Athlon 2800+ laptop (Got it a month ago, prime condition), I have lying here? I upgraded it to 2GB with a 160GB HDD? It even has a Windows XP Home license sticker. I'll tell you who it will take: nobody, because it makes no sense to reuse it. Yes, I'm a bit bitter ;-)
I stopped the "preserving" a few years ago. I donated anything exotic I had to a teacher who was collecting for a museum. (Nice finds were a Sinclair QL and a Sun SparcClassic)
Yes, I know that were usualy configs back then. 512MB was high-end machines. I took 512MB as something that would be "unacceptable" these days. I'm a dumpster diver, but if a machine can't support 1GB RAM, it's not worth my time. It will be impossible to refurbish for anyone.
If you want under the hood changes, XP did know about Hyperthreading and acted accordingly. 2000 would consider the machind tn have two CPUs, which could result in reduced peformance because of the (incorrect) assumptions made.
That's not entirely true. XP did add wireless support out of the box, even though every wireless driver seems to come with it's own crappy interface, but on Windows 2000 you had to use the crappy interfaces while on XP you can avoid them entirely. Also, there is fast user switching which is invaluable on home systems. Furthermore you neglect the compatibility layer added for older games. Windows 2000 was often a hassle to install (older) games on. Most of them worked, but you had to jump though hoop.
Sure, there is no reason Windows 2000 couldn't have had these improvements, but it didn't get them.
Well, in some cases, the extra requirements even come within the release. Consider Windows XP pre-SP2. It would run easily on a 512MB machine. After SP2, 512MB became low-end, you needed 1GB to run smoothly (beyond 1GB, the advantage became less visible. I've rarely had a XP machine use up more than 2GB, unless you ran a shebang of development programs on it. For normal use, 1GB was enough).
Now, I still am very fond of XP and it runs well on pretty much all hardware in use today. (Just use Administrator/Limited User separation and you'll be fine... and no, that's not hard) I use a dumpster diven P-IV-Mobile 1.6GHz, which I upgraded to 2GB RAM. XP runs very well. I wouldn't dare to run Vista on it, 7 would probably be a joke too. Sure, it is not "current" hardware... but current hardware even on the low end, we're talking multi-core madness and at least 3GB RAM, but often more. Unless we're talking Netbooks: the aforementioned P-IV-Mobile, ranks about the same as a Atom Z515, and let's be frank.... That's an "old" netbook processor. What's
modern these days? Atom N570 or so?
So that Windows 8 will "run" on hardware of today? No surprise, as we already know what "run" means for Microsoft....
I had Firefox freeze up on my Ubuntu 10.04LTS machine regularly. Firefox turns "gray" when it happens, I can use the rest of the system. I first thought it was Flash-related, so I disabled it. That didn't fix it to my surprise. Googling a bit, some people suggested killing the profile. I did one step less, I cleared everything that is cached (Tools-Clear Recent History-Everything). That fixed it. The freezing is totally gone now.
I must admit that I have moved this profile from computer to computer, within different versions of Firefox (and probably even from when it was called Phoenix) and never bother to clean cookies or cache.
My guess is thus, that it is possible under certain conditions that the cached items are corrupted and impact on the performance of Firefox. It also makes it extremely hard to find, as basically, someone with the problem should sumbit their profile to the developers so they can look into it. That's surely not going to be me.