I don't see any evidence that memory fragmentation makes Firefox slow. Your link shows that a lot of Firefox's memory use can be due to memory fragmentation.
I said for caching. Not all of Firefox's memory use is used for caching. I never said that Firefox will not use more than a hundred megs or so of total memory use. Sheesh!
For what it's worth, I agree. I also have problems with memory bloating with FF. I don't really care if they are memory leaks, or memory fragments, it's still a problem that I would like to see fixed. Unfortunately I cannot fix the problem, so I will patiently wait for the next great release of FF. I have no solution, but this is my informal bug report.
What would help is explaining how one could see the problem you're referring to. I agree it doesn't matter whether it's memory leaks or memory fragmentation or memory caching causing excessive memory use. If you can cause Firefox 3 to use significantly more memory than another browser, post instructions for how to reproduce the problem, and then we can file a bug report so the problem can be fixed.
I've seen similar complaints, but have never been able to reproduce any such problem. I can open and close tabs all day, and Firefox does not suck up all my memory, or even a significant portion of it. I can't even run it long enough to come close to sucking up all of my memory (it would take several weeks of use every day without ever closing it). Could you explain how the rest of us could see the problem? If you do, we could report it and the problem could be fixed.
Firefox is not going to use a couple of gigs of memory for caching. Maybe a hundred megabytes or so if you have so much RAM, but it's not going to use all your memory.
No, recently the developers have found that few leaks are left, so that to reduce memory usage further they had to change their focus to reducing fragmentation. Originally, the problem was leaks, it's just that once the worst ones were fixed fragmentation became responsible for a larger fraction of the memory usage. This a continuation of people trying to find one single cause of high memory use. As I and others have been saying for years, there is no one cause. There is no "the memory leak" or "the memory issue", just as there is no "the crash problem" or "the security problem".
Yes, they have been working hard on fixing memory leaks for years. On the other hand, Firefox will likely always have some memory leaks, as all browsers certainly do. I don't know of any massive leaks that will cause users to have to restart Firefox 3 regularly due to memory issues. If anyone can list a set of steps to reproduce such a problem, or cause Firefox 3 to use significantly more memory than other browsers, please do so, and the problem can be reported and fixed.
I'm sure they'll be delighted to know that last year was not only one of the coolest on record, but that the trend was so pronounced as "to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years.
There has been no "erasure". This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not "erase" anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.
In other words, the recent cooling is unusual, but does not reverse the trend of global warming.
If you read with any care what William Ruddiman says, it's that the small amounts of carbon dioxide given off by humans thousands to hundreds of years ago (by burning campfires) are what staved off the cooling period. He doesn't say anything about the massive amounts of carbon dioxide given off over the past 100 years (by widespread burning of fossil fuels and forestation). If a tiny amount of extra carbon dioxide can stave off a natural cooling, imagine what devastating effects the unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide will have!
The original site says that this does not "wipe out" a century of warming:
There has been no "erasure". This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not "erase" anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.
The recent cooling is an anomaly, and does not mean that global warming has reversed.
So why is it so hard to believe that a continued waning (solar activity is still going down, lower than the amounts that stabilized the temperature) will help drop the temperature?
Because we're very near solar minimum, so this is about all the cooling we're going to get. Now for another ten or so years of rising, followed by perhaps another plateau.
On the other hand, scientists can make a real name for themselves if they can disprove a widely-held belief. That's why you always have scientists with dissenting opinions, as they're hoping for a breakthrough and make a name for themselves. You can expect some dissenters, and if they're really on to something, that will be the next bandwagon to jump onto.
I agree that heavily taxing fossil fuels and using the taxes to research to fund alternative energy sources is the wisest approach. That will both decrease carbon dioxide emissions and help conserve fossil fuels, while also helping to transition to alternative energy sources.
Well, duh. It's winter in the northern hemisphere, so of course the ice caps are growing. Will this have an impact on summer ice levels? It's too soon to say.
I don't believe I have to explain this, but here we go...
There is a very limited amount of fossil fuels remaining. Continuing to use it at an ever increasing pace until it runs out will cause economies that are energy dependent to fail catastrophically. By funding alternative sources of energy while tapering off our use of fossil fuels, we will ensure that economies that depend on energy will continue to flourish.
Your claim that global warming is good for agriculture seems to be based on one study. If the study based its claim on the usual 95% statistical certainty, it has a 5% chance of being incorrect. If twenty similar studies were performed, we would expect one to be incorrect, and of course the media will sensationalize the one dissenting finding. Scientific conclusions are based on repeatable studies and reaching a consensus, not lone papers that seem to disprove what the vast majority of scientists are saying.
First, I didn't proclaim I'm right. Second, I didn't say that "everyone" agrees. I merely said there's a scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions is causing global warming. That consensus is shared by the Joint Science Academies, U.S. National Research Council, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, among others. I'm sure you can find some scientists and perhaps even some groups that disagree. That doesn't mean the consensus has not been reached.
Of course not all scientists agree, and of course we should never discount alternative views. My point is that I'm not going to believe that global warming is a scam based on what one meteorologist says.
How exactly does cutting back on carbon emissions "wreck worldwide economies"? On the other hand, if global warming produces droughts, that could certainly wreck economies that depend on agriculture.
It appears to me that those who said that the SUN was causing global warming due to increased sunspot activity, that has recently subsided, were correct. And all those scientist that claimed it was solely man made were wrong.
I agree that any scientist that said any change in temperature was solely due to human activities was laughably wrong. That doesn't mean that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere won't cause global temperatures to increase several degrees over the next century. Sure, we can cross our fingers for decreased solar activity, or we can do what scientists widely agree will slow global warming.
No, facts are not copyrighted. But works that include facts are copyrighted. If I hold a copyright on a book of facts, you are free to publish a book with the same facts. However, you are not free to copy material verbatim out of my book. This is what map publishers are protecting against by introducing errors into their works.
To correct such a large problem as an entire subdivision missing, they will probably need to send someone out to map the area. That may take a year or more. Whinging about it probably won't help, either. Just report the errors and be patient. The minor errors I reported to NAVTEQ were all fixed within a year, and the new streets added in my area since then were added promptly without error.
No, my "theory" does not immediately fall apart from just one counterexample. They could ignore half the corrections users suggest, and it would still be worth our while to report corrections. Any errors not corrected the first time would still have a 50% chance of being corrected the second time, etc. Simply report the correction again, and my "theory" holds...
When I've written to the map companies with corrections, they usually update their maps within the year. Have you requested that your street be added? Of course, you shouldn't have to do that, but you may as well seeing as how they're not picking up your street.
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I don't see any evidence that memory fragmentation makes Firefox slow. Your link shows that a lot of Firefox's memory use can be due to memory fragmentation.
I said for caching. Not all of Firefox's memory use is used for caching. I never said that Firefox will not use more than a hundred megs or so of total memory use. Sheesh!
I've seen similar complaints, but have never been able to reproduce any such problem. I can open and close tabs all day, and Firefox does not suck up all my memory, or even a significant portion of it. I can't even run it long enough to come close to sucking up all of my memory (it would take several weeks of use every day without ever closing it). Could you explain how the rest of us could see the problem? If you do, we could report it and the problem could be fixed.
Firefox is not going to use a couple of gigs of memory for caching. Maybe a hundred megabytes or so if you have so much RAM, but it's not going to use all your memory.
In my experience, Firefox uses less memory than other browsers. How would one see Firefox being a memory hog?
No, recently the developers have found that few leaks are left, so that to reduce memory usage further they had to change their focus to reducing fragmentation. Originally, the problem was leaks, it's just that once the worst ones were fixed fragmentation became responsible for a larger fraction of the memory usage. This a continuation of people trying to find one single cause of high memory use. As I and others have been saying for years, there is no one cause. There is no "the memory leak" or "the memory issue", just as there is no "the crash problem" or "the security problem".
Yes, they have been working hard on fixing memory leaks for years. On the other hand, Firefox will likely always have some memory leaks, as all browsers certainly do. I don't know of any massive leaks that will cause users to have to restart Firefox 3 regularly due to memory issues. If anyone can list a set of steps to reproduce such a problem, or cause Firefox 3 to use significantly more memory than other browsers, please do so, and the problem can be reported and fixed.
If you read with any care what William Ruddiman says, it's that the small amounts of carbon dioxide given off by humans thousands to hundreds of years ago (by burning campfires) are what staved off the cooling period. He doesn't say anything about the massive amounts of carbon dioxide given off over the past 100 years (by widespread burning of fossil fuels and forestation). If a tiny amount of extra carbon dioxide can stave off a natural cooling, imagine what devastating effects the unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide will have!
On the other hand, scientists can make a real name for themselves if they can disprove a widely-held belief. That's why you always have scientists with dissenting opinions, as they're hoping for a breakthrough and make a name for themselves. You can expect some dissenters, and if they're really on to something, that will be the next bandwagon to jump onto.
I agree that heavily taxing fossil fuels and using the taxes to research to fund alternative energy sources is the wisest approach. That will both decrease carbon dioxide emissions and help conserve fossil fuels, while also helping to transition to alternative energy sources.
It may be common sense that global warming will increase agricultural yields, and it was commonly believed at one point, but recent evidence is that global yields will be negatively affected.
Well, duh. It's winter in the northern hemisphere, so of course the ice caps are growing. Will this have an impact on summer ice levels? It's too soon to say.
I don't believe I have to explain this, but here we go...
There is a very limited amount of fossil fuels remaining. Continuing to use it at an ever increasing pace until it runs out will cause economies that are energy dependent to fail catastrophically. By funding alternative sources of energy while tapering off our use of fossil fuels, we will ensure that economies that depend on energy will continue to flourish.
Your claim that global warming is good for agriculture seems to be based on one study. If the study based its claim on the usual 95% statistical certainty, it has a 5% chance of being incorrect. If twenty similar studies were performed, we would expect one to be incorrect, and of course the media will sensationalize the one dissenting finding. Scientific conclusions are based on repeatable studies and reaching a consensus, not lone papers that seem to disprove what the vast majority of scientists are saying.
First, I didn't proclaim I'm right. Second, I didn't say that "everyone" agrees. I merely said there's a scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions is causing global warming. That consensus is shared by the Joint Science Academies, U.S. National Research Council, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, among others. I'm sure you can find some scientists and perhaps even some groups that disagree. That doesn't mean the consensus has not been reached.
Of course not all scientists agree, and of course we should never discount alternative views. My point is that I'm not going to believe that global warming is a scam based on what one meteorologist says.
How exactly does cutting back on carbon emissions "wreck worldwide economies"? On the other hand, if global warming produces droughts, that could certainly wreck economies that depend on agriculture.
Of course. I always value the scientific opinion of the founder of The Weather Channel over the consensus of hundreds of climate scientists.
No, facts are not copyrighted. But works that include facts are copyrighted. If I hold a copyright on a book of facts, you are free to publish a book with the same facts. However, you are not free to copy material verbatim out of my book. This is what map publishers are protecting against by introducing errors into their works.
To correct such a large problem as an entire subdivision missing, they will probably need to send someone out to map the area. That may take a year or more. Whinging about it probably won't help, either. Just report the errors and be patient. The minor errors I reported to NAVTEQ were all fixed within a year, and the new streets added in my area since then were added promptly without error.
No, my "theory" does not immediately fall apart from just one counterexample. They could ignore half the corrections users suggest, and it would still be worth our while to report corrections. Any errors not corrected the first time would still have a 50% chance of being corrected the second time, etc. Simply report the correction again, and my "theory" holds...
When I've written to the map companies with corrections, they usually update their maps within the year. Have you requested that your street be added? Of course, you shouldn't have to do that, but you may as well seeing as how they're not picking up your street.