From the Slashdot story: "This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments."
That's not what happens in the case of Microsoft's virtual monopoly. Many people, when they find their computer has become slow, buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of
Windows, which, of course, still has huge security risks.
The incredible CPU-sucking of Norton software also helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows, also.
Somehow Microsoft has arranged that owners of Microsoft Windows XP must pay again when they get a new computer.
It's miserable to have billionaires who care only about money riding on your back. That's why open source is necessary.
Or, get a DVD from the library, which is also free.
Reading books is the best way to get an education and have fun, too: The New York Time Bestseller list. Once you know the title, use your library's online catalog to reserve the book.
1) Start a Netflix subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.
2) Start a Blockbuster subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.
3) Go back to step one, this time using another person's name in your household, with a different credit card. This will be indistinguishable from a new renter/owner of your house or apartment.
The above demonstrates one of the problems with a company being tricky with customers: Customers can be tricky too, and there are a lot more of them.
-- Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis.
Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. taxpayers pay to kill
Iraqis. Improvement?
Also, my understanding is that the AT & T name now belongs to SBC, a telephone company in California that is widely considered to be very poorly managed. Apparently AT & T sold all its assets except for a few, and SBC bought the name. For example, Comcast bought AT & T's cable business.
Apparently SBC is so hated that the company decided they needed to have a new name.
Some people claim that the US patent system is broken, but that way of expressing the problem is a bit misleading. The word "broken" implies that something undefined caused the patent system to be disfunctional. That's not what happened. The disfunctionality was caused deliberately. Those who want government corruption so that they can make money have caused the patent system to be underfunded. They've done the same to the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here are short reviews of books about the corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Most people, I think, won't have a clear understanding. They don't know what a server does. They won't understand that the U.S. government can secretly demand the information. They won't realize the importance of the lost of privacy, or the reason why Google is offering to do something for them.
When you work with computers every day, it is extremely easy to overestimate the level of comprehension of the average person.
If you have a gmail account, Google already knows who your friends and family are. That's okay if you can trust the company, and the political system.
Now Google seems to be becoming one of those amoral companies. The new Google Desktop takes advantage of people who don't understand what is happening. Is Google going from "Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"?
Unfortunately, the U.S. government believes that it can perform surveillance anywhere and can keep the reasons secret. The U.S. government often forces companies not to disclose that they have given information to the government. So, maybe no company can be trusted.
-- Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & you pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
It would be nice if Slashdot discussions were more thoughtful, I think, instead of writing all the marginally funny and unfunny jokes.
So, I will try to mention something that goes in that direction:
Basically, the fact that companies steal people from each other means that there are very, very few people who both have excellent technical knowledge, and are good managers. Otherwise, why hire someone from a competitor?
I think that one of the reasons for this is that programmers often take an insufficiently complex view of their lives. I expanded on that idea in this comment: Toward more perfect programmers.
I've never seen any evidence that Mr. Kahn understood technical things. No one who understood much about programming would have thought Ed Esber's Ashton-Tate was worth $440,000,000. Apparently Kahn got lucky when he hired Anders Hejlsberg, who does know what he's doing.
When Hejlsberg gave in to his dark side, Borland was left without a technical head, and has been confused ever since.
The Slashdot story said, "The anti-standardization guys are advocating a
mixed environment..."
I agree with your ideas (in the parent comment), but I thought this
sentence was extreme: "I am a computer programmer. I make computing devices
do what I want. I will use any tool at my disposal, to hell with my employer's
proposed "beneficial" restrictions."
The problem is that many people involved with computers fundamentally
don't actually work for their company. Instead, they do only what they
perceive is best for them. Generally, when such people are programmers they want a resume that shows
familiarity with many computer languages.
That kind of short-term vision works because of the brokenness of the
human resources department of most technically-oriented companies. In most
such companies, the top management has too little technical understanding. The
top management tries to reduce salary expense by hiring people who will work
cheaply, and that means people with minimal technical understanding.
Poorly educated human resources people are impressed by someone who says he has
familiarity with several computer languages. (Actually, human resources people
aren't impressed at all; they only think the manager for which they are
interviewing applicants will be impressed. Generally the people with no
technical knowledge at a technically-oriented company have a secret belief
that they are superior to those who work with grubby technical details.)
Of course, it would be possible for someone to lie on a resume and
claim knowledge of languages with which he or she had little experience.
But that is regarded by most people as far too risky. The liklihood is that
someone doing the interviewing would detect ignorance.
So, many programmers want enough practice that they can claim
familiarity with several languages. Such people can be expected to lead their
companies into as many technologies as possible.
A good simple example of this is any online banking web page. You will
find a lot of foolish use of Javascript by designers who clearly were just
experimenting. Banks are where the money is! But, amazingly, banks are not
able to hire people who actually work for them; their IT staff works for their
next job. It's that bad.
The average person wants to move up the job ladder in preparation for
retiring and waiting to die. Someone who actually has programming in his or her heart,
however, gets tired of all the tools after a while. Each tool has serious
limitations. Each tool has its own quirkiness. Is it beyond human
comprehension to make one good compiler and one good editor?
"The right tool for the job" tends to mean "none of the tools are very
good". My opinion is that Java is necessary and good, but it should have been
activated as a compiler switch for GCC.
Unfortunately, programmers are, in my experience, not good at loving
themselves. Many of them are too insensitive to social issues to recognize
when they are being abused, so they don't recognize when they are abusing. In
a perfect world, programmers would expect more perfect tools, and they would
always have the needs of their companies in their hearts at the same time they
considered their own needs.
But, we don't yet have that more perfect world, and programmers often
express desires to be involved in software development in such a way that they would
quickly create intellectual overload for themselves and their managers. If they have their
way, their company fails and they get a job elsewhere, never realizing the misery of
their existence.
-- Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits and paid part to kill
Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, and American citizens pay
to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
You said, "I still can't get what happened around the whole Inprise situation."
That was frightening to see. But that's what happens when a technically oriented company has managers who don't understand technical things. They say they can manage, but they can't.
It's a sad end. Borland once made the best assembler for DOS, for example. Sometimes the Microsoft assembler would produce the wrong machine code, so it was useless, at least to me.
Borland was the best in what it did in several ways.
But after Philippe Kahn destroyed Borland's chances by buying dBase and Ashton-Tate for $440,000,000, the company lost its way. I estimate that dBase was worth perhaps $40,000,000 then.
Mr. Kahn threw away $400,000,000!! That's the kind of thing that happens when a technical company has top managers who know nothing about technical issues, and don't care that they don't know, and don't have respect for people who do.
Managers who cannot understand the business of their companies often turn to evil; they destroy lives and they destroy their companies. There are many, many examples of this.
After the fall and the departure of Mr. Kahn, Borland became a small shell of itself, a shell that sold excellent software development tools and IDEs.
Now Borland is Borland in name only, like AT & T is now just a name that has been bought to disguise the ownership of a despised company, SBC. (It is not just my opinion that SBC is despised; many people say that.)
It does seem that security bugs in Mozilla and Firefox are fixed promptly.
However, other bugs simply aren't fixed. For about 3 years many, many people have reported the
CPU hogging bug which is unique to Firefox and Mozilla browsers. For a small example
of the reports of problems see Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
Under the conditions mentioned in the bug reports, I'm not able to make the CPU hogging bug fail; it is always there.
I've tried Linux, Windows XP SP2, and Windows 98 SE. I've tried Intel and
Via chipset motherboards. For about 3 years, in all versions, the CPU and memory hogging bug has always been there.
Firefox version 1.5.0.1 is worse than Firefox version 1.5, and those versions are worse than
earlier ones. This is with a clean profile and no extensions except DOM Inspector, which is a menu choice on the installation program.
In 3 years, I've never had any evidence that any Firefox or Mozilla developer has reproduced
the conditions that cause the problem.
The problem with Firefox and Mozilla developers not fixing
difficult bugs seems to be a social one, not primarily a technical one. The developers
keep asking for the problem to be made easier, but it appears to me that there
is already plenty of evidence that would allow further investigation.
Perhaps
the developers do not understand that there is a class of bugs that
can only be found using the methods of scientific research.
Many people like programming,
but only people who accept the biggest challenges truly have programming
in their hearts and minds:
Three biggest challenges of programming
Here are programming's three biggest challenges. Coding is relatively
easy. It is these challenges which separate a true professional from an
average programmer:
Being a scientist -- Often the most difficult programming is easier
than the most difficult debugging. Often debugging requires creative
scientific thinking. First, it is necessary to gather information. Second,
make a theory that fits the facts. Third, design an experiment that tests the
theory. Fourth, perform that experiment and analyze the results. Fifth, using
the information that was learned, design a new theory, and repeat the steps
above. The information that has been provided about Firefox instability is
plenty to begin making theories.
Skill in social interaction -- Often the social interaction necessary
to understanding what is needed and wanted is more difficult than any coding
challenge. Social skills can be learned, and are part of being a good
programmer.
Designing the user interface -- Only someone who has habits of
caring for others can have the necessary detailed insight and creativity to
discover how to do everything possible for the user.
Instead there are excuses:
Mozilla Top 12 Excuses
Top 12 things Firefox and Mozilla developers say about those who
report difficult bugs, collected during the last 3 years:
Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build.
Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important.
No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report,
they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes
TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated.]
If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug.
This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is
invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
For about 3 years many, many people have reported the unique
instabilities in Firefox and Mozilla browsers. Under the conditions mentioned
in my bug reports, I'm not able to make the bug fail; it is always there. I've
never had any evidence that any Firefox or Mozilla developer has reproduced
those conditions.
I've tried Linux, Windows XP, and Windows 98 SE. I've tried Intel and
Via chipset motherboards. The CPU and memory hogging bug is always there.
The answer from Firefox and Mozilla developers has always been
a variation of "If you make the problem easier for me, I will consider fixing
it." I don't think that those developers understand the following:
Three biggest challenges of programming
Here are programming's three biggest challenges. Coding is relatively
easy. It is these challenges which separate a true professional from an
average programmer:
Skill in social interaction -- Often the social interaction necessary
to understanding what is needed and wanted is more difficult than any coding
challenge. Social skills can be learned, and are part of being a good
programmer.
Being a scientist -- Often the most difficult programming is easier
than the most difficult debugging. Often debugging requires creative
scientific thinking. First, it is necessary to gather information. Second,
make a theory that fits the facts. Third, design an experiment that tests the
theory. Fourth, perform that experiment and analyze the results. Fifth,
using the information that was learned, design a new theory, and repeat the steps above.
Designing the user interface -- Only someone who has habits of caring
for others can have the necessary detailed insight and creativity to discover
how to do everything possible for the user.
Instead there are excuses:
Mozilla Top 10 Excuses
Top 10 bad things Firefox and Mozilla developers say about those who
report difficult bugs:
Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build.
Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important.
No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they had read the bug report,
they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes
TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated.)
If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug.
This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is
invalid. (The other bugs aren't specified.)
You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. (But the
same use does not crash Opera.)
I don't like the way you worded your report. (So, I didn't read it or
think about it.)
You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself.
(Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem,
and we may fix it.)
Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be
trolling. (They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is
beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week.)
I don't know, but my understanding is that you tell Nextel where you want "Push to Talk" to go in advance, and they connect you when you press the button.
Cellular phones have a very limited range, so if "Push to Talk" works when the other person is many miles away, that is evidence that the transmission is going through Nextel's equipment.
"As to believers of the original article, eggs average around 50 grams in weight. It takes one calorie to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree Celsius. One calorie = 4.184 Joules (let's say 4.2 because this is a rough approximation anyway). Room temperature is 20 Celsius, so the difference to boiling is 80 degrees C. You need 4000 calories to bring an egg up to boiling (50 gms * 80 degrees C), or about 17000 Joules. Since a joule is equal to a watt-second, that means your average phone with 1 watt output would need about 4.5 hours to raise the egg to boiling temperature, assuming NO other losses."
Then someone said that an egg is not all water, and it is easier to raise the temperature of an egg than water, which is true.
But, that is not enough difference to change the fact that this is a hoax.
I like this, too:
"It takes 3 minutes to hard boil an egg in water. There's no way your cell phone (or even a few of them) could put enough heat into an egg to make its temperature go up even a couple degrees. You need to be able to put more heat into the object than the air around it can dissipate."
One reason for that is the radiation is going in ALL directions, not just into the egg.
Bunratty, you are just playing an angry game here. If you actually had an interest in the CPU hogging and crashing of Firefox, you would read all the ideas presented.
Note that you included this sentence in your quote above: "This demonstrates one aspect of the bug, but is not representative of [the bug occurring] in normal use, since that web page is huge."
It's just one aspect. To understand what people know about this very well-publicized bug, you should read everything. It's interesting to note that no Firefox or Mozilla developer has done this; it's obvious from their replies.
Anyhow, does it seem reasonable that opening 3 tabs showing the same 4 megabyte HTML file should require 200 Megabytes?
Why is it that Opera has no problems of this nature? Don't say extensions or plug-ins, because I'm not using any.
Note that cellular phones don't communicate with each other. They communicate with a local transmitter/receiver, one of the "cells". Putting an egg between them implies that the power going back and forth heats the egg; it doesn't, because there is no cell-phone-to-cell-phone direct communication, in spite of what the cell phone ads imply.
Cellular phones, and the cells, transmit only the power necessary to make them communicate. That's to prevent interference in heavily populated areas.
The Slashdot article is more about the evils of not listening in Physics class than the evils of cell phones.
The idea is preposterous. Note that the radio does nothing. Note that cellular phone antennas are not directional, and the energy goes equally in all directions.
Maybe Slashdot editors did too much gaming when they were young, maybe they haven't taken the time to learn how the world works, because they often fall for hoaxes.
Firefox: Most unstable program in common use = +5
on
A History of Firefox
·
· Score: 0, Troll
An honest history of Firefox would include the fact that it has been unstable for more than 2 1/2 years.
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use
on
A History of Firefox
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Firefox is the most unstable software in common use. Firefox 1.5.0.1 is far less stable than 1.5, which is less stable than earlier versions. This is on Windows XP SP2, all patches supplied. Firefox 1.5.0.1 was installed a clean profile, with no extensions, except DOM Inspector, which is an Installation menu choice.
Sometimes software has problems and no one wants to work on those problems. The biggest source of instability, in my opinion, is the CPU hogging bug. Firefox will begin using 10%, then 50%, then 96% of the CPU, when there is no browser activity, and just a few windows and tabs are loaded.
The CPU hogging bug seems to be due to insufficient allocation of resources inside Firefox, such as inadequate stack space. Those who use a browser to do extensive research, for example, are likely to have more windows and tabs open than the average user. Apparently Firefox developers did not plan for that.
It's interesting to note that the CPU hogging bug sometimes causes Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird to hog the CPU, also. Obviously, some resources are being shared, because the CPU hogging bug is shared.
Firefox needs approved extensions. Mozilla.org heavily advertises the existence of
extensions. Then, when users have problems with Firefox, the developers blame the problems on the
user or the extensions author.
At present, Firefox is developer-centered, not customer-centered. If there are problems users are told, "Here are several hours of technical things you can do to make Firefox work for you."
Slashdot Mirror
From the Slashdot story: "This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments."
That's not what happens in the case of Microsoft's virtual monopoly. Many people, when they find their computer has become slow, buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of Windows, which, of course, still has huge security risks.
The incredible CPU-sucking of Norton software also helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows, also.
Somehow Microsoft has arranged that owners of Microsoft Windows XP must pay again when they get a new computer.
It's miserable to have billionaires who care only about money riding on your back. That's why open source is necessary.
Or, get a DVD from the library, which is also free.
Reading books is the best way to get an education and have fun, too: The New York Time Bestseller list. Once you know the title, use your library's online catalog to reserve the book.
Isn't there an obvious answer?
1) Start a Netflix subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.
2) Start a Blockbuster subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.
3) Go back to step one, this time using another person's name in your household, with a different credit card. This will be indistinguishable from a new renter/owner of your house or apartment.
The above demonstrates one of the problems with a company being tricky with customers: Customers can be tricky too, and there are a lot more of them.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. taxpayers pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Also, my understanding is that the AT & T name now belongs to SBC, a telephone company in California that is widely considered to be very poorly managed. Apparently AT & T sold all its assets except for a few, and SBC bought the name. For example, Comcast bought AT & T's cable business.
Apparently SBC is so hated that the company decided they needed to have a new name.
Does anyone have clarification about this?
Some people claim that the US patent system is broken, but that way of expressing the problem is a bit misleading. The word "broken" implies that something undefined caused the patent system to be disfunctional. That's not what happened. The disfunctionality was caused deliberately. Those who want government corruption so that they can make money have caused the patent system to be underfunded. They've done the same to the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here are short reviews of books about the corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Most people, I think, won't have a clear understanding. They don't know what a server does. They won't understand that the U.S. government can secretly demand the information. They won't realize the importance of the lost of privacy, or the reason why Google is offering to do something for them.
When you work with computers every day, it is extremely easy to overestimate the level of comprehension of the average person.
If you have a gmail account, Google already knows who your friends and family are. That's okay if you can trust the company, and the political system.
Now Google seems to be becoming one of those amoral companies. The new Google Desktop takes advantage of people who don't understand what is happening. Is Google going from "Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"?
Unfortunately, the U.S. government believes that it can perform surveillance anywhere and can keep the reasons secret. The U.S. government often forces companies not to disclose that they have given information to the government. So, maybe no company can be trusted.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & you pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
It would be nice if Slashdot discussions were more thoughtful, I think, instead of writing all the marginally funny and unfunny jokes.
So, I will try to mention something that goes in that direction:
Basically, the fact that companies steal people from each other means that there are very, very few people who both have excellent technical knowledge, and are good managers. Otherwise, why hire someone from a competitor?
I think that one of the reasons for this is that programmers often take an insufficiently complex view of their lives. I expanded on that idea in this comment: Toward more perfect programmers.
Note this biography of Philippe Kahn. I imagine that it is biography-speak, and Mr. Kahn does not have technical knowledge.
It's been 23 years. I think Mr. Kahn bought Turbo Pascal from Anders Hejlsberg.
I've never seen any evidence that Mr. Kahn understood technical things. No one who understood much about programming would have thought Ed Esber's Ashton-Tate was worth $440,000,000. Apparently Kahn got lucky when he hired Anders Hejlsberg, who does know what he's doing.
When Hejlsberg gave in to his dark side, Borland was left without a technical head, and has been confused ever since.
The Slashdot story said, "The anti-standardization guys are advocating a mixed environment..."
I agree with your ideas (in the parent comment), but I thought this sentence was extreme: "I am a computer programmer. I make computing devices do what I want. I will use any tool at my disposal, to hell with my employer's proposed "beneficial" restrictions."
The problem is that many people involved with computers fundamentally don't actually work for their company. Instead, they do only what they perceive is best for them. Generally, when such people are programmers they want a resume that shows familiarity with many computer languages.
That kind of short-term vision works because of the brokenness of the human resources department of most technically-oriented companies. In most such companies, the top management has too little technical understanding. The top management tries to reduce salary expense by hiring people who will work cheaply, and that means people with minimal technical understanding.
Poorly educated human resources people are impressed by someone who says he has familiarity with several computer languages. (Actually, human resources people aren't impressed at all; they only think the manager for which they are interviewing applicants will be impressed. Generally the people with no technical knowledge at a technically-oriented company have a secret belief that they are superior to those who work with grubby technical details.)
Of course, it would be possible for someone to lie on a resume and claim knowledge of languages with which he or she had little experience. But that is regarded by most people as far too risky. The liklihood is that someone doing the interviewing would detect ignorance.
So, many programmers want enough practice that they can claim familiarity with several languages. Such people can be expected to lead their companies into as many technologies as possible.
A good simple example of this is any online banking web page. You will find a lot of foolish use of Javascript by designers who clearly were just experimenting. Banks are where the money is! But, amazingly, banks are not able to hire people who actually work for them; their IT staff works for their next job. It's that bad.
The average person wants to move up the job ladder in preparation for retiring and waiting to die. Someone who actually has programming in his or her heart, however, gets tired of all the tools after a while. Each tool has serious limitations. Each tool has its own quirkiness. Is it beyond human comprehension to make one good compiler and one good editor?
"The right tool for the job" tends to mean "none of the tools are very good". My opinion is that Java is necessary and good, but it should have been activated as a compiler switch for GCC.
Unfortunately, programmers are, in my experience, not good at loving themselves. Many of them are too insensitive to social issues to recognize when they are being abused, so they don't recognize when they are abusing. In a perfect world, programmers would expect more perfect tools, and they would always have the needs of their companies in their hearts at the same time they considered their own needs.
But, we don't yet have that more perfect world, and programmers often express desires to be involved in software development in such a way that they would quickly create intellectual overload for themselves and their managers. If they have their way, their company fails and they get a job elsewhere, never realizing the misery of their existence.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits and paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, and American citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Oi, Brasileiro,
You said, "I still can't get what happened around the whole Inprise situation."
That was frightening to see. But that's what happens when a technically oriented company has managers who don't understand technical things. They say they can manage, but they can't.
It's a sad end. Borland once made the best assembler for DOS, for example. Sometimes the Microsoft assembler would produce the wrong machine code, so it was useless, at least to me.
Borland was the best in what it did in several ways.
But after Philippe Kahn destroyed Borland's chances by buying dBase and Ashton-Tate for $440,000,000, the company lost its way. I estimate that dBase was worth perhaps $40,000,000 then.
Mr. Kahn threw away $400,000,000!! That's the kind of thing that happens when a technical company has top managers who know nothing about technical issues, and don't care that they don't know, and don't have respect for people who do.
Managers who cannot understand the business of their companies often turn to evil; they destroy lives and they destroy their companies. There are many, many examples of this.
After the fall and the departure of Mr. Kahn, Borland became a small shell of itself, a shell that sold excellent software development tools and IDEs.
Now Borland is Borland in name only, like AT & T is now just a name that has been bought to disguise the ownership of a despised company, SBC. (It is not just my opinion that SBC is despised; many people say that.)
I'd never heard that about Fluke. LOL.
However, other bugs simply aren't fixed. For about 3 years many, many people have reported the CPU hogging bug which is unique to Firefox and Mozilla browsers. For a small example of the reports of problems see Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
Now the problems are beginning to be reported in technical magazines, newsletters, bloggers, and even the mainstream media.
Under the conditions mentioned in the bug reports, I'm not able to make the CPU hogging bug fail; it is always there. I've tried Linux, Windows XP SP2, and Windows 98 SE. I've tried Intel and Via chipset motherboards. For about 3 years, in all versions, the CPU and memory hogging bug has always been there. Firefox version 1.5.0.1 is worse than Firefox version 1.5, and those versions are worse than earlier ones. This is with a clean profile and no extensions except DOM Inspector, which is a menu choice on the installation program.
In 3 years, I've never had any evidence that any Firefox or Mozilla developer has reproduced the conditions that cause the problem.
The problem with Firefox and Mozilla developers not fixing difficult bugs seems to be a social one, not primarily a technical one. The developers keep asking for the problem to be made easier, but it appears to me that there is already plenty of evidence that would allow further investigation.
Perhaps the developers do not understand that there is a class of bugs that can only be found using the methods of scientific research. Many people like programming, but only people who accept the biggest challenges truly have programming in their hearts and minds:
Three biggest challenges of programming
Here are programming's three biggest challenges. Coding is relatively easy. It is these challenges which separate a true professional from an average programmer:
Instead there are excuses:
Mozilla Top 12 Excuses
Top 12 things Firefox and Mozilla developers say about those who report difficult bugs, collected during the last 3 years:
For about 3 years many, many people have reported the unique instabilities in Firefox and Mozilla browsers. Under the conditions mentioned in my bug reports, I'm not able to make the bug fail; it is always there. I've never had any evidence that any Firefox or Mozilla developer has reproduced those conditions.
I've tried Linux, Windows XP, and Windows 98 SE. I've tried Intel and Via chipset motherboards. The CPU and memory hogging bug is always there.
Now the problems are beginning to be reported in technical magazines and newsletters, and even the mainstream media.
The answer from Firefox and Mozilla developers has always been a variation of "If you make the problem easier for me, I will consider fixing it." I don't think that those developers understand the following:
Three biggest challenges of programming
Here are programming's three biggest challenges. Coding is relatively easy. It is these challenges which separate a true professional from an average programmer:
Instead there are excuses:
Mozilla Top 10 Excuses
Top 10 bad things Firefox and Mozilla developers say about those who report difficult bugs:
I don't know, but my understanding is that you tell Nextel where you want "Push to Talk" to go in advance, and they connect you when you press the button.
Cellular phones have a very limited range, so if "Push to Talk" works when the other person is many miles away, that is evidence that the transmission is going through Nextel's equipment.
Correction: I now understand the purpose of the radio; cell phones don't transmit much when there is no sound.
I like this quote from an earlier comment:
"As to believers of the original article, eggs average around 50 grams in weight. It takes one calorie to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree Celsius. One calorie = 4.184 Joules (let's say 4.2 because this is a rough approximation anyway). Room temperature is 20 Celsius, so the difference to boiling is 80 degrees C. You need 4000 calories to bring an egg up to boiling (50 gms * 80 degrees C), or about 17000 Joules. Since a joule is equal to a watt-second, that means your average phone with 1 watt output would need about 4.5 hours to raise the egg to boiling temperature, assuming NO other losses."
Then someone said that an egg is not all water, and it is easier to raise the temperature of an egg than water, which is true.
But, that is not enough difference to change the fact that this is a hoax.
I like this, too:
"It takes 3 minutes to hard boil an egg in water. There's no way your cell phone (or even a few of them) could put enough heat into an egg to make its temperature go up even a couple degrees. You need to be able to put more heat into the object than the air around it can dissipate."
One reason for that is the radiation is going in ALL directions, not just into the egg.
Bunratty, you are just playing an angry game here. If you actually had an interest in the CPU hogging and crashing of Firefox, you would read all the ideas presented.
Note that you included this sentence in your quote above: "This demonstrates one aspect of the bug, but is not representative of [the bug occurring] in normal use, since that web page is huge."
It's just one aspect. To understand what people know about this very well-publicized bug, you should read everything. It's interesting to note that no Firefox or Mozilla developer has done this; it's obvious from their replies.
Anyhow, does it seem reasonable that opening 3 tabs showing the same 4 megabyte HTML file should require 200 Megabytes?
Why is it that Opera has no problems of this nature? Don't say extensions or plug-ins, because I'm not using any.
More notes to go with those above:
Note that cellular phones don't communicate with each other. They communicate with a local transmitter/receiver, one of the "cells". Putting an egg between them implies that the power going back and forth heats the egg; it doesn't, because there is no cell-phone-to-cell-phone direct communication, in spite of what the cell phone ads imply.
Cellular phones, and the cells, transmit only the power necessary to make them communicate. That's to prevent interference in heavily populated areas.
The Slashdot article is more about the evils of not listening in Physics class than the evils of cell phones.
The idea is preposterous. Note that the radio does nothing. Note that cellular phone antennas are not directional, and the energy goes equally in all directions.
Maybe Slashdot editors did too much gaming when they were young, maybe they haven't taken the time to learn how the world works, because they often fall for hoaxes.
Note that the Firefox is the most unstable program in common use was moderated up to +5 in a former discussion.
An honest history of Firefox would include the fact that it has been unstable for more than 2 1/2 years.
Firefox is the most unstable software in common use. Firefox 1.5.0.1 is far less stable than 1.5, which is less stable than earlier versions. This is on Windows XP SP2, all patches supplied. Firefox 1.5.0.1 was installed a clean profile, with no extensions, except DOM Inspector, which is an Installation menu choice.
Sometimes software has problems and no one wants to work on those problems. The biggest source of instability, in my opinion, is the CPU hogging bug. Firefox will begin using 10%, then 50%, then 96% of the CPU, when there is no browser activity, and just a few windows and tabs are loaded.
The CPU hogging bug seems to be due to insufficient allocation of resources inside Firefox, such as inadequate stack space. Those who use a browser to do extensive research, for example, are likely to have more windows and tabs open than the average user. Apparently Firefox developers did not plan for that.
It's interesting to note that the CPU hogging bug sometimes causes Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird to hog the CPU, also. Obviously, some resources are being shared, because the CPU hogging bug is shared.
Firefox needs approved extensions. Mozilla.org heavily advertises the existence of extensions. Then, when users have problems with Firefox, the developers blame the problems on the user or the extensions author.
At present, Firefox is developer-centered, not customer-centered. If there are problems users are told, "Here are several hours of technical things you can do to make Firefox work for you."
Anyone have experience with this: Quintessential Player?
Note that it says you can rip CDs at full speed. WinAmp requires you to pay to do that.