I couldn't get to just about any website I tried... weather.com... cnn.com... aviationweather.gov... all I wanted to know was what the goddamn weather was going to do, and I couldn't get anywhere.
I rebooted my router and every PC in the house, and still nothing. Called Comcast, they said everything looked fine from their end...
Now I know what was really going on...
I'd say I can't wait for Fios, but they are probably just as bad..
True, the article also accuses engineers of being lacking in social skills, which is absolute bunk. I happen to be an ENTJ, with a capital E. I have friends and still have a relationship with my family. Whomever wrote the headling is grossly generalizing a bad stereotype given to engineers by MBA types.
We all know this from the OGG vs. MP3 issue years back, or AAC vs. MP3, or just about any other codec that produces smaller files that have a higher quality than MP3.
This is no different, but the experiment doesn't SEEM to lie. The quality of the FioS frames is certainly higher than the Comcast frames on those particular channels, at that particular time, during that particular program.
Another factor that is not known is whether Comcast and/or Verizon change their compression dynamically based on the utilization of the loop. How do we know that verizon won't do the same thing once their fiber loops are hopelessly oversubscribed, as Comcast's are now?
There are too many variables left unconsidered to treat this person's analysis as reliable. All he has demonstrated is that more highly compressed video has lower quality than that of lesser compressed video, and nothing more. It is hardly a comprehensive study.
Patents do nothing to prevent you building something for your own use using your own materials. They only protect the inventor from you pursuing a commercial interest in the invention.
So, if you want to build your own atomic bomb a la The Manhattan Project, be my guest. Nobody is going to file a patent suit against you (although I would worry deeply about NRC, ATF, DHS, FBI, NSA, and many other three-letter organizations that would be interested in you).
They're just going to keep spinning off the successful parts of the company until there is nothing left...
First, they spun off On-Semi because MOT was dying, but the semi part was doing well..
Then, they spun off FreeScale, because their processor unit was doing well, but MOT was dying...
See, what happens is, when a company overall is doing poorly, their cost of debt increases dramatically. This can hamper parts of the company that are doing well, so they spin off the good parts so they can operate on low interest rates. What is left crashes and burns, leaving creditors (i.e. shareholders) with nothing.
The platforms for XM and Sirius are wholly incompatible. You can bet that the new XM is not going to pay to maintain both. My speculation is that, in the immediate term, they will close down the Sirius studios and just pipe XM content to both platforms, effectively halving the cost of their programming while maintaining the same revenue. They will also probably stop selling Sirius hardware at some point and, as the satellite infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life, simply flip the breaker.
"They set up a trade to sell at such and such a date in the future. If they get hold of some inside information that is very bad for the company, they let the trade proceed. The SEC says it's OK because the sale was set up before the knowlege of the insider information. If all is A-OK with the company, they cancel the trade, and because there was no stock bought or sold, the SEC says it's OK."
You are right, and there is another scandalous vehicle called a "stop loss" order, and you and me or anybody else can do one. You and me or anyone else can cancel a stop-loss order as well, so in effect, they are not doing anything that we can't do. We place an order to sell at a pre-determined price, and if the price does not go that low, the order is not executed. We don't even have to call to cancel it! MY GOD!
Yes, of course FF is flawless, and it MUST be my setup, because the fact that I can reproduce this on ANY machine, and that dozens if not hundreds of people have complained about the same problem IN THIS THREAD, and that the FF memory leak is absolutely LEGENDARY, yes, that obviously means it must be an isolated case of just my one machine.
This attitude is right on point, and is the perfect example of how our education system has been broken for decades. CS kiddies are taught that there is no such thing as a software problem, and that any problem must necessarily be a customer issue, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
It's not up to the customer to do your work for you and generate "useful bug reports." It's YOUR job to release software that isn't broken in the first place. This problem with FF is so ubiquitous that there really is no excuse for it having survived alpha, let alone made it to the umpteenth release of the SECOND major version. For you to tell me that it's my job to fix it for you, aside from being completely ludicrous, is completely arrogant and representative of the holier than thou attitude that software people have been taught to believe in.
I am a customer, not a developer. As far as I am concerned, it just has to WORK.
I have both players, so I've been soaking up HD-DVDs dirt cheap since Toshiba threw in the towel.
One thing that has been observed since Toshiba's decision is that sales of players and movies have SKYROCKETED, and Toshiba has been reported to be reconsidering their decision.
When I came in this morning, it had grown to 120MB from the 70-someodd it was last night when I left. I wasn't awake this morning and I ended up using it to surf around today (is there any way to save the history URL file?) and it has grown to 320MB since this morning.
I'm happy to provide any info that would help you guys figure this out. If there's a way to have a surf log (URLs and time and whatnot) I don't mind disclosing that to you over a period of time. It is definitely a consistent and repeatable thing on this machine.
I don't find anecdotal evidence convincing, especially when it does not agree with what I have found repeatedly and consistently with my experience.
Besides, what was wrong with the list I gave you? That's exactly how I use FF. I don't know how to be more specific than that.
Today, before I leave, I will start FF and just leave it there with gmail, slashdot, aopa.org, and cnn.com in 4 tabs. I will note memory usage before I go home today, and again in the morning when I come in.
1) Start Firefox 2) Surf the web normally for a day 3) Go away 4) Come back in 1-3 days and observe memory usage
Step 2) is optional and may be repeated (or not) over the course of the 1-3 day memory expansion period.
I would usually have 3-4 tabs open. Gmail was always one of them, and the others were usually Slashdot, aopa.org, and maybe one other news-related site (take your pick, fox, drudge, or whatever)
On point 3- I don't see how taking up 800-1200 Mbytes of memory for cache is even possible, nor even desired when the result is that it slows the entire machine to a complete crawl.
I can leave my office on Friday, with FF open, and come back on Monday, and memory usage has gone from 100MBytes to 1200Mbytes (yes, 1.2GB), and I haven't surfed a damn thing all weekend. How is that cached pages?
No, I do not use any extensions or addons.
This is not a feature, no matter how many times you say it.
does it still leak gigabytes of memory all over the goddamn place? I'll switch back from IE when someone can swear to god and their mother's grave that they've fixed all of the memory allocation issues in FF.
Slashdot Mirror
"40% of british residents believe they are being followed."
does that mean that 60% of British residents live in a fantasy land of disbelief?
Don't forget the tired but reliable 1-5-6m-4 for emo songs that need at least one minor chord to project all that angst... oh my.. how angsty...
This is certainly the day the music died....
tag: thedaythemusicdied
I couldn't get to just about any website I tried... weather.com... cnn.com... aviationweather.gov... all I wanted to know was what the goddamn weather was going to do, and I couldn't get anywhere.
I rebooted my router and every PC in the house, and still nothing. Called Comcast, they said everything looked fine from their end...
Now I know what was really going on...
I'd say I can't wait for Fios, but they are probably just as bad..
True, the article also accuses engineers of being lacking in social skills, which is absolute bunk. I happen to be an ENTJ, with a capital E. I have friends and still have a relationship with my family. Whomever wrote the headling is grossly generalizing a bad stereotype given to engineers by MBA types.
*sigh*
Wow, I just saw that movie last weekend. I can't remember the name of it, though. Hah.
It was so much better last year...
Sucks this year. Plus that damn NetApp flash ad keeps covering up the top story on the main page and there's no "close" function...
We all know this from the OGG vs. MP3 issue years back, or AAC vs. MP3, or just about any other codec that produces smaller files that have a higher quality than MP3.
This is no different, but the experiment doesn't SEEM to lie. The quality of the FioS frames is certainly higher than the Comcast frames on those particular channels, at that particular time, during that particular program.
Another factor that is not known is whether Comcast and/or Verizon change their compression dynamically based on the utilization of the loop. How do we know that verizon won't do the same thing once their fiber loops are hopelessly oversubscribed, as Comcast's are now?
There are too many variables left unconsidered to treat this person's analysis as reliable. All he has demonstrated is that more highly compressed video has lower quality than that of lesser compressed video, and nothing more. It is hardly a comprehensive study.
How long will it be before the Principal outsources the kid's job to India thinking it'll be cheaper...
Patents do nothing to prevent you building something for your own use using your own materials. They only protect the inventor from you pursuing a commercial interest in the invention.
So, if you want to build your own atomic bomb a la The Manhattan Project, be my guest. Nobody is going to file a patent suit against you (although I would worry deeply about NRC, ATF, DHS, FBI, NSA, and many other three-letter organizations that would be interested in you).
They're just going to keep spinning off the successful parts of the company until there is nothing left...
First, they spun off On-Semi because MOT was dying, but the semi part was doing well..
Then, they spun off FreeScale, because their processor unit was doing well, but MOT was dying...
See, what happens is, when a company overall is doing poorly, their cost of debt increases dramatically. This can hamper parts of the company that are doing well, so they spin off the good parts so they can operate on low interest rates. What is left crashes and burns, leaving creditors (i.e. shareholders) with nothing.
"I really don't understand what these developers are thinking when they develop PC games"
Why don't you go to Bangalore and ask them yourself?
Great idea in theory, but not in practice.
The platforms for XM and Sirius are wholly incompatible. You can bet that the new XM is not going to pay to maintain both. My speculation is that, in the immediate term, they will close down the Sirius studios and just pipe XM content to both platforms, effectively halving the cost of their programming while maintaining the same revenue. They will also probably stop selling Sirius hardware at some point and, as the satellite infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life, simply flip the breaker.
Talk about the polarized masses... but, the Parent has a good point...
Nice job relying on your firefox dictionary.
All they are doing here is providing a vehicle for insiders to have a "stop loss" order without the required advance notice of sale.
"They set up a trade to sell at such and such a date in the future. If they get hold of some inside information that is very bad for the company, they let the trade proceed. The SEC says it's OK because the sale was set up before the knowlege of the insider information. If all is A-OK with the company, they cancel the trade, and because there was no stock bought or sold, the SEC says it's OK."
You are right, and there is another scandalous vehicle called a "stop loss" order, and you and me or anybody else can do one. You and me or anyone else can cancel a stop-loss order as well, so in effect, they are not doing anything that we can't do. We place an order to sell at a pre-determined price, and if the price does not go that low, the order is not executed. We don't even have to call to cancel it! MY GOD!
*pounding head into desk*
Yes, of course FF is flawless, and it MUST be my setup, because the fact that I can reproduce this on ANY machine, and that dozens if not hundreds of people have complained about the same problem IN THIS THREAD, and that the FF memory leak is absolutely LEGENDARY, yes, that obviously means it must be an isolated case of just my one machine.
This attitude is right on point, and is the perfect example of how our education system has been broken for decades. CS kiddies are taught that there is no such thing as a software problem, and that any problem must necessarily be a customer issue, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
It's not up to the customer to do your work for you and generate "useful bug reports." It's YOUR job to release software that isn't broken in the first place. This problem with FF is so ubiquitous that there really is no excuse for it having survived alpha, let alone made it to the umpteenth release of the SECOND major version. For you to tell me that it's my job to fix it for you, aside from being completely ludicrous, is completely arrogant and representative of the holier than thou attitude that software people have been taught to believe in.
I am a customer, not a developer. As far as I am concerned, it just has to WORK.
I have both players, so I've been soaking up HD-DVDs dirt cheap since Toshiba threw in the towel.
One thing that has been observed since Toshiba's decision is that sales of players and movies have SKYROCKETED, and Toshiba has been reported to be reconsidering their decision.
This war may not be over just yet...
When I came in this morning, it had grown to 120MB from the 70-someodd it was last night when I left. I wasn't awake this morning and I ended up using it to surf around today (is there any way to save the history URL file?) and it has grown to 320MB since this morning.
I'm happy to provide any info that would help you guys figure this out. If there's a way to have a surf log (URLs and time and whatnot) I don't mind disclosing that to you over a period of time. It is definitely a consistent and repeatable thing on this machine.
Fair enough
Tab 1: gmail.com (logged into my account)
Tab 2: www.aopa.org
Tab 3: slashdot.org
Tab 4: cnn.com
Now: 71280K (the largest memory user on the system at the moment)
We'll see what it is using in the morning.
I don't find anecdotal evidence convincing, especially when it does not agree with what I have found repeatedly and consistently with my experience.
Besides, what was wrong with the list I gave you? That's exactly how I use FF. I don't know how to be more specific than that.
Today, before I leave, I will start FF and just leave it there with gmail, slashdot, aopa.org, and cnn.com in 4 tabs. I will note memory usage before I go home today, and again in the morning when I come in.
Sure, here are the steps:
1) Start Firefox
2) Surf the web normally for a day
3) Go away
4) Come back in 1-3 days and observe memory usage
Step 2) is optional and may be repeated (or not) over the course of the 1-3 day memory expansion period.
I would usually have 3-4 tabs open. Gmail was always one of them, and the others were usually Slashdot, aopa.org, and maybe one other news-related site (take your pick, fox, drudge, or whatever)
On point 3- I don't see how taking up 800-1200 Mbytes of memory for cache is even possible, nor even desired when the result is that it slows the entire machine to a complete crawl.
I can leave my office on Friday, with FF open, and come back on Monday, and memory usage has gone from 100MBytes to 1200Mbytes (yes, 1.2GB), and I haven't surfed a damn thing all weekend. How is that cached pages?
No, I do not use any extensions or addons.
This is not a feature, no matter how many times you say it.
does it still leak gigabytes of memory all over the goddamn place? I'll switch back from IE when someone can swear to god and their mother's grave that they've fixed all of the memory allocation issues in FF.