Poorly coded extensions definitely are the biggest memory leak problem. I was using forecastfox for a while and Firefox was leaking like a rusty bucket, even with the sessionistory fix. One day, forecastfox popped up with the latest temperature over an hour after I'd closed Firefox. I uninstalled it right then and Firefox has been pretty well-behaved memory-wise ever since; I haven't seen it's memory usage go over 85 mb.
Also, this fix helps too:
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.
You don't even have to go so far as being seen with someone who was into anything shady. It could be someone who doesn't just like the way you look who fingers you for no other reason. It could be someone "official" who doesn't like you or is pissed about you cutting him off on the highway. Hell, anyone in any kind of official capacity, past, present or future could make sure that happened to you. Think I'm exaggerating? Study the history of the Soviet Union and fascist governments; people were killed for far less and many officials used their power for vendettas and to get rid of people in their way. Do anything or do nothing, it could still happen to you.
Thank you. But since I don't trust people who post information online about themselves, I must now watch you carefully, track your activities on the internet, listen in on your phone conversations and otherwise keep an eye on you at all times.
What's the difference between a paranoid nutjob stalking you and a government spying on you without cause? Anyone?
I doubt it. The climate has more to do with them flying south than the magnetic field. Sure, they use the magnetic field to navigate, but that's not why they fly south. They would start flying north only if the climate changed so that north was warmer. In the meantime, as another poster stated above, some birds will die because they can't always navigate correctly during migration and possibly even a few species could become extinct because of it. On the other hand, I'm not sure any species would become extinct, since (like sailors of old) they also use temperature and even smell to navigate by.
What makes it news is that someone in the corporate world noticed and actually said something about it. Many other corporations are too busy fleecing the suckers who click those links.
No, but murderers are treated with more respect than Microsoft's customers are by Microsoft. Murderers have to be proven guilty awhereas Microsoft assumes all copies of Windows are pirated until proven otherwise. Furthermore, they attempt to shakedown their paying customers into buying more of their software under threat of lawsuit if they can't prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that their copies ar elegal, don't they?
"Have they disenfranchised an entire population and brought them under a brutal dictatorship? "
In a way, yes. With their monopolistic actions in the market they have repeatedly attempted to take away the rights of everyone to use competing software. Software they can refuse your right to use even after you've paid for it.
"Have they done scientific experiments on unwilling human-beings?"
No, but some would say that their customers have been used as unwilling beta-testers in the past. Considering that the first computer I ever got came with Windows ME I would agree.
"Have they enslaved millions of people to do their bidding in extremely harsh and abusive environments?"
Well, yes. As I said above, with their continual monopolistic and anti-trust actions they have attempted over and over to leave everyone with no choice but to use their software. And they never considered security important until Vista, and on that note the internet itself is a harsh and abusive environment which they have left everyone completely exposed to. Of course, they will give you some protection from it if you pay them even more now.
"Have they ever attempted ethnic cleansing?"
Operating system-wise, they have. They has continually tried to eliminate Linux and it wasn't long ago that Ballmer was hinting that they might have some patents that they could threaten Linux with, wasn't he? Not to mention the constant studies they fund that invariably find that Windows is better for some reason or another.
The real problem is that too many people don't consider treachery and cheating to be evil anymore. Once upon a time, it was. Now it's standard practice.
"ActiveX (in a browser, I have to assume thats what you're talking about) gives security prompts on any attempt to install software. If you click No or do not install or whatever, it doesn't."
Spyware vendors got past that years ago.
"Wow, way to quote a 3 year old article."
You say that as if three years were a long time or things had changed at Microsoft. Three years isn't that long at all, especially as Microsoft hasn't yet produced another OS or browser (Vista and IE 7 are in beta), nor has there been a large turnover in key employees, and especially, the executives who make the decisions about these things.
"In exchange, you may or may not become a Click and Run customer."
And if you don't, you'll be able to do what with your computer? Practically nothing. Without third-party software, Linspire is almost as bare as Windows. Without Click and Run, your computer is little more than a big paperweight. And apt WILL break it. When I tested it, apt-get broke the OS after just three uses to install very common programs; my, what a coincidence that the only other way to get software that they don't profit from breaks the OS. So, saying that you have a choice here is almost inaccurate here -- really, you don't, they just pretend that you do before you install it. It's like a choice between eating or starving.
Not only are you wrong about Navaho (and it's no the only thriving Native Americna language, to the astonishing ignorance of other Americans), but i'ts very unwise to take for granted that a language that is "unpopular" or whatever now will be dead a millenium or longer in the future. I'm certain most people in the Middle East 3500 years ago were sure Hebrew would be a dead language long before now.
Lol. On a more serious note, they should have pictures of humans with their throats cut and hearts torn out. As gruesome as that sounds, it would be horrific enough that even aliens or an intelligent furture species should be able to understand it.
"You won't be able to surf to disney.com without the NSA knowing about it and adding a little Freudian note in your dossier that you clicking on Donald's nuts"
OMG! How did you find out about that?!.... Or are you like that too?
Agreed. My husbad and I keep a long, long wish-list of games we want and buy one off that list generally once a month, in addition to an annual game shopping-spree when he gets his vacation pay. I noticed just two days that there wasn't a single EA game on that list. I'd buy an EA game if they put out a decent one, but none of them that sounded even slightly interesting stood up the harshest critics -- user reviews. We're the people they're aiming at, but they seem to be shooting blind.
Yes, Eberron has been selling well. But not well enough to suit WotC. Part of the problem is that they seem to think they're a software compnay nowadays, and if they refuse to support other game worlds by dropping them, they can force others to switch to Eberron. How is that supposed to work? You can just keep paying any world you want, regardless of whether new material is coming out for it or not. Not to mention that a good DM uses his or her own material anyway. Hell, I use my own world, just like a lot of other DMs. I don't know, but word on the message boards (many, many of them) for months now has been that's what WotC is trying to do.
The pure anal-retentiveness of the design is what sucks about it. Bonsues and penalties are divided by types and most can't be stacked. You get a +1 to something because of this or that and another +1 but you don't get a +2. No, you still only get a +1. This is worse in computer-based D&D games like NWN, where many magic item are pretty much random instead of chosen by a sensible DM.
The spells are divided into separate spell lists for each and every spellcasting class. Why do paladins and rangers need a separate spell list from clerics? One of the most innovative things about 2nd Edition rules was that they combined most of these together. WotC threw the baby out with the bathwater and made a whole new system -- and that's not the only time they did that either. I don't supposed it occurred to anyone that this might create a little more work for the DM, as some players might be tempted to cheat and use a spell that's not on his list, knowing good and well that the DM hasn't go them all memorized?
Combat. WTF?! This system is more complicated than real combat! You spend over a minute calculating attacks of opportunity for each round of combat. And they give attacks of opportunity for the stupidest things! Why should someone get a free attack against you just because you're not armed? Why should doing virtually anything provoke an attack of opportunity? Why is evreything divided into 5-foot squares? If I'm not mistaken, you can't attack soemone in the same 5-foot square as your character. Huh? You can't attack someone who is within 5 feet of you?! Talk about unrealistic. And how come your utterly helpless when you're knocked down? What, do your arms and legs automatically become paralyzed every time you're prone? Lie on back and tell me how much sense that makes.
Now, I'll fully admit the combat rules for AD&D always felt incomplete, so I completed them for my campaigns, but there was no need to over-complicate it to this extent, let alone throw in a bunch of "because I said so!" rules that don't make sense in the first place.
Psionics. It's nothing but an alternative magic system with a different spell list. Others have, fortunately, come up with a much better system based on skills and feats. Look up "d20 Skills Feats Psionics" with a search engine to find it; it's a free download in.pdf format. Pay no attention to the crass rip-off of it that Green Ronin wants you to buy from them.
Alignment. I've never liked the alignment rules and I'm sick of having them forced down my throat. To show how bad that has gotten, here's a special quote: "Malefica are always evil and should not be encouraged as player characters. This game should be about heroic fantasy. Malefica make great NPCs to challenge player characters. They should be played as the typical "wicked witch" from fairytales or stories." Well, excuse me, I didn't know my game was subject to their approval. And here I thought we could play however we wanted. How foolish of me. With some books, there's hardly a page without a reference to "good-aligned" or "evil-aligned". And some books reduce complex social situation and mental states to alignment, nothing more; example, the 3rd Edition Ravenloft rules for madness. Schizophrenia is reduced purely into the individual swithcing alignments -- a game mechanic. Well, I guess that was easier than actually bothering to look any info on the subject, wasn't it? Many are way over-dependent on the alignment rules and even use them in a heavy-handed attempt to control how others play the game.
XP costs. We played just fine for over 15 years without that nonsense. Yes, they say it's an optional rule, but then they try hard as they can to browbeat you into using it, over and over again with spells and magic items stats.
Armor and weapons. Did you know that the longsword of D&D isn't? And why is the bastard sword an exotic weapon? It was a popular weapon in Europe for centuries! And what's with it weighing 10 pounds?! Bastard swords should weigh ab
Because if they are going to force ads down your throat and the FBI warning as well, they don't deserve support in the first place.
The only DVDs I've bought in the last two years (!) were copies of Citizen X and ROTK. Any other DVD I get that has ads on it that I can't skip past gets returned to the store. By the way, I've never pirated a movie, not even once. But that doesn't mean I swallow their crap whole and ask for more. There aren't any movies left out there that I want, period. I'd rather have all the flesh removed from my toes with wire cutters than be forced to watch any of the movies that have come out since 2004.
I agree, but I don't think this will happen -- the corporate fat is at the top, namely Ballmer, Gates and other decision-makers. They want this and this and this and that, never mind what I said last week, and basically send their employees scrambling in all directions at once. Furthermore, they're so concerned with securing the code to their projects that the people working on it don't ever see all of it, so they don't know what others have coded into it that might conflict with their code; yes, this makes for buggy software, but Gates and Ballmer care more about secrecy with the code than they do about the quality of it. MS's business model worked great for years, but they've gotten too big, are too concerned with secrecy, have executives who want the company to replace half of the businesses on Earth and keep starting more and more projects in different areas; they're the ones who are slowing the company down and creating more problems than all of their competition combined.
"The article states that those receivers would be replaced with devices that treat anything with an audio broadcast flag as copy-protected."
And if what is broadcasted is public domain itself, such as, say, passages from the Bible? I know a couple of ministers who would be upset that their sermons couldn't be freely copied by listeners. Basically, this would take away all choice even from the person broadcasting as well, wouldn't it?
I recently fixed a computer owned by a totally clueless person that had over 700 instances of spyware. I kid you not. What amazed me is that the machine, a Gateway Essential 800, was running ME with 128 mb RAM and was noticeably slower, but *was* running and was usable. (If I hadn't been so stunned I'd have installed a copy of a screen capture program and took a screenshot of the Ad-Aware window when it reported that.)
I used to think that too, but then I got Terragen. All other 3D terrain generation programs are hopelessly complex, but Terragen has a simple interface and produces results just as good. More software developers could learn a lesson if they compared Terragen to other programs that do the same thing. In other words, if they tried to make it simpler instead of just coding the program to be able to do that, period. How many actually try? I don't know, but the number probably isn'tvery high.
Slashdot Mirror
Poorly coded extensions definitely are the biggest memory leak problem. I was using forecastfox for a while and Firefox was leaking like a rusty bucket, even with the sessionistory fix. One day, forecastfox popped up with the latest temperature over an hour after I'd closed Firefox. I uninstalled it right then and Firefox has been pretty well-behaved memory-wise ever since; I haven't seen it's memory usage go over 85 mb.
Also, this fix helps too:
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.
You don't even have to go so far as being seen with someone who was into anything shady. It could be someone who doesn't just like the way you look who fingers you for no other reason. It could be someone "official" who doesn't like you or is pissed about you cutting him off on the highway. Hell, anyone in any kind of official capacity, past, present or future could make sure that happened to you. Think I'm exaggerating? Study the history of the Soviet Union and fascist governments; people were killed for far less and many officials used their power for vendettas and to get rid of people in their way. Do anything or do nothing, it could still happen to you.
Why bother with all that? That's very inefficient, tsk tsk. Just buy them, like you can everyone else in government if you have enough money.
Thank you. But since I don't trust people who post information online about themselves, I must now watch you carefully, track your activities on the internet, listen in on your phone conversations and otherwise keep an eye on you at all times.
What's the difference between a paranoid nutjob stalking you and a government spying on you without cause? Anyone?
I doubt it. The climate has more to do with them flying south than the magnetic field. Sure, they use the magnetic field to navigate, but that's not why they fly south. They would start flying north only if the climate changed so that north was warmer. In the meantime, as another poster stated above, some birds will die because they can't always navigate correctly during migration and possibly even a few species could become extinct because of it. On the other hand, I'm not sure any species would become extinct, since (like sailors of old) they also use temperature and even smell to navigate by.
What makes it news is that someone in the corporate world noticed and actually said something about it. Many other corporations are too busy fleecing the suckers who click those links.
"Have they killed countless millions of people? "
No, but murderers are treated with more respect than Microsoft's customers are by Microsoft. Murderers have to be proven guilty awhereas Microsoft assumes all copies of Windows are pirated until proven otherwise. Furthermore, they attempt to shakedown their paying customers into buying more of their software under threat of lawsuit if they can't prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that their copies ar elegal, don't they?
"Have they disenfranchised an entire population and brought them under a brutal dictatorship? "
In a way, yes. With their monopolistic actions in the market they have repeatedly attempted to take away the rights of everyone to use competing software. Software they can refuse your right to use even after you've paid for it.
"Have they done scientific experiments on unwilling human-beings?"
No, but some would say that their customers have been used as unwilling beta-testers in the past. Considering that the first computer I ever got came with Windows ME I would agree.
"Have they enslaved millions of people to do their bidding in extremely harsh and abusive environments?"
Well, yes. As I said above, with their continual monopolistic and anti-trust actions they have attempted over and over to leave everyone with no choice but to use their software. And they never considered security important until Vista, and on that note the internet itself is a harsh and abusive environment which they have left everyone completely exposed to. Of course, they will give you some protection from it if you pay them even more now.
"Have they ever attempted ethnic cleansing?"
Operating system-wise, they have. They has continually tried to eliminate Linux and it wasn't long ago that Ballmer was hinting that they might have some patents that they could threaten Linux with, wasn't he? Not to mention the constant studies they fund that invariably find that Windows is better for some reason or another.
The real problem is that too many people don't consider treachery and cheating to be evil anymore. Once upon a time, it was. Now it's standard practice.
You can send me lots of beer and vodka and I'll make sure Taco gets it. Trust me.
"ActiveX (in a browser, I have to assume thats what you're talking about) gives security prompts on any attempt to install software. If you click No or do not install or whatever, it doesn't."
Spyware vendors got past that years ago.
"Wow, way to quote a 3 year old article."
You say that as if three years were a long time or things had changed at Microsoft. Three years isn't that long at all, especially as Microsoft hasn't yet produced another OS or browser (Vista and IE 7 are in beta), nor has there been a large turnover in key employees, and especially, the executives who make the decisions about these things.
"In exchange, you may or may not become a Click and Run customer."
And if you don't, you'll be able to do what with your computer? Practically nothing. Without third-party software, Linspire is almost as bare as Windows. Without Click and Run, your computer is little more than a big paperweight. And apt WILL break it. When I tested it, apt-get broke the OS after just three uses to install very common programs; my, what a coincidence that the only other way to get software that they don't profit from breaks the OS. So, saying that you have a choice here is almost inaccurate here -- really, you don't, they just pretend that you do before you install it. It's like a choice between eating or starving.
With all the "geekier than thou" claims on /., it's kind of sad to see that no one else seems to be getting that joke.
Not only are you wrong about Navaho (and it's no the only thriving Native Americna language, to the astonishing ignorance of other Americans), but i'ts very unwise to take for granted that a language that is "unpopular" or whatever now will be dead a millenium or longer in the future. I'm certain most people in the Middle East 3500 years ago were sure Hebrew would be a dead language long before now.
Lol. On a more serious note, they should have pictures of humans with their throats cut and hearts torn out. As gruesome as that sounds, it would be horrific enough that even aliens or an intelligent furture species should be able to understand it.
"You won't be able to surf to disney.com without the NSA knowing about it and adding a little Freudian note in your dossier that you clicking on Donald's nuts"
OMG! How did you find out about that?!.... Or are you like that too?
Agreed. My husbad and I keep a long, long wish-list of games we want and buy one off that list generally once a month, in addition to an annual game shopping-spree when he gets his vacation pay. I noticed just two days that there wasn't a single EA game on that list. I'd buy an EA game if they put out a decent one, but none of them that sounded even slightly interesting stood up the harshest critics -- user reviews. We're the people they're aiming at, but they seem to be shooting blind.
If you are an EA representative, then the attitude towards a potential custoemr you displayed in your post proved his point spectacularly.
Yes, Eberron has been selling well. But not well enough to suit WotC. Part of the problem is that they seem to think they're a software compnay nowadays, and if they refuse to support other game worlds by dropping them, they can force others to switch to Eberron. How is that supposed to work? You can just keep paying any world you want, regardless of whether new material is coming out for it or not. Not to mention that a good DM uses his or her own material anyway. Hell, I use my own world, just like a lot of other DMs. I don't know, but word on the message boards (many, many of them) for months now has been that's what WotC is trying to do.
The pure anal-retentiveness of the design is what sucks about it. Bonsues and penalties are divided by types and most can't be stacked. You get a +1 to something because of this or that and another +1 but you don't get a +2. No, you still only get a +1. This is worse in computer-based D&D games like NWN, where many magic item are pretty much random instead of chosen by a sensible DM.
The spells are divided into separate spell lists for each and every spellcasting class. Why do paladins and rangers need a separate spell list from clerics? One of the most innovative things about 2nd Edition rules was that they combined most of these together. WotC threw the baby out with the bathwater and made a whole new system -- and that's not the only time they did that either. I don't supposed it occurred to anyone that this might create a little more work for the DM, as some players might be tempted to cheat and use a spell that's not on his list, knowing good and well that the DM hasn't go them all memorized?
Combat. WTF?! This system is more complicated than real combat! You spend over a minute calculating attacks of opportunity for each round of combat. And they give attacks of opportunity for the stupidest things! Why should someone get a free attack against you just because you're not armed? Why should doing virtually anything provoke an attack of opportunity? Why is evreything divided into 5-foot squares? If I'm not mistaken, you can't attack soemone in the same 5-foot square as your character. Huh? You can't attack someone who is within 5 feet of you?! Talk about unrealistic. And how come your utterly helpless when you're knocked down? What, do your arms and legs automatically become paralyzed every time you're prone? Lie on back and tell me how much sense that makes.
Now, I'll fully admit the combat rules for AD&D always felt incomplete, so I completed them for my campaigns, but there was no need to over-complicate it to this extent, let alone throw in a bunch of "because I said so!" rules that don't make sense in the first place.
Psionics. It's nothing but an alternative magic system with a different spell list. Others have, fortunately, come up with a much better system based on skills and feats. Look up "d20 Skills Feats Psionics" with a search engine to find it; it's a free download in .pdf format. Pay no attention to the crass rip-off of it that Green Ronin wants you to buy from them.
Alignment. I've never liked the alignment rules and I'm sick of having them forced down my throat. To show how bad that has gotten, here's a special quote: "Malefica are always evil and should not be encouraged as player characters. This game should be about heroic fantasy. Malefica make great NPCs to challenge player characters. They should be played as the typical "wicked witch" from fairytales or stories." Well, excuse me, I didn't know my game was subject to their approval. And here I thought we could play however we wanted. How foolish of me. With some books, there's hardly a page without a reference to "good-aligned" or "evil-aligned". And some books reduce complex social situation and mental states to alignment, nothing more; example, the 3rd Edition Ravenloft rules for madness. Schizophrenia is reduced purely into the individual swithcing alignments -- a game mechanic. Well, I guess that was easier than actually bothering to look any info on the subject, wasn't it? Many are way over-dependent on the alignment rules and even use them in a heavy-handed attempt to control how others play the game.
XP costs. We played just fine for over 15 years without that nonsense. Yes, they say it's an optional rule, but then they try hard as they can to browbeat you into using it, over and over again with spells and magic items stats.
Armor and weapons. Did you know that the longsword of D&D isn't? And why is the bastard sword an exotic weapon? It was a popular weapon in Europe for centuries! And what's with it weighing 10 pounds?! Bastard swords should weigh ab
Because if they are going to force ads down your throat and the FBI warning as well, they don't deserve support in the first place.
The only DVDs I've bought in the last two years (!) were copies of Citizen X and ROTK. Any other DVD I get that has ads on it that I can't skip past gets returned to the store. By the way, I've never pirated a movie, not even once. But that doesn't mean I swallow their crap whole and ask for more. There aren't any movies left out there that I want, period. I'd rather have all the flesh removed from my toes with wire cutters than be forced to watch any of the movies that have come out since 2004.
I agree, but I don't think this will happen -- the corporate fat is at the top, namely Ballmer, Gates and other decision-makers. They want this and this and this and that, never mind what I said last week, and basically send their employees scrambling in all directions at once. Furthermore, they're so concerned with securing the code to their projects that the people working on it don't ever see all of it, so they don't know what others have coded into it that might conflict with their code; yes, this makes for buggy software, but Gates and Ballmer care more about secrecy with the code than they do about the quality of it. MS's business model worked great for years, but they've gotten too big, are too concerned with secrecy, have executives who want the company to replace half of the businesses on Earth and keep starting more and more projects in different areas; they're the ones who are slowing the company down and creating more problems than all of their competition combined.
"Honestly...why do the editors keep posting his garbage? Humor value?"
Isn't it obvious? So that we can argue about it and they can be amused by all of us arguing about it.
Our penguins are NOT fat! They're just big-boned!
"The article states that those receivers would be replaced with devices that treat anything with an audio broadcast flag as copy-protected."
And if what is broadcasted is public domain itself, such as, say, passages from the Bible? I know a couple of ministers who would be upset that their sermons couldn't be freely copied by listeners. Basically, this would take away all choice even from the person broadcasting as well, wouldn't it?I recently fixed a computer owned by a totally clueless person that had over 700 instances of spyware. I kid you not. What amazed me is that the machine, a Gateway Essential 800, was running ME with 128 mb RAM and was noticeably slower, but *was* running and was usable. (If I hadn't been so stunned I'd have installed a copy of a screen capture program and took a screenshot of the Ad-Aware window when it reported that.)
I used to think that too, but then I got Terragen. All other 3D terrain generation programs are hopelessly complex, but Terragen has a simple interface and produces results just as good. More software developers could learn a lesson if they compared Terragen to other programs that do the same thing. In other words, if they tried to make it simpler instead of just coding the program to be able to do that, period. How many actually try? I don't know, but the number probably isn'tvery high.