Webkit isn't a browser, genius, it's a rendering engine. It's more akin to building a car from the ground up using an ENGINE from a Toyota and everything else being your own design.
Completely agreed. What's more, the comparisons being made are wholly unfair. IE8 bigger than XP? Only in terms of memory usage and I'd like to think an OS would be kind enough to NOT use a lot of RAM. Plus, memory usage depends entirely on the sites being visited. The tests they made were specifically designed to hit very content-heavy sites with all sorts of crap on them, so higher memory usage is to be expected. Sure, FF3 handles it better, but it's still "more bloated" than every MS OS before XP, according to this comparison.
They even went to all the trouble of making a nice little comic book to explain this to even the most technically challenged of people and yet you STILL managed to miss it. Well done!
Do they all NEED to be plugged in at the same time?
You could get one of those 200-in-1 universal adapter things and keep a note of the power requirements for each device in a handy notepad. Then you can just dump those chargers in a drawer somewhere, where they belong.
Does it really matter? You have a point in that carbon must be generated somewhere because at some point there's a coal or gas plant feeding energy into the national grid, which may be used to create a fuel cell, but that energy is going to be produced regardless as to what it's used for. At least this technology can ultimately replace a lot of devices that produce a lot of carbon, narrowing down the areas you have to target in order to solve the (supposedly) looming energy crisis. Imagine 10 or 20 years down the line all new vehicles use these fuel cells, you immediately reduce a large amount of carbon output and can then target our energy production structure, possibly replacing the carbon-generating power plants with natural/renewable sources (which we already have the technology, such as solar, it just needs to be refined and propagated a bit more). It wont be as simple or easy as that, but every step we take, no matter how small, is at least a step in the right direction.
You make it sound like their actual votes (when they're older) are actually going to make a difference and not just get lost in some electronic voting machine's circuits.
I have absolutely no idea where you come from, but I'm from the UK and I find that even when people aren't interested in politics, they still enjoy political satire like "Have I got news for you" and "Private Eye". I know in the U.S. there are similar shows such as "The Daily Show", so wherever you're from, try directing your friends to these, or consistently mention when a politician does something stupid and gets caught out. Works for me.
Firefox 3 already gave quite a nice performance boost to Javascript, enough to actually impress me (google maps is a great demonstration of this). It's good to see they haven't stopped there and are busy improving it further, a lot of software developers tend to spend too much time on making new features and not enough time fixing/optimising the existing one, but I think after the backlash from FF2's memory usage, Mozilla has rethought their priorities and I'm glad to say they're doing things right.
What? How is this in any way remotely similar to Quicktime? Quicktime is a video format and Microsoft has enough of those, this beast is entirely different.
Actually it doesn't do this at all. Time to at least give Microsoft some credit here, it does a pretty decent job of figuring out the 3D layout of everything and allows you to move around as much as you like. It's obviously not EXACTLY right (Although I'd bet that with more pictures, it's more accurate) but it's close enough that you could make a pretty good "virtual tour" of just about anywhere with nothing more than a bog-standard digital camera. It's definitely impressive.
Efficiency is just one of the goals of the language, but general use is another. That's why you can do absolutely ANYTHING with C++. Give me a task another language can do that C++ can't. That's what I mean by being "general".
Can somebody please explain to me what the hell a "mainframe" is/was for and why it might be dead? According to Wikipedia, Mainframes are a bit like supercomputers but better suited to tasks where there's a LOT of input/output data, but not a lot of calculation involved. Payrolls and such. As far as I'm aware, those tasks still exist today, probably moreso than in the 1970's and 1980's, so why would the Mainframe be dying out? Have regular desktop/server processors advanced faster than demand for this data calculation and thus are now simply adequate or is this article just a bit of FUD to make 'ol timmy look like he's doing his job?
FYI: I'm most certainly under 40. In fact, I'm barely more than half that age, so excuse my ignorance on the subject; the only times I've really heard the term "mainframe" used is in Films, Games and cheap 80's TV shows. And slashdot.
Well that's just it, C++ is designed to be as general a language as you can manage (which is why so many people don't "get" it or complain that it's complicated because not much is done for you in comparison to other languages) which is why other languages may be better suited to certain tasks. The example you gave for C# is a pretty good one, but it still highlights that there are areas where C++ isn't well suited to certain tasks and until it is, it's fair to say there's room for improvement. Thus I welcome any improvements to the language, especially as Bjarne certainly seems to know what he's doing.
If it was as good as it stands, then newer languages such as C# wouldn't take off. Don't get me wrong, I love C++ and it's my primary programming language, but to say it's perfect as it is, is just silly.
That's strange, I've had no trouble running any of the sites I usually go on to with FF3 (including Facebook). Are you sure FF3 is the problem and not some wayward extension or old cache data?
Try opening Firefox in it's own "safe mode" to see if you're still having the same problem.
Then again, it could just be that the facebook problem is subtle enough that I didn't notice it, I wouldn't say I'm big on the site or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
It's still processing. Don't blame me, blame google for being slow.
Uploaded the low-quality version to youtube, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzYUkXG7Occ
(Currently processing, it'll be done soon).
No, they make you feel like a big man.
Quick! Someone say "Russell Brand called George Bush a retard" for some cheap +1 informative mods.
Then spend the rest of your day wondering if you were modded informative for explaining the situation, or for repeating what Russell said.
Then realise that if anyone knew what you were thinking, they'd probably mod you +1 Troll.
Then realise you spend too much time on slashdot.
Then realise you've got no girlfriend.
Then realise you'll probably never have a girlfriend.
Then realise you've got no life.
Then mod yourself +1 offtopic.
Webkit isn't a browser, genius, it's a rendering engine. It's more akin to building a car from the ground up using an ENGINE from a Toyota and everything else being your own design.
Completely agreed. What's more, the comparisons being made are wholly unfair. IE8 bigger than XP? Only in terms of memory usage and I'd like to think an OS would be kind enough to NOT use a lot of RAM.
Plus, memory usage depends entirely on the sites being visited. The tests they made were specifically designed to hit very content-heavy sites with all sorts of crap on them, so higher memory usage is to be expected. Sure, FF3 handles it better, but it's still "more bloated" than every MS OS before XP, according to this comparison.
They used webkit and built it from the ground up.
They even went to all the trouble of making a nice little comic book to explain this to even the most technically challenged of people and yet you STILL managed to miss it. Well done!
Oh the PURE and UNADULTERATED HORROR of it all!
Whoosh!
You've never played Mindball, have you?
Good logic there and you make a valid point, but being perfectly honest, 2 years in the GPU industry is more like 5 years in the CPU industry.
Sure, if you'd rather not talk to people or don't mind a bit of crap call quality.
Do they all NEED to be plugged in at the same time?
You could get one of those 200-in-1 universal adapter things and keep a note of the power requirements for each device in a handy notepad. Then you can just dump those chargers in a drawer somewhere, where they belong.
Does it really matter? You have a point in that carbon must be generated somewhere because at some point there's a coal or gas plant feeding energy into the national grid, which may be used to create a fuel cell, but that energy is going to be produced regardless as to what it's used for.
At least this technology can ultimately replace a lot of devices that produce a lot of carbon, narrowing down the areas you have to target in order to solve the (supposedly) looming energy crisis.
Imagine 10 or 20 years down the line all new vehicles use these fuel cells, you immediately reduce a large amount of carbon output and can then target our energy production structure, possibly replacing the carbon-generating power plants with natural/renewable sources (which we already have the technology, such as solar, it just needs to be refined and propagated a bit more). It wont be as simple or easy as that, but every step we take, no matter how small, is at least a step in the right direction.
You make it sound like their actual votes (when they're older) are actually going to make a difference and not just get lost in some electronic voting machine's circuits.
I have absolutely no idea where you come from, but I'm from the UK and I find that even when people aren't interested in politics, they still enjoy political satire like "Have I got news for you" and "Private Eye".
I know in the U.S. there are similar shows such as "The Daily Show", so wherever you're from, try directing your friends to these, or consistently mention when a politician does something stupid and gets caught out. Works for me.
Firefox 3 already gave quite a nice performance boost to Javascript, enough to actually impress me (google maps is a great demonstration of this). It's good to see they haven't stopped there and are busy improving it further, a lot of software developers tend to spend too much time on making new features and not enough time fixing/optimising the existing one, but I think after the backlash from FF2's memory usage, Mozilla has rethought their priorities and I'm glad to say they're doing things right.
What? How is this in any way remotely similar to Quicktime? Quicktime is a video format and Microsoft has enough of those, this beast is entirely different.
Actually it doesn't do this at all. Time to at least give Microsoft some credit here, it does a pretty decent job of figuring out the 3D layout of everything and allows you to move around as much as you like.
It's obviously not EXACTLY right (Although I'd bet that with more pictures, it's more accurate) but it's close enough that you could make a pretty good "virtual tour" of just about anywhere with nothing more than a bog-standard digital camera.
It's definitely impressive.
Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkk monkey speed!
Efficiency is just one of the goals of the language, but general use is another. That's why you can do absolutely ANYTHING with C++. Give me a task another language can do that C++ can't.
That's what I mean by being "general".
Can somebody please explain to me what the hell a "mainframe" is/was for and why it might be dead?
According to Wikipedia, Mainframes are a bit like supercomputers but better suited to tasks where there's a LOT of input/output data, but not a lot of calculation involved. Payrolls and such.
As far as I'm aware, those tasks still exist today, probably moreso than in the 1970's and 1980's, so why would the Mainframe be dying out? Have regular desktop/server processors advanced faster than demand for this data calculation and thus are now simply adequate or is this article just a bit of FUD to make 'ol timmy look like he's doing his job?
FYI: I'm most certainly under 40. In fact, I'm barely more than half that age, so excuse my ignorance on the subject; the only times I've really heard the term "mainframe" used is in Films, Games and cheap 80's TV shows. And slashdot.
Well that's just it, C++ is designed to be as general a language as you can manage (which is why so many people don't "get" it or complain that it's complicated because not much is done for you in comparison to other languages) which is why other languages may be better suited to certain tasks.
The example you gave for C# is a pretty good one, but it still highlights that there are areas where C++ isn't well suited to certain tasks and until it is, it's fair to say there's room for improvement.
Thus I welcome any improvements to the language, especially as Bjarne certainly seems to know what he's doing.
If it was as good as it stands, then newer languages such as C# wouldn't take off.
Don't get me wrong, I love C++ and it's my primary programming language, but to say it's perfect as it is, is just silly.
That's strange, I've had no trouble running any of the sites I usually go on to with FF3 (including Facebook). Are you sure FF3 is the problem and not some wayward extension or old cache data?
Try opening Firefox in it's own "safe mode" to see if you're still having the same problem.
Then again, it could just be that the facebook problem is subtle enough that I didn't notice it, I wouldn't say I'm big on the site or anything.