Interesting Links for 25-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• The Mozilla phone is on its way
  (tags: mozilla firefox web mobile_phones )
• Why people draw on computer screens. With marker pens. (Because their software is rubbish.)
  (tags: software design ui )
• Isaac Asimov's fake chemistry paper
  (tags: chemistry asimov )
• If you have McAfee antivirus running then it's probably causing massive memory leaks in Firefox.
  (tags: firefox antivirus software )
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace has now grossed $1 billion
  (tags: starwars movies )

Comments

[redbird]

The "why people draw on computer screens" link seems to have crashed my computer: I got a "waiting for site" message, then everything went blank. I had to power cycle it, because it wasn't responding to anything else. (This is a PC.)

[andrewducker]

How very odd. Did it happen more than once? It just a coincidence?

[redbird]

After I hung my partner's computer once and had to reboot by power cycling, I didn't pursue the matter further, because the content of the article didn't seem interesting enough to risk hanging the machine again.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

About the mozilla phone: the article doesn't really examine the press release that it regurgitates

With Boot to Gecko, carriers would have an open operating system, based on an open browser and framework, with a truly open Marketplace. Carriers could create their own Open Web Marketplace and populate it with their own apps, and create their own rules. They could brand the OS and load it up with as much or as little bloat

Because we had the "carriers in control" model; and it was truly rubbish, and we're so much better that Apple and then google disrupted it. There is no evidence that putting them back in control rather than turning them into fat dumb pipes for smart connected apps has any benefits at all for consumers.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I don't see that as a good thing either.

But I don't see it as likely - make everything an open standard (as Mozilla do), and everyone can build on top of it. The carriers will have as little control as they currently do.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Also, carriers get to brand Android, and they make a total damn mess of it.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Oh wait, I mean manufacturers. I'm going back to the telegraph.

[andrewducker]

Both do - my phone has both HTC and Orange software on it, installed by default and unremovable.

(Hence my next phone being a Galaxy Nexus)

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Firefox is a giant memory hog for me. I thought it was my old computer's problem, being that it was, you know, an old computer, but this new machine doesn't fare any better. In fact, currently my task manager tells me that Firefox, as I'm tying right here, is using ~1,152,908K of my memory. I know I have a fair number of tabs open, but that still just doesn't seem right. The McAfee article makes me wonder what it is I've got going that's dragging me down so bad; I don't have McAfee running, or that would have been an easy solution, but if that could be it, then it could be something else.

[andrewducker]

Wow. That's _way_ too high. I have about 25 tabs open in 300MB of memory.

Are you running the latest version of Firefox(10)?

And what plugins are you running (Tools->Addons)?

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Latest, most updated version. Just updated it the other day. As for Addons, I've got:

Adblock Plus
BugMeNot
Download Manager Tweak
DownThemAll!
FireFTP
Greasemonkey
Link Alert
Missing e
NoScript
Rikaichan
Stylish
Tab Mix Plus

Missing e/Stylish postdate the problem and only have to do with Tumblr. I just put Adblock on the other day (so I can block annoying .gifs), and I haven't noticed any change. Rikaichan isn't running most of the time, nor is FireFTP or DownThemAll.

The input lag is the worst -- especially on things like lj's new comment system and Google Docs.

[andrewducker]

My first suggestion would be to disable them all, restart firefox, and see if it all suddenly works faster/in less memory.

And then try turning them back on one by one until you see what the problem one is.

But that doesn't sound like much fun.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

My FF typically uses around 2Gb ... I have about 120 tabs open at the moment, though :)

(this has actually come down a lot since about v8 - it used to get up to around 4Gb and become unresponsive (I have 8Gb in this machine, there was still plenty free))