Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 13th Mar 2008 20:41 UTC, submitted by RJop
"While Firefox 2 used less memory than it's predecessor, Firefox 1.5, we intentionally restricted the number of changes to the Gecko platform (Gecko 1.8.1 was only slightly different than Gecko 1.8) on which Firefox was built. However, while the majority of people were working on Firefox 2/Gecko 1.8.1, others of us were already ripping into the platform that Firefox 3 was to be built on: Gecko 1.9. We've made more significant changes to the platform than I can count, including many to reduce our memory footprint. The result has been dramatic."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Convoluted...don't you mean clear.
No, convoluted. Long winded gobbly goop going on about non-existent optimisations as justification for code bloat; Christ, use your brain and search OS News for the number of blog articles written by Firefox developers trying to justify the unjustifiable!
Do you not remember all those points being knocked down when this article was a couple of small paragraphs at the bottom of a very long list of feature changes. You seem to miss out the massive changes in firefox unrelated to any bug fixes.
I never said there weren't changes. I said that they were never honest when it came to memory leaks. AGAIN, how does it go from 'memory being used to optimise the user experience' to facing the reality, the 2 tonne elephant in the corner of the room, that Firefox is a giant memory leak that needs fixing.
I'd like you to point to point out where the Mozilla developers are lying scum...I suspect with a project with open development and discussion it would be somewhat trivial for several choice quotes.
I never said they were lying scum. I said they were liars because for over a year we the end users were told that the 'bloat' and 'memory leaks' of Firefox 2.x weren't memory leaks but part of their 'optimisation of Firefox' and that the 'memory is used to improve the browsing experience'.
Well, here we are, months before the release of Firefox 3.0 and told, "well, they were leaks, and we've fixed them". How the hell do you go from claiming that they're optimisations to now classifying them as memory leaks.
The bottom line is that some "uneducated half-wits" claimed nothing was being done about the "memory leak"snicker;)
Nothing was being done because no one in the Firefox development team wished to admit that their product leaked memory like there was no tomorrow - and everytime they were questioned on the bloat of their software they came up with the same rubbish of, "well, its for optimising the end user experience" - yeah, sure; what next, you'll be telling me that Hillary really does care about the welfare of the average American.
Edited 2008-03-16 11:21 UTC
Member since:2006-03-12
If you cannot understand the article which is pretty clear than I suspect you have even less chance of understanding the code, which undoubtedly will have some code bloat. It does seem though that the effects of this supposed bloat have yet to be felt as its managed yet another release that's faster uses memory more efficiently, and doesn't suffer from consuming memory, hell its even heading towards better standards.
...but my favorite it the conspiracy theory. I am shocked no surprised...I have no doubt that you are on the money. In a project where the code, and those changes to the code; the bugs available for everyone to see, that these scumbags keep making stuff up...and nobody notices. Its better than wot that bloke did with the china wall.
The funny thing is the feature you describe is still available in firefox3 without the memory leaks and a slew of other new features...or maybe its a clever trick , but it does seem to be the case, or maybe they have improved the program to get into your head...perhaps you should pull out your teeth, because that's how they get you to believe they have cashed pages, and not leak memory. Its in the teeth.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2006-03-12
Regarding Firefox, I am running Firefox 3.0 nightly right now; yes, things have improved, but I simply don't trust the Firefox programmers. When they lied through their teeth claiming that there were no leaks, and all the screaming were by uneducated half-wits; and yes, they turn around and claim that there are leaks, and they're being fixed. How do I know, after 3.0 has released, that they simply won't go back to their old programme of denying memory leaks until the next dust up?
Convoluted...don't you mean clear.
Do you not remember all those points being knocked down when this article was a couple of small paragraphs at the bottom of a very long list of feature changes. You seem to miss out the massive changes in firefox unrelated to any bug fixes.
I'd like you to point to point out where the Mozilla developers are lying scum...I suspect with a project with open development and discussion it would be somewhat trivial for several choice quotes.
The bottom line is that some "uneducated half-wits" claimed nothing was being done about the "memory leak"snicker;)