I will point to two examples that readily come to mind, not that these two are the sum-total of my experience with buggy software.
1. Battlefield 2 - Pre-ordered the game and was very excited for its release. It arrived by UPS on release day and after installation the game would start up but I could actually play anything for days until EA put out a patch that fixed some GUI elements as well as communications with their servers.
2. iPhone iOS updates - early on in the original iPhone's life the patches Apple released would routinely risk bricking your phone (even on non-jailbroken phones) or removing functionality and Apple would follow-up with an emergency patch days later.
I'm sure Firefox 4 will be great, and I look forward to enjoying it. But I have adopted the mentality of waiting for the initial rush to pass and see what everyone's experience with it is before I join in.
1. Battlefield 2 - Pre-ordered the game and was very excited for its release. It arrived by UPS on release day and after installation the game would start up but I could actually play anything for days until EA put out a patch that fixed some GUI elements as well as communications with their servers.
Never played that game. Also, EA sucks. Solution is to not play that game.
2. iPhone iOS updates - early on in the original iPhone's life the patches Apple released would routinely risk bricking your phone (even on non-jailbroken phones) or removing functionality and Apple would follow-up with an emergency patch days later.
I never had original iPhone, but I had 3G and now 4. I have always done firmware updates as soon as possible. I have never had a problem in my almost 3 years of iOS use. Every update only made the phone better. Never jailbroke.
I will play with it (FF4) for web dev comparison if nothing else, but at the moment I am happy with chrome. Whatever it was that FF3 offered that required it to use such memory was simply not required for my server sync and general browsing of chrome.
Never played that game. Also, EA sucks. Solution is to not play that game.
I share the point of view now, but this experience was back in 2005 before I became wise to this better approach.
I never had original iPhone, but I had 3G and now 4. I have always done firmware updates as soon as possible. I have never had a problem in my almost 3 years of iOS use. Every update only made the phone better. Never jailbroke.
Yes, Apple has gotten much better at the iOS QA process since the early days, which is why I specifically made the point that my experience of getting burned was some time ago and at that time it is well documented that burnination was a distinct possiblity with iPhone updates.
Whatever it was that FF3 offered that required it to use such memory
I am actually completely baffled about what requires firefox to take over a gig of memory on my system.
I'll say this only once more, and then write a blog post about it. Memory is so cheap. Even netbooks have 2 or more gigs of RAM these days. The Macbook Air has 2 or 4. If you aren't swapping, then it doesn't matter how much memory you are using. If I have a browser and a game open with 50% memory free, and someone else has a browser and a game open with 75% free, there's no problem. Pick the software you like based on the software, not based on how much memory it uses.
It should only be an issue if your computer is really really sad and has almost no memory. In that case you need to actively reduce how many things you have running simultaneously. Remove those extensions you don't use. Uninstall those plugins. Get rid of that anti-virus crap.
Apple actually has the right idea hiding information like percentage of free memory from normal users. Having it so visible has a psychological impact that leads to irrational behaviors.
I have actually been using Firefox 4 a while now. Even in beta I really liked this version and moved away from chrome and I'm not going back anytime soon.
Obviously the only solution is to never ever install Firefox and automatically label it as a piece of shit software. Never look back.
Clearly that is what I'm going to do instead of just moving some of those bookmarks to IE for the time being and periodically check the site until it starts working again.
I'll say this only once more, and then write a blog post about it. Memory is so cheap. Even netbooks have 2 or more gigs of RAM these days. The Macbook Air has 2 or 4. If you aren't swapping, then it doesn't matter how much memory you are using. If I have a browser and a game open with 50% memory free, and someone else has a browser and a game open with 75% free, there's no problem. Pick the software you like based on the software, not based on how much memory it uses.
It should only be an issue if your computer is really really sad and has almost no memory. In that case you need to actively reduce how many things you have running simultaneously. Remove those extensions you don't use. Uninstall those plugins. Get rid of that anti-virus crap.
You seem to be confusing "Can do without causing problems" with "Should, just because". Unless there is an Explanation as to why it should take as much memory to run regular Firefox with Adblock plus as Crysis with most of the eye candy turned on, I'd love to hear it. I COULD drive everywhere at 10 Km/h, but that doesn't mean I should just because. I COULD weld with a welding rod, a car battery, and a set of Jumper cables, but that doesn't mean I should, when I have a perfectly good arc welder and don't have to. I COULD do what the Jackass crew or Cap'n Video does, but it doesn't mean I should.
EDIT- Also,
I'll say this only once more, and then write a blog post about it.
Is what I'm pretty sure you said the last time, but I might be confusing it with something else. It was either that, or you called it bad software design.
Obviously the only solution is to never ever install Firefox and automatically label it as a piece of shit software. Never look back.
Clearly that is what I'm going to do instead of just moving some of those bookmarks to IE for the time being and periodically check the site until it starts working again.
You're well on your way to becoming an IT expert like Rubin.
1. Battlefield 2 - Pre-ordered the game and was very excited for its release. It arrived by UPS on release day and after installation the game would start up but I could actually play anything for days until EA put out a patch that fixed some GUI elements as well as communications with their servers.
Never played that game. Also, EA sucks. Solution is to not play that game.
Thank you, Scott! Really, thank you so much. You have changed my life with your brilliant philosophy. Clearly, the answer to all my problems is to give up on them when one attempted solution fails! An assay fails in lab? Guess I'll never get conclusive data! Probable cancer patient is negative for cancer? IT'S A FUCKING MEDICAL MYSTERY, guess we'll just make those last days comfortable!
I am privileged to have you in my life to tell me that anything that does not immediately work flawlessly is shit and not work my time. You are truly a modern fucking Prometheus, Scott.
You seem to be confusing "Can do without causing problems" with "Should, just because". Unless there is an Explanation as to why it should take as much memory to run regular Firefox with Adblock plus as Crysis with most of the eye candy turned on, I'd love to hear it.
You realize that Chrome sends out an excessive bandwidth-wasting number of DNS requests? While you are reading this forum doing nothing, it is sending out the DNS queries for every link on the page that it doesn't already know. Most of that is just a waste because you are only going to click on one link. But when you do finally click on that one link, it will load more quickly because it does one less query.
You realize that if you run any modern Linux that no matter how many applications you have open, you will very likely be using 100% of your RAM at all times! That is because the kernel is constantly caching your disk activity. Watch a 1GB video in mplayer, and it will load the entire video off the disk into memory and keep it there. If you play the video again, without editing it, it will read the video from memory without hitting the disk, and it will save you a ton of loading time.
A lot of Firefox's RAM usage is due to it's pre-rendering technology. For example, if you do a Google search, Firefox renders the results of that search. It will also request and render, or partially render, the top search results whether you actually visit them or not. That way when you finally do click on a search result, the loading time will be significantly reduced because a lot of the work was done already. Of course, that means Firefox will be holding a lot of pages in RAM that you might never visit. If you have a lot of tabs open, and there are a lot of links on the pages in those tabs, that's a lot of caching of rendered pages going on.
The people who write this kind of software know what the fuck they are doing. Even the Internet Explorer guys know what they are doing. They just have different motivations and corporate mandates that force them to go in different directions. Don't just look at some numbers in your task manager and think you know something about computer science. These examples don't even scratch the surface of the kinds of algorithms and optimizations that are being used in the software on your computer, especially your browsers and operating systems. The people who write high profile software like Chrome or Firefox know more than you. Trust them like you trust a doctor. They have expert knowledge that non-experts really aren't qualified to question.
You realize that Chrome sends out an excessive bandwidth-wasting number of DNS requests? While you are reading this forum doing nothing, it is sending out the DNS queries for every link on the page that it doesn't already know. Most of that is just a waste because you are only going to click on one link. But when you do finally click on that one link, it will load more quickly because it does one less query.
Nope, because I don't bother with Chrome.
You realize that if you run any modern Linux that no matter how many applications you have open, you will very likely be using 100% of your RAM at all times! That is because the kernel is constantly caching your disk activity. Watch a 1GB video in mplayer, and it will load the entire video off the disk into memory and keep it there. If you play the video again, without editing it, it will read the video from memory without hitting the disk, and it will save you a ton of loading time.
Nope, because I don't bother pissing about with Linux, when I already have a copy of windows that does exactly what I need it to do, and was equally free. Maybe if I needed an OS to run on a Bewolf Cluster of graphing calculators and don't need good sound support, Linux, I promise you, first port of call. But till then, Windows is sufficient for my needs.
Can we move along to the point, please? I know you're used to being the smartest guy in the room, but the Patronizing preamble doesn't make you big or clever, so can we stop wasting time?
A lot of Firefox's RAM usage is due to it's pre-rendering technology. For example, if you do a Google search, Firefox renders the results of that search. It will also request and render, or partially render, the top search results whether you actually visit them or not. That way when you finally do click on a search result, the loading time will be significantly reduced because a lot of the work was done already. Of course, that means Firefox will be holding a lot of pages in RAM that you might never visit. If you have a lot of tabs open, and there are a lot of links on the pages in those tabs, that's a lot of caching of rendered pages going on.
Oh look, It's the explanation. Thank you, We were all waiting with baited breath. Very interesting, and I stand...Well, not corrected - Large Waste for minimal gain is still not good design, as best I know, but hey, computing may be different, I expect you'll correct me if I'm wrong, just please cut down the unnecessary lecture bollocks when you do, yeah? - but certainly informed.
The people who write this kind of software know what the fuck they are doing. Even the Internet Explorer guys know what they are doing. They just have different motivations and corporate mandates that force them to go in different directions. Don't just look at some numbers in your task manager and think you know something about computer science.
Oh, I wasn't aware I gave the impression that I thought I knew shit about computer science, Rubin. It's not like we don't have multiple prior examples where I manned up and said "Oh yeah, Sorry about that, you're the expert, I defer to your expertise" - or words to that effect, at least - instead of spouting something stupid like "Why don't we just snipe Gadaffi" without knowing shit about the topic, and then going to full radio silence when corrected.
Don't just look at some numbers in your task manager and think you know something about computer science.
I appreciate what you are saying. However my computer runs slower with FF than chrome. Explain to me why I should use the slower software.
"Well, you should just go buy more ram" - I'm not convinced by this argument, its a browser - and if other browsers complete the job faster, the argument that I need to upgrade my equipment to run the software that offers no appreciable performance increase on my systems seems a little forced...
However my computer runs slower with FF than chrome.
Doesn't your computer always run at however many Ghz your processor is?
Semantics... My computers "chrome calculator" returns solutions faster (my argument is 'practicality' over 'feature loading') than my computers "FF calculator".
I am going to give FF4 a fair trial, it's daft not too, but if there is no appreciable performance increase then there is no reason to warrant the switch.
Large Waste for minimal gain is still not good design, as best I know, but hey, computing may be different, I expect you'll correct me if I'm wrong,
You're wrong. RAM is only wasted when it's not in use. Fill it with caches and speed yourself up. If those caches aren't used, you lose basically nothing, and they're immediately dropped in favor of anything more important that needs the space.
Take that same line of thinking and apply it within an application. If there's RAM free, and a program can use it to make itself run faster, it can take it. If there starts to be a RAM shortage, it can give it up and run slower. If you are not swapping, meaning you are out of memory complete and you are using your slow ass hard drive as extra memory, then you should not be concerned with how much RAM is being used. Ideally you would have near 100% RAM usage at all times.
Don't look at things like RAM usage to decide what program is better than another. Look at the actual features and such, and decide which one you like best. If an application is crashing, has security holes, is measurably slower, has worse features, etc. those are all valid complaints. Using too much memory is not a valid complaint unless you can definitely prove that that one particular application has a memory leak of some sort that is causing swappage.
You're wrong. RAM is only wasted when it's not in use. Fill it with caches and speed yourself up. If those caches aren't used, you lose basically nothing, and they're immediately dropped in favor of anything more important that needs the space.
Oh, alright. Thanks for that, between that and Scott's link, you're right, I am wrong. Mech En Principles don't apply well to computers, who'da thunk it. Apparently, not me, but that's why you pair are the ones with your particular degrees, not me. And a number of years of high quality schooling, but that's beside the point.
Don't look at things like RAM usage to decide what program is better than another.
I don't. I was questioning why a program I already use did something which seemed illogical an inefficient - I was wrong in that assumption, from lack of knowledge. I'm not going to change browsers because of it, if I were, I would have already. Appreciate the change of tone, by the way - Being assholes to each other in new and creative ways every time we get the shits is honestly slowly becoming too much effort.
Comments
1. Battlefield 2 - Pre-ordered the game and was very excited for its release. It arrived by UPS on release day and after installation the game would start up but I could actually play anything for days until EA put out a patch that fixed some GUI elements as well as communications with their servers.
2. iPhone iOS updates - early on in the original iPhone's life the patches Apple released would routinely risk bricking your phone (even on non-jailbroken phones) or removing functionality and Apple would follow-up with an emergency patch days later.
I'm sure Firefox 4 will be great, and I look forward to enjoying it. But I have adopted the mentality of waiting for the initial rush to pass and see what everyone's experience with it is before I join in.
It should only be an issue if your computer is really really sad and has almost no memory. In that case you need to actively reduce how many things you have running simultaneously. Remove those extensions you don't use. Uninstall those plugins. Get rid of that anti-virus crap.
Apple actually has the right idea hiding information like percentage of free memory from normal users. Having it so visible has a psychological impact that leads to irrational behaviors.
EDIT-
Also, Is what I'm pretty sure you said the last time, but I might be confusing it with something else. It was either that, or you called it bad software design.
Thank you, Scott! Really, thank you so much. You have changed my life with your brilliant philosophy. Clearly, the answer to all my problems is to give up on them when one attempted solution fails! An assay fails in lab? Guess I'll never get conclusive data! Probable cancer patient is negative for cancer? IT'S A FUCKING MEDICAL MYSTERY, guess we'll just make those last days comfortable!
I am privileged to have you in my life to tell me that anything that does not immediately work flawlessly is shit and not work my time. You are truly a modern fucking Prometheus, Scott.
You realize that if you run any modern Linux that no matter how many applications you have open, you will very likely be using 100% of your RAM at all times! That is because the kernel is constantly caching your disk activity. Watch a 1GB video in mplayer, and it will load the entire video off the disk into memory and keep it there. If you play the video again, without editing it, it will read the video from memory without hitting the disk, and it will save you a ton of loading time.
A lot of Firefox's RAM usage is due to it's pre-rendering technology. For example, if you do a Google search, Firefox renders the results of that search. It will also request and render, or partially render, the top search results whether you actually visit them or not. That way when you finally do click on a search result, the loading time will be significantly reduced because a lot of the work was done already. Of course, that means Firefox will be holding a lot of pages in RAM that you might never visit. If you have a lot of tabs open, and there are a lot of links on the pages in those tabs, that's a lot of caching of rendered pages going on.
The people who write this kind of software know what the fuck they are doing. Even the Internet Explorer guys know what they are doing. They just have different motivations and corporate mandates that force them to go in different directions. Don't just look at some numbers in your task manager and think you know something about computer science. These examples don't even scratch the surface of the kinds of algorithms and optimizations that are being used in the software on your computer, especially your browsers and operating systems. The people who write high profile software like Chrome or Firefox know more than you. Trust them like you trust a doctor. They have expert knowledge that non-experts really aren't qualified to question.
Can we move along to the point, please? I know you're used to being the smartest guy in the room, but the Patronizing preamble doesn't make you big or clever, so can we stop wasting time? Oh look, It's the explanation. Thank you, We were all waiting with baited breath. Very interesting, and I stand...Well, not corrected - Large Waste for minimal gain is still not good design, as best I know, but hey, computing may be different, I expect you'll correct me if I'm wrong, just please cut down the unnecessary lecture bollocks when you do, yeah? - but certainly informed. Oh, I wasn't aware I gave the impression that I thought I knew shit about computer science, Rubin. It's not like we don't have multiple prior examples where I manned up and said "Oh yeah, Sorry about that, you're the expert, I defer to your expertise" - or words to that effect, at least - instead of spouting something stupid like "Why don't we just snipe Gadaffi" without knowing shit about the topic, and then going to full radio silence when corrected.
"Well, you should just go buy more ram" - I'm not convinced by this argument, its a browser - and if other browsers complete the job faster, the argument that I need to upgrade my equipment to run the software that offers no appreciable performance increase on my systems seems a little forced...
My computers "chrome calculator" returns solutions faster (my argument is 'practicality' over 'feature loading') than my computers "FF calculator".
I am going to give FF4 a fair trial, it's daft not too, but if there is no appreciable performance increase then there is no reason to warrant the switch.
http://www.linuxatemyram.com/index.html
Take that same line of thinking and apply it within an application. If there's RAM free, and a program can use it to make itself run faster, it can take it. If there starts to be a RAM shortage, it can give it up and run slower. If you are not swapping, meaning you are out of memory complete and you are using your slow ass hard drive as extra memory, then you should not be concerned with how much RAM is being used. Ideally you would have near 100% RAM usage at all times.
Don't look at things like RAM usage to decide what program is better than another. Look at the actual features and such, and decide which one you like best. If an application is crashing, has security holes, is measurably slower, has worse features, etc. those are all valid complaints. Using too much memory is not a valid complaint unless you can definitely prove that that one particular application has a memory leak of some sort that is causing swappage.