Wow, it’s actually been over 2 months since the last time I posted here. It’s been an insanely busy summer, but with the beginning of the Fall semester things are actually starting to calm down a bit. Our daughter Lela is going to preschool for the first time which has allowed my wife and I to return to a normal schedule. It’s been a little weird to be physically at work every day, but it’s been great to get back to the continuity of a regular 9-5 schedule. Hopefully this will also allow me to give a little more attention to my blog. (among other things)
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Memory leak in Safari 3.2.x?
I recently wrote about an issue with the “Fraudulent Sites” feature in Safari 3.2 that causes excessive CPU utilization. I didn’t bother to speculate about the cause in that article. However, as I was thinking about the issue it occured to me that this was probably a memory leak introduced in the Safari 3.2.2 release. (the timeframe seems to fit the release schedule) one of the last few releases. I honestly don’t use Safari that much, certainly not for casual browsing, so I can’t say for sure. (I just don’t trust anything outside of the Firefox/NoScript combo for that.) However, the bug is definitely there in 3.2.2 and 3.2.3. (I just confirmed the bug is present in Safari 3.2.1 on Tiger as well) If you’ve got a copy of Safari 3.2.0, I’d be interested to see if the bug is there as well. It’s simple to reproduce:
- open Safari, go to the preferences menu, click the security tab and check the box next to “Fraudulent Sites”
- Visit any website and wait.
After a minute or two, your CPU utilization should jump to around 100%. At this point Safari should still be usable, but will no longer respond to the quit command requiring a force-quit. Don’t let it run too long in this state as Safari will eventually consume enough resources to lock the system down entirely.
I had stopped using Safari entirely due to this issue, but knowing there’s a workaround is good. I typically used Safari for remote management of devices where its speed and small memory footprint could be an advantage. Now that Apple is beta testing Safari 4, I don’t see this issue getting much attention. If you’re affected by it, just turn off the Fraudulent Sites security feature. However, I wouldn’t recommend using it as your primary browser in that configuration.
ZD’s Robin Harris proclaims death of BD already?
Blu-ray is dead – heckuva job, Sony! | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com
Robin, what gives? Ok, it’s been 8 months since the format war ended, but jeez did you really expect the price to match those of DVDs already? Seriously? Eight months ago, BD players were $500. Now you can get them for $270/$300 on average, cheaper if you look around. Yes, BDs cost more now, but so did DVDs when they came out. I bought my first DVD player, a Toshiba when prices hit the $250 mark. That was close to 10 years ago. (wow, has it really been that long?) DVDs weren’t exactly cheap back then either. It will take time, but the prices will eventually come down. And about it not being worth it, puh-leeze! Even if you’re not an AV snob, the picture is amazing. Something a DVD (upconverted or not) certainly isn’t. Don’t get me wrong. DVDs are still great, but they’re from a different era. 480i is still going to look dull and blurry no matter what you do to it when compared with even 720p. Robin makes some good points about the high price of production, but get real; this isn’t going to last forever. A year from now, BDs will be a lot more mainstream. DVDs are already on their way to the bargain bin and once the switch to DTV happens next year I think you’ll see a lot more people looking seriously at HD sets and media players. I just have to add one last thing, HD content streaming in the U.S. is going nowhere. As long as providers keep holding people back with their bandwidth caps and limited connectivity options, internet-based HD streaming won’t become a true alternative to disc.