MenTaLguY - Slashdot User

Submission + - Firefox Memory Hogging Is Due to Fragmentation (pavlov.net)

Submitted by A beautiful mind on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @10:19AM

A beautiful mind writes: It has been long claimed by users that Firefox leaks memory, and on the other hand the developers claimed the number of leaks are minimal. It turns out both groups were right. Stuart Parmenter, one of the authors of the RAMBack extension started investigating and found out that the issue is memory fragmentation. He discovered that while loading about:blank uses 12,589,696 bytes of memory in the test he performed (image), after exercising Firefox with different websites and then clearing the caches with the help of the RAMBack extension the picture is wholly different: "Our heap is now 29,999,872 bytes! 16,118,072 of that is used (up 4,634,208 bytes from before... which caches am I forgetting to clear?). The rest, a whopping 13,881,800 bytes, is in free blocks!"

Submission + - U.S. court denies Webcasters' stay petition (kpfa.org)

Submitted by

Michael Manoochehri

on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:38PM

Michael Manoochehri writes: "Reuters reports that a "federal appeals court has denied a petition by U.S. Internet radio stations seeking to delay a royalty rate hike due July 15 they say could kill the fledgling industry." This royalty rate hike, put forth by the US Copyright Royalty Board, will increase royalty rates for webcast music tremendously, in some cases to more per year than many webcasters bring in from revenue. Save Net Radio, a coalition of webcasters, is telling listeners that "We are appealing to the millions of Internet radio listeners out there, the webcasters they support and the artists and labels we treasure to rise up and make your voices heard again before this vibrant medium is silenced.""

Submission + - DARPA Is Growing Remote Controlled Spy Moths (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

robotsrule

on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @05:04PM

robotsrule writes: "In a page taken right out of the science fiction books DARPA, which stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is working on growing moths that have computer chips implanted in them at the Pupa stage. As the article from the Technology section of Times Online says, this is the most futuristic project to date undertaken by the research and development arm of the US Department of Defense. The goal is to grow moths that can fly unnoticed into the camps of enemy insurgents and spy on them in order to obtain useful military intelligence. Rodney Brooks, who is the head of iRobot, a company that has major contracts with the military for bomb disposal and other types of robots, is involved with the research and confirms the viability and reality of the project. These winged Microelectromechanical Machines, or MEMS, can be developed relatively cheaply compared to expensive military technologies like nuclear weapons and smart missiles. Although they have not been put into service by the military yet, their appearance on the battlefield is almost assured at some point in the near future. IRobot is also the company that produces the popular Roomba vacuum cleaner robot."

Submission + - Apache battling Sun over Java License

Submitted by

nuages

on Tuesday April 10, 2007 @12:06PM

nuages writes: "InfoWorld is reporting that the Apache Software Foundation is going public with a dispute it is having with Sun Microsystems over that company's Microsoft-like behavior regarding a license for the Java technology compatibility kit needed for the Apache Harmony project, an open source implementation of Java Platform. (http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/10/HNsunap ache_1.html). In an open letter of protest to Sun, posted Tuesday, Apache says that the JCK [Java Compatibility Kit] license Sun is offering "imposes IP rights restrictions" that are unacceptable to Apache and that violate the terms of the Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA), to which Sun is bound. Sun's JCK license protects portions of Sun's commercial Java business at the expense of Apache's open software, Apache contends."

Submission + - Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:19PM

An anonymous reader writes: Read/WriteWeb reports that Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla, a kiwi who drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke at the recent New Zealand Foo Camp event about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This means you'll be able to use your web apps — like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc — in the browser even when offline. Not only does this move suit Google, but it makes Firefox attractive as the browser platform of choice for SaaS providers like salesforce.com. All of which will hit Microsoft where it hurts. Robert O'Callahan turns up in the comments to the article to say that "Yes, Web apps need to be reengineered for this, and no, no-one (including Google) has announced they will do so — although we hope they will!".

Submission + - New Hiking Maps of Mars

Submitted by

sighted

on Monday February 12, 2007 @03:38PM

sighted writes: "The European Space Agency has released new topographic 'hiking maps' of Martian canyons. The maps provide detailed height contours and names of complex geological features in the Iani Chaos region, which in the past was the site of ice melted by volcanic heat. These days, if you want to hike the labyrinth of canyons and cliffs in Iani, you'll have to bring your own water."

Submission + - The QEMU Accelerator is Open Source

Submitted by hint on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:17PM

hint writes: Fabrice Bellard finally released the QEMU Accelerator (aka KQEMU) kernel module under the GNU General Public License. KQEMU allows the QEMU system emulator to run unmodified Operating Systems at near native speeds. Compared to other Open Source virtualization solutions such as Xen, KVM or VirtualBox which all rely on the QEMU code, KQEMU has the advantage of running unmodified 32 bit and 64 bit Operating Systems, of not requiring newer CPUs supporting hardware virtualization, of being ported to Linux, Windows, Solaris and FreeBSD and of being natively supported by QEMU.

Submission + - New Inkscape 0.45 brings photorealistic effects

Submitted by

Bryce

on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:01PM

Bryce writes: "Inkscape's first major new release since last June is up. Inkscape is an open source vector drawing tool for Linux, OSX, etc. The major new feature is Gaussian Blur, sponsored by Google's Summer of Code program. With this, you can do a lot of photorealistic effects, drop shadows, glows, etc. Check out the Release Notes to see what else is changed, download it."

Submission + - Scientists Cure Cancer - No One Notices

Submitted by

Messianni

on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:24PM

Messianni writes: "A report at New Scientist has an article claiming that scientists have found a cheap, already tested drugs that kills most cancers. From the article:
"It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar. Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis's experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died."
So where is this in the rest of the media? Are the drug companies that powerful?"

Submission + - Inkscape 0.45 - Pretty blurry release

Submitted by

Bryce

on Monday February 05, 2007 @05:31PM

Bryce writes: "Our first major new release of Inkscape since last June is up. Inkscape is a vector drawing tool along the lines of Illustrator, CorelDraw, etc. but open source and available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. The major new feature is Gaussian Blur, sponsored by Google's Summer of Code program. With this, you can do a lot of photorealistic effects, drop shadows, glows, etc. Check out the Release Notes to see what else is changed, download it, and join the mailing lists."

Submission + - Allofmp3 responds

Submitted by

7macaw

on Friday December 01, 2006 @06:38PM

7macaw writes: "Allofmp3 has issued a statement regarding the WTO negotiations. "...we believe that the site cannot be forced to cease its activities due to Russia's entry to WTO unless Russian legislation undergoes significant changes." They also have a detailed review of not just Russian, but also American applicable laws."

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