t3rmin4t0r writes "Google has announced its Google native client, which enables x86 native code to be run securely inside a browser. With Java applets already dead and buried, this could mean the end of the new war between browsers and the various JavaScript engines (V8, Squirrelfish, Tracemonkey). The only question remains whether it can be secured (ala ActiveX) and whether the advantages carry over onto non-x86 platforms. The package is available for download from its Google code site. Hopefully, I can finally write my web apps in asm." Note: the Google code page description points out that this is not ready for production use: "We've released this project at an early, research stage to get feedback from the security and broader open-source communities." Reader eldavojohn links to a technical paper linked from that Google code page [PDF] titled "Native Client: A Sandbox for Portable, Untrusted x86 Native Code," and suggests this in-browser Quake demo, which requires the Native Code plug-in.

Cyberhwk writes "I have a system with Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) installed on it, and it has 4GB of RAM. However when I've been watching system performance, my system seems to divide the work between the physical RAM and the virtual memory, so I have 2GB of data in the virtual memory and another 2GB in the physical memory. Is there a reason why my system should even be using the virtual memory anymore? I would think the computer would run better if it based everything off of RAM instead of virtual memory. Any thoughts on this matter or could you explain why the system is acting this way?"