Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Taming Firefox 1.5

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Ever since I installed Firefox 1.5 (and later 1.5.0.1) I have had nothing but grief. Freezes. CPU spikes usually in the 50s — which meant it took 20 seconds for anything to happen — but sometimes much higher, verging on 100%, which meant nothing happened however long I waited. Even if I didn’t get a CPU spike, going away from the machine with Firefox open in a window, even in the background, would make it freeze up, requiring that I use the task manager to kill it.

The problem was especially bad when I loaded a particular large and complex web page that I use several times a day (no, not this blog) — not only did it load slowly, but it would bring Firefox to its knees every time. And yet it worked fine in 1.07.

My first Google search suggested it was probably a plugin issue. I duly changed from Adblock to Adblock plus. I used less aggressive Adblock settlings. I replaced my tab manager with something that had a better reputation for playing nice with others. I removed this plugin, then that one. (See below for a list of what I’m running now — an only partly restored list from what I used to use.)

Nothing worked.

I disabled the prefetch. I turned off Bfcache — the caching of recently viewed pages — losing the lightening back and forth which was one of the best reasons to upgrade.

And of course I followed the directions at InternetWeek to play with settings in about.config to reduce the cache. And I carefully followed the directions as to what settings to use in place of the defaults for the about:config setting in browser.cache.memory.capacity.

Nothing worked.

But at last I can report that I think I have found the magic bullet: Ignore the directions in the cookbook about setting browser.cache.memory.capacity to 15000 if you have up to 1 Gig of RAM, or maybe 32768 if you have a full gig. I have a full gig of RAM, and it’s not shared with my graphics card, and my problem only went away when I shrank browser.cache.memory.capacity to the absurdly small 8192.

That worked.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software | 6 Comments

More on Cheney’s Declassification Authority

Posted on February 16, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

While attention is focused on the Veep’s decapitation authority, the real issue of his declassification authority is not getting the attention it deserves. LiberalOasis has a nice analysis. I haven’t checked the original sources personally, but this seems very plausible to me.

Update: Extended discussion of this issue at Secrecy News.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 1 Comment

Quailgate

Posted on February 16, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The Washington Note posts a transcript of the Cheney interview. Others will doubtless post on the serious stuff: the sycophantically and powder-puff nature of the questions, the failure to engage the big issues of the day like torture, the odd and unconvincing explanation for the delay in going public, the failure to engage the issue of who told what to whom when, and especially the failure to ask whether Cheney ever spoke to Bush about the shooting. (Not the mention the question of whether Texas follows the year-and-a-day rule.)

Instead, I’m going to focus on a triviality: Here’s how Cheney sets the scene,

It’s in south Texas, wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it’s wild quail. It’s some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country.

Wild quail? I thought these were pen-raised birds like in the famous 2003 hunt,

In December of 2003, he went (via Humvee) to a pheasant shooting party in Pennsylvania at the Rolling Rock Club. Gamekeepers there released some 500 pen-raised pheasants from nets, and Cheney’s party, which included former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) as well as several influential Republican fundraisers, shot 417 of them. Cheney himself got at least 70. Apparently that wasn’t enough slaughter, because after lunch the group went after pen-raised mallard ducks.

So which was it, wild or domestic?

(Incidentally, a quick hunt suggests that Texas does not mechanically follow the year-and-a-day rule, but I’m not a Texas lawyer.)

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | 2 Comments

Get Your Atom or RSS Feed Here

Posted on February 16, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

RSS & Atom Syndication Quick Links

RSS: Subscribe in Rojo
Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Get Your Atom or RSS Feed Here

Elephants Want Revenge?

Posted on February 15, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The UK Telegraph summarizes a story in the New Scientist (the original seems to be behind a pay wall) as suggesting that elephants are seeking revenge for the killing of their relatives and friends,

The reputation that elephants have for never forgetting has been given a chilling new twist by experts who believe that a generation of pachiderms may taking revenge on humans for the breakdown of elephant society.

The New Scientist reports today that elephants appear to be attacking human settlements as vengeance for years of abuse by people.

But later in the story this starts to seem a bit sensationalist: the real problem may be that the killing of older, wiser elephants has created a generation of “juvenile delinquents”.


Destined for reform school?

Posted in Science/Medicine | 3 Comments

Padilla Lawyers Work the System

Posted on February 14, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Southern District of Florida Blog summarizes the latest Padilla news:

Lawyers for Jose Padilla have appealed Magistrate Judge Garber’s pre trial detention order. In their appeal, his lawyers contend that Mr. Padilla’s application may be a fraud. The Government argued at the detention hearing that Mr. Padilla completed the form in 2000. Defense lawyers also assert that the government did not present evidence that Mr. Padilla could speak Arabic and therefore understand the contents of the form, or that he ever adopted the Arabic name Abu Adallah al Mujahir. Justice Department lawyer Stephanie Pell explained at the hearing that the application was authenticated by a cooperating government witness. One of the most interesting assertions in the appeal is that there were apparently more than 50,000 phone calls in the alleged 8 year terrorism conspiracy, and Padilla participated in only seven conversations.

Even ignoring the fraud allegations, we haven’t seen much suggesting that the government has a particularly strong case, have we?

Posted in Padilla | 3 Comments