gille.ws

I really like Firefox as a web browser.

You can have several tabs, remove ads with useful extensions, etc…

But, if your run it for a long time (several weeks) and you have some tabs opened (around 30), it starts to “eat” a lot of memory.

Firefox (v1.5.0.6) is actually using 1 205 916KB of memory (click on the picture to enlarge it). And if you are closing some tabs, it does not help too much. You have to close the browser and start it again to clean up the memory.

I have this problem since version 1.5, I hope the Firefox team will fix this problem with version 2.0.

InfoWorld has published an interesting article: “Is Windows inherently more vulnerable to malware attacks than OS X?“

This article points out weak security points on Windows.

My favorites are:

• Windows requires that users log in with administrative privileges to install software, which causes many to use privileged accounts for day-to-day usage
• Windows requires extraordinary effort to extract the path to, and the files and TCP/UDP ports opened by, running services, and to certify that they are valid (note from me: and it is also painful when you are working on web applications and want to check what is happening!)
• Access to the massive, arcane, nearly unstructured, non-human-readable Windows Registry, which was to be obsolete by now, remains the only resource a Windows attacker needs to analyze and control a Windows system

If you have a lot of memory on your computer, you certainly wan to apply this tweak.

It will force Windows to keep in memory its core system. It will not be swapped anymore.

From the Registry Guide for Windows:

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\
Memory Management]

Value Name: DisablePagingExecutive

Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

Value Data: (0 = default, 1 = disable system paging)

You will have to restart Windows for change to take effect.

Apple has released new “I’m a PC”/’I'm a Mac” ads. They are funny, like the old ones.

The new ones are on:

• Accident, that explains the problem of power cable connection on PC
• Angel/Devil, about photo book on iPhoto and
• Trust Mac, about not spywares on Mac.

Good job Apple! Soon, we will all buy one Mac

If you have a big screen, you certainly have some trouble to find some high resolution wallpapers.

Interfacelift is the solution for you. They have wallpapers up to 2560×1600!

My screen is “only” 1920×1200 and I have found plenty of great wallpapers.

Canon will release a new DSLR camera: the Canon Rebel Xti (USA name) / EOS 400D (European name).

This camera will replace the Canon EOS 350D in the DSLR lineup.

There are a lot of improvements compared to the previous camera. The press released and other information are available on DPReview.

Of course, you have the common sensor upgrade. This new camera will have a 10 megapixels CMOS sensor (more than the EOS 30D), that is impressive for a first camera in the DSLR lineup.

The big news for this camera is the sensor cleaning system. Konica Minolta, then Sony (who bought the brand) already had such system. It is great to see Canon bringing this technology to its DSLR lineup. All the Canon DSLR should have it in the future.

I hope that other brands will follow this path. Cleaning dust on sensors is painful. I hope that Nikon will use this technology in their future DSLR.

First look on this new Rebel sounds promising. Competition is good for the DSLR market. That let me hope that the new Nikon lineup will have great new features also.

According to Internet forums rumors, Nikon should release a D3h at Photokina (Remember, it is rumors!) and a D3X (perhaps full frame) next year. Let’s wait few weeks for Photokina to check these rumors.

The New York Times (free registration) has an interesting article on how YouTube is used during US elections.

Senator George Allen, the Virginian Republican, has been caught on tape at a campaign calling someone a “macaca”.

This tape has quickly been uploaded on YouTube. Due to the popularity of this YouTube video, CNN has reused the tape.

Loic Le Meur has published a story about a French socialist candidate caught lying in public in his own blog.

Is is interesting to see Internet, and especially blogs, being a new source of information. Unfortunately the source of the information is not often checked and it could be used as a source of propaganda.

It is up to each reader to check the information and I am not sure that everybody is doing that.

Tweak Guides is publishing the ultimate tweaking guide for Windows XP.

You can download it in PDF format. This book contains 177 pages and is replying to a lot of questions people are asking around about Windows XP.

It also covers BIOS optimization, Drivers, security tools and a lot of other topics.

In this article, Cybernet is providing the top 10 cameras used on Flickr.

Here is the top 10 at the time of the article:

1. Nikon D50

2. Nikon D70

3. Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

4. Canon EOS 20D

5. Canon EOS 350D Digital

6. Nikon D70s

7. Cybershot

8. Canon Powershot S2 IS

9. Canon EOS Digital Rebel

10. Nikon D200

 I am surprised to see so many Nikon cameras there!

Microsoft has released a beta version of Windows Live Writer.

The first goal of the tool is to help people to publish articles into their blogs.

You could think that Microsoft would limit the publication of articles to their blogs. But surprisingly, they have not.

It is easy to setup your blog connection. You are providing the URL of your blog (for me, http://www.gille.ws) and the software will discover the interface to use (I am using WordPress and it has been immediately identified). Then you are providing your username and password and Voilà!

Live Writer is downloading the stylesheet of your blog and is able to display the article using this stylesheet, that is really useful to check how your article will be rendered inside your blog.

You can also include some pictures to your article. By default, the application is adding a shadow border to the picture and is not using the default stylesheet rendering. But you can easily change this setting and its default value. By default, Live Writer is also creating a thumbnail of the picture that you are including and is creating a link to a popup that is containing the original picture. It could be useful, like in this article to include a screenshot.

Windows Live Writer is able to use an FTP account to upload picture. It is also easy to setup.

A spell checker is included but it is not displaying a red line under bad spelled word, like you can have in Word. It would be a good addition to this software.

You cannot define a title for an hyperlink. It is also something that I would like to see in a future version.

In conclusion, it is a good software that has little to improve to be great. I will certainly use it from now to publish articles on my blog.