[extropy-chat] Optimal computer configurations [Was: Commentary: Does Karl Schroeder's opinion reallymatter?]

[Alfio Puglisi]

On 5/2/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> I could be wrong but I think Firefox is only single threaded in the
> communications area, not in the page format & display area.  You shouldn't
> *have* "processor-intensive tabs" -- thats an indication of "foreign" code
> being run on your machine and I would suggest people are taking very large
> risks if they allow sites to do that on a general basis (which is why I
> generally block Javascript).

With processor-intensive tabs I referred to huge pages with complex
layouts that can take several seconds to render on a slower machine
(actually, I don't think any 1ghz+ processor can be qualified as
"slow" :-)   In those case, firefox hangs for the entire rendering
task, whether you are looking at that tab or at another. This
behaviour smells of single-threading in some critical area.

Alfio