Apparently the mere acknowledgment that Atheists exist is too offensive for some people. There will always be dissenters though, that doesn’t surprised me. What did surprise me were the comments made by Governor Chet Culver:

“I was disturbed personally…by the advertisement, I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent.”

Here we have the chief executive in the state of Iowa stating that simply pointing out Atheists exist is personally disturbing. I am used to politicians pandering, but it appears Chet is taking this to the point of promoting and identifying with the complete intolerance of Atheism. We cannot stand by and allow our public servants to spew forth bigotry which labels the views of a growing minority as “disturbing.” This kind of statement is not far from hate speech and will embolden those who do hate Atheists.

Friendly Atheist has made a call to Christians to support the advertisement, and many have responded. It is clear this is not a battle between religious views but instead a battle for tolerance, religious or otherwise. Many Iowa Christians understand this, but clearly their governor does not.

I encourage all reasonable citizens of Iowa and elsewhere to write to both DART and, more importantly, Governor Chet Culver. We need to make it clear to DART that these ads are not offensive. We need to make it clear to Governor Chet Culver that acknowledging the existence of people with certain religious views (or lack thereof) is not disturbing and statements from public officials suggesting otherwise will not be tolerated.

DART can be emailed at dart@ridedart.com or called at 515-283-8111. Governor Chet Culver can be reach through a contact form or by phone at 515-281-5211. I encourage you to speak your mind, but please do so in a polite, rational, respectful, and non-threatening way.

Today DART announced they have received more calls in support of the ad than against it and are now asking the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers (IAF) to submit a new ad for consideration. They still seem to be suggesting the original ad was offensive, but want to work with the IAF. I have no idea how the IAF could craft an ad which reaches out to Atheists and is less offensive than the current ad, but maybe I am missing something. I still feel DART could use some convincing that the original ad was fine and that their requirement for a new one is unfounded.

Update: DART did the right thing and chose to allow the ad. The original one with no modifications. Support for the ad was overwhelming and our freedom of speech helped us protect our freedom of expression. We may have a long road ahead of us, but I stand today proud of my country and the ability our citizens have to challenge authority when that authority infringes one of our basic rights. This doesn’t absolve the governor of his responsibility for making such short-sighted public statements which dismiss the views Atheists, but this does show that DART is a reasonable organization who know now, more than ever, how important our liberties are. Thank you DART.

For over a month all was well and Palm Pre owners who used iTunes could sync their music with the Palm Pre seamlessly. Then, on July 15th, 2009, Apple did what many had feared. Version 8.2.1 of iTunes included an update that appeared to specifically block the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes. Although many people were outraged and saddened by this, the response I saw was surprisingly small. It appears as though most Palm Pre owners who weren’t already using iTunes used other media managers to sync with their Pre. I myself use Winamp, RhythmBox, and manual syncing.

Today Palm released version 1.1.0 of their WebOS software to Palm Pre owners. Along with many new features this update included a return volley in the battle over iTunes compatibility by restoring the Palm Pre’s ability to sync with Apple’s iTunes. To accomplish this it appears Palm took more steps to disguise the Palm Pre as an iPod. This time not only does the device identify itself as an iPod, it also identifies itself as being manufactured by Apple.

A shallow examination of the methods used by Apple to block the Palm Pre from syncing and the methods used by Palm to re-enable it seem to indicate there are still a few more ways Apple could easily block the Palm Pre. However, it also appears that Palm’s ability to disguise the Pre as an iPod is virtually limitless. If Apple chooses to fight this battle further they may find themselves stuck with the decision of forcing firmware updates on iPod users in order to prevent the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes, a move that will surely upset many long-term iPod users who have never even heard of the Pre. Even in that scenario it’s possible Palm could yet again re-enable iTunes syncing, meaning Apple could alienate its own faithful customers and still fail to block the Pre from iTunes.

This fight by Apple is not surprising when put in the perspective of Apple’s history with third party hardware and software. Apple has actively fought its own customers on the ability to use third party media managers for iPods/iPhones by constantly breaking compatibility through firmware updates and even threatening those who share information on how to load/unload media from their devices. In the past Apple may have had a valid argument for preventing third party media managers from managing content on iPods due to the DRM present on many tracks purchased through iTunes. Apple no longer sells music with DRM and has not done so for a while, so the argument that they must fight third party software to prevent piracy is outlandish. This stance of Apple makes it extremely difficult for legitimate iPod and iPhone users from using anything else but iTunes to load content onto their devices. For some using iTunes isn’t even an option as iTunes is not available (and does not have any plans to be made available) on Linux, meaning those of us who use Linux cannot use an iPod or iPhone at all.

Palm Pre’s Media Sync capability is different story though. In this case Apple isn’t forcing their hardware users to use their software, they are forcing software users to use their hardware. At first this seemed to me to be slightly less anti-consumer than the previous scenario until I thought about who actually uses iTunes to sync with their Palm Pre. Most people who use iTunes own an iPod or iPhone. iTunes is a decent media player but there is very little incentive for those who don’t own an iPod to use it. Both iPod owners and non-owners are encouraged by Apple to use iTunes for all their music needs and it is the only way to purchase music from Apple’s music store. Many users have invested large sums of money to build a collection of music through the iTunes Music Store, and those users believe they “own” that music. Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you have purcahse ~$500 worth of DRM-free music over the past couple years and you have stored that music on your trusty iPod. Now, imagine you are shopping for a new phone and for whatever reason you decide to purchase a Palm Pre (maybe AT&T isn’t an option, or maybe Sprint is your current carrier, or maybe even though you are an iPod user you just don’t like or want the iPhone). In the process of purchasing your Pre you discover it actually makes a great media player that allows you to lower the number of devices in your pocket. Sure, you still use your iPod for certain things like jogging, but on a daily basis you don’t want both devices in your pocket so you want to use the Pre for music as well. Now, how do you go about getting your music onto your device? Well, without an iTunes syncing capability there are ways to get your MP3s out of iTunes and onto your device, but doing this manually or migrating to another media manager may be difficult and cumbersome. Plus, you still have to use iTunes for your iPod. Wouldn’t it be great if the Pre “just worked” with iTunes? Yeah, Palm thought so too so they made it happen. Apple’s response to this is to punish their own customers by putting up road blocks to this kind of interoperability.

Apple can try to spin this however it wants, but its hard to deny that they are punishing their own customers. If they continue this fight it may also be tough for organizations like the Department of Justice to ignore these actions in the context of the current digital music market, where roughly 70% of all music sold online occurs through iTunes. Even in the greater music market Apple is now the number one seller of music in the USA. Apple’s position in the market gives them a lot of power, and they appear to be using that power to dictate significantly the terms with which customers shall have access to content. This matches accepted definitions of “monopoly” almost verbatim. Apple can avoid that label by not strong-arming their customers, but if this battle continues that is exactly what they will be doing.

In conclusion, I strongly disagree with critics who claim Palm is wrong for trying to be interoperable with iTunes. The Palm Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes is just one of the many ways Palm allows users to load media onto the Pre. Palm is not attempting to “rely” on iTunes or any single sync method, and is instead taking the approach of giving users as many options as possible. I think this is the right approach and in most cases this allows users, who have already amassed huge media collections, to sync that media with the Pre using their current setup, whatever that may be. I believe Apple is wrong here for trying to punish their own customers who have added a non-Apple device to their collection of devices. Apple’s actions are anti-competitive and, possibly more importantly, anti-customer. They aren’t hurting Palm much by playing cat and mouse, they are hurting their own paying customers.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, let me fill you in. In August 2008 Nigel Haskett, then a 21-year-old McDonald’s employee in Little Rock, Arkansas, witnessed Perry Kennon beating a woman in the McDonald’s where he is employed. Video shows Haskett acted quickly by forcing the assailant outside of the restaurant and then blocking the door. His actions immediately ended the beating Perry Kennon was giving to the woman in the restaurant. Afterwards, Kennon went to his car, grabbed a gun, and proceeded to shoot Nigel Haskett multiple times. Nigel then stumbled into the restaurant and eventually collapsed. Nigel survived the incident and, after three surgeries, appears to be doing well. However, he is now saddled with approximately $300,000 in medical bills and his claim for Worker’s Comp has been denied by McDonald’s and their insurer.

I am not alone in my outrage at McDonald’s for denying this claim. What is disheartening, however, is the fact that as of this writing McDonald’s is continuing to deny the claim, and several bloggers and commenters around the web seem to be siding with McDonald’s on this issue. McDonald’s insurer states “we have denied this claim in its entirety as it is our opinion that Mr. Haskett’s injuries did not arise out of or within the course and scope of his employment”. The reasoning behind this stance is that apparently, during a 30 minute orientation, Mr. Haskett and other employees were informed that during a robbery or anything like a robbery they should not get involved and should simply call 911.

Whether or not Nigel was strictly following company policy doesn’t really determine the validity of the compensation claim, unless the violation was grossly negligent and contributed directly to the injury. In this case Nigel’s action of intervening may have violated company policy (this is debatable however, as the situation was not a robbery and was arguably nothing like a robbery), but those actions may not have contributed to the actual injury. When Nigel encountered Perry Kennon beating a McDonald’s customer Perry was not armed. He was, however, actively assaulting a customer. Calling the police is the right thing to do, but the police are not magical and would not have arrived in time to end the beating being delivered to the female customer. It is entirely possible another employee was already contacting the police. Nigel’s actions immediately saved the customer from continued assault. What happened afterwards should really be viewed as a separate instance altogether. It is entirely possible that Perry Kennon may have gone to his car for the gun anyways to shoot the female customer or simply because a McDonald’s employee asked him to leave. Kennon is clearly an unstable individual who is obviously prone to shoot people over small altercations. The reasoning that Nigel Haskett’s actions potentially put additional people in danger are no more compelling than the argument that Perry Kennon may have intended to shoot the female he was assaulting, there by putting everyone in the store in eminent danger of being shot. By removing Perry Kennon from the store Nigel Haskett may have foiled further actions by Perry Kennon that could have resulted in more people than just Nigel Haskett being shot and may have resulted in the death of a McDonald’s patron. I realize this is a tenuous argument, but I make the argument for the purposes of showing just how equally speculative, tenuous, and ridiculous the claims are that Nigel Haskett’s actions somehow put more people at risk. Had Perry Kennon been armed from the start then it would not have been smart for Nigel to intervene. However, Perry Kennon was not armed. In this case, even if it is determine Nigel violated company policy, and it is determined he was aware of this policy (he currently denies being informed of this policy) it may not matter. When Nigel intervened he saw an unarmed person assaulting a customer. He did not try to fight with the perpetrator or resolve the dispute… he quickly and simply removed Perry from the restaurant and blocked his return. There was nothing negligent about these actions. The fact that Perry Kennon was unstable and had a gun hidden in this car is something Nigel could only know in hindsight. And, with a person as unstable as Perry Kennon there is no reason to believe he wouldn’t have shot Nigel or another employee over something else, like soggy french fries.

By every measure and definition I have seen (unless you ask Dwight Schrute) Nigel Haskett is a hero. He acted quickly and lawfully to aid a fellow human being who was clearly in deress. I only hope I have the courage to do the same if I am ever in a similar situation. McDonald’s owes this man far more than the $300,000.00 in medical expenses he is asking for. They owe him an apology and a debt of gratitude.

I am disappointed this story has not received the national exposure it deserves. If you are reading this, please blog about it and forward this to as many people as possible. I am thoroughly disappointed that it may require public outcry for McDonald’s to do the right thing, but it appears we are at that point and I will do whatever I can to see that Nigel is given the recognition and compensation he deserves. If anyone has any more information on this story that I may have missed, please share it with me. There is currently a fund set up to help Nigel Haskett through Twin City Bank. Donation instructions are right on their front page under “featured products” in the bottom right.

First I noticed that the US increased its dominance at the top of the list. The nine fastest super computing sites are all in the United States. You must go all the way to the tenth fastest to find a computing site outside of the United States. In the previous list (June 2008) the US still dominated, but Germany, France, and India all had computing sites in the top ten. With just six of ten fastest computing sites located in the US only six months ago, the nine out of ten score this time around is a significant improvement. The TOP500 list has been published twice a year since 1993 and looking through all the previous lists this is the most dominant the US has ever been in the top ten, and possibly overall.

The second interesting thing I noticed was that the tenth place site is located in China. This is only China’s second time being listed in the top ten (the last time was in June 2004), and they have yet to reach any higher on the list than tenth place.

However, what really caught my eye was the choice of operating systems in the top ten systems. All nine of the systems located in the US are using some flavor of Linux as their operating system. Linux is built by a community of volunteer programmers around the world and is often considered antithetical to commercial software. By association, some people believe Linux and the Open Source software movement are in direct opposition to capitalism. I found it both ironic and gratifying to see that the most commercial and capitalistic nation on earth is dominating the rankings of the world’s fastest computing sites using a product assumed to be at odds with both commercialism and capitalism. In an even more ironic twist of fate, The People’s Repulbic of China, whose communist leaders often insist on home grown solutions for many industries, are using a foreign commercial software stack to run their fastest computing site: Microsoft Windows HPC 2008.

Beyond being interesting, does this list offer any real economic, scientific, or political insight? Probably not. However, if it did, it appears the list would be saying that the United States is not loosing its relevance as the center of the information technology revolution as quickly as many have suggested. It might also be telling us that the United States is embracing “socialist”, “grassroots”, or “community” tools (when it comes to software) to a greater degree than many realize, and that China may be embracing capitalism and commercialism more quickly than we are often led to believe.

Sarah Palin’s recent visit to Omaha has many saying that the McCain campaign is scared of loosing the single electoral vote of Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district. One of the people indicating this was Gentry Collins, McCain’s Regional Campaign Manager. Obama is also aware of how close the race has gotten in this district. He recently moved 15 additional staff here and opened a second campaign office in Omaha.

Recent electoral college projections show that Obama and McCain could end up in a tie, with each candidate receiving 269 electoral votes, both shy of the 270 votes needed to win. If we can energize Obama supporters in Omaha and cause our single electoral vote to be pledged to Obama our tiny congressional district could very well determine the outcome of this election.

I hear time and time again from discouraged potential voters in the Omaha area who think that even if they do vote for Obama it won’t matter because Nebraska is so overwhelmingly Republican. Now you know that is not true. Voters living in Douglas County and most residents of Sarpy County will find they have a very loud voice on election day… a voice so loud it could dictate the future of our country for the next four years, and possibly beyond.

Please vote. It’s possible your vote matters more this year than it has in your entire life.

First, I would like to present you with the mental image, as reported by the New York Times, of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson bending down on one knee and begging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not withdraw her party’s support of the bailout plan.

Pelosi responds to Paulson by saying “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Paulson replies, “I know. I know.

How did it come to this? Around 1pm EST yesterday we heard from members of both parties indicating that an agreement has been reached on the basic framework of the bailout package. They informed us that they would still meet at the White House that evening to hash out additional details on the “agreed-upon” plan.

President Bush welcomed members of both parties into the White House, including presidential candidates Barrack Obama and John McCain, who had arrived in Washington since the 1pm announcement. At the beginning of this meeting it looked like a great moment in bipartisan cooperation, and I for one expected the White House meeting to adjourn with broad consensus for a plan somewhat similar to the proposal offered by Treasury Secretary Paulson, with some additional protections and oversight.

However, briefly after the beginning of the meeting, House Minority Leader John Boehner (Republican) of Ohio unveiled a new plan to rescue the economy. This completely blind-sided both the president and the Democrats. For the first time I know of in President Bush’s administration he found himself backed broadly by Democrats, but back-stabbed by his own party. Apparently, House Republicans had been meeting in private since the afternoon adjournment at the Capitol Building. In these meetings they discussed Boehner’s new plan and decided to withdrawal support for the plan pushed by President Bush.

In Boehner’s plan congress would pass huge tax breaks and incentives for investors. This would theoretically encourage investors to pour money into financial markets, which would provide capital for banks to resume extending credit. This plan would limit government involvement and would not cost taxpayers money. Or, that is at least how the plan is presented. There are two serious flaws with this idea: 1) This plan is deceitful in that it is presented as a plan that costs the American taxpayers nothing. However, by allowing investors to avoid paying taxes tax revenues will be significantly less then they would have been without the plan and could potentially cost tax payers even more money in lost tax revenue. 2) This plan offers no guarantee of success and no mechanism for recouping these lost tax revenues. The Treasury’s plan at least allows the Treasury to buy assets with the expectation of recouping some money dolled out by taxpayers.

Luckily, this historic situation of a president supported by the opposing party results in the president being supported by the majority party. As talks continue today Democrats have the bargaining power as they have both the majority and the support of the president. I am confident that the progression of negotiations will result in a plan that is similar to the original plan proposed by Paulson, with some additional protections and oversight.

I would personally like to see several features added to the original Treasury proposal. There already seems to be consensus that adding oversight to the bill is a requirement, as is adding verbiage that prevents financial executives from profiting from the bailout (the so-called “golden parachute” prevention mechanism). Members of both parties also agree that protections should be added to ensure that taxpayers recoup as much of their investment as possible. One additional provision I would like to see, and which financial companies and Republicans vehemently oppose, is a requirement that financial institutions be obligated to renegotiate mortgage terms with struggling homeowners. Preferably, this requirement would be imposed on every financial institution, regardless of their participation in the bailout plan. This provision could be managed through the courts by giving judges the ability to rewrite mortgage terms in a fair an equitable manner when they encounter home owners stuck with mortgages they can not afford and shouldn’t have received in the first place.

One thing seems clear, though: the economy is in serious trouble and everyone from Wall St. to Main St. is clamoring from some kind of response from congress. In the last 24 hours we have seen yet another bank failure, this time the largest in history as Washington Mutual, the largest savings and loan institution in the country, found its assets seized by the Fed and sold to JP Morgan for $1.9 billion. This failure was handled quickly and in such a way that Washington Mutual and its customers will be able to continue doing business as usual for the foreseeable future. However, with increasing pressure on America’s financial juggernauts these kind of deals will be harder and harder for the fed to broker. JP Morgan might be well capitalized, but after purchasing both Bear Sterns and WaMu in the past few months their ability to buy up their failing competitors is limited, and very few large and well-capitalized buyers still remain.

Cooler heads appear to be prevailing and as the day comes to an end focus is quickly shifting to tonight’s debate, which McCain confirmed today he will attend.

This seems like a good opportunity for worried Americans to sit back, relax, and watch the debate. If that’s not exciting enough for you then I suggest you do what I plan to do: get some friends together and play the Presidential Debate Drinking Game.

This is a predictable reaction to recent attacks by Pit Bulls in the city, and it’s a reaction I feel is knee-jerk. These new requirements fail to address the problem in a responsible and fair manner. In this proposed plan all Pit Bulls and Pit Bull owners will be punished, with no significant change in the treatment of the dogs and owners involved in attacks. Citizens are clamoring for some kind of response from legislators, and what our esteemed mayor and council members respond with is a finger pointed at the average Pit Bull owner. The average Pit Bull owner doesn’t own a dog that has ever attacked some one. The average Pit Bull owner restrains and trains their dog sufficiently to prevent an attack from ever occurring. However, the average Pit Bull owner will be handed the punishment for the actions of a minority of owners who do not properly restrain, train, and care for their Pit Bull.

Less short sighted solutions could include something like stiffer penalties for the owners of Pit Bulls involved in attacks.

Here is a quick overview of my thoughts on Google Chrome:

Pros

• Super fast rendering
• Super fast javascript and great inspection tools
• Super fast user interface
• Very compatible and standards compliant (thanks webkit!)
• Simple, clean, attractive, and intuitive UI
• Fantastic stability and resource management

Read on for more detailed thoughts about the Google Chrome beta browser.

Throughout this article I will mainly be comparing Google Chrome to Firefox 3.0 for a number of reasons. First, Internet Explorer is garbage and isn’t even trying to be competitive. Safari and Opera are both great browsers and worthy of a comparion, but to be honest I am not intimately familiar with either of those browsers and taking the time to familiarize myself would cause the scope of this article to balloon from a first impression to a full-on review. I have chosen Firefox 3.0 as a point of comparison both because of my familiarity with that browser (its the browser I use 98% of the time) and the fact that it is far and away the most popular open source browser at this time.

When you first start Google Chrome you are greeted with a pleasant start page wrapped in an even more pleasant interface. It has conveniently imported my bookmarks, history, settings, and other things from Firefox for me. How thoughtful.

The first thing you see when you start Google Chrome

User Interface, or a Welcome Lack There Of?

Google Chrome really hammers home Google’s minimalist approach to user interfaces. The number of pixels devoted to interface in Google Chrome is significantly less than in Firefox 3.0 (which itself is much less than Internet Explorer). Even if you hide the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox, Google Chrome still spends significantly less screen real estate on browser interface than Firefox 3.0. Chrome also shaves some additional screen real estate by ditching the status bar. Instead, Chrome uses a status “overlay” that is overlayed across the bottom of the page only when there is useful information to show you.

You will find there are no File, Edit, View, or any other standard menus anywhere to be found in this application. They aren’t hidden like they are in Internet Explorer… they simply don’t exist. All operations are performed through one of the two menus in the top right of the interface. One looks like a page icon and is used to instatiate a new tab, new window, or to perform various operations related to the current page. The other menu is shaped like a wrench, and as you can probably guess is used to perform application level operations, like accessing Chrome’s option screens or opening browser history.

At first the address bar in Google Chrome seems much like the Awesome Bar in Firefox 3.0… it performs full text searches through all of your history and bookmarks as you type. However, if you look closely you’ll notice that Chrome’s address bar also throws in suggestions provided by Google Suggest and gives you easy access to perform web searches against your default search provider (doesn’t have to be Google).

This an other features are explained right away by Google Chrome through a welcome tab that is opened when you first start the browser. These brief feature descriptions are great, and you can easily click through for more detailed information including video walkthroughs and even a comic book.

Google Chrome Welcome Page

The next new feature Google Chrome brings to the table is its “incognito” mode. You can open a new window “incognito” and any browsing done in this window will not show up in Chrome’s history, will not be cached in Chrome’s cached, and any cookies will not be stored with the rest of your cookies. This won’t help you if someone is monitoring your network, but this should definitely help keep your browsing history away from your kids or a nosey roommate. Some might even call this a “porn” mode. I am sure there are many practical uses for this feature besides looking at porn… I can’t think of any right now, but I’m sure there are reasons.

Regardless, the incognito mode works great and does so in style. I really love the visual cues used on incognito windows and the great little page that explains what incognito does (and doesn’t do) when you first open one of these windows.

An "Incognito" Window Opened for the First Time

The final feature I will discuss is what I feel is the most important and most unique feature Google Chrome offers: robust process isolation and resource management. Every single tab opened in Chrome spawns an independent operating system process, which is independent from the main Chrome process and independent from processes for each plugin being used. Every time you close a tab the corresponding process is killed and every resource it was using, including every last byte of memory, is entirely reclaimed. Even the simple act of typing a new address in a current tab will result in the process and resources for that tab being trashed, and a new process will be spawned. This is an incredibly smart way to manage browser resources and after seeing it in its simple glory it seems so obvious now. I am truly shocked this has not been done before.

The benefits of this approach may not be immediately obvious, but consider this example. You are using the Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin in one tab and it crashes. Normally this will crash the entire browser, but not with Chrome. Google Chome has isolated the resources of that tab so well that even if the “browser” crashes the result isn’t what you might think. Google Chrome isn’t just a web browser, its more of a browser manager. Each tab is isolated in such a way that it is its own browser, so if it crashes the remaining tabs will be completely unaffected and Google Chrome will keep running like nothing has happened. To make this scenario even easier to deal with Google Chrome includes its own task manager which you can use to manage each process (which can be a plugin, a window, or a tab). Should one of these processes stop behaving properly you can kill it, just like you would kill a crashed or stubborn program the task or process manager of any operating system.

Chrome's Task Manager

As you can see from the screenshot above, Chrome’s task manager also includes a link titled as “Stats for nerds”, which opens a tab that provides detailed resource usage information and even compares the resource usage to any other web browsers running on your system. This information isn’t incredibly useful, especially not to the average person… but Google is right about one thing: nerds love stats. I appreciate the nod from Google… even if the realization that I find statistics on memory usage entertaining hurts my self esteem just a little.

Performace: Subjective Looks at Speed and Memory

I haven’t set up any scientific benchmarks. I haven’t tested for memory leaks. I haven’t even done any hard number crunching over a vast number of websites. I have just used Google Chrome and occasionally checked its memory usage and compared it to Firefox 3.0. First, lets talk about speed…

Firefox 3.0 is fast. When it was released it was the fastest browser I had ever used. It has great javascript performance and quick page rendering. I am not an extension whore, so even today my install of Firefox is quite fast. However, based on my subjective testing Google Chrome is much faster… At everything. Pages render faster, javascript runs faster, the interface feels more responsive and faster (while at the same time feeling more slick and polished). This is a lightning fast browser. I expected decent speed, especially with javascript, but what I got was fabulous amounts of speed during every single moment of the user experience. Thank you Google! All of the problems and short comings I have found with Chrome are almost forgotten when I am constantly rewarded by the speed of this browser.

However, browser “performance” isn’t completely about speed. We must also take into account memory usage. You may recall that one of the primary goals of Firefox 3 was to not only speed up the browser, but to significantly reduce memory leaks and overall memory usage. The Firefox team met this challenge and created an extremely efficent browser when it comes to memory usage. Google Chrome does not win this battle, and I can’t say I’m surprised. In my tests Firefox uses roughly 15 – 25 MB less memory than Google Chrome, and that is with a couple extensions. Google puts up a good fight, and still beats the crap out of Internet Explorer in memory usage (who doesn’t?), but its not enough to beat Firefox. With the overhead incurred by Chrome’s process isolation and the fact that this is a beta, I can’t say I’m surprised. I am not sure if this fact will ever change, as Chrome is likely to adopt many more features before its out of beta. More features generally means more memory used, so unless Chrome can loose more weight then it adds to its tool belt it may never win the memory usage crown. We may come to find that additional memory usage is the price we must pay for the robustness and stability Chrome is aiming for. If that is the case then I will happily give up a few more megabytes.

Whats Missing Behind Google’s Shiny Chrome

I’ve spent the breadth of this article going over all of the things Google Chrome does. What I haven’t gone over is what it doesn’t do and why its not yet ready to replace Firefox or other browsers for many (or most) users.

Google Chrome does not do extensions. At all. It doesn’t call them something else or do them in some new way… as of right now Chrome just is not extensible. Also, plugin support is provided through the old Netscape API and the robustness of that support is currently unknown. However, many Firefox users (and especially extension developers) know that plugins are not extensions, and most Firefox users who make use of extensions are not yet going to make the switch to Google Chrome. When you come to rely on things like Greasemonkey, mouse gestures, Flashblock, you will not give them up easily. Hopefully Chrome will gain some form of extensibility soon. This is huge. If Chrome was extensible it would already be my default browser and I would be busy writing extensions for it.

Google Chrome is not skinnable or themeable. This is likely to change, but for now if you don’t like the default look and feel of Chrome you either have to get used to it or use another browser.

Google Chrome has a good number of other missing features and bugs. Here are some examples: There is no fullscreen mode. Chrome does not confirm when you attempt to close windows with multiple tabs… it just does it. Using the backspace key in certain rich text fields sometimes causes the browser to go back a page…

All of these are mostly minor issues, and aren’t exactly unexpected from a beta browser. They are still significant distractions though, from an otherwise great browser.

Conclusion

In the end, my final verdict is that Google Chrome is a fantastic browser that feels less like a beta than any other beta browser I have ever used. I’m not ready to give up Firefox yet, but Google Chrome has already far exceeded my expectations of what a Google browser would be like, and those expectations were already high. The paradigm shifts Google is attempting to bring to the browser world shows that they really understand where the web is heading and how browsers need to change to take us there. This is a great day for the browser market, and the fact that Google has released Chrome as an open source project makes the significance many times sweeter. I don’t imagine Chrome will be the only browser on the block to handle resources in such a robust way for long, but I don’t think Google ever intended it to be a concept exclusive to Chrome. Google’s example of what can and should be done to move the web forward will have an even greater impact on the web than the actual implementation they released today.

Just before heading off to bed last night I came across an interesting leak of information via LifeHacker,  Gizmodo, and Ars. However, the breadth of coverage wasn’t necessary to catch my attention. I knew this was big news the moment I read the headline… Google is releasing a browser, and its called Chrome. The beta is set to be released later today. Read on.

Update: Google Chrome beta has now been released. I’ll write up my first impressions soon.

There are many things about this announcement that surprised me.

First, I was suprised to learn that Google was working on a browser at all. They have a history of partnership with the Mozilla Foundation and it was always my assumption they were pretty happy with the direction of the Firefox project. Google does have a history of employing certain Mozilla Foundation members and former Netscape employees, including the former project lead for the Firefox project, Ben Goodger. Even though Ben and others have directly worked on crafting web browsers in the past, it was my honest belief that Google chose to employ them to work on things like browser compatibilty and optimization for Google’s web apps, browser plug-ins and extensions, Google Desktop tools (like Google Desktop Search), and web applications and tools for Google’s Android mobile phone platform. I also assumed these browser buffs would help build things like Google Gears and Google Web Toolkit. Who would have thought that Google’s real motivation for employing people with experience building desktop web browsers was to build a desktop web browser of their own? Okay, so maybe it should have been plainly obvious, but for whatever reason I just didn’t see this coming.

However, this is not where the surprises end…

If I had predicted Google was going to build a web browser and I had taken the time to pontificate about what that browser would look like, I don’t think my imaginary browser would have been any closer to what Google has built than, say, Firefox is to what Google has built.

For one, I would have assumed Google would start with the Gecko layout engine. Wrong. They chose Webkit, which was originally the engine for KHTML and later improved upon by Apple. Looking at this decision closer, I can’t say I would have settled on Gecko either. It appears that Webkit is much easier to program for. What I find comical is that Google named the browser Chrome, which is the name Mozilla uses to refer to user interface configurations for their various projects (Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Seamonkey, etc.). I am not sure if this name is a tip of Google’s hat to the Mozilla Foundation, an acknowledgement of the multiple Mozilla developers Google employs, or possibly a reference to something Google may have taken from the Firefox project: the XUL user interface language. We may find out which one, if any of these, are the reason for the name Chrome when the beta and source code are released later today

A couple assumptions I would have made about a Google browser appear to be true: the interface is simple, and they have attempted to improve javascript performance and robustness. Given the company’s much lauded approach to very simple user interfaces, and their reliance on using javascript as an application framework, I am not surprised by either of these features. Their V8 javascript rendering engine is claimed to be very fast and robust. I will have to wait for the beta to see just how true this is.

The next big difference between Google Chrome and other browsers is the way it handles resources. Every single tab or window is a seperate operating system process, with isolated memory and rendering resources. Leaked screenshots even show that the browser will include its own internal task manager, should you need to swat a tab out of existence. What is the significance of this? Well, the idea is that should some plugin or website crash your browser, it won’t crash your browser… it will only cause that website’s tab or window to close, leaving the remaining tabs/windows unaffected. This also means that when you close a tab you are killing a process, so every last byte of memory used by that tab is reclaimed, helping thwart nasty memory leaks. I feel that this is Chrome’s “killer feature”. Google wants web applications to replace desktop applications, and for that to happen a browser must be more than just a browser. It must be a platform. It must be an operating system for web applications. This means it must have the robust process isolation and resource management you expect from an operating system. This idea is so simple yet so powerful, I am shocked it has not been done [right] before. I’ll still have to wait for the beta to decide just how well Google Chrome does this.

This is a significant day for web developers, application developers, and the internet at large. I am much more excited than I thought I would be about the concept of a Google Browser. Welcome, Google Chrome!

So, what is a “network” DVR? A “network” DVR (NDVR for the remainder of this post) is a DVR setup where the actual recording takes place in the central office of the service provider, and is then streamed to the user whenever playback of the recorded program is requested. This setup has a huge number advantages over current DVRs for cable/IPTV providers, especially for their wallets. In an NDVR setup the cable company has to spend less money on each device since each “DVR” sent to a customer is really just a network client with no hard drive or other substantial amount of storage. To avoid copyright implications the system currently requires customer to select to record a show ahead of time. The (possible) advantage for customers is that the number of hours/programs recorded with an NDVR, and the number of programs recorded concurrently, would only be limited by what the cable company chose to offer, not by any constraints of the customer’s DVR hardware.

This ruling has already caused Time Warner to bring up the possibility of an NDVR deployment during their most recent conference call. This also means that Comcast could upgrade the software on their “crippled” NDVR setup to offer similar features to customers using existing and forthcoming set-top boxes.

I really like where this case is headed. Copyright cartels, like the RIAA, MPAA, and various broadcaster associations, have long taken advantage of the public’s mostly apathetic look at copyright law and have lobbied and successfully gained ridiculous increases in copyright protections, resulting in a body of copyright law which in no way embodies the intent copyrights laws were originally created. This steady march of power grabbing by these cartels has also led to the destruction of fair use, the virtual elimination of any modern works from the public domain, the proliferation of DRM, and the criminalization of reverse engineering. However, rulings like this one show that the copyright cartels are not the only ones with money who care about fair use and protecting the intent of copyright laws. Sadly, service providers such as Cablevision are fighting the good fight on this issue, but only because of the potential profits they could see if they succeed. Unfortunately, these same companies have not fought nearly as hard against providing customer data to these copyright cartels.

The product being discussed here, the NDVR, is a great idea and I do hope more companies are quick to follow suit. The deployment of these devices would also provide devices capable of streaming ALL content recorded by the cable provider (whether the customer previously asked for it to be recorded or not) should the legal landscape progress enough to allow such a service to exist in the US. This device could also spell trouble for satellite companies, who currently have no way to deliver such a service to the majority of their customers. Both DirectTV and DishNetwork are working on IP-based on-demand delivery systems, but as yet these systems are neither robust nor ubiquitous enough to offer a comparable solution.