techie question

So I have a techie question and there are a ton of people out there
who will know better and can clarify. Correct me PLEASE.


I keep hearing things to the effect "some web page (anybody's where
there is some programmed animated element, even just scrolling status
bars) crashed my browser". But as far as I can tell, it's the result
of sloppy memory managers combined with browsers that ask for memory
addresses that simply aren't available. THAT will crash you.


Ie. if I leave my machine on for a few days, record some audio tracks
with some midi sequence tracks, convert it all to .au, compile some
thing to play it, scan pictures with Pshop, upload the files, check
it all out with a few browser versions. After a few tries, I will
crash. Try it again after restarting and it's fine. But this
limitation has increased steadily through the years as I've been
through it now on a dozen machines. (which is yet ANOTHER reason to
prefer Macs, they are at least 3 times more efficient about this
stuff)

The way computers SEEM to work (or rather - don't) is that the memory
manager doesn't always clear all the memory addresses in RAM. It
doesn't grab the biggest available chunk of addresses but the ones on
"top". If there is still residue from a previous program in a tiny
slot but up high, it can only use the small space above it, even when
there are more than ample MB's free and only the OS running.

So freezing and crashing happen when the machine can't perform some
basic low level function (like put up an error (2) message).
Restarting then has the effect of wiping all the addresses in RAM
back to zero. But since web technologies can request processors to
do all sorts of unexpected things, happens more often on web pages
that ask processors to do some math over and over.

Is this right though?


this heap/stack thing sounds like a half-baked idea. the
manufacturers are putting these grey doohickies on the shelf when
they still haven't ironed out the kinks. Let's just stop buying them
until they can make them right. Wouldn't that be so cool? Imagine
if quality won out over hype. Imagine spending as much on a computer
as a used car but this one only breaks down about 10 times as often
instead of 100.

judson


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003