Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Let’s finish the job.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

In my day, never was longer.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

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80Comments

  1. 1.

    Grumpasaurus

    Nope. Works fine for me. Windows 7 sucks as hard as the previous versions, but I have no changes in FF usability.

  3. 3.

    Unabogie

    Nope, Firefox works fine. In fact, so far no issues at all with Windows 7 beyond the fact that I have to set permissions for some apps to write to the hard drive, which is annoying as hell.

    Have you tried disabling FF add-ons?

  5. 5.

    JenJen

    I’m not running Windows 7, but I did switch from Firefox to Chrome a while ago now and never looked back. Not only is Chrome stable, it blazes compared to any browser I’ve ever tried.

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    @JenJen:

    You just got me to (finally) give Chrome a go. I’m generally happy with Opera, but it has a few flaky interactions with some sites (mostly to do with AJAX, I think).

  9. 9.

    James Gary

    I’ve had a whole bunch of websites load extreeemely slowly the last few days, and I’m running Firefox on a Mac. So maybe it’s a cross-platform Firefox problem.

  10. 10.

    swarty

    Prattlehorn is right in a respect.

    I switched a few years ago when they Installed the Intel chips in the macs, figuring I would install Boot Camp for any Windows stuff I needed. 3 + years later I have never installed it.

    Much more stable OS. Sure, you get the annoying spinning beachball from time to time, but it sure beats the blue screen of death I was so used to.

  11. 11.

    Nazgul35

    Same here…but didn’t start until I loaded up the newest version of Firefox…and yes, it is getting really annoying.

  12. 12.

    worriedman

    Same situation – I disabeled the “Sidewiki” button that mysteriously appeared on my google toolbar in the past week or so and life returned to normal.

  14. 14.

    worriedman

    Same situation – I disabled the “Sidewiki” button that mysteriously appeared on my google toolbar in the past week or so and life returned to normal.

  15. 15.

    JenJen

    @asiangrrlMN: Because I’m busy watching this depressing Bengals-Vikings game. What am I missing in the Open Thread?

    (ETA: Oh, that’s right. Vikings fan. I’ll be right over!)

    @Steeplejack: You won’t be sorry. I hope you really dig it!

  16. 16.

    Anoniminous

    Windows 7 on a new machine (yesterday) running Firefox 3.5.5. downloaded yesterday.

    Working fine.

    Try removing Firefox and re-installing from scratch.

    I’ve noticed, on a previous installation, some old plug-ins do not work under 3.5.5. So you could disable them on your current installation and see if that fixes the problem(s). If it does, selective re-enable will determine which of them is causing the problem(s).

  17. 17.

    adolphus

    I have Firefox on two Macs and am slowly moving to Safari and trying Opera.

    I don’t know what happened but in the last year or so Firefox has gotten slow and unstable as all get out. I’d be off it entirely except for the Zotero plug-in, but have created a few tricks to work without it.

  18. 18.

    Richard R

    I have found Chrome to be fast, simple, and light on resources. If you don’t mind being a Google slave, running gmail, Google reader, and youtube in one Chrome window really makes life simpler. You get all the tab manipulation of Firefox and there is now a version of LastPass for Chrome.

    The only sites I’ve found that don’t support Chrome are from Microsoft – hard to believe!?

  19. 19.

    Daveboy

    Not a problem for me, bud. Running Firefox with Windows 7.

    One question, one suggestion:

    1) Are you running Adobe Acrobat? I have had problems with it in the past.

    2) Are you running add-ons? Try disabling them all and see if your browser performance returns to normal.

  20. 20.

    Zorro

    Try deleting the browsing history. I found this cured my “not responding” lag.
    Go to history-show all history- delete some or all.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @adolphus: Since you’re on a Mac, you could try getting a copy of Papers, and using that to substitute for Zotero. Papers runs standalone, so you can use whatever browser you want.

    -dms

  23. 23.

    mawado

    I have Win7, 64 with FF and my only trouble is flash. It will occassionaly hang the thing and I’ll eventually get a message that says ‘a script on this page….’ and gives me the option to kill the script.
    I solved it by upgrading flash plugin.

    My wife had a problem with Vista and FF when she installed norton. Norton wanted to check everything for virii VERY SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY.

    For what it’s worth, I do not care for chrome. No google toolbar w/ my bookmarks. Go figure.

  24. 24.

    Pb

    Windows 7 and Chrome here, I have to say I’ve been pretty happy with it… I did set up a RAM drive for temp files and whatnot, and had to change a few audio preferences, but all in all it has been amazing for a Windows OS…

  25. 25.

    monkeyboy

    I currently run FF on home Vista premium.

    I always keep Windows Task Manager running with the “Show Kernel Times” option (under the view tab) enabled (it graphs as red in the Performance pane).

    Some times my machine gets sluggish and when I look in the Performance pane it shows about 50% of my 2 cpus time spent in the kernel. Sometimes exiting FF cures this and sometimes I have to reboot. I have no idea of what is causing this.

    I’ve been thinking of upgrading to Win7 because it is supposed to manage multiple cpus better, but if John is having kernal consumption there I won’t.

  26. 26.

    fantabulizer

    I had no end of problems with closing Firefox then FF claiming it was still running and having to kill it via task manager until I figured out that my real issue was Firefox’s sqlite databases. After I found this Lifehacker “vacuum” solution, problem solved.

  28. 28.

    Anoniminous

    Since this is a Technical Thread …

    The SO is currently infected by the Stephenie Meyers 4.0 Hijack. I’m hoping to avoid a ROS (Reality Operating System) re-installation so if anybody knows some way of eradicating the problem – without a complete overhaul – I’d be most grateful.

    :-)

  30. 30.

    J.D. Rhoades

    I seem to be the only person for whom Chrome runs slowly. I think it may be that it doesn’t play well with Avast! AV software. Anyone else have this problem?

  31. 31.

    Svlad Jelly

    I’ve had this problem a few times after I’ve installed certain Add-Ons. Maybe try uninstalling the last one you installed and see if that helps.

  34. 34.

    maus

    Nope, sorry dude. I’ve got seven running at work, home, and on my netbook in 64-bit and x86 versions and I’m not seeing it.

  36. 36.

    PaulW

    Anyone running Windows Seven noticing a real problem with Firefox. Mine hangs all the time giving me the “not responding” stuff and I am about to say to hell with it and move to Chrome.

    You need to check these items in this order:

    1) Look for all new Firefox updates and patches.
    2) Check your plugins: Flash in particular. Update where needed.
    3) You might want to check your Internet connection. If you’ve updated an existing computer and OS (XP, fer instance) to Win7, your Network Interface Card and network settings may need updating.
    4) Sue Microsoft for not making Win7 browser-friendly. Good luck with that. >:-)

  37. 37.

    licensed to kill time

    I have Opera and Chrome but keep coming back to FF because of AdBlock and NoScript. When I use the other two everything looks so junky, cluttered up with ads and crap and takes much longer to load because of it. My old laptop can’t take the stress, so FF it is for me. Not using Win7 until I can replace this old dog, still on XP. So naturally my post is totally irrelevant to John’s question; hey, what’s new?!

  38. 38.

    Jennifer

    @Anoniminous: Unfortunately, this virus can affect the memory controllers of SOs. They can become locked up with Teenage Regression 4.5, and programs like Acne, NoLaid, or Awkward can be completely erased from memory.

    This virus will require a Reality Check, I’m afraid. And removing any of her books from your home.

    Hope this helps. Hang in there.

  39. 39.

    Beauzeaux

    Mr. Cole, you might try downloading CCleaner and running it now and then. It’ll clean out Firefox’s cache, along with other odd bits and pieces your computer no longer needs. (However don’t use it to clean your registry.) It’s one of my favorite pieces of freeware.

  40. 40.

    Jim

    I was having lots of problems with Firefox 3.5.5 and XP — Javascript wouldn’t run, Firefox wouldn’t close down properly, etc. I disabled AdBlock Plus and all the problems went away. So I’m with those who recommend disabling add-ons until you find a culprit.

  41. 41.

    brent

    Similar to what others have noted above, I am having that same problem with Firefox on my Mac, and I have for awhile (although not as much as I used to a month or two ago) so I don’t believe the culprit is Windows 7 compatibility here.

  42. 42.

    Tom Betz

    I had that problem with FF on a month-or-two-old 64-bit Windows 7 installation, so I installed the 3.6.4 beta. Now it hangs less, but I find certain sites (like davidfeldmancomedy.com) actually crash the tab it’s loaded in — but the rest of the browser stays open! Can’t say whether the hang reduction is the result of a browser fix, or it turns off certain incompatible extensions, but the crashed tab stuff is entertaining.

    And when I installed Chrome’s new beta to play with its new plug-in capability, I discovered the same sites crash it.

    Of course, I can’t use the 64-bit IE 8 on half the web, because there is no Flash available that’s compatible with it.

  43. 43.

    Demo Woman

    I switch back and forth from Chrome to firefox. I’m on XP and firefox has been having a few problems. I like the convenience but the slow downs and hangups are aggravating.

  45. 45.

    MikeJ

    The adblock on chrome is almost, but not quite there. Basically I never, ever want to see anything flashing or animated in my browser unless I specifically ask for it. For now, Firefox with adblock and noscript is the only way to keep me as sane as I am. Actually links works pretty well too, but I try to use non-command line apps every now and then. In six months chrome may be usable.

  46. 46.

    NonWonderDog

    Probably not your issue, but I had the same problem when I installed Windows 7 to a new hard drive. Eventually I started noticing the problem in everything else, though, and I started getting short lockups whenever I had hard drive I/O.

    It turns out that the two brand new 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives I’ve tested don’t like to be mounted vertically. Go figure. They’re perfect when mounted horizontally.

  47. 47.

    adolphus

    dmsilev
    I am trying Papers now. It has some quirks I am working through. I am also using Refworks through my University and Endnote and trying to figure out a work flow that fits my style.

    I’ll be ditching FF methinks. Just to wonky and it doesn’t always play well with my school’s library which is a deal breaker.

    BTW: How long has there been a Chrome for Mac? I just checked their website and downloaded a Beta. I must have missed the announcement.

  51. 51.

    Mustang Bobby

    Nope, Windows 7 and Firefox work fine here, on a brand-new Toshiba Satellite L505 that I got a month ago to replace my P.O.S. HP Pavilion (Carly’s revenge for writing all those leftie posts?). In fact, this machine runs better than just about anything I’ve had, and I go back to the days of a DEC PDP 8/S with punchtape and a teletype.

    I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit and Firefox 3.5.5 with the usual add-ons such as Ad-Blocker.

  52. 52.

    Mustang Bobby

    Nope, Windows 7 and Firefox work fine here, on a brand-new Toshiba Satellite L505 that I got a month ago to replace my P.O.S. HP Pavilion with Vista (Carly’s revenge for writing all those leftie posts?). In fact, this machine runs better than just about anything I’ve had, and I go back to the days of a DEC PDP 8/S with punchtape and a teletype.

    I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit and Firefox 3.5.5 with the usual add-ons such as Ad-Blocker.

  53. 53.

    GReynoldsCT00

    I have experienced problems on both the office PC (XP) and the home MAC when running the Firefox add-ons. Had to uninstall all of them except for AdBlock. Serious hangage.

  54. 54.

    Demo Woman

    Maybe it’s time for an open thread. Because of the Stillers loss we no longer have open football threads. I still think that after the Cincy loss and Tunch’s embarrassing photo that the team was jinxed. The only thing that can save Pittsburgh is Tunch photo shopped with an appropriate shirt on.
    By the way Falcons came close to beating the Saints. Close doesn’t count though.

  55. 55.

    Tagg

    There was some initial problems but with the latest Firefox update it’s humming along. My problem with going Chrome is that so much of my website and homepage is tied to Firefox.

  56. 56.

    bago

    The error is inside of the firefox process. If anyone wants to doubt my geek cred, I am typing this on my phone while waiting for star trek to start In the smithsonian air and space museum.

  57. 57.

    Jeffrey Boser

    I use Chrome myself, but its not my main browser. It keeps making my bookmark bar disappear every time I leave the home page, setting minimum font size is a pain, and I really need a gmail notifier addon that recognizes multiple accounts and one that does flashblock. really really need. really.

    If firefox is slowing down when you type in url’s and such, you might want to clean up your places.sqlite database. An addon called Vacuum Places Improved makes it pretty handy to do that.

  59. 59.

    anna

    Using Windows 7, 64 bit…using FF with Ad Block add-on, no problem. Try uninstalling FF, reinstalling it, or installing a diff version. I have tried Opera and Chrome, and still prefer FF

  60. 60.

    Dino

    Firefox became very unstable for me about two months ago. Then it shut down all together. Kept taking me to the add-ons page. Tried reinstalling, no good very frustrating.

    Two weeks ago, I tried Opera but it would not let me bookmark a new page. Switched over to Chrome last week and am very impressed.

    I am running Windows XP.

  63. 63.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Demo Woman:

    Agreed on the football thread, there was (and still is) some great football today.

    By the way Falcons came close to beating the Saints.

    Meh. The score may have been close, and the teams pretty closely matched in personnel. But when the Atlanta OC called that silly wildcat-reverse on 1 & 10 after kickoff, it was over. Saints’ D lives for that kind of stuff.

  65. 65.

    The Dangerman

    @MikeJ:

    Huge market in blue pills to fix that.

    OK, I, um, stand corrected.

    This reminds me of a recent thought; if the osteoporosis commercial with Sally Field (for B_oniva) was followed by a commercial for one of those blue pills, would there be confusion caused by back to back ads, one for bone loss and one for bone gain?

  67. 67.

    mattH

    Had FF repeat my bookmarks in front of the original set of bookmarks sometime this week, but the hanging I had before that was taken care of with a reinstall of FF. Running 3.5.5 and 32 bit Win 7.

  68. 68.

    MikeJ

    BTW, the sqlite vacuum note above is a good one. I’ve not used any add ons to do it. Pretty easy to c&p the command into the console.

  70. 70.

    Anachronym

    If you switch to Chrome, Adsweep is mandatory as a replacement for Adblock+. You will need to switch to the ‘dev channel’ of chrome in order to use extensions (there are instructions on that page).

    I switched a while ago due to FF being generally sluggish on all platforms. I had tried chrome several months ago but it was pretty unstable then; it is much better now.

  71. 71.

    CalD

    I’ve had no problems running Firefox on Windows 7 so far. I’m also much less impressed with Chrome than a lot of people seem to be.

    I’ve been running Chrome side-by-side with Firefox and find Chrome to be slow as paint in switching tabs and loading pages when you I have more than a couple of tabs open. I often have 8 or 10 tabs or more open in Firefox when I’m researching something and it’s very noticeably faster.

    Might have something to do with processor or graphics card optimizations, I guess. The machine that I do most of my web surfing on is getting a little long in the tooth.

  72. 72.

    Mustang Bobby

    Monkeyboy & BruceFrom Ohio: Wow! Now I know why I realized I was gay in 1968, which was when I first came in contact with the PDP 8/S at boarding school.

    Whew. All this time I thought I was born that way.

    :)

  73. 73.

    CalD

    It occurs to me that every time I’ve had issues with FireFox hanging on any OS in the year or so it usually turns out to be the fault of either the Acrobat, QuickTime or Flash plug-ins. So make sure you have the latest/greatest of those installed.

    If the whole computer isn’t connecting to the internet that wouldn’t be the fault of the web browser as a rule. If you can’t connect with IE or Chrome either then it’s probably either a network settings issue of some kind, a bad cable or the router/modem or Ethernet adapter has gone south.

    If Firefox is the only thing that won’t connect, make sure that “Work Offline” is unselected in the File menu. You might try turning it on and back off again just to make sure. If that’s OK then it’s likely getting blocked by the firewall.

  75. 75.

    Quiddity

    Re Chrome on XP: I’m not impressed. It’s slower to render pages I’ve already visited when compared to FF. I suspect it’s a difference in calls to the OS – about retrieving the page data from where-ever-it-is. With Chrome, if I go to a previously opened page/tab, the browser frame appears and even the pull-down menus are responsive to mouse clicks, but the central area is white for up to 10 seconds. Examination of the processes via Task Manager doesn’t give any clues.

    BTW, It’s an HP Pavillion (1Ghz, 500Mg) so maybe there’s an additional hardware aspect to this problem.

    Also, does anybody like the UI with Chrome? For some reason they did stuff differently than other browsers (e.g. the bookmarks/favorites folder is on the right instead of left, search & address bars now combined, no full Page Title display, no status bar, no warning on close multiple tabs, etc.)

  76. 76.

    mclaren

    Of course you couldn’t possibly do something sensible, like ditch Windows 7 and use a non-bug-ridden OS that actually works…like Windows XP.

    It’s really sad to watch someone deliberately subject himself to the living hell that it is Windows 7, then try to fix it by changing to a new browser. That’s like driving around in a broken-down Yugo and trying to fix things by installing a shiny new steering wheel.

    I run the latest Firefox. Works perfectly. Never crashes, never bogs down. Oh, and by the way I’ve currently got…let’s see…40 browser windows open on my Pentium III computer with a whopping 512 megs of RAM. And everything works perfectly when I browse the internet, not a problem in the world.

    Of course, I’m running Windows XP SP2. Not that piece-of-shit bugfest Vista Service Pack 3 (AKA Windows 7).

    Cue the hatefest from the ignorant incompetent kooks who will scream that Windows 7 is teh bestest OS ev-AR in…3…2…1…

  77. 77.

    Chuck

    @CalD:

    Chrome runs every tab in a separate process. If you’re low on memory, the thrashing can be a problem.

    @mclaren: If what you have works for you, great. Enjoy your own little hatefest rant if it makes you feel better.

  79. 79.

    Mr. Wonderful

    I used to love FF but for the past eight months or so it’s been hell on earth. I’ve upgraded, etc. (on XP). It takes forever to launch, to get to a site, to load the contents. The heck with it, I say–strong language, yes, and I meant it to sting.

    Instead, I’m using a whimsical combination of SeaMonkey (FF’s retarded little brother), Chrome, and–to my shock–Internet Explorer. I know, I know. But while I thought IE in the past was cluttered w/ crap, v. 8 is performing quite nicely.

    I emailed Rob Pegararo at WaPo and asked if he was getting a lot of complaints about FF and he said no, not particularly. But, I mean, Jeez.

  80. 80.

    JTnTX

    Factory load of Win7 64-bit on a Gateway computer. Apps lock up and cannot close them, have to power-cycle the machine to reboot. Will not come back from sleep.

    Wiped, fresh install of Win 7 64-bit, everything runs fine! No problems

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