back to article Who would code a self-destruct feature into their own web browser? Oh, hello, Apple

“Put down the sacrificial dagger and step away from the goat.” Tsk, typical. I make all the effort of finding a remote hillock in Wales and an inexpensive black doe for my pagan ritual and I’m not even halfway through the banishing ceremony. It’s wet and cold and the trailing edges of my robes are muddy, and now some norm in a …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This!!!

    Literally most of this!!!

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Let me be the first to sing...

      LET It go, let it GO

      </disneyprincess>

      1. Vinyl-Junkie
        Happy

        Re: Let me be the first to sing...

        You weren't - see my post on the next page (at the moment); two hours before yours! :)

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: Let me be the first to sing...

          I bow to your claim to prior-art @Vinyl-Junkie :-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Here is some more "this" then:

      Safari also doesn't like you click buttons and links too quickly. If you do, you will be told that the webserver has unexpectedly shut down the connection which is utter tosh, and the bug shows a strict adherence to Murphy's law insofar that it pulls this one if you're just about to confirm some major config change that took ages to get right.

      Which is why I now use Firefox for that sort of work (no, sorry, not interested in Google code on my Mac).

      And don't get me started on Mail either.

      1. Sam Liddicott

        Sounds to me like an objective c++ paradigm flaw.

        It's easy to write async lambdas all over the place but it doesn't mean that your code can cope with state changes in the mean time.

        Which reminds me, I think it was MSIE 2, I clicked to print a page and focus returned back to the browser while it was printing. I immediately guessed that if I navigated to another page while it was printing, the browser would crash.

        And it did. Changing page WHILE it was printing was like replacing a paving stoe with a banana skin.

        1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          "Sounds to me like an objective c++ paradigm flaw.'

          Sounds like shit coding to me.

          "And it did. Changing page WHILE it was printing was like replacing a paving stoe with a banana skin."

          See the above.

          Why, oh why do software companies keep hiring infinite numbers of monkeys, then release the first thing that they bang out that compiles?

    3. N13L5

      Crapple, Greedle and Microshaft - get them out of your life...

      But jeez, just cut the stupid internet connection :p

      It won't be going to any sites.

      Still, your overall point is true enough, hence the title

      The goal of software companies has changed from enabling business to blocking you and wasting as much of your time as possible, if you remain unwilling to get sucked into Farmville and the like.

    4. Mark 65

      Alistair, meet convenience. Convenience is the modern day replacement for intelligence. Intelligence has been consigned to the waste bin because it just wasn't convenient.

  2. Alister

    He has now ditched Chrome and is rediscovering Firefox, a browser he has not installed, let alone launched, for years.

    Oh dear.

    Sorry Alistair, but that's not going to save the goat.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Firefox WORKSFORME, WONTFIX.

      That's what it says all over Bugzilla.

      We're not listening... la la la...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'm tracking around 50 bugs, some which I filed, and I think one was fixed in 2015.

        Realistically Google are the only ones with the resources to build a webbrowser, and the spec is only growing more sprawling every month. That scares me, because Google aren't neutral and their agenda is beginning to shine though.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The problem with Chrome

          Is you can never get away from Big Brother Google tracking everything you do.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The problem with Chrome

            Google analytics is browser agnositc.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: The problem with Chrome

              Google analytics is browser agnostic

              .. and Do Not Track agnostic - it ignores that setting from all browsers, hoping you fall for the "install this thing from us to prevent us tracking you" ploy.

            2. Stoneshop
              Devil

              Re: The problem with Chrome

              Google analytics is browser agnositc.[sic]

              My hostsfile is too.

          2. pauly

            Re: The problem with Chrome

            Is Iron the answer?

        2. Ilgaz

          WebKit is open source too and I am sure there are many bugs over there too. In fact, I bet similar stuff is going on at Chrome project.

          That is how open source works, not so perfect but at least better than Microsoft way.

        3. Doctor_Wibble
          Trollface

          Revolutionary statement!

          > their agenda is beginning to shine though.

          If it's shining then that is proof that you *can* polish a turd!

        4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "Realistically Google are the only ones with the resources to build a webbrowser"

          Realistically? Google came into being because the web already existed. It existed because there were browsers that other people had built.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Goat?

      it began as a doe, was a goat for a bit but is clearly RAM in the photo... Methinks Dabbsy needs to spend less time enjoying that green, green grass --->

      1. Gray
        Angel

        Oh, yummies

        Nanny goats are good to eat, unpissed upon by the Billy;

        Billy goats are foul and rank, behold, they drink their piss

        to woo the nanny wi' randy tongue, to mount 'er, silly Billy!

        'Tis very much akin The Trump, his randy tongue,

        his givin' us the piss!

        - - -

        Vote 2016. It don't count fer shite,

        'n it keeps the pollsters up all nite.

        1. ElectricRook

          Re: Oh, yummies

          That has the makings of a fun poem, needs some tuning.

      2. macjules

        We all know that if you mention 'ram' and 'Apple' you get 'hog'.

  3. T_o_u_f_ma_n
    Pint

    TFI Friday

    That's how I like my Dabbs... Utterly stark raving mad. Just the way I feel when a web browser refuses to handle even the simplest of webpage for unknown reasons.

    Err... Obligatory question... Have you tried Firefox ?

    Have a beer

    1. theModge

      Re: TFI Friday

      I concur re:enjoying the madness. I must however draw your attention towards the greyed out biography box at the end, which answers your question.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: TFI Friday

      I reckon the big question should be: "Euh... why did you think of Chrome first instead of Firefox?"

  4. Lee D Silver badge

    Try and see what happens when Chrome hits the Steam Community Market pages which eventually cause the "redirect loop" message to appear.

    I guarantee that no matter how many times you clear cookies or whatever, it will come back eventually.

    And there is NO way to configure how many HTTP redirects you want to allow, or turn it off, or access the page when it decides it's redirected too much. And there have been bugs open for years for exactly this problem.

    Sadly, this also infects every Chrome-based browser (Vivaldi, etc.), which is probably why the Steam in-built browser is actually WebKit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'd just like the correct language on the Steam pages. It keeps thinking I'm in some other land (no, no VPN and no idea why it will not revert back permanently).

      1. Fibbles

        Does the same for me sometimes, especially in their community forums. My Swedish is improving though.

  5. ukgnome

    Pagan ceremony is no good when tackling browser issues, what you need is dark magic.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Dark magic is zapping the PRAM, there's nothing more cargo cult than that. Thank heavens they took repairing the permissions out of disk utility.

      Post your problem in Apple's forums and the first reply you get is "Have ye repaired the permissions and zapped the PRAM? Eeeh? Have ye?"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        pee ram

        This first question comes to mind with regards to modern PC's Mac's: Do they STILL have Pee ram?

    2. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: dark magic

      I have a nagging suspicion that web browsers are spawns of dark magic. In that case, it would be folly to throw any further amounts at them, it only makes them stronger.

      Well-aimed lightning bolts have somewhat better chances. If your Mac is reduced to a smoldering ruin, then evil ghosts will have to leave. Probably.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: dark magic

        Ah... is the need to sacrifice goats why we refer to "the nanny state"?

      2. Rol

        Re: dark magic

        I have often penned letters to the BBC requesting that their dramas be more realistic, showing full frontal nudity and graphic sex scenes uncensored in their entirety, but hey ho, they just don't listen.

        However, when I write to the developers of internet browsers, asking them to accommodate, cross site-scripting, injected code, and lots of other useful tools for the wannabe merchants of malevolence, they drop everything and gleefully get on with turning, arguably the greatest invention of modern times, into the seven headed, nine i'd, beast of regressive morality.

        I can't see or hear what I'm looking for, for the cacophony of whistles and bells that are thrust at me.

        Grr, a hideous pox on all their houses.

        ...Err, is that goat and dagger still handy?

    3. Teiwaz

      Clearly you need the Necrotelecomnicon.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        dark magic

        Have you tried my EVANGELION web browser? Now being shipped to unsupecting high school students in Japan. Comes in four distinct color schemes, and we are working on a better automated one (it will one come in "white with some crimson" though).

  6. Franco

    Firefox is working for me. Has it's downsides though, I had to anoint myself with deadly nightshade and that smell gets right into the pores.

    Occasionally I wish for the good old days of using Netscape Navigator. Then I remember Netscape Communicator and the moment swiftly passes.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      the real thing

      I think I read somewhere that Apple requies both Mozilla and Google to use the same toolkit as Safari, at least on iOS. So much for innovation and competition. Just another walled garden, for what? To make a fashion statement? Self-inflicted wounds, these be?

    2. noj

      Working for me too. Each browser has its pros and cons; there's no one size fits all. I use three browsers: Tor, Firefox (with lots of privacy add ons), and Safari. Which one I use depends on what I'm doing. I consider it leveraging the strengths of each browser rather than pushing it to do something its not good at.

    3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Ah, Netscape Navigator

      Still remember that, and Mosaic (which still supported gopher)

      There were of course so few websites in the days of Mosaic that you could conceivably test your browser on all of them

      Now I tend to use Firefox under Linux and Windows, and Chrome on Android. Works for me.

  7. chivo243 Silver badge

    I was 5 or 6

    ... push my fist through plate glass and drag my wrists along its edges, - 20 some sutures later...

    I actually had this Safari problem too... I wasn't looking for any hills in Wales, but the phone number of a good therapist... Then I unchecked everything under Search in Safari Preferences.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: I was 5 or 6

      I would say I didn't have this problem with Safari because I unchecked the privacy-invading stuff which causes the problem when I originally upgraded to Yosemite, but then I realised I don't use Safari anyway.

      1. chivo243 Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: I was 5 or 6

        @Dan 55

        Excellent advice, run away... Got some tips? I am open to suggestions. Camino was my choice back in the day. Now I have many accounts to manage, and would like Chrome's nose out of my bidnus.... Don't mention FF, and I have tried Vivaldi, bookmark import helli... have I covered your suggestion?

        Got sane tips?

        Please share!

        1. Montreal Sean

          Re: I was 5 or 6

          Lynx browser for Mac? Last updated in 2014...

  8. David Roberts
    Joke

    Nice to know..

    ....that Apple have finally achieved full Windows compatability.

    [Around 95 or ME if my failing memory serves me.]

    Yes, I know, cheap and obvious but somehow irresistible all the same.

    1. djstardust

      Re: Nice to know..

      Not with iTunes. It's still shit.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nice to know..

        You'd have to sacrifice the whole population of London in order to upgrade iTunes into a simply dreadful programme. Anything less and you just make it stronger.

        1. jelabarre59

          Re: Nice to know..

          > You'd have to sacrifice the whole population of London in order to upgrade iTunes into a simply dreadful programme. Anything less and you just make it stronger.

          .

          The only reason I ever installed whyTunes (and in a MSWin VM at that, since it just refuses to work under Wine) was to use a $50 gift card I got. And you know what? Over a year later, I still have $12 credit on it (the jPop selection on whyTunes stinks).

        2. PNGuinn
          Go

          Re: Nice to know.. @ Mike Richards

          And Slough.

          Especially Slough.

          1. P. Lee

            Re: Nice to know.. @ Mike Richards

            >Especially Slough.

            Apparently we have permission to nuke Slough from orbit.

            http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition/Slough.html

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Nice to know.. @ Mike Richards

              But we can't reach our orbital gun (Prophet SIX ZERO ZERO NINE ONE) for hands-on programming until we have built Skylon.

          2. roytrubshaw
            Coat

            Re: Nice to know.. @ Mike Richards

            "Especially Slough."

            "Come friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!

            It isn't fit for humans now.

            ..."

            Slough - John Betjeman

            Was Alistair in a slough of despond?

            Leaving now...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Nice to know..

      I remember 98 had the IE cache timbomb throughout its life (was never patched) so it may well have continued into ME *spits* - didn't suffer that for long enough to look. Didn't 95 have its own (non IE) shell?.. so MS's little IE landmine wouldn't have b0rken that entire OS.

      1. Denarius
        Unhappy

        Re: Nice to know..

        If one ran that little registry script from Win95lite.com that deleted IE and Outlook express Win95 would burble along very happily for days. Good idea to keep number of running programs below 3 though. I remember Netscape just working. Easier to use compared to Firefox now. How I hate hidden or non-existent menus that require clicking on meaningless icons to make a careless semi-appearance. The freezes on newer releases are also annoying and this is Windows XP where 10 releases ago it was usable, stable and unfrozen. Cant stand Win8, even with classic shell as removing Win10 upgrade patches installed against configuration settings was getting to be like work. I despair as Win 8 even with i7 CPU and many GB of RAM, basic web browsing is no faster than Win3.1 one days with 56k modem and Winsock. Anyone remember the QNX OS and web browser on a 1.44 Meg floppy ? Small and fast could be done, once.

        But I digress. Keep at it Dabsy, I feel a feloow bitter soul developing. :-)

        1. Hideki

          Re: Nice to know..

          Remember QNX

          Got it on the front of a magazine

          Was very popular with kids at a US school (whose name I forget) as you could boot from it and browse the web while bypassing the filtering they had in place.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nice to know..

        Yes, you had to make sure that the default value (some percentage of RAM) was 64 MB or less, otherwise it couldn't manage the cache thus leading to a TITSUP.

  9. frank ly

    Variables

    "... wildly overestimate what constitutes a “knob” of butter."

    It depends what you're used to handling.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Variables

      Margarine.

  10. Chewi
    Linux

    I know how this feels

    I had a similar problem with Linux on my Vaio some 10 years ago. One day, it just randomly started freezing. Sometimes more than once a day but sometimes a whole week would go by. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It drove me crazy and at one point, I swore blind it was the graphics drivers and said some rather silly things in a Mesa bug report. Eventually I somehow got in touch with someone with the exact same model and within days, they realised it the was ACPI driver for the CPU. Sure enough, I blacklisted that and all was well. Turns out it wasn't Linux's fault though. When I later tried Vista on the same machine, it would barely even make it to the first setup screen before freezing up hard. This was exactly the same problem and I had to disable the equivalent driver there. That wasn't easy. I think I had to modify the ISO and then intercept the install to disable it again after the first reboot. If only I'd known how much Vista sucked beforehand.

    1. Real Ale is Best

      Re: I know how this feels

      When I later tried Vista on the same machine, it would barely even make it to the first setup screen before freezing up hard.

      I thought that was standard Vista behaviour!

    2. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: I know how this feels

      Once upgraded a video card in my work Linux machine and it would randomly crash. Spent hours and hours of frustrating time with video drivers of various release versions and even a new kernel. Went back to old card and setting and STILL crashed!

      Turned out the PSU was on its way out and the power cycling was the last straw. Changed that and all was fine, except for two days of my life wasted :(

  11. Sir Barry
    Pint

    Goat Kebabs

    Cheers

    1 pound boneless goat loin, cut into 1/2" cubes

    1 cup plain low fat yogurt

    2 Tbs orange juice

    1 Tbs ground coriander

    1/4 tsp ground ginger

    1/2 tsp turmeric

    1/2 tsp ground cumin

    1/2 tsp salt

    skewers

    In a medium bowl, stir together yogurt, orange juice and all seasonings. Blend well. Add the goat meat cubes to the bowl, stir to coat with the marinade, cover and refrigerate for 4 - 24 hours.

    Remove the meat from the marinade, pat lightly with paper towels to dry. Place meat evenly on the skewers. Grill over medium-hot coals, turning frequently, for about 10 minutes until nicely brown.

    1. John G Imrie
      Devil

      Re: Goat Kebabs

      Now This is why I read the register. More Satanic Cookery please.

      1. Mark 85
        Coat

        @John G Imrie -- Re: Goat Kebabs

        Satanic Cookery - schmookery.... it's all Greek to me.

        I'll get my coat and take some to Uncle Tonoose. He'll know.

    2. Warm Braw

      Re: Goat Kebabs

      Wouldn't returning the goat a pound lighter affect his chances of a refund?

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Goat Kebabs

        Sorry to be gruff, but now you're trolling.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Goat Kebabs

          He's only kiding.

      2. Michael Strorm Silver badge

        Re: Goat Kebabs

        "Wouldn't returning the goat a pound lighter affect his chances of a refund?"

        Depends whether the goat had agreed to the rather onerous non-payment penalties when it first took out that 3000 ducat loan it got into trouble with.

        Should have gone to a bank instead of a merchant of venison and goat meat.

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: Goat Kebabs

          A new browser... Firegoat.

        2. Michael Thibault
          Black Helicopters

          Re: Goat Kebabs

          @M. Strorm

          Fair warning: you will not go unpunished. I've dispatched my sharks in your direction.

    3. Zork-1
      Pint

      Re: Goat Kebabs

      No no no! That's too much work for a Friday afternoon. Just feed the goat the ingredients then roast it (alive) for 4 (rare) to 24 (burnt) hours.

      Have a few beers while you wait. And don't touch that browser!

      May be I should patent this.

  12. Fitz_

    ...*did* you disable Safari Suggestions during the service problem..? Seems to have fixed it for everyone else.

    1. TRT Silver badge
  13. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    We are not worthy

    I would just like to say that that was the most astonishingly brilliant bit of rant I've seen in a long, long while, Dabbsy, and as a result, I am applying for you to be added to the pantheon of demi-gods of Ikabai-Sital.

    Yours in awestruck worshipfulness,

    Esme (High Priestess of Ikabai-Sital)

  14. 's water music

    We all have to make sacrifices

    I have sacrificed virgins (in my dreams, anyway)

    I would have thought that this is one thing that would be in plentiful supply to the average IT worker, although I can understand dreaming of sacrificing some of my colleagues over the years...

  15. Emo

    Excellent Friday morning rant!

  16. M7S
    Coat

    Units of measurement

    Is a Dabb to a dab what a dogg* is to a dog?

    *Its Friday, verb that noun.

  17. MonkeyCee

    Ritual sacrifice

    I take computers apart and fix them, or strip them for parts. For pay, for fun. Doing this where other computers can see this causes those computers to work very reliably :D

    This also explains why errors that others get don't recur when I'm there. Sheer terror on the part of the machine in question.

    Swearing is medically proven to help you both feel better and enhance your problem solving skills.

    Google owns my soul anyway, so chrome is the devils own browser ;)

    1. Alister

      Re: Ritual sacrifice

      errors that others get don't recur when I'm there. Sheer terror on the part of the machine in question.

      I have a reputation for this. Any user that calls me to look at what his machine isn't doing / is doing wrong usually finds that my standing behind them glaring at the machine makes all the errors go away...

      Or maybe it's the 2lb Lump hammer I'm idly tapping on the palm of the other hand...

      1. MonkeyCee

        Re: Ritual sacrifice

        I too find that a lump hammer is the best way to make user errors go away.

        Very handy for refactoring a server case to fit in to a tight corner.

        1. Mark 85

          Re: Ritual sacrifice

          Also it works very well to get the attention of a recalcitrant user....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ritual sacrifice

      I often myself wondered why when I use to build and fix machines that when on site or a customer brought one back they refuse to produce the same error or any error.

      I haven't sacrifice any animals though I do ritualistically eat bacon while chanting the eternal mantra of brown sauce. Maybe this is the sauce of my mystical computer powers?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ritual sacrifice

      Threatening all manner of electronic devices works for me. It might have to do with my close familiarity with 20,000 volts or more on a regular basis. And I'm quite sure the devices have passed on the horrors regularly visited upon their beings in my laboratory. Repeatedly. With malice aforethought.

      Now why mechanical devices work for me is a mystery as I'm pretty amechanical.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ritual sacrifice

      I take computers apart and fix them, or strip them for parts. For pay, for fun. Doing this where other computers can see this causes those computers to work very reliably :D

      Some kind of Jawa scavenger type, then?

      "We have a report on some stolen droids..."

  18. Paul Woodhouse

    Anyone else think that purely for research he should use IE through WINE or something like that for a week and then report back?...

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      1. Paul Woodhouse

        Jesus Christ, I'm only trying to permanently traumatise the poor sod, no need to go that far..

      2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Someone else already has: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=25

        Apparently IE6 is garbage, but you might be able to use IE8.

  19. Martin an gof Silver badge
    Devil

    I have lit candles, drawn magic circles and reread some Dennis Wheatley

    Have you tried The Laundry Files?

    M.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seems when Webkit's got your goat…

    …time to call in the flaming fox!

  21. The Islander

    Inner Circle

    Ah Master Dabbs, I see now where that stream of consciousness came from .. Ipsissimus R Corbett.

    Well your apprenticeship has come on.

    Plus one for the boatload of fond memories.

  22. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    come on now Mr Dabbs

    you should really know better.

    any experience IT bod will have two if not three tools available "just in case".

    As for browsers on my Macbook

    Firefox LTS is what works for me. Safari is there just in case and for those sites that have 40+ tracking cookies and crap that is loaded with every page.

    No flash on the system though.

    Email, is Thunderbird with Apple Mail as a backup.

    etc

    etc

    etc

    so, Mr Dabbs what are your backup apps then? I am sure that your readership would like to know.

    1. Jonathan Richards 1
      Thumb Up

      Re: come on now Mr Dabbs

      > tools available "just in case".

      lynx. Seriously, a lifesaver sometimes [1].

      I've just used it to look at the source of crashsafari.com, which seems to be some Javascript voodoo involving Google Analytics objects. It's beyond me.

      [1] Hyperbole license 0018b9f5d

      1. Manolo
        Mushroom

        Re: come on now Mr Dabbs

        I also wouldn't recommend visiting crashsafari.com with Chrome. It crashed Chrome on Win7 at work. I'll try it on my Chromebook and Chromebook's Linux chroot next and report back.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: come on now Mr Dabbs

          My solution would be to toss the over-expensive brick out the window and buy a proper computer.

          Safest way to browse, is to make yourself a browsing VM, which is both portable and cannot take down your main OS.

          1. Someone_Somewhere

            Re: come on now Mr Dabbs

            >Safest way to browse, is to make yourself a browsing VM, which is both portable and cannot take down your main OS.

            Whonix.

            Or (WINE+) Portable Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Dragon/whatever.

            My choice; SSH into a remote machine from my Whonix workstation and connect to the Whonix gateway on the remote machine - my ISP knows who I am but not what I'm doing; the remote ISP knows what I'm doing but not who I am.

    2. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: come on now Mr Dabbs

      You use Apple Mail? What, are you insane???

  23. Vinyl-Junkie
    Coat

    Perhaps...

    ...Dabbsy should take a hint from the picture at the top of the article and just "Let it go"!

    Mine's the one with my grand-daughters' favourite DVD in the pocket (the one I have been forced to sit through more times than the adult human mind was designed to accommodate!).

    1. Jemma

      Re: Perhaps...

      A friends dad solved that problem, made her watch the entirety of The World at War, at the age of three. Permanently traumatised her but Disney never got a look in. Has anyone else found kiddies TV mildly horrifying recently? Cross-dressing Jimmy Saville cringe-alikes for the 2 year olds and foot fetishist lemurs and the Penguin Separatist Front for the older ones, not to mention the bring-out-yer-gays homopalooza that is Spongebob. cBeebies, creating psychopaths with your TV licence. Not to forget airborne flamethrowers with a side order of unstabilised projectiles and lava vomit (all in a good cause naturally) sort of America in Vietnam for 8 year olds (unsanctioned massacres that didn't happen anyway, not included). And differently able Vikings making a contribution to society..

      1. Someone_Somewhere

        Re: Has anyone else found kiddies TV mildly horrifying recently?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDHSbrPZH4A

  24. Unicornpiss
    Pint

    Horcruxes

    That is why I make 7 backups of my machine...

    Seriously, I like Firefox a lot. Except on my mobile device where it appears to have a crash anticipation feature that causes the browser to exit right when you've reached the bit of the webpage you want to read that you clicked through a dozen referrers to get to...

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

    .... or does he just stand head and shoulders above the pack because the rest of The Register has gone all PC?

    1. BoldMan

      Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

      Not so much PC as more like all "storage" and "The Conversation"

      1. Mark 85

        Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

        Not so much PC as more like all "storage" and "The Conversation"

        OTOH, Apple actually responded El Reg recently. Devil's work, I tell you....

        1. Fibbles

          Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

          If Apple is unafraid to extend the hand of friendship, the Reg clearly isn't biting hard enough.

    2. GrumpenKraut

      Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

      > ... the rest of The Register has gone all PC?

      Cannot say the Reg is PC. The ongoing experiment on how much "hyperconverged agile cloud flash devoops" needs to be inflicted on the readers to make their collective brains explode, however, worries me.

      1. brotherelf
        Coat

        Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

        Oh just because they're not labeled ¡Bong! anymore…

      2. cd / && rm -rf *
        Thumb Up

        Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

        They seem to have beaten a retreat on that, thankfully.

      3. Adam 1

        Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

        > hyperconverged agile cloud flash devoops

        I just won buzzword bingo!

    3. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

      The Register has gone all PC?

      It's a fucking PC magazine. Of course it's PC.

  26. Emmeran

    Sooo...

    When did Apple and Microsoft switch clothes?

    Upgrade to Edge and your troubles will be far behind you. Jeez I didn't realize that Apple's had so many ways to crash and burn and crash and burn and crash and burn and well you get the idea. Seriously, no sarcasm here, myself not being a macMan I've never realized how unstable that house of cards had grown. I've made my money from Micro$ofts houses of cards over the years and thus cut my teeth on BSOD's (explaining my horrific flashback when experiencing my first PSOD courtesy of VMware).

    And what is this PRat or PRam thing? Bong, Bong, Bong? Ask not for whom the bell tolls? How frickin cool is that!?!?!

    1. Sealand
      Pint

      Re: Sooo...

      "I've never realized how unstable that house of cards had grown"

      That's nothing.

      Try working in Xcode on a Mac more than one week old with iTunes running in the background. To me that's proof that the 2nd law of thermodynamics also applies to software.

      At times like that I think Douglas Adams was right - we should probably never have come down from the trees.

      Have one on me, everyone.

      1. Blue Pumpkin

        Re: Sooo...

        Errr ... All the laws of thermodynamics apply to EVERYTHING ....

        1st law : You cannot win.

        2nd law : You cannot break even

        3rd law : You cannot quit the game

        IIRC Ivar Jacobson has a small section entitled Software Entropy in one of his books ... But then again analysis and design is old hat these days ...

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Sooo...

      The PRam (silent P) is a male goat that must be sacrificed every time something goes slightly wrong on a Mac. You sacrifice it by electrocuting it, hence "zapping the PRam". After zapping the PRam you will be bestowed good fortune and may then proceed to efficaciously diagnose and remedy the problem with the software in question.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Units of Measurement

    Ahh! I see we have another unit to add to el Reg's collection.

    When me and my mates were younger, and up to our elbows in various automobiles, the minimum increment of distance or tightness was referred to as an RCH -- Royal C*nt Hair.

    At least three of the automobiles were British. One was German. The German one used the MCH - Metric...

    1. Darryl

      Re: Units of Measurement

      I was in printing too at one time, and we used the RCH for measuring trap and register adjustments, but the R stood for 'red'

  28. TRT Silver badge

    Is... err... is...

    your "goat cleansing" ritual symbolic, then, of clearing the browser's cache? Eh? The goat being representative of the contents of the cache which you, metaphorically of course, get rid of? Eh? Want to see the back of, eh? He asks knowingly. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Say no more?

  29. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    FAIL

    The thing that gets me...

    ... is that Apple's OS is supposed to be UNix-based (BSD?). So how the heck does a badly-behaved app take the whole machine down?

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: The thing that gets me...

      It didn't for me. But it did introduce lengthy pauses whilst the Safari rendering engine occupied huge amounts of system resources. Seems that the "Safari rendering engine" is used by many, many apps for ways of displaying XML-subset marked up files. Safari gets first dibs on the rendering engine's time it appears, and any hold up in Safari impacts the performance / user experience of other applications.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The thing that gets me...

      No idea; I've often had apps crash without affecting system stability. Hardware faults are more of a problem. Last year my trusty Logitech-branded trackball went on the fritz: while it usually worked, once in a while it would do something that took down the entire USB system. All the USB ports go dead, but everything else is still running, so I could SSH in and reboot, which fixed it for anywhere between a few weeks and a few minutes. Replacing the trackball finally fixed it for good.

  30. Efros

    “a gnat’s cock”

    Hmm must be related to, but a least an order of magnitude bigger than, the Scottish measurement "a gnat's baw hair" usually applied to how close the local fitba' team came to scoring last week.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: “a gnat’s cock”

      Not that useful as a unit of measurement, seeing as how Scottish gnats seem to be about the size of an albatross with the teeth of a velociraptor.

      1. Efros

        Re: “a gnat’s cock”

        and we call 'em midges, stupid name for something that bloodthirsty,

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: Midges

          Also how we used to pronounce a certain British car marque. They are about the same size, and make a similar amount of noise.

      2. BebopWeBop

        Re: “a gnat’s cock”

        Not that useful as a unit of measurement, seeing as how Scottish gnats seem to be about the size of an albatross with the teeth of a velociraptor.

        Much though I repsepct and fear the Free Scotland Airforce they are not a pinch on their equivalents in Alaska. Although at least you have a good chance of downing them with a large bore hunting rifle.

    2. Fink-Nottle

      Re: “a gnat’s cock”

      > the Scottish measurement "a gnat's baw hair" usually applied to how close the local fitba' team came to scoring last week.

      Coincidently, to have 'Goat Wan' is a cause for celebration.

  31. chris 17 Silver badge

    Like a moth to a light

    Couldn't resist taking a visit & crashsafari.com crashes my install of firefox on windows 7 too. Is this because chrome and firefox use the safari rendering engine?

    1. Jonathan Richards 1

      Re: Like a moth to a light

      El Reg won't let me post the quoted html from crashsafari.com here, but somebody has already done so at pastebin. I don't know whether the Google Analytics thing is the culprit within the javascript, or the huge loop shoving stuff into the browser history. Probably the latter.

      Edit: explanation here[github.com], including why it crashes not only Safari.

      Second Edit

      Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

      HTML5 introduced the history.pushState() and history.replaceState() methods, which allow you to add and modify history entries, respectively.

      1. -tim

        Re: Like a moth to a light

        The HTML5 history.pushState() and history.replaceState() are just pure evil waiting to abuse millions of users.

        I would love to have all browsers support a permissions text file (so sysadmins can properly maintain it) with entries like:

        history.replaceState() disable

        history.pushState() disable

      2. Down not across

        Re: Like a moth to a light

        Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

        HTML5 introduced the history.pushState() and history.replaceState() methods, which allow you to add and modify history entries, respectively.

        Quite. The history is for the client/browser to use it is sees fit. It should not be accessible or modifiable by any external source.

    2. Unicornpiss

      Re: Like a moth to a light

      Haven't tried it on Windows, but "crashsafari" with Firefox on Mint Linux causes FF to pause for about 10 seconds, then tell me a script is unresponsive, to which I click "stop script", and it gracefully recovers. Whilst doing this, the video playback in my other FF window was utterly unaffected.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: Like a moth to a light

        Haven't tried it on Windows, but "crashsafari" with Firefox on Mint Linux causes FF to pause for about 10 seconds, then tell me a script is unresponsive, to which I click "stop script", and it gracefully recovers.

        That's because the script blocks the browser while it fills your history to bursting.

        This page will hang chrome and Firefox until they time out:

        <html><head><script>for(;;);</script></head></html>

        1. Unicornpiss
          Happy

          Re: Like a moth to a light

          Haven't tried it on Windows, but "crashsafari" with Firefox on Mint Linux causes FF to pause for about 10 seconds, then tell me a script is unresponsive, to which I click "stop script", and it gracefully recovers.

          That's because the script blocks the browser while it fills your history to bursting.

          This page will hang chrome and Firefox until they time out:

          <html><head><script>for(;;);</script></head></html>

          Um... same result. 5-10 seconds of busy, then dialog asking if I want to stop the script. (unless this is what you mean by timing out) Other browser windows unaffected.

          The "crashsafari" page does put an impressive number of entries into my history for the day, but other than the annoyance of that, doesn't harm anything when using FF, and only makes the current window unresponsive for some seconds until it comes to its senses.

  32. tim 13

    A female goat is a nanny.

    1. TRT Silver badge
      Coat

      And a male goat is only a buck!

      I'll get my goat.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Devil

      A female goat is a nanny.

      Hence the conversation...

      Wife: What were you just doing online dear?

      Husband: I was just looking for a new nanny

      [meanwhile husband is mashing the delete browser history button]

      Husband [under breath]: Phew! That was a bit hairy...

      1. TRT Silver badge

        What's all that bleating about the bush?

  33. Mephistro
    Coffee/keyboard

    Top work, Mr. Dabbs!

    I was going to write something about you owning me not only a new keyboard, but also a paint job in the wall behind my monitor and the cleaning of several pieces of furniture, but I find myself unable to write long texts due to uncontrollable bouts of giggling.

    On a more serious note, I tried that crashsafari site on both Chrome and Mozilla. Mozilla stuttered for a bit and then presented me with a 'script taking too long' warning. I stopped the script and everything worked nicely. Chrome crashed, but I was able to close it without having to resort to the task manager.

    Next test: trying this page in both browsers (plus Chromium) in my Ubuntu and Mint VMs.

    1. Mephistro
      Devil

      Re: Top work, Mr. Dabbs!

      Sorry, I forgot to say that I didn't dare try this with IE, as this act would probably invoke several powerful creatures from the Lowest Planes.

      I don't want to bring about the end of the world. That's the politicians's job!

  34. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    Good article

    One minor niggle - a doe is a female deer; a female goat is called a nanny. This may be why your sacrificial offering didn't result in a flash of blue light and your subsequent ownership of a pair of +2 blessed wellingtons.

  35. hrhpod

    Whitehat aviator

    - it's so secure it breaks half the internet and nothing plays unless you tell it to so everything looks ugly AND it deletes everything every time you close it, so you actually need to be able to remember your passwords.

    I love it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whitehat aviator

      Whitehat Aviator was implicated in leaving interesting malware on my machine (and before you ask, that was code obtained from their website, not from some download.com). It managed to install a hidden volume which would get reloaded on boot, and if it had not been for me trying out some file systems I would have never spotted it. Digging into it showed Aviator to be the source.

      It was time to rebuild anyway, so I did. Haven't touched anything of theirs since.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe try Vivaldi?

    Vivaldi is now in beta, and it seems to work OK other than a VERY annoying habit to add a tab with the intro page to every new browser window you open. I mainly use it to confuse websites :).

    There may be a setting for that extra tab somewhere, but I wonder why the heck that annoyance happens to be a default in the first place.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maybe try Vivaldi?

      It doesn't do that for me. Sounds like it is a setting somewhere...can't say which one because I always go through and arbitrarily turn off everything I don't like the look of before using a program.

  37. cd / && rm -rf *
    Gimp

    Can we see the pic of the goat with the toilet brush?

    1. Mephistro
      Angel

      re: (@ cd / && rm -rf *)

      This is the closest thing I was able to find: Thanks Smokey

      On a side note: Are you perchance an elder relative of little Bobby Tables?

      1. cd / && rm -rf *
        Pint

        Re: re: (@ cd / && rm -rf *)

        Thanks Smokey

        Great fun, thanks, suitably NSFW given the general tone of the comments :)

        I had to google Little Bobby Tables. Should have expected it to be an xkcd cartoon...

        It's Friday. Have some (more) beer --->

  38. AdamT

    French slang?

    Not at all an expert on French slang but I was made aware of "zizzi" as meaning the same as "bite", in this slang context at least, by my French colleagues' hysterical laughter at this news item from 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6586879.stm

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: French slang?

      "Zizzi" is what children say. "Bite" is the vulgar version once a French child has been upgraded to adult.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: French slang?

        Urgent: where can I download this upgrade?

  39. macjules
    Coat

    oops.

    " ... the goat is eating everything and shitting everywhere.."

    So nothing out of the ordinary with your Mac then?

  40. msknight

    Come on....

    Admit it. You've just done this because Apple condescended to talk El Reg the other day, haven't you.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Come on....

      That was their last mistake..

  41. G R Goslin

    Talking of...

    Talking of "Gnats cock" as a unit of size, a friend of mine, in the production engineering business, used to regard, as the standard unit of size significance was "half a gnats pubic hair". The removal of such would give two mating parts the proper sliding fit. Here's to you Bob!

    1. Mephistro
      Happy

      Re: Talking of...

      In my country when I was a kid we had a funny expression that could be approximatedly translated as "Shorter than a Playmobil doll's dick". That surely beats all the former measurement units listed in this thread, doesn't it?

  42. What? Me worry?

    So...

    stepping around the goat and into the fray... I was going to suggest Opera, but as that's a shiny piece of chrome these days perhaps, as was early suggested by AC, Vivaldi? El Reg bleated last year about new browsers, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/03/new_browsers_stagnation_breaker/ Personally, when I'm hankering for a bit of self-flagellation, I revert to Lynx, and Pine my e-mail. Ah, the good 'ol days... ;)

  43. phuzz Silver badge
    Boffin

    Memtest

    Just a thought, have you tried doing a memtest? It's pretty unlikely that both your machines would start suffering memory errors at the same time, but you never know.

    Perhaps one of your neighbours has started up a particle accelerator next door?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Memtest

      Add my data points here.

      Had numerous inexplicable memory related problems but resolved them by doing the following.

      1) added thermal interface material so they all ran at the same temperature

      2) Underclocked them, found that DDR2-400 and DDR3 8500s seem to be particularly glitchy on some netbooks notably the Atom ones and some newer Intel Core2 Duos.

      3) Replaced the ones on my x520 with 2GB 10600s and problem go byebye.

      Interestingly the fail seems to occur when the memory has been in use for a while, almost like bits in the SPD chip get flipped. I've compared to identical modules but can't seem to find anything obvious so its probably some component degrading like a ceramic capacitor corroding its endcaps.

      i can be reached online as have some other interesting hacks such as adding realtime thermal feedback strips for increased reliability.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    GooglePlus?

    " If I type ‘upload’, does it jump to Uploadmypasswordstogoogleplus.net?"

    So...no harm done.

  45. channel extended

    New Approach

    Try editing the registery and delete all Safari keys. Then reinstall systemd. This did not work for me but who cares, its Safari.

  46. kev whelan

    It's rubbish.

    Move on

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    So the moral of the story is...

    Safari crashes really get your goat?

    (OK, I'll leave now.)

  48. Nya

    Maybe you were holding your goat the wrong way?

    and needed some new wellies with buckles according to the locals :P

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You are funny!

  50. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Maybe it's some sort of clumsy Apple tribute to Marvin Minsky gone wrong? Machine switching itself off, that sort of thing?

  51. -tim
    Unhappy

    So many problems...

    Safari becomes very unstable when the hard drive starts to fail. Oddly enough I was getting bad blocks on my iMac but the S.M.A.R.T stuff was saying the disk is fine.

    When Apple brought out OS X for the Power PC processor they still were compiling for Intel in house and that found quite a few bugs that way. Once they dropped all support for Power PC, their bug ratios started to climb. I wonder how quickly the 1st bug would be found if they tried to build it on the PPC platform today. I'm also a fan of making sure developers have access to a very old supported platform and making sure they use it from time to time so they get a better feel for real world issues seeing that their top of the line box with fast cpus, massive displays, surplus ram and fast disks isn't what the end users are using.

    At work most things are Intel based Linux but we have some Sparc as well. I asked a coder to compile his buggy code for the Sparc platform and he said it was a waste of time since it didn't compile correctly and it crashed but according to him that was a result of the platform not his bugs. Some of the least buggy open source code will happily build on some very old and bizarre platforms yet the buggiest code seems to require very specific platforms.

    1. Down not across

      Re: So many problems...

      I'm also a fan of making sure developers have access to a very old supported platform and making sure they use it from time to time so they get a better feel for real world issues seeing that their top of the line box with fast cpus,

      Slower/lesser machines are very useful for observing differences a code change makes which wouldn't be anywhere near (if at all) noticeable on faster machine. Good for ensuring code is optimised. Still good idea to do final test on something near production spec in case running on faster environment causes race conditions etc.

      Some of the least buggy open source code will happily build on some very old and bizarre platforms yet the buggiest code seems to require very specific platforms.

      Yes. Some well written code still compiles nicely even on SunOS 4, Ultrix 4.3 etc.

      Other code, often dependent on some latest bleeding edge dev library for no reason, just won't.

      Been a while since I had to port anything to any old platform, but when I did I found that code originally developed on *BSD was usually easiest to port (or compiled as it is).

  52. Martin Maloney
    Coat

    For future reference

    Never take your goat on a safari, especially if you're in a huff (which is a small British motorcar.)

    He'll wander away, and you won't be able to keep tabs on him.

  53. dshan

    Have You Checked the Bloody Log?

    Instead of interfering with a goat on a hillside has the writer at any point in this saga opened Console and had a gander at system.log to find out what is going on with these crashes? You'd be amazed what you can find out about what lies behind such problems by doing more, looking deeper, than simply throwing up your hands and claiming it's all beyond you. Computers are logical, there's always a reason for anything they do, you just have to look hard enough to find it.

    For example, ever since I upgraded to OS X 10.11 I've been having issues with ejecting an external HD that I often use to transfer & convert videos from another Mac running EyeTV. Often, but not every time, I was told the volume couldn't be ejected and would I like to retry the operation (which usually failed) or force eject the bugger. I usually took that option though I knew it wasn't good to have to keep doing this.

    After months of this nonsense I finally decided to get to the bottom of it once and for all - when I next encountered the issue I ran "sudo lsof | grep /Volumes/<VolumeName>" and discovered it was fscking Spotlight trying to index the contents of the disk! But surely that couldn't be, I'd disabled Spotlight on that disk years ago... A visit to System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy showed that in fact this was no longer the case, somewhere along the line (I suspect during the 10.11 upgrade process) the "ignore <VolumeName>" setting had been lost and so Spotlight was holding onto the disk like grim death trying to index it's contents. Now the disk ejects every time just like it should.

    At no point in this saga was I tempted to sacrifice a goat on a windy hillside, or use Chrome.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Have You Checked the Bloody Log?

      True. Just not what you should have to do running 'the most user-friendly OS there is'.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Have You Checked the Bloody Log?

      At no point in this saga was I tempted to sacrifice a goat on a windy hillside, or use Chrome.

      But doing that could have saved you months of problems. Next time, try the goat first, it may save time.

      :)

    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Have You Checked the Bloody Log?

      Computers are logical, there's always a reason for anything they do, you just have to look hard enough to find it.

      This is of course a red herring.

      The complexity of what is going on may well move the "looking hard enough" into NP-hard, if not make it uncomputable altogether.

      YOU MAY NEVER FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING WRONG. DEAL WITH IT!

  54. BurnT'offering

    Great stuff

    Dabbsy is becoming a kind of sweary P G Wodehouse (which, of course, OSX's zealous spellchecker wanted to render as sweaty)

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Great stuff

      Yes. I hereby demand his humorous escapades and zany antics be told in weekly installments on the magic picture box, starring a great actor of our age!

  55. Gary 24

    Meanwhile those not looking for linkbait

    Have been using Safari on multiple computers for years with absolutely no issues.... meanwhile Chrome's revocation of RC4 encryption has basically broken a load of sites... well done Google.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
      Pint

      Re: Meanwhile those not looking for linkbait

      have clicked on it anyway... Have a nice weekend and a pint.

  56. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It Just Works (Not!)

    This can't be right, it's a Mac, "it just works" Saint Jobs himself said so, so it must be true.

    I blame Microsoft obviously and will now regale you with tales of how unstable Windows was when I last used it (in 1995) before I jumped ship and overpaid for my Mac PC...

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: It Just Works (Not!)

      A little re-jiggering for trading standards.

      "It works...just."

      Inevitable when a 'messiah' is replaced by a 'pope' in any religion...

  57. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a back door feature..

    howver the story is more good arty than pagmatic content.

    I do wonder though!

  58. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    There's your problem

    As it's saturday I had time to do some research and I think I found at least some answers:

    If you experience problems with a web browser you must sacrifice a steer or an oxen.

    Sacrifying a female goat apparently is the thing to do when it's a faulty hardware driver, except for on-board graphics. That will take either a white female sheep or a black male goat, the sources I found are somewhat unclear on that particular point. Further study seems to be indicated.

    And if you have printer problems - forget it. Male unicorn.

  59. Slx

    Just curious:

    Could you check the Console app for GPU resets?

    Also just post what exact machine this was happening with and if it had a particular GPU.

  60. Old Handle
    Mushroom

    Speaking of Apple self-destruct features

    How about Error 53?

  61. Arctic fox
    Thumb Up

    I would just like to say that both the article (thank you Mr Dabbs) and many of..........

    ...............the comments BTL had me close to crying with laughter. See icon.

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Safari being the new IE..

    makes it my very last choice.

    Why should I let them stick 2 fingers up to HTML 5. So much for that declaration that HTML 5 is the future!

  63. Willie T
    WTF?

    Someone must have published one of the April 1st articles early as this is obviously a joke. Everyone knows that Apple products "just work" and never require users to fiddle with such mundane things as settings, cache, cookies, etc. And crash? Never!

    This is obviously a story about a Windows user that someone replaced all the references for IE & PC with Safari and MacBook. After all, we know nothing on those crappy Windows machines ever works and they crash constantly - every version, including all future ones.

  64. a_yank_lurker

    Goat for Safari, what for Winbloat?

    If a sacrificial goat is necessary for the gods of IT to make Safari work correctly what is needed for Winbloat?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Goat for Safari, what for Winbloat?

      Sacrificial goatse ... with the sound that goes with it.

  65. Lodgie
    Coat

    Just installed Netscape Navigator 9. By the Christ it's effin quick. On Win 10 too.

  66. Gritzwally Philbin

    SeaMonkey, Mr Dabbs.. SeaMonkey. It is a fork of FF based on the old Netscape Communicator suite and it runs quite snappy.

    http://www.seamonkey-project.org

    (I quit on Safari back when Panther 10.3 was the current OS - it was shite back then and I see nothing has happened to change that.)

    Get it and run with uBlock Origin and NoScript and you're golden.

    Safari is a total bag of dicks.. big floppy limp ones that stiffen at the most inopportune time and bone your system..

  67. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How to zap the PRAM???

    It's a long time since I've had hands on experience with Apple Macs - System 6 on a Quadra comes to mind. So was a bit surprised that it's still a thing on Apple stuff, it bought back memories.

    Will be interested to hear the "correct" way to zap it though - I found that I had to use both hands on the keyboard, so had to take my shoe off so I could manoeuvre the mouse with my foot to select restart.

  68. Dracwyrm

    Firewall.

    Hi,

    Did you try installing a software firewall and set it to block that website? If safari can never access it, then it can't crash. :)

    Just a thought...

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