Did some benchmark testing on the Javascript engines of several Mac OS X web browsers by using SunSpider and Google’s V8 benchmark suite. Although Google Chrome is still a development release on OS X, it’s already the winner in this test. Safari 4 comes second, it shows similar results in the SunSpider test but loses more in the V8 test. Sadly Firefox 3.5 loses to both of them by quite a significant margin, despite the fact that Firefox 3.5 introduces the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Opera 10.00 beta 2 is just not a viable competitor to all of the others, I hope this is just because of the beta thing.
Here are some charts that show the results:
真係未見過有公司咁樣 launch website 嘅，原本個 website run 得好地地，為咗推新 service，將成個 site 換咗佢，結果係搞到好多俾咗錢聽 archive 嘅人聽唔到，特別係一眾 Mac user 同非 Windows user。嗰個新推出嘅 Toolbar 又唔 support OS X，又唔 support Firefox 3。原本嗰 site 都仲有得俾 user 揀用 RealPlayer 定係 Windows Media Player (Microsoft ASF format) 來收聽 realtime 廣播同 archive，但係個新 website 淨係 serve ASF 同埋用佢個 P2P toolbar。香港公司搞 website，已經無眼睇好耐。宜家咩年代啊，做 website 竟然仲唔注意係唔係 cross-platform。雖然 Real Audio 同 ASF 都係 proprietary，但係點計 RealPlayer 嘅 cross-platform support 都好過 ASF 好多，Mac 有 client，Linux 又有，連 Unix 都有。宜家商台竟然仲廢埋 Real Audio，有無搞錯。其實商台真係好天真好傻，將個 site outsource 俾大陸公司做，大陸公司做 website 出名 IE-only，商台自己嘅 project management 又好有問題，無做好 testing 唔駛講，個 site 宜家俾人媽到飛起，俾咗錢嘅用唔到應有服務，咁都仲唔 rollback 番個舊 site 出來，又或者同時間放番個舊 site 出來一齊行，咁係咪即係話根本無諗過任何 fallback plan，無 contingency plan 嘅呢？前幾日入去商台個 website，赫然發現個 domain name 變咗 beta.881903.com，心諗，唔係唔記得改番 DNS 吓嘛，邊有人用咁嘅 domain name 架，後來先發現原來商台係認真嘅，仲喺埋個 logo 寫住 beta，懶係 web 2.0 咁，真係膠到無朋友。人哋啲 website 寫住 beta，好似 gmail 咁，alpha, beta, gamma 都無問題，因為第一，佢就算係 beta 都仍然好 stable，第二，佢無收我錢。但係商台呢個 case 唔係咁，我真係唔信竟然有人 launch beta service 俾 paid service 嘅 user 咁樣搵香蕉皮自己踩。
好，鬧完，既然俾咗錢，唯有自救，用 XCode + Applescript + shell script 寫咗個 application 俾 Mac OS 10.5 嘅 user 用（唔知 10.4 得唔得，得嘅話通知聲），可以聽得番 archive，呢度 download。Download 完記得睇 README 點樣用！為咗獲得最佳效果，請同時下載 Real Player & Flip4Mac，得閒可以順手裝埋 Perian。
更新 2/7/2008 6:25pm: 如果你安裝咗 Flip4Mac，你要先響 System Preferences 度打開 Flip4Mac，make sure “Use Filp4Mac WMV Browser Plug-in” 選項無被揀中。
Stumbled upon a toy which performs Japanese handwriting recognition online by using ajax as the frontend. As I said it’s just a toy so the correctness is so so, but nonetheless a very good proof-of-concept. This toy uses Support Vector Machine as the underlying algorithm so the program is able to learn from the user’s handwriting. Ever since I made lamerpad I realize that pattern recognition should be a better means to handle handwriting recognition than analyzing stroke patterns, such as stroke order, numbers and positions, which lamerpad employs, as stroke structures vary from person to person. But by using machine learning algorithms like SVM or artificial neural networks, a hybrid system could be made, such system not only can learn from how the character looks, but also how the character is written by the user. By now Chinese handwriting recognition technology is already quite mature, but just no such open source programs, SCIM handwriting module, anyone?
Creators of any website that resembles my homepage must be vi-addicted. *grin*
The author is crazy enough to implement hjkl keystrokes for movement in the search results, i for insert, commands like :q and :help for quit and help messages, etc. There is also a status bar at the bottom that looks exactly like a normal vim. Uber-cool.
where Open Source technology and Middle Kingdom meet