Never satisfied with something that is already working (Firefox), a few months ago I decided to check out Chromium, the open source version of Google’s Chrome web browser. My impression is that it is very snappy at page loads. In looking into which browser would be better on an old, hardware-challenged computer (a Sony VAIO with a 1.2 GHz Pentium M and 512 MB RAM), I found that Tom’s Hardware reports that while Chrome has a heavier memory footprint, it also has faster page loads. On low-end systems that makes it kind of a toss-up—will the increased memory demands translate into a faster feel in your browsing?—but on my 6 GB RAM Dell desktop and my 8 GB RAM Lenovo laptop, the OS can easily afford to throw a couple of GB to Chromium in exchange for a faster browsing experience. Continue Reading »

One of the more interesting issues to emerge during the recent Republican primary debates was the division of powers in our federal system of government. Often this gets called something like “states’ rights”, but that phrase is probably irreversibly entwined with Jim Crow and other state curtailments of civil rights. The present issues perhaps require a new term, along the lines of “states’ responsibilities”, which would emphasize things that states should do for their citizens—in the absence of federal action, or perhaps even in preference to federal action. Continue Reading »