tl;dr By now, everybody in the tech industry has heard that Microsoft and Xamarin have come to terms and Microsoftwill acquire the cross-compiling mobile development tools vendor. This is a good thing for both parties, and aside fromwatching Miguel de Icaza pop the cork on some very expensive champagne and celebreate with his people, there’s a numberof things to think about. Here’s my thoughts around the next steps for Microsoft (and the Xamarin division withinMicrosoft, however that looks), as well as for people using Xamarin.

1. Signal Standalone Desktop App Mac Just Sitting Idle After Crashes
2. Signal Standalone Desktop App Mac Just Sitting Idle After Crashing

If you’ve not already, read the announcement.

But after a few minutes of running, it starts streaming 'too many open files' errors. I'm not sure why, it's as if grep doesn't close a file after it opens it to search in it. I've also had issues with grep just stopping. Not quitting, not crashing, not going unresponsive, but not using any more CPU, not reading anything from the disk, just. The app crashes immediately upon opening. It shows the blue screen with the logo for one second and then disappears. The signal app icon still updates the number of unread messages. This happened after updating to the latest version of signal from the appstore (2.3.1).

First of all, take a moment and take a deep breath. This is a good thing, but like all acquisitions, there exists allkinds of potential downsides. More importantly, as the Parse shutdown showed us, what looks like a great acquisitionin the beginning is always susceptible to “a change in direction” or “reallocation of resources” later. Microsoft isno exception, though ScottGu is certainly more transparent than most high-level executives and Satya is definitelymore savvy than his predecessors have been.

Neverwinter nights gives me artifacts but doesn't crash. BF2142 crashes every time, although the time before BSOD seems variable. It seems like the video signal just croaks- The monitor LED goes yellow, but I can still hear the sound.

Once you’re done calming down from the excitement and sheer giggle factor, here’s a couple of things to consider:

Xamarin Studio may be going the way of the dodo

Yeah, it wasn’t a rock-solid product in the first place, so maybe this won’t come as a huge blow to anybody who’s usingVisual Studio. But, if it goes (and it’s perfectly reasonable to imagine it will—why maintain two IDEs?), and untilthere’s a Visual Studio for the Mac, this means that anybody carting around a MacBook Pro andusing Mac OSX (which is still the norm for all those iOS developers) are going to be left out of this movement.

This actually has a pretty big impact: in a lot of ways, Xamarin has needed to make the transition out of the “What .NETdevelopers use when they want to build mobile apps” world, and into the larger “What mobile developers use when theywant to build mobile apps” world. Until that happens, Xamarin will always be seen as a product “just for the .NET guys”,and that hurts both them, Microsoft, and by extension their whole community.

Apple, Google, and Oracle cannot remain idle

This is a huge cannonball into the development tools pool, and frankly, I can’t really see the aforementionedcompanies just sitting back and doing nothing in return.

Apple doesn’t really need to do much on the mobile end much, but they could definitely make a splash by acquiring a MBaaSor small cloud player—or, if you really want to shake things up a bit, perhaps a partnership with IBM now that IBM isusing Swift as part of its OpenStack cloud profile. However, Apple needs to get clear of this FBI nonsense first.

Google is the one I can’t really predict right now; I’m not sure what would make sense for them at the moment.(Then again, I’m not entirely sure Google knows what makes sense for them at the moment, either; some of their recentmoves really leave me scratching my head. “Alphabet”? Really?)

Oracle, to me is an easy one to call: since their play into the mobile world is basically stymied since they couldn’tnegotiate/strongarm a path into a Founder’s Chair at the Android table, they need to make a deeper jump into the machinelearning/big data space (which makes more sense for them given their cash cow anyway). So, in my crystal ball, Oraclelooks to acquire the recently-renamed Typesafe/Lightbend. Between Scala, “reactive”, andScala’s easy connection to machine learning, it offers Oracle an easy road into those kinds of projects, and in returnLightbend has direct access to the guys working on the JVM, huge data centers, and deep pockets.

Xamarin will get swallowed up by Microsoft

Yes, of course, there will be the usual promises of preservation of company culture and all that, but like it or not,Microsoft is a big-ass company, and that will eventually “grind down” some of the things that enticed people intoXamarin. Miguel of course will become some kind of VP within the firm (unless part of the deal was to let him walkaway with a whole pile of Microsoft stock, which would surprise me greatly), or possibly a Technical Fellow, but therest of the company will find itself sort of “sliced and diced” into the various different parts of Microsoft, wouldbe my guess. Xamarin evangelists will become part of Microsoft’s DPE arm, the core language and library developers willbe moved into DevDiv, Xamarin University will probably get moved over to Channel 9, and so on and so on.

This isn’t a terrible thing, by the way. Part of the reason Xamarin wants to be part of Microsoft is to have access tothe channels that Microsoft opens up to them this way, and part of having access to those channels is being in the sameroom when people who own those channels are talking to customers. That means being a part of the rest of the companyas it currently stands—refactor Xamarin into Microsoft’s structure, and not trying to remake Microsoft in Xamarin’simage. But that will imply that Xamarin loses some of its cohesiveness and it’s individual branding, and possibly resultsin some of the Xamarin folks finding a new home (hopefully with a nice severance and some Microsoft stock to remindthem of the ride along the eway).

This is Microsoft admitting its mobile strategy was a failure

Or, to be more accurate about it, it’s the final page in the chapter labeled “Windows Phone”. Having admitted that theNokia purchase was a bad one, having admitted thatWindows Phonewasn’t the success they wanted it to be, Microsoft is now (finally!) looking to recircle the wagons. The Lumia phonessimply weren’t selling, and while I certainly know a number of people personally who love their Windows Phone,almost all of them are either Microsoft employees or relatives of Microsoft employees. Sales figures certainly seemedto agree with my understanding of consumers’ dislike of the devices, compared to iOS and Android.

So now what?

I think this is a multi-part strategy on Microsoft’s part:

• Make sure they have a good development story and experience for building mobile apps RIGHT NOW. That means having a goodset of tools and framworks for building apps on the platforms that developers need to build for right now: iOS andAndroid.
• Continue to work the Windows8/Windows10-as-a-tablet angle. Windows10 on a touch laptop or “two-in-one” is definitely anice experience, and frankly the Surface 3 was a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways. I had actually started convincingmyself to pick up a Surface 4 (probably a Pro) as my next Windows laptop when some of the hardware issues started to(pardon the pun) surface, but the 3s were definitely a lot more solid. I figure Microsoft isn’t done with Surface yet,not by any means. And there’s a lot of other hardware running Win10 that are also pretty nice.
• Figure out where and how they want to be in the phone market. Personally, I think Microsoft just needs to stop.Microsoft is literally fighting a war on every single front it possibly can imagine—from console gaming systems to themobile device market all the way through development tools, operating systems, databases, office suite software,consumer accessories, search engines, game studios and the cloud, and that’s just thinking of things off the top of myhead—and frankly, there comes a time in every general’s campaign when she just needs to signal a retreat from the battlefield,rest and restock those troops, and then use them as a strategic or tactical reserve elsewhere. There’s no shame in this.None of their opponents are tackling anywhere near this many things at once, and none of them seem in any danger ofcalling in broke.

The intriguing thing is that if Microsoft has no mobile hardware and separate platform, they can conclude a partnershipdeal with Apple and Google, and start using their advantage as one of the best software development companies on the faceof the planet to shore up where their partners are weak.

Companies using Xamarin will probably need to revisit their spend

No details are available yet, but chances are pretty good that companies that used Xamarin will need to talk to somebodyat the company and figure out what the Xamarin development licensing would look like going forward. Chances are, ifMicrosoft’s history is any guide, Xamarin will get folded in as part of an MSDN license. (I can’t see Microsoft givingall of Xamarin away for free, but they probably don’t want to maintain a standalone SKU for it.) That could be a good thing,since MSDN includes other goodies (like Azure credits), but it could also be more money than a company wants to spendif they’re just using Xamarin for mobile development.

Then again, if we assume that the vast majority of Xamarin’s customers are already MSDN licensees (and I’m willing to betthey are), then lo, their Xamarin spend just went to zero. Which of course they will turn around and give to the mobiledevelopment team as a bonus, right?

F# for iOS and Android apps just became that much more real

That’s just a personal bonus.

The recently-announced Xamarin/Skia deal gets weird

Signal Standalone Desktop App Mac Just Sitting Idle After Crashes

Xamarin had just, like days earlier, announcedthey were moving to use Skia, Google’s 2D graphics library. So far, Microsoft and Google have had a fairly neutralrelationship with one another (the whole Google/Bing thing notwithstanding), so this could probably end up beingnothing.

Miguel just became the new startup poster child

Start open-source project.

Found company.

Get acquired by one major player (Novell).

Get cut loose by said player a year or so later.

Figure out crucial pivot (AOT compilation for mobile platforms).

Get acquired by an even bigger major player.

PROFIT!!

(BTW, Miguel, if you’re reading this, next MVP Summit, if you come to my party, you’re bringing my wife a reallynice bottle of something—after this, I know you’re good for it. ;-) )

For the Xamarin developer, this will mostly be business-as-usual

If you’re using Xamarin, the tools and libraries will likely just get folded in as part of Microsoft’s next releaseof Visual Studio, but hey, that was already happening as part of Visual Studio 2015, and the libraries are availableover NuGet already, so those can redirect to a Microsoft URL without anybody even noticing.

But still, questions remain:

Some of this will be answered when the details of the deal are made public, and some won’t be answered for months oryears to come. But, still, it always bears to ask them up front.

Q: What happens to Mono?

Mono has, throughout all of this, remained an open-source alternative to the CLR. This was going to be an open questionas the CLR moved to other platforms anyway, but now, it’s even more interesting/poignant. Xamarin certainly has noreason to keep it alive at this point, since now they have legal access to the CLR itself, so….?

Q: Would anybody miss Mono now?

Seriously.

Q: Will .NET become WORA?

Although it wasn’t often talked about, Mono and Xamarin had the ability to build Mac OS X desktop applications andconsole apps. Clearly Microsoft wants to target mobile with Xamarin, but does this signal their desire to have a platformby which to build Mac OSX and/or Linux apps? And if so, doesn’t this sort of back-handedly admit that maybe Java’s“Write Once Run Anywhere” strategy wasn’t all that bad an idea?

(And bear in mind, I am firmly in the camp that WORA is a pipe dream and a terrible idea.)

Q: When will Visual Studio for the Mac ship?

Given that I can’t see Xamarin Studio surviving in its current incarnation, when will Visual Studio for the Mac ship? Or,perhaps another question would be, when will Visual Studio Code have the necessary plugins to write, compile, debug anddeploy .NET apps on the Mac and/or Linux?

Q: What will Miguel’s title at Microsoft be?

Will he report to Gu? Will he report to Satya? Will he be a Technical Fellow? Will he be forced to give up his MacBook Pro?Will he be asked to jump around the stage at Build shouting, “Developers developers developers developers…”?

Q: What happens to the Xamarin Monkey?

They were cute mascots, but will they have to go away now? Or will they just be forced to wear the Windows logo in thenext batch?

Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.

Having multiple websites open should have no impact on your internet bandwidth usage, unless those sites are actively uploading or downloading data.

by Leo A. Notenboom, © 2011

My brother complains to my dad that his video games are slow because I have tabs open on my browser (formerly, Internet Explorer, now Firefox 4) and I am 'chewing up the bandwidth'. Usually, one is Facebook and others are miscellaneous blogs. I am not the most computer-savvy person, but I know from computer-savvy friends that bandwidth doesn't work that way. How can I explain to my dad that that's not how bandwidth works and therefore, I don't have to shut down tabs?

•

Usually, that's not how bandwidth works. I'll certainly agreethat it's extremely unlikely that tabs in your browser have anything to do withyour brother's video game speed.

But (and there's always a but), there are scenarios where what you're doing inyour browser may have an impact.

It's more likely that other things are happening on your system oryour network.

•

Most Web Pages and Bandwidth

Bandwidth is all about data transfer. Your internet connection can onlytransmit data at a certain rate, so if you're doing something, like playing agame, which requires continuous data transfer, other things which are also transferringdata at the same time might impact it.

For the most part, once a web page has been shown in your browser, there's nomore downloading going on. There are no file transfers, no ongoing internetactivity - the page is just sitting there in your browser looking pretty,waiting for you to do something with it.

The act of browsing to a page and causing it to be displayed causes internetactivity, but once it's displayed, that's over.

So, no, those multiple tabs of web pages aren't likely to be impacting anyone'sgaming experience.

Some Web Pages and Bandwidth

Some web pages actually do maintain some small amount of data transfer whilethey're sitting there 'doing nothing'.

Facebook is actually a good example. Every so often, the web pagere-connects to Facebook and looks for updates to whatever it is that you'redisplaying. It may then download updates to your wall, or just update theunread message count icon. Either way, the web page in the browser on yourcomputer had to talk to the mothership - facebook.com - to ask it if there wereany updates and get them if there were.

Other sites, mostly feature-laden sites and services, like Gmail, GoogleDocs, Facebook, Twitter, and others, will all do things like this to some degree.

And to be clear, it's a very small amount of bandwidth in comparison andit's not going to impact anyone's gaming experience.

Obvious Web Pages and Bandwidth

You probably already realize this, but if the tabs that you have open are alldownloading files, or if you are viewing YouTube videos or streaming online video fromsites like Hulu or Netflix, then yes, those are continuous uses of enoughbandwidth that they may very well impact other users on your network.

Naturally, if you're playing an online game at the same time, that would alsohave an impact.

Signal Standalone Desktop App Mac Just Sitting Idle After Crashing

But these are obvious: they're transferring large amounts of datacontinuously.

What Else Might Impact Others

The trick, the key, to understanding what might impact others on yournetwork, like your brother playing an online game, is that the impact must bean ongoing data transfer of some sort.

As we've seen, just having a lot of browser tabs open doesn't do that.

But other things might.

What tends to impact me the most often is Windows Update.

I have several computers that are all set to automatically download updates when they become available. That typically qualifies as a 'large ongoing data transfer',and I've seen it impact other things that I'm doing. (Same for my Mac and Linuxmachines that also have an automatic update facility enabled.)

I'm certainly not saying that what your brother is experiencing is due toWindows Update (which could be his machine or yours), but simply use that as anexample that other things which you might not be aware of could be using bandwidth that you hadn't expected.

And yes, that could slow a game down.

Article C4805 - April 28, 2011 «»

You may also be interested in:

• How do I monitor internet activity and see who's using it? Process Monitor is a powerful tool and it can be used to track down exactly what program on your machine is responsible for internet activity.

• How does what I do on my computer use bandwidth? Bandwidth is a vague term that has at least two different definitions. I'll look at those as well as how uploading and downloading relate to bandwidth.

• What is bandwidth? Bandwidth is a term you hear frequently but it can be confusing and it's easy to gloss over exactly what it means.

On a sort of related note: Do flash videos have memory leaks? I've noticed that if I watch a youtube (or other video), things are OK. Then I click on next video, or somehow watch another video in the same tab, and my machine slows down a bit. By the third video, my PC is halting. If I watch a fourth video without restarting the browser (whichever browser I'm using: Chrome, IE, or FF), I might as well have a hung PC.

I have not methodically tested this out to be sure that's what's causing my PC to momentarily halt all the time, and I do keep many, many tabs open all the time.

Jeff,

Yes, all software is susceptible to memory leaks. And, with browsers including plugins from multiple sources, the odds increase that _some_ plugin will have a leak. (Some years back, the browser I was using at the time had some memory leak that caused it to 'grow' by a few K every few seconds. Not usually a big deal, but since my machine would be up for days at a time, I actually had it crash my system more than once, when it grew to 2GB.) Whether or not the Flash plugin has any, I can't say for sure.

I can tell you that even today, with FireFox 4.0, it appears that something has a memory leak. After running for a few days, Process Explorer (www.sysinternals.com) will show that FireFox's 'virtual size' may grow to over 1.5GB. Exiting and restarting (including restoring all open tabs) will show it back down to 'only' a few hundred MB. (Which will, of course, grow over time.) I see similar results in Safari 5.

Note, too, that Flash is used all over the place. Many banner ads are Flash-based. Even my kids' middle-school website uses Flash to put 'cute' little animations om the page. In fact, my daughter's teacher's homework page has three(!) Flash animations running on it. I don't know how the plugin handles having possibly dozens of references across many tabs.

Finally, note that there is a Safari extension 'ClickToFlash' which disables all Flash on a page until you actually click on it, or whitelist the page/site. It's a real timesaver for me. I see similar extensions available for FireFox (such as 'Flashblock'), though I haven't used any of them.

Thank you! That helps a lot. Also, if Facebook is up, will that likely affect anyone else or is it unlikely? From the information given, it sounds like it would not but that is the usual 'it's chewing bandwidth' argument, so it would be helpful to have a definite 'probably not' or 'it's semi-probable.'

And thank you so much for answering my question.

Have you tried switching your own PC OFF and also disconnecting it physically and totally from the Internet (including any WiFi and similar connections, then have your brother run his games.

If as is likely, his PC is still slow, then the problem is with his PC or the Internet connection or BOTH.

Try switching your Router OFF for at least 60 seconds then switch ON, waiting five to ten minutes for it to sysnchronise.

Have you checked the working speed of your Internet connection, with each PC separately and simultaneously?

Games, video and other detailed, rapidly-changing graphics are very demanding on all parts of the extended system, from the remote Server, through your ISP, phone line etc to the actual PC employed.

Has your brother done any 'HOUSEKEEPING' on his PC, such as Defrag, Chklinks, Registry tidies and the like?

If not recently on a weekly basis, then his PC will be like an extremely UNTIDY room, where he has great difficulty in finding anything, clothes, diary, cell-phone etc.

Or does he have an auto and never fill it, check the oil levels, tire wear etc, yet expect it to start and run smoothly without such housekeeping?

PCs are just the same, they need a regular, rigorous process of tidying, cleaning etc, to keep them in fine fettle and 'fit to run'.

Does he switch his PC OFF 'gracefully' or just throw the mains supply wall outlet switch?

Has he deleted any out-dated files, programs etc from the HDD?

ALL of those HOUSEKEEPING actions IMPROVES the PERFORMANCE of ANY PC, YOUNG or OLD.

Alex Dow

@KC: Leaving a standard Facebook page open in your web browser will definitely NOT chew up any significant bandwidth. It will simply poll the server at intervals to retrieve any updates, which is very quick and very low bandwidth. However, I say 'standard' because one *can* chew up a lot of bandwidth if you're running Facebook apps like Farmville or Cafe World. I reject *all* apps and all is well.

Since the original question did not specify, I wonder if the two siblings are sharing one computer (not two computers sharing an internet connection). If they are taking turns on a single computer, the problem would very likely be the browser memory leak issue.

I have the same experience as both Jeff and KenB: all browsers seem to have massive memory leak problems, and that seems to increase with multiple tabs and windows. After a while, I notice my system getting gradually, or suddenly, more sluggish. Task manager (or Process Explorer) shows very large memory usage by the browser, and closing all of its windows and tabs (not just some) and restarting is the only reliable solution. Note that MSIE will often have several processes. I think these are related to multiple 'security zones' rather than to the number of windows or tabs. At this moment, Process Explorer is showing four iexplore.exe processes, with 225M+170M+140M+30M of 'privatebytes' and 'working sets' of 93M+156M+130M+27M, respectively.

So, even if the browser windows are minimized while the brother plays games, the game performance could be severely impacted by the lack of available memory once a browser has gobbled up a lot of memory.

I had a similar slowdown problem caused by an Internet Security Suite once. I was getting tired of Norton's product being such a resource hog so I tried two other brands of security suites. One had some sort of issues where whatever it learned in teach mode was screwing up and causing horrendous slowdowns that grew worse over time. They were straight across the board and not confined to just certain actions. I was glad when Norton got their act together and improved their product so I could start using it again.

That being said I would ask if the slow down is really connection speed and if anything else is slowing down, too? If not is it possible it may be server traffic causing the data to slow such as playing at peak times? Is it certain that it isn't the game itself or what is being processed on the local machine running slow? I wish the symptoms would have been described better.

If it's the game itself there are other issues that can affect gaming speed. The main culprit is usually hardware followed by the software that supports the hardware. My recently retired PC was a butt kicker in its prime. In regards to gaming it struggled with almost every game that had come out in the past several years. Many games are written for multi-core processors and while they may run on a lesser processor, they will not run well. Some won't run at all and others are choppy and start and stop. Some will not even install. I had a Pentium 4 @ 2.3 GHz and some games that called for at least a dual core would play, but poorly. RAM is another issue. If you don't have a lot of RAM to begin with gaming is tough. If you are running a lot of background programs it can be worse because you don't always have a lot left over to run programs like games. My old PC had 2 GB of RAM of which almost half was used by Windows and background tasks. My new PC has 24 GB of DDR3. Serious gamers say 12 GB is good (provided your operating system can use it and your motherboard can support it) but 24 is best. Then there's the most important piece: the video card. My old PC had an ATI x1950 Pro with 512 MB memory. It was a beast in its day but has been all but useless for any modern games. The last modern game I could run satisfactorily albeit tuned down to middling settings was Fallout 3 and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. Games like Metro 2033, Crysis, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty World at War wouldn't even play. Anything requiring DX 10 or above was a no-go. My new PC has a pair of SLIed GeForce GTX 580 Fermi Black Ops with 1536 MB memory each. I use DX 11. Gaming hardware loses ground quickly. Even though my video cards are less than 3 months old, they have been released in faster and more powerful versions twice already! But, even so, my PC chews through the most demanding games on maximum settings and the video runs as smoothly as watching a movie.

Games, more than any other software tend to take advantage of newer hardware and the increased power of computers. That's why PC gaming is supposed to be so much better than console gaming although many new games are console games ported to the PC. As part of that superior experience a gaming computer will show its age faster than a computer used for almost anything else. Gamers demand it and the technology drives the games forward and this includes online gaming. Nobody wants a game that looks like an old 8 bit Nintendo game when it's possible to have almost nearly photographic cinematic quality.

It's very important to keep up with video card drivers as well. Sometimes older drivers may end up having problems when used with certain games. These bugs are often repaired and the repairs released as new drivers. Sometimes the opposite happens. A new driver will have issues that don't show up until they are used in the field. In those cases it will be recommended to reinstall an older driver.

Every game has a forum somewhere and often a half dozen or more. Every problem you can imagine has been experienced by somebody and it has been discussed and often resolved in a forum. It really does pay to check if for no other reason than you always learn something even if it wasn't what you were looking for.

I heard it said once and attributed to Sherlock Holmes: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, what ever is left, no matter how improbable, is the answer.' I think there is a whole lot of impossible that still needs to be eliminated here.

Can the source of the bandwidth be an issue? I understand cable TV source can be slowed by the number of users on line. I use to notice this with my old cable provider, about the time kids got home from school or when late TV news was over the internet seemed to slow to a crawl. Where as DSL is based upon distance from the relay station. The further away the slower the speed. Don't know if this is an issue anymore.

Can't he open his Task Manager and click on the Network tab and see if he is eating up network bandwidth? Also - I tried running a neat little program that created 2-D cars that tried to travel down roads, and they would evolve and be able to travel farther and farther. Simple little program that I thought wouldn't take much of my computer's resources. After running it for a few hours (to watch what they evolved into), my computer started really dragging. As soon as I got out of I-explorer, my system perked back up to normal. Some of those little programs can really bog down one's system if you keep tabs open. But check your Task Manager - that is what it is for, and it will show you if anything is happening. You can take a snapshot of the bandwidth used with 2 tabs open, and then show with many tabs open (but look back periodically to see if you have one of those 'the longer I leave it open the more resources it takes' type of tabs open.

First step would be to get your brother to run a connection speed test, such as speedtest.net, and log the results. Then you can all see if this is the root of the problem.

Having said that, Windows and Security software updates are essential functions which can slow down internet speed, but which should be left on if possible. However, a browser can easily be set to start up with all of your favourite sites loaded, so why not reach a deal with your brother to close it when you are not actually using it? Seems to be the diplomatic solution.

Thanks for this article now my brother can stop anoying me about leaving tabs open...

What if you open a streaming website, and it has already finished buffering. Like as in the bar is completed. Will it slow down the internet?

•

Comments on this entry are closed.

If you have a question, start by using the search box up at the top of the page - there's a very good chance that your question has already been answered on Ask Leo!.

If you don't find your answer, head out to http://askleo.com/ask to ask your question.