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Mathwiz

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Everything posted by Mathwiz

  1. Mathwiz
    One more Office 2010 update today: KB4475604. The support page, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4475604, just gives a 404 error but the update seems safe for XP. Edit: Link started working while I was typing this post. Appears the update is specific to Outlook 2010, which I didn't install, so I can't confirm for sure whether it's safe for XP.
  2. Mathwiz
    With that insight, along with the fact that the number of reserved sectors in a FAT32 volume defaults to 32, it occurred to me that if I could just "round up" the number of FAT sectors to the nearest multiple of 32, then both FATs and the data clusters area would all be 16KiB-aligned! So with that in mind, I downloaded the source code to mkdosfs, made that change (turned out to be a one-line fix), and recompiled it with VS2010. And it works: The key is that the FATs are 27344 sectors long vs. the 27333 sectors calculated by the original version. (BTW, the Linux code in mkdosfs will auto-select FAT32 - you don't have to specify "-F 32" if the volume is 512MiB or larger - but that change was never ported to the Win32 code, so I did that too "while I was at it.") CrystalDiskMark indicates that aligning the FATs in this manner doesn't make a noticeable difference, but it may not tell the full story. It creates test files, then measures sequential and random read/write speeds to them, so the FAT doesn't get updated while the benchmark tests run. I looked online for a program to benchmark file system operations, as opposed to raw read/write speeds, but didn't find much. There is a program called Iozone, but it's a very complex command-line program with very little help or documentation, so I couldn't figure out how to use it.
  3. Mathwiz
    I think that's exactly right. FUEL isn't something new or updated add-ons should ever use, but it's good to leave it in PM (and hence NM) so that extensions that did use it (but that are no longer being maintained) can still run. Speaking of which.... Mozilla announced the details of its plan for the deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1. This will happen in March 2020. Others may disagree, but I don't have a problem with this. TLS 1.2 has been recommended since 2008; by now, every Web server should support it. The concern I have, though, is that this industry-wide move will encourage even more Web sites to disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1. That's not a problem with desktop browsers (even XP supports TLS 1.2 with the appropriate patches), but it's a big problem for users of older mobile devices, since mobile apps rely on the OS to provide TLS support, the OS on these devices cannot always be updated (particularly with Android), and many mobile devices were shipped without TLS 1.2 support through at least 2012. I know that the Powers That Be have decreed that everyone shall throw their old mobile devices in the trash and buy brand-new ones every year or two, but that's always rubbed me the wrong way. Online banking is one thing, but if I'm just downloading a podcast that's available to the public anyhow, I don't mind not using "current and recommended cipher suites."
  4. Mathwiz
    It's been a longstanding issue with the built-in h.264 (actually that's video; the audio codec that causes the issue is probably AAC) support. It works fine with most PCs, but some have the audio issue you described. Try installing the Adobe Primetime CDM and disabling the built-in support (set media.ffvpx.enabled to false). That's fixed the issue for others. Edit: Oops; @VistaLover beat me to it!
  5. Mathwiz
    It's two separate forks. Each of the above was the most current version of each of the two forks when you wrote that post. Both are derived from MCP's Basilisk project, but MCP abandoned Basilisk 55 (forked from an alpha version of FF 53) early on and started over, by forking Basilisk 52 from FF 52 ESR. Since then, MCP has kept updating Basilisk 52, and @roytam1 has also kept Basilisk 55 alive with updates from ArcticFox and other sources.
  6. Mathwiz
    It's the new Tobin paradigm. Relax; this isn't unusual at all. @roytam1 just happened to release FF45 updates three weeks in a row (8/24, 8/31, and 9/7) but one or two releases of FF45 per month has been more typical.
  7. Mathwiz
    Maybe M$ will do like some old hotel buildings and just skip from Windows 12 to 14. Or they could just go "back to the future" and start using the year of release as the version number, as I suggested for Firefox. Ain't it the truth?
  8. Mathwiz
    Surprised they didn't call it the iPhone XI
  9. Mathwiz
    Wouldn't surprise me a bit. I remember when DECT came to the USA, the American version was numbered DECT 6.0 . Was there a DECT 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0? Of course not - it's just that the then-prevalent cordless telephone technology used the 5.8 GHz band, and they wanted a version number greater than 5.8 so folks wouldn't think it was "worse" than the old 5.8 GHz phones! And of course, there's Micro$oft jumping from Windows 8 to 8.1 to 10, skipping 9 because some marketing genius thought the version right before "10" wouldn't sell (and Apple following suit with the iPhone going from 8 to "X") - and I rather suspect both are afraid to release a version 11 of their various products, so we'll be stuck with Windows 10 and iPhone X[insert random letters here to imply additional "coolness"] for quite a while. But it would've been easier to just number FF versions by the year (as with Windows 95, 98, & 2000). The next release would just be Firefox 2020. Let Google beat that!
  10. Mathwiz
    Slightly OT, since XP/Vista users have no hope of running FF Quantum, but still seems worth mentioning here: And I have to wonder: is this really necessary? I mean, security updates I dig, but 13 new FF versions a year? That's 13 chances to mess around with the UI, break web sites, etc. Of course, compared to the NM 28/Serpent 52 release cycle we're used to here (nearly every week), 13 updates/year seems downright relaxed; so I guess it just depends on your perspective.
  11. Mathwiz
    Just keep in mind that the UOC Patch is actually JavaScript - but it's pretty simple JavaScript, so maybe (just maybe) it'll run without outputting SSE2 instructions....
  12. Mathwiz
    Good work, but keep in mind UXP's JavaScript compiler will still output SSE2 code, so JavaScript will often foil your SSE-only version of Serpent.
  13. Mathwiz
    The 2nd post was not only spam; it was also deceptive: the link claiming to go to 123[dot]hp[dot]com actually goes to [...]! @dencorso, could you please remove the offending post (or at least "neuter" the deceptive link)? Thanks!
  14. Mathwiz
    Thanks; I'll make the appropriate updates to myuseragents.js (posted on page 8) and re-upload it. I'll also change the OS version on the github*.com overrides from 6.0 (Vista) to 6.1 (Win 7). I doubt Github even looks at the OS version, but just in case they decide to start someday.... In fact I should probably bump the OS version on most of these to 6.3 (Win 8.1) soon; due to Win 7's impending EoS it's likely that some sites will start complaining about 6.1 next year. (BTW, changing the OS version in the UA won't fool every Web site; it's possible to get the true OS version with JavaScript, unless you run the browser itself with a utility that spoofs the OS. Hopefully, though, most sites that look at the OS version don't go any deeper than the UA.)
  15. Mathwiz
    Yeah, it was a Win 7 post, but I suspect @glnz posted it here because the folks who came up with the POSReady hack for XP are here. There's some activity in the Win 7 forum but it's not nearly as active as this one. I don't even check it much, even though I use Win 7! AFAIK there isn't a "Vista Embedded;" Vista users are manually installing Server 2008 patches. But I don't think anyone has yet discovered a way to fool WU into thinking a Win 7 system is Win 7 Embedded, so 7 users may be stuck doing the same thing.
  16. Mathwiz
    @mixit might be able to fix it; the thing is, it's now clear that Instagram will eventually change something else and break it again. Instagram users need something more permanent. Besides Serpent 52 and New Moon 28 (and probably Chrome), Mozilla's recently-finalized SeaMonkey 2.49.5 is known to work with Instagram on XP, so evidently, Mozilla eventually figured it out; but as you may have read on the @roytam1 browser thread, SeaMonkey requires either Adobe Primetime or some minor "surgery" to play .mp4 videos on XP. (Roytam has already performed the needed surgery on Serpent and New Moon.)
  17. Mathwiz
    Confirmed. Fails on both FF 52.9.1 and Serpent 55. Looks just like before. Works in Serpent 52 (just like before). Instagram probably changed their styling in some way that broke @mixit's fix.
  18. Mathwiz
    The situation with Serpent 55 and 52 resembles the situation with SeaMonkey and BNav. Of each pair, the former browsers are generally better, but are no longer actively maintained by their original creators. With Serpent 55 (and a few other browsers in the same situation, such as FF 45 ESR), @roytam1 does what he can, importing fixes from ArcticFox and other sources to keep them as up-to-date as practical. But there are no weekly updates coming from "upstream;" that's why updates to these browsers occur irregularly. I too happen to prefer Serpent 55; for me the main difference is slightly better support of WebExtension-style add-ons, particularly the Multi-Account Containers add-on. I don't mind getting less frequent updates in exchange.
  19. Mathwiz
    Yes, BNav is a very lightweight browser, even lighter than NM 28; but it's based on the same UXP platform so it will continue to benefit from MCP's and @roytam1's attention. At this very moment, I like SM better, but version 2.49 is at EOL; according to the SeaMonkey Project web site, there will be no 2.49.6. (Unless of course @roytam1 picks it up ). And newer versions won't run on XP. Well, don't feel too bad; @mixit didn't mention that pref in the Primetime thread either. (Probably because, in FF and Serpent, it's there and set to true by default.) BTW; I've been meaning to ask about Widevine. It seems to take considerable work to support a new Widevine version every time Google puts one out. I've heard that MCP is working on making Basilisk work with 1.4.10 but it's been a few months and I've heard nothing. Any news? (Of course, 1.4.9 and up won't run on XP anyway, but I also have Win 7....)
  20. Mathwiz
    Yes. Second instruction doesn't apply to "stock" SM, but if you replace SM's av .dll's with @roytam1's modded ones, it probably does. So to be safe, I set both media.wmf.enabled and media.ffvpx.enabled to false for testing. With those settings, it appears SM works the same on Win 7 as on XP. Despite appearances, Primetime does work, but for whatever reason, it just won't appear in the list of plug-ins!
  21. Mathwiz
    Well, I did it the old-fashioned way: closed the browser and copied the "network.proxy" settings from my Serpent prefs.js to my BNav prefs.js using Wordpad Not proud of it, but it worked; I was able to get to Instagram. FoxyProxy is fine, of course; just a bit more elaborate than what I needed. It lets you route different URLs to different proxies based on pattern matching. The built-in support requires a .pac file to do that. RT has one other add-on in the boc-uxp/ folder: good ol' uBO. Latest legacy version.
  22. Mathwiz
    Specifically, the DevEd Theme GUI breakages are due to: [Basilisk] Remove Dev Edition theme. Like you, I also happen to like the Dev Edition Theme over the default Australis one The man has no imagination. At least the F12 key still works.... And the DevEd Theme isn't limited to developers! I'd think lots of folks are like us and prefer it even for day-to-day use. Edit: I guess it does fit with his philosophy though: make the browser itself as minimal as possible and move everything else to add-ons. Except, by that logic MCP should have put the removed theme at addons.basilisk-browser.org. Needless to say, they didn't. Would you please? It's just a theme, for crying out loud....
  23. Mathwiz
    Glad you got SM working. The same thing happened to me: I installed Primetime, but it won't show up in the plug-ins list, but it seems to work anyway. BNav, of course doesn't need Primetime since it has @roytam1's modded .dll's. Which is good, because AFAICS, Primetime will not install in BNav. If you install Primetime and set media.ffvpx.enabled to "false," Instagram videos will still play in Serpent and SM via Primetime, but won't play in BNav even if you install Primetime and create all the same prefs as in SM. BTW, I find BNav's Edit / Preferences dialogs to be woefully inadequate compared to SM. There's no way to set proxy preferences; all the "advanced" dialogs are missing! I had to copy my proxy prefs from SM to BNav manually just to test Instagram in BNav here at work.
  24. Mathwiz
    True; this was just for testing. I wanted to see if I could get it to install, but I couldn't. I've since tried on XP (where either it or @roytam1's modded .DLLs are actually needed) but I'm running into the same problem. Edit: OK, just for kicks, I just tried your Instagram video without copying over modded .DLLs and it ... worked? Yet it's not showing the Primetime plug-in on about:addons/Plug-ins.... Now I'm starting to question my sanity. Edit 2: OK, it's definitely using Primetime to play the video. If I rename the "17" folder, it doesn't play; if I rename it back to "17" (and reinstall the media.gmp-eme-adobe.version pref and set it to 17) it works again! So the problem isn't that Primetime won't run; apparently it works just fine! The problem is simply that it won't show up in about:addons!
  25. Mathwiz
    So, I installed SM 2.49.5 on my Win 7 system at home for testing, and try as I might, I could not get the Adobe Primetime CDM to install! I have no idea what's wrong. All the prefs are there; the "17" subdirectory is there, but it just won't show up in about:addons/Plug-ins. At one point it even deleted some of the prefs and the "17" subdirectory! I restored it again and flagged the files read-only, and it hasn't deleted them again, but it still won't show up. Primetime works fine in Serpent on the same system. I know it should work with SM too since I see it in the screen shots above. So, I fell back to method 2, which works fine. The Instagram test video plays just fine. But this has me baffled. I'll try again on my XP VM tomorrow and see if my luck is any better there.
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