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UCyborg

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Posts posted by UCyborg

  1. 6 hours ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

    A huge difference would exist if only you are immortal and other mortals.
    It would be a sad life because you would see loved ones around you grow old and die.

    Indeed, it already happens. I'm the youngest in my family, yay...

    This bit reminded me of Doctor Who series, where protagonist is the Time Lord, he travels with human companions. Time Lords live for a long time, several centuries at least. I remember there was a scene about this issue of losing people.

  2. That said, perhaps this thread should be left alone until something develops? Or at least the title should have been reworded to indicate extended kernel for Windows 8.1 is not actually a thing yet? Just my two cents.

    • Upvote 2
  3. Agreed, things can get out-of-hand easily as it is with official files, which guys at MS have much easier time modifying than someone poking around in disassembler. I've seen some unexplainable oddities throughout various Windows versions with updates, no updates, keeping it clean by only ever installing only programs deemed essential that I'd never uninstall, keeping it a bit less clean and everything in between.

    Whether it was due to bizarre hard-to-repro bugs that maybe could have been avoided by just deep freezing Windows partition or maybe hardware glitching while being otherwise undetectable I'll never know, but I do know I don't want to add more risk factors by applying such modifications. I only ever tried some such mods as Sunday curiosity safely within the constraints of a virtual machine, never on a production system.

    Yeah, fiddly. Plus, in a rapidly changing software world, such development seems like a waste of time, but it's not my time and if that's what they want to do...

    • Like 1
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  4. Yay, bugs:

    spacer.png

    If there's something I learned working in IT, it's that things never work as expected. It's an endless cycle of trying to get basics to work right, then there's constant want of new features while the basics still don't work and then there are regressions when either implementing or fixing older flaws...rinse and repeat.

    Windows...I ran them all from 95 to 10, except ME. Still can't say I have a favorite in 2023.

    But I've grown to accept the flaws so they don't get to me as much as they used to.

    Some relatable reading:

    https://www.bruceb.com/2016/05/personal-computers-are-just-too-hard-to-use-and-it-isnt-your-fault/

    https://www.bruceb.com/2019/01/its-not-just-your-computer-everything-is-too-hard-to-use-and-its-not-your-fault/

    • Like 1
  5. Curse, especially in this toxic and violent society. And you'd have to trick yourself to prevent things from getting old, which can be a problem as it is. Working the same old boring job forever? Living with anhedonia forever? Etc etc.

    That said, the process of getting to the other side...nobody knows how it'll go...nobody comes back to tell the tale.

    https://time.com/6246864/reverse-aging-scientists-discover-milestone/

  6. Did things ever make sense?

    On 6/12/2011 at 12:18 PM, Ludwig Von Cookie Koopa said:

    I just wish that all electricity would go away and we would go back to wind-up devices and telegraph machines.

    Ugh, it would be awful if that happened, due to how dependency on electricity developed, everything would collapse and since people are insane as it is...

    • Like 1
  7. I figured that part would be open for interpretation and exemptions.

    Funniest thing IMHO, a bunch of Windows releases were considered crap when new, but then suddenly became great with passage of time.

    In that light, it also seems unfair to consider early adapters brainwashed sheep (eg. this thread gives such vibes - https://msfn.org/board/topic/182631-why-do-so-many-people-say-staying-on-older-versions-of-windows-is-stupid/). I'm sure if the world still stands by 2040 and computing in current form will still be relevant by then, Windows 10 extended kernel will be all the rage.:buehehe: Even today, it's pretty much like XP of current era and 8.1 seems like Win2000. :)

    • Upvote 2
  8. This fits in any "extended kernel" thread, but since I happened to notice it was brought up here and due to all "extended kernel" talk...

    Projects like ReactOS and WINE have to follow some rules, like relying only on published documentation and only clean-room reverse-engineering may be done. Has any "extended kernel" followed such rules? The whole concept of "extended kernel" seems to be in direct violation of MS's EULA. An excerpt from Vista/7 EULA:

    Quote

     SCOPE OF LICENSE.  The software is licensed, not sold.  This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software.  Microsoft reserves all other rights.  Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement.  In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.  For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not

    • work around any technical limitations in the software;
    • reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
    • use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
    • make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
    • publish the software for others to copy;
    • rent, lease or lend the software; or
    • use the software for commercial software hosting services.

    Revised in 8.x:

    Quote

    Are there things I’m not allowed to do with the software? Yes. Because the software is licensed, not sold, Microsoft reserves all rights (such as rights under intellectual property laws) not expressly granted in this agreement. In particular, this license does not give you any right to, and you may not: use or virtualize features of the software separately; publish, copy (other than the permitted backup copy), rent, lease, or lend the software; transfer the software (except as permitted by this agreement); attempt to circumvent technical protection measures in the software, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, except if the laws where you live permit this even when our agreement does not. In that case, you may do only what your law allows. When using Internet-based features or Microsoft Family Safety, you may not use those features in any way that could interfere with anyone else’s use of them, or to try to gain access to any service, data, account, or network, in an unauthorized manner.

    10 version from 2015:

    Quote

    Restrictions. The manufacturer or installer and Microsoft reserve all rights (such as rights under intellectual property laws) not expressly granted in this agreement. For example, this license does not give you any right to, and you may not:
    (i)    use or virtualize features of the software separately;
    (ii)    publish, copy (other than the permitted backup copy), rent, lease, or lend the software;
    (iii)    transfer the software (except as permitted by this agreement);
    (iv)    work around any technical restrictions or limitations in the software;
    (v)    use the software as server software, for commercial hosting, make the software available for simultaneous use by multiple users over a network, install the software on a server and allow users to access it remotely, or install the software on a device for use only by remote users;
    (vi)    reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, or attempt to do so, except and only to the extent that the foregoing restriction is permitted by applicable law or by licensing terms governing the use of open-source components that may be included with the software; and
    (vii)    when using Internet-based features you may not use those features in any way that could interfere with anyone else’s use of them, or to try to gain access to or use any service, data, account, or network, in an unauthorized manner.

    And for some reason, "extended kernels" may be discussed, but activation bypasses may not be? Sorry, doesn't compute here.

    • Upvote 4
  9. I only started using Win10 seriously with version 1809, though I ended up with 20H2 on home desktop, mostly 'cause I was curious about 1909, then installed it, then later I got curious again about 20H2, now I'm just holding position here. Besides MS continuing to make questionable changes that are either difficult or impossible to undo, just overall less time that I'm willing to spend messing with Windows.

    I suppose there were the least surprises with 1809, after it got some patches. Interestingly, a bit off-topic, but another MS product from the time, SQL Server 2019, is supposedly very popular version of SQL Server these days and it will also be supported for the longer period.

    I ended up turning off a bunch of scheduled tasks, so things don't get fired left and right, reducing disk activity. Bells and whistles should still be functional.

    Still using plain HDD, interestingly, the one data disk being written to the least was the one that ended up developing few bad sectors there and there while the other two disks are OK for now. SuperFetch behavior seems to be a lot like Vista's, I don't remember Windows 7 preloading as much data. Loading user profile takes several seconds though, significantly slower compared to previous versions, all seems good when things settle.

    • Like 1
  10. There are instructions out there how to patch latest Flash to disable EOL restriction. I was the first to bring it up on MSFN. :P Some even opt to use Flash version that continued to be developed for Chinese market (only security fixes I guess) after it was EOL for the rest of the world, but I didn't follow that.

    In my most recent experience, NPAPI version for Mozilla-based browsers and other browsers implementing NPAPI was most performant, the worst was ActiveX in Internet Explorer, though for some reason it was much better in the pre-Chromium Edge, a bit better than NPAPI even.

    Of course, standalone version keeps it simple by not being tied to the web browser's plugin architecture.

    • Like 1
    • Upvote 1
  11. I see nothing shocking regarding native Web Components as far as YouTube load speed is concerned, it's about as fast as with Firefox 42 user agent that gives polyfill. Trying out official Pale Moon 32.0.1b3, it's actually a bit slower, comparing 32-bit vs 64-bit though since official beta is only 64-bit. 64-bit Pale Moon was always slower on my PC.

    Not related to current developments, but I suspect we're still far away from decent scores on Speedometer 2.0.

    • Like 2
  12. 23 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

    edit - at least none of my Win10 systems will screen-cap if HA is enabled

    Yeah, that's not normal I think. On my end, Prt Scr works even with fullscreen D3D (at least D3D8 and later) stuff, which is expected since MS tweaked their compositor and related stuff (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/).

    D3D8 was tried with d3d8.dll from an older Win10 build 17134 with "fullscreen maximized windowed mode" disabled - it takes tweaking internal variable inside the file, the one modified by exported function Direct3D8EnableMaximizedWindowedModeShim, the variable must be set to 0.

    It's interesting they deleted the code for the old behavior from D3D8...I think maximized windowed mode is just one part of the equation for making old stuff more compatible with compositor, historically, it caused massive performance degradation in DirectDraw based applications/games in Windows 8, which was fixed in Windows 10, but this mode may still show window borders of fullscreen games that don't tweak their window styles because it wasn't really expected to be done by devs, was supposed to be handled internally, so you could create normal window with borders and toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode via D3D and not worry about window styles - workings of fullscreen mode made them disappear anyway...until they came up with "fullscreen maximized windowed mode".

    But what we're seeing with more performant alt-tabbing and ability to PrtScr fullscreen stuff etc. - that's on their tweaks in other places it seems, not this "fullscreen maximized windowed mode" as exposed by ddraw.dll, d3d8.dll and maybe d3d9.dll. Though going from my memory, I think intro videos in GTA III era games don't work if it's forced-off for DirectDraw, so yeah, might be done just for compatibility. Easier to just have this mode always enabled rather than putting entries in the compatibility database only for games that need them, since that's a lot of work and needs feedback from customers, but only enterprise customers matter to MS and folks playing old games have community developed solutions for such issues.

    Anyway, regarding videos in the browser, they work quite well on my end in Firefox in software mode. Unknown if Chromium still has massive performance hit with videos in software mode.

    https://i.imgur.com/NGJJCM3.png (the screen on the right has graphics info indicating software mode is enabled - WebRender (Software))

    But there's a bit of slowness in other aspects, immediately apparent with animations on web pages.

    It also seems Mozilla did some changes/fixes between Firefox 96 and 110 regarding notifications. Enabling alerts.useSystemBackend in about:config to use OS' notification system no longer causes notifications to just disappear after few seconds.

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  13. It depends on the license, open-source software may still have a license with certain restrictions, hence all the drama in the past with Mozilla-based browsers discussed on the forum.

    I don't know the specifics/quirks in this case, lawyers are better address for those. The less you need lawyers in life, the better...

  14. Yeah, Chromium can't use GPU for rendering on XP. Mozilla-based browsers may be able to use Direct3D 9, but get this, it's rarely mentioned, Direct3D 9 on XP DOES NOT WORK WELL ACROSS MULTIPLE MONITORS...well, it only does with A LOT OF LAG, the performance is only as it should be (within drivers'/OS capabilities) as long as the browser window is entirely on the primary monitor. Talk about waste of good hardware!

    • Like 2
  15. Careful with Debian. It's thought by some that it's more suited to those that are sure they need Debian specifically. Debian is outdated by design, which is not necessarily a good thing.

    I'm experimenting with it on my laptop since it's sill quite familiar choice if one has been acquainted with another Debian derived distro and is looking for 32-bit one...and at the same time wonder if the reason for Firefox crashing when trying to make it use hardware accelerated video decoding capabilities on the GPU is due to GPU drivers / Mesa from 2020.

    • Upvote 2
  16. It's not easy to make the switch when you're accustomed to Windows way of doing things and specific software. I've been keeping Linux around for years, just not as the main desktop OS.

    I don't know about the future (if there is such a thing), Win10 currently suits me the best, pre-Win7 versions don't suit me at all, I have grudges about every Windows version I used though and Win11 is way too alien.

    • Upvote 2
  17. On 2/27/2023 at 7:16 PM, UCyborg said:

    Something technical, I can't see embedded images here originating from pbs.twimg.com on my new and shiny Firefox 110 installation.

    On 2/27/2023 at 7:46 PM, msfntor said:

    I do NOT have this problem, all images are here.

    22 hours ago, mina7601 said:

    Hello, here, on a fresh Firefox 110 profile, I can't see them either.

    Found the reason, they're blocked by built-in tracker blocking feature, but can still see them when clicking the link to them, By default, blocking only happens in "private" windows. Not new in this particular version.

    On 2/27/2023 at 8:57 PM, msfntor said:

    What is happening on this MSFN.... no activity on other topics....:puke:

    I'm not much of a talker, plus tired from working and composing posts may take me significant chunk of time. I don't know about others, maybe they don't want to talk about other things here, maybe they go elsewhere for other topics, maybe they don't want to talk about other things at all...who knows.

     

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/22/laibach-to-become-first-foreign-band-to-perform-in-kyiv-since-invasion

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/slovenia-band-laibach-concert-ukraine-canceled-amid-rift-97491115

    What the hell is Laibach all about? (it's in English)

    PS: Life is Life

    • Upvote 1
  18. Regarding Gmail, if I was reading correctly, access without OAuth2 is not possible anymore? If so, it seems to be enforced only for personal accounts. My corporate Gmail account still works with just classic username and password. At least I don't remember I had to change anything in the email client, I'll edit the post tomorrow after checking again to see if it's really the case.

    We have one application at the company that can send emails, but doesn't support OAuth2, they had to enable application password for it on Gmail side. It just generates unique password for application to use to authenticate with SMTP.

    • Upvote 2


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