I second this. FlashBlock is INCREDIBLY useful extension, perhaps the single most useful extension for Firefox that there is (for the average user, who doesn't need web dev toolbar, dom inspector, or TBP).
Almost all flash is useless and highly annoying ads, or now tracking stuff. Its so easy to just click the giant Play button if you really want to see one particular flash, such as a flash based game or movie, and you can whitelist sites you trust and visit often too.
I don't see as much annoying Java, but Java applets should be included in Flashblock sometime as well, since they are typically as useless as Flash.
I never said they warranted calling SE and ME new operating systems. But they exist as they are, and users have them, so I need to be aware of their differences. Use TransparentBlt in a constant WM_PAINT handler and your application will eventually freeze and fail to redraw until it crashes, under 98 and SE, but not under ME or 2000+. Its not the applications fault either, its the OS for leaking resources in a system DLL.
If I want to call the common dialog for open or save as, and I want it to appear as the user expects under new OSes, I need to know when to use sizeof(OPENFILENAME) and when to stick in OPENFILENAME_SIZE_VERSION_400 instead. By default, you will get the old 95/98 style dialog even under 2000 and XP, which would look bad to the users. Its not like you get the source code to GetOpenFileName()/GetSaveFileName() to change these things.
Another thing is DirectX, which while it is upgradable, there are some things (working with DirectShow filters for certain types of movies) that require 7.1 or higher, which ME happens to come with out of the box. 98(5.0) or SE(6.1a) require DirectX upgrades for applications using these features.
Additionally, 98 comes with IE4, which is incredibly horrible, and SE comes with IE5, which is also very bad at rendering. ME comes with IE5.5, which is actually a lot closer to IE6 than it is to IE5, so if you want to use any about of standard html in embeded browesrs, I set the requirements for my applications to require IE5.5+. Just another thing 98/SE users would have to upgrade that ME users don't have to worry about.
Its all really useless trivial points though, because many of the REALLY cool APIs only exist in 2000 and XP, such as many of the alpha blending and translucency related stuff. The Windows world would be a much better place if everybody moved to Windows 2000 or higher about now, which is a good majority anyways already.
As a programmer, those aren't particularly meaningful differences. You don't exactly get anything related to DOS like that in Windows 2000 or XP, and you still get the file protection just like ME has. The file protection is a good thing, and if you are trying to create an installer for a program that thinks it needs to overwrite a file that the file protection won't allow, you are most likely doing something wrong and distributing files you shouldn't be.
As a programmer, I see a lot of differences. ME fixed the resource leak in msimg32.dll finally that exists in 98 and 98SE both with no available patches. ME has the explorer extended style common dialog for open/save as with the toolbar on the left. 98SE and ME both support WDM while 98 does not. ME comes with the Trebuchet font that 98 and 98SE do not.
I've seen video footage on something like discovery or PBS once about regular mail and how these machines can open letters and look inside without destroying the paper or glue, as long as it is shut again within a fraction of a second it seems. They opened them at what seemed to be like the regular place you lick and glue shut on a normal envelope. I don't think they where really reading the letters or contents, but they were able to sniff for certain chemicals and flag those letters for closer inspection.
According to Diskeeper, which defrags the MFT as well as swap and registry hives, during a reboot. After one reboot and defrag session lasting several hours, it reported the MFT was down to 36,000 fragments. This is a 120G drive with about 30G free and about 150,000 files. After a few more reboots and defrags, the MFT was down to 3 fragments. I had run the Windows 2000 default defragger quite often before this, and most of the actual files were defragmented just fine, but there was tons of green slivers in the display there before I ran Diskeeper, and only a few chunks of solid green afterwards. I got rid of diskeeper because I didn't like it running in the background all the time, but its reboot defrag process was pretty good.
What most people are missing here, is that if the bird moves his head, or is flying, then the object is moving in relation to the birds eye. That is the key here. A bird can choose to sit still and watch the world fade away while a human cannot realisticly control the eye and neck/head muscle jittering. Robins frequently will stand perfectly still watching the world fade away until they see only a worm move somewhere, then they hop towards it and stand still again, because in the process of moving, the world has reappeared as well, making it more difficult to see the worm. Its not that birds (or a t-rex we guess) can't see objects that don't move, its that they don't perceive static objects as threats, and if they stand still they only see moving objects. While it may seem somewhat of an advantage (to the robin getting the worm) its really the result of a less evolved vision system.
Birds too, I believe, cannot see things that do not move, and birds are believed to be whats left of dinosours as they evolved to today. I've read that if it were possible for a human to control the natural eye jitteriness and just focus absolutely still, the image you see would fade away to nothing. The eye needs constant movement to be able to keep updating what you are seeing.
Actually now Windows 2000 and Windows XP forces programmers to store user data in either the Application Data folder or HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry key, instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or the applications own directory, if you expect the program to be able to run under a limited user account. What this means is that if you install a program as User A, then run it as User B (and C, D, E, etc) then go uninstall the program as User A, the uninstaller CANNOT possibly in any way access user B's HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry area, and data is left behind. It is now standard and recommended practice according to Microsoft to orphan user specific data that the uninstaller cannot reach. Only HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE keys are deleted at uninstall time. Many Microsoft programs as well as 3rd party programs will do this exact thing.
Super special magic fix, just paste this into a.reg file and run it!
REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu rrentVersion\Uninstall\Mozilla Firefox (1.0.1)]
Of course, I'm sure your mom who shouldn't be using the registry is REALLLLLY worried about two entries in a control panel dialog she doesn't know exists either.
Add/Remove programs is hardly a list of installed programs. Its just a list generated from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall Nothing really magical going on there. Two entries for firefox doesn't mean you have two copies of firefox installed. Delete the registry key if you really care that much? Most people are too busy USING their computer to worry about what little glitches are in a dialog in control panel that they never use.
Who sits and looks at add/remove programs all day? You only go there if you plan on removing something, which is pretty rare. Besides, if you REALLY care, how hard is it to delete a single registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall ? Sure the installer could do that for you, or it could just re-use the existing key like it should, but it really is hardly worth caring about at all.
If you REALLY care about duplicate entries in add/remove programs (it really doesn't matter if they are there), then just go delete the registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall
I know monochrome is pretty old, but I assume this means 16 color, 256 color, or 24bit. There is also a 32bit format used in Windows XP and higher, which supports an alpha channel as a replacement for the AND-mask. I guess it only supports 16x16, 32x32, and 48x48 sizes? Those are pretty common, but icons are valid at any combination of sizes 1 to 255. Thats at least 325,125 valid image combinations so far.
Thats not true. ICO files have 2 channels per image (an XOR mask and an AND mask) plus other data different from BMP, such as the number of sizes and colors in the.ICO file.
Re:Many high-end web-cams have day/night and pan/t
on
Infrared Webcam HOWTO
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· Score: 1
Where can I get such a light, and such a filter? Hopefully for a reasonable ($100 total) price?
Re:Many high-end web-cams have day/night and pan/t
on
Infrared Webcam HOWTO
·
· Score: 1
Wow, but the important part, and hard part to get in most cases, is a good IR lightsource that can illuminate a big enough area, particularly if you want to use a cam like this for security. Look at these prices though! http://www.nuspectra.com/SearchResult.aspx?Categor yID=21
SBC that bad, Really? SBC offered 6.0/608 ADSL for $44/month over a year ago. I've had it for over a year now, virtually no down time, free modem/router/wireless thing, free install. I've got people on the 1.5/384 plan when it was 26.95/month and its down to 19.95/month now, with no long distance required. Just a basic phone line (which sucks, but hey, cable requires basic TV around here, which is the $40/month package, not the $13/month locals-only cable packet).
I can't think of any legitimate use for opening more then one window at once, or even opening a window while changing the current location, and I would be all for only allowing 1 window or location change per click, even if the content is not the last choice and firefox only sent you to an ad, it would be suicidal for websites to do that, and they would have to change their model if they want people to use their site.
I use TBP and have the option set: Open these requested JavaScript popups in tabs: [All Popups] So absolutely any popup that could possibly ever open, is going to be in a new tab anyways. While I have never seen a popup that isn't legit pop up, the example javascript somebody else posted about having links be replaced with a javascript function that calls a few window.open's then sets location.href does in fact open several tabs when you click a link. Other then click action based popups, I don't see any other way popups appear yet, and I don't see why a future patch can't deny all but the final call to window.open or location.href in a function. A click never needs to open more then one window or change the location more than once. location.href setting should override window.open's of course.
All I see is a little icon in the status bar. I don't know if something changed in the 1.0+ nightly I have, or people are just making this crap up. I havn't seen a popup in a loooong time.
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I second this. FlashBlock is INCREDIBLY useful extension, perhaps the single most useful extension for Firefox that there is (for the average user, who doesn't need web dev toolbar, dom inspector, or TBP).
Almost all flash is useless and highly annoying ads, or now tracking stuff. Its so easy to just click the giant Play button if you really want to see one particular flash, such as a flash based game or movie, and you can whitelist sites you trust and visit often too.
I don't see as much annoying Java, but Java applets should be included in Flashblock sometime as well, since they are typically as useless as Flash.
I never said they warranted calling SE and ME new operating systems. But they exist as they are, and users have them, so I need to be aware of their differences. Use TransparentBlt in a constant WM_PAINT handler and your application will eventually freeze and fail to redraw until it crashes, under 98 and SE, but not under ME or 2000+. Its not the applications fault either, its the OS for leaking resources in a system DLL.
If I want to call the common dialog for open or save as, and I want it to appear as the user expects under new OSes, I need to know when to use sizeof(OPENFILENAME) and when to stick in OPENFILENAME_SIZE_VERSION_400 instead. By default, you will get the old 95/98 style dialog even under 2000 and XP, which would look bad to the users. Its not like you get the source code to GetOpenFileName()/GetSaveFileName() to change these things.
Another thing is DirectX, which while it is upgradable, there are some things (working with DirectShow filters for certain types of movies) that require 7.1 or higher, which ME happens to come with out of the box. 98(5.0) or SE(6.1a) require DirectX upgrades for applications using these features.
Additionally, 98 comes with IE4, which is incredibly horrible, and SE comes with IE5, which is also very bad at rendering. ME comes with IE5.5, which is actually a lot closer to IE6 than it is to IE5, so if you want to use any about of standard html in embeded browesrs, I set the requirements for my applications to require IE5.5+. Just another thing 98/SE users would have to upgrade that ME users don't have to worry about.
Its all really useless trivial points though, because many of the REALLY cool APIs only exist in 2000 and XP, such as many of the alpha blending and translucency related stuff. The Windows world would be a much better place if everybody moved to Windows 2000 or higher about now, which is a good majority anyways already.
As a programmer, those aren't particularly meaningful differences. You don't exactly get anything related to DOS like that in Windows 2000 or XP, and you still get the file protection just like ME has. The file protection is a good thing, and if you are trying to create an installer for a program that thinks it needs to overwrite a file that the file protection won't allow, you are most likely doing something wrong and distributing files you shouldn't be.
As a programmer, I see a lot of differences. ME fixed the resource leak in msimg32.dll finally that exists in 98 and 98SE both with no available patches. ME has the explorer extended style common dialog for open/save as with the toolbar on the left. 98SE and ME both support WDM while 98 does not. ME comes with the Trebuchet font that 98 and 98SE do not.
I've seen video footage on something like discovery or PBS once about regular mail and how these machines can open letters and look inside without destroying the paper or glue, as long as it is shut again within a fraction of a second it seems. They opened them at what seemed to be like the regular place you lick and glue shut on a normal envelope.
I don't think they where really reading the letters or contents, but they were able to sniff for certain chemicals and flag those letters for closer inspection.
According to Diskeeper, which defrags the MFT as well as swap and registry hives, during a reboot. After one reboot and defrag session lasting several hours, it reported the MFT was down to 36,000 fragments. This is a 120G drive with about 30G free and about 150,000 files. After a few more reboots and defrags, the MFT was down to 3 fragments.
I had run the Windows 2000 default defragger quite often before this, and most of the actual files were defragmented just fine, but there was tons of green slivers in the display there before I ran Diskeeper, and only a few chunks of solid green afterwards. I got rid of diskeeper because I didn't like it running in the background all the time, but its reboot defrag process was pretty good.
PageDefrag didn't defrag my MFT though, which can get quite fragmented (mine was in 50,000+ fragments for some reason)
What most people are missing here, is that if the bird moves his head, or is flying, then the object is moving in relation to the birds eye. That is the key here. A bird can choose to sit still and watch the world fade away while a human cannot realisticly control the eye and neck/head muscle jittering. Robins frequently will stand perfectly still watching the world fade away until they see only a worm move somewhere, then they hop towards it and stand still again, because in the process of moving, the world has reappeared as well, making it more difficult to see the worm.
Its not that birds (or a t-rex we guess) can't see objects that don't move, its that they don't perceive static objects as threats, and if they stand still they only see moving objects. While it may seem somewhat of an advantage (to the robin getting the worm) its really the result of a less evolved vision system.
Birds too, I believe, cannot see things that do not move, and birds are believed to be whats left of dinosours as they evolved to today.
I've read that if it were possible for a human to control the natural eye jitteriness and just focus absolutely still, the image you see would fade away to nothing. The eye needs constant movement to be able to keep updating what you are seeing.
Actually now Windows 2000 and Windows XP forces programmers to store user data in either the Application Data folder or HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry key, instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or the applications own directory, if you expect the program to be able to run under a limited user account. What this means is that if you install a program as User A, then run it as User B (and C, D, E, etc) then go uninstall the program as User A, the uninstaller CANNOT possibly in any way access user B's HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry area, and data is left behind.
It is now standard and recommended practice according to Microsoft to orphan user specific data that the uninstaller cannot reach. Only HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE keys are deleted at uninstall time. Many Microsoft programs as well as 3rd party programs will do this exact thing.
Super special magic fix, just paste this into a
REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
Of course, I'm sure your mom who shouldn't be using the registry is REALLLLLY worried about two entries in a control panel dialog she doesn't know exists either.
Add/Remove programs is hardly a list of installed programs. Its just a list generated from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall
Nothing really magical going on there. Two entries for firefox doesn't mean you have two copies of firefox installed. Delete the registry key if you really care that much? Most people are too busy USING their computer to worry about what little glitches are in a dialog in control panel that they never use.
Who sits and looks at add/remove programs all day? You only go there if you plan on removing something, which is pretty rare. Besides, if you REALLY care, how hard is it to delete a single registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall ? Sure the installer could do that for you, or it could just re-use the existing key like it should, but it really is hardly worth caring about at all.
If you REALLY care about duplicate entries in add/remove programs (it really doesn't matter if they are there), then just go delete the registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall
"nine valid images" ?
I know monochrome is pretty old, but I assume this means 16 color, 256 color, or 24bit. There is also a 32bit format used in Windows XP and higher, which supports an alpha channel as a replacement for the AND-mask. I guess it only supports 16x16, 32x32, and 48x48 sizes? Those are pretty common, but icons are valid at any combination of sizes 1 to 255.
Thats at least 325,125 valid image combinations so far.
http://ark42.com/freeimage/alphahlp.exe is a nice little free command line utility that can:
Thats not true. ICO files have 2 channels per image (an XOR mask and an AND mask) plus other data different from BMP, such as the number of sizes and colors in the
Where can I get such a light, and such a filter? Hopefully for a reasonable ($100 total) price?
Wow, but the important part, and hard part to get in most cases, is a good IR lightsource that can illuminate a big enough area, particularly if you want to use a cam like this for security.
Look at these prices though! http://www.nuspectra.com/SearchResult.aspx?Catego
As of March 1, you do not need the all-distance plan anymore. The deal might only be good until March 31 though.
SBC that bad, Really? SBC offered 6.0/608 ADSL for $44/month over a year ago. I've had it for over a year now, virtually no down time, free modem/router/wireless thing, free install. I've got people on the 1.5/384 plan when it was 26.95/month and its down to 19.95/month now, with no long distance required. Just a basic phone line (which sucks, but hey, cable requires basic TV around here, which is the $40/month package, not the $13/month locals-only cable packet).
I can't think of any legitimate use for opening more then one window at once, or even opening a window while changing the current location, and I would be all for only allowing 1 window or location change per click, even if the content is not the last choice and firefox only sent you to an ad, it would be suicidal for websites to do that, and they would have to change their model if they want people to use their site.
I use TBP and have the option set:
Open these requested JavaScript popups in tabs: [All Popups]
So absolutely any popup that could possibly ever open, is going to be in a new tab anyways.
While I have never seen a popup that isn't legit pop up, the example javascript somebody else posted about having links be replaced with a javascript function that calls a few window.open's then sets location.href does in fact open several tabs when you click a link.
Other then click action based popups, I don't see any other way popups appear yet, and I don't see why a future patch can't deny all but the final call to window.open or location.href in a function. A click never needs to open more then one window or change the location more than once. location.href setting should override window.open's of course.
All I see is a little icon in the status bar. I don't know if something changed in the 1.0+ nightly I have, or people are just making this crap up. I havn't seen a popup in a loooong time.
Basically, just make sure not to get a texas-censored version of whatever you get.