Overview of Nokia phones offered by U.S. carriers (October 2012)

US web offers for new Nokia phones as of 10.10.2012.
The list is somewhat incomplete, and emphasis is added to phones that don't have Windows Phone in them (all Windows Phone versions, including 7.5, 7.8, and 8).
This list also reflects which carriers' websites first ask for location without offering their phones first. The carriers whose sites do that, are more likely to offer locked phones and with a fixed contract instead of selling them to someone who would want to use their phone with a different carrier.

This time I have also included MVNO-s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) that were featured in the respective Wikipedia navbox.

Near the end of the compilation it turned out that most carriers and MVNO-s did not carry Nokias, so if I will ever make a future compilation of who carries Nokias, these will get further emphasis beyound colour.

Legend:
* "Nokia not listed" means that the website is offering phones by brand name
* "No Nokia phones" means that the website either does not offer phones by brand name, or that Nokia phones were not available.

National

• T-Mobile:
  Nokia X2 (refurb)
  Nokia Lumia 710 (doesn't count)
  Nokia Lumia 810 (announced; doesn't count either)
  
  
• AT&T: Nokia Lumia 900 (doesn't count, and now also includes refurbished models)
  (Nokia not in the list of first four (primary) offered manufacturers)
• Verizon Wireless
  Basic phones: No Nokia
  Smartphones: Nokia is not even in a gray list
• Sprint: Personal/Business — No Nokia. (Sony Ericssson not included anymore)
  Wants zip code, but includes coverage maps.

Supra-Regional

• C-Spire: None (has Sony Ericsson)
• Cricket Wireless (subsidiary of Leap Wireless) — No coverage in the area.
  According to Wikipedia (as of 09.10.2012), Nokia is not mentioned, and the mycricket website does not feature Nokia phones.

MetroPCS (to be merged into T-Mobile) — Nokia is not in the listed brands
U.S. Cellular — Nokia is not in the listed brands

Minor-Regional/Regional

• Tried Alltel Wireless — service not available at "my" zip code (I used one of Au Sable Forks, NY)

Alaska Communications — Nokia is not in listed brands

Cellcom —
Nokia is listed, but no products shown
• Cellular One
  Locations: Montana, North-Western Wyoming, Texas (TX-10, TX-11), and Oklahoma (OK-5)

  cellonenation.com — Wants zip code celloneet.com (lands on cellonenation.com)— Wants zip code

  • cellular1.net (Yum! :-) (East Central Illinois, device availability varies by location) —

    Feature Phones:

    Nokia 2720

    
    

    Smartphones: Nokia not listed, but includes a bevy of Sony Ericsson phones.

    
    

    Texting phones:

    Nokia C3

  • cellularoneonline.com (Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico)

    All mobile phones:

    Nokia C1

    
    

    Smartphones: Nokia not listed.

    
    

    Hearing aid-compatible:

    Nokia 2720

    Nokia 6085

    Nokia 7020

    Nokia E5 (Aspect)

  • South Canaan Cellular (Wayne and Pike Counties, Pennsylvania/cellularonenepa.com) — No Nokia phones
  • Choice Wireless (Texas and Oklahoma, cellonetxok.com, models vary based on availability)
    Nokia 2760
    Nokia 5800
    Nokia 6061
    Nokia 6085
    Nokia E63
• Cincinnati Bell — Has landing page, but this can be run around. Nokia not listed.
• Element Mobile — No Nokia phones
• i Wireless (T-Mobile affiliate)
  Nokia listed, but no phones shown.
• Immix Wireless — No Nokia phones, but some Sony Ericsson phones.
• nTelos — Nokia not listed, but includes Sony Ericsson
• Revol Wireless — No Nokia phones
• southernLINC Wireless — No Nokia phones
• West Central Wireless (includes Five Star Wireless and Mid-Tex Cellular)
  Nokia 1661
  Nokia C1-01
  Nokia C3-00
  Nokia C6
  Nokia N8
• Indigo Wireless — No Nokia phones
• Viaero Wireless
  Nokia listed, but no phones shown. (Offers two Ericsson devices that are not phones)
• Long Lines Wireless
  Nokia listed, but no phones available.
• Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative (astac.net) — Still wants zip code.

MVNO-s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators)

• Virgin Mobile (Sprint) — Nokia not listed
• Boost Mobile (Sprint) - Nokia not listed
• Consumer Cellular (uses AT&T) - No Nokia phones
• Hawaiian Telcom (uses Sprint & Verizon) - No Nokia phones
• GreatCall (uses Verizon) - No Nokia phones
• Kajeet (uses Sprint) —
  
  Nokia listed, but no phones available.
• KDDI (uses Sprint) - No Nokia phones.
• Liberty Wireless (uses Sprint Nextel CDMA) - No Nokia phones
• MOSH Mobile (Indiana, uses Centennial Wireless, no international calling; website redirects to AT&T's site) —
  
  Current Nokia devices as of 28 January 2008 according to Wikipedia:

  Nokia 2610
  Nokia 6101
  Nokia 6085
• Movida Wireless (based in Florida, uses Sprint PCS) — No Nokia phones
• Page Plus Cellular (headquartered in Toledo, Ohio; uses Verizon) — No Nokia phones
• Ting (a no-frills operator launched in February 2012 by Tucows; uses Sprint CDMA, 3G, 4G WiMAX, and 4G LTE) — No Nokia phones
• Tracfone Wireless (subsidiary of Mexican América Móvil; uses Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) — No Nokia phones
  • Simple Mobile (headquartered in California, subsidiary of Tracfone Wireless, uses T-Mobile). Purchasing a phone requires going to affiliate website. —
    
    Nokia N100
  • Net10 (brand of TracFone Wireless; uses AT&T and T-Mobile). The e-store requires a zip-code. Availability varies by location —
    
    Nokia 1600
  • SafeLink Wireless — Wants zip code, area not supported.
  • Straight Talk (CDMA: Verizon or Sprint; GSM: T-Mobile or AT&T) — Shopping for a phone takes to a different domain, which wants zip code, with area supported. — No Nokia phones.
• TruPhone (international operator) —
  Only for businesses: Offers Nokia phone bundles, does not quote models or price on their website.
• Trumpet Mobile (headquartered in Dallas, Texas; CDMA) — No Nokia phones.
• NTT DoCoMo USA —
  Nokia 500

Free Software alternatives to Segoe UI

This post started first as a side note to a post about Free Software Trajan Pro alternatives.

I've found at least two free fonts possibly similar to the non-free Segoe UI: Iwona, Quercus.

N., 13.09.2012.
Another alternative to Segoe UI is the Ubuntu font family, which consists of
• Ubuntu,
• Ubuntu Condensed, and
• Ubuntu Monospace.

Note that fonts of the Ubuntu Font Family are governed under the Ubuntu Font License, which is not compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and not approved by OSI. Nevertheless, the Ubuntu Font License is copyleft and fairly permissive.

Nevertheless, Ubuntu Font Family fonts have been included into use with Google Docs, so it seems that they have already earned themselves quite a reputation.

Manipulating page styles with the new Greasemonkey

This article assumes that the reader knows some JavaScript and a fair share of CSS, and how to create userscripts for Greasemonkey.

The argument for using Greasemnkey is that it allows for a more straightforward implementation of user-created styles, which don't require remote storage, such as userscripts.org.

Well, as of recently, it became impossible to manipulate styles on pages with modern versions of Greasemonkey running within Firefox and SeaMonkey.

I suppose this might have happened during the transition from Firefox 12 to some newer version. Oddly, the version of SeaMonkey has always remained the same, so this should somehow have ruled out that issue. Then I began thinking of NoScript — which is about the only extension maintained well for both SeaMonkey and Firefox, and updatd accordingly — but I'm not going to point any fingers, just because I don't know what the real cause is.

So, the situation happened to me using SeaMonkey 2.5 (which I am not using often, though planning to upgrade one day) with Greasemonkey 0.9.13.1, and in Firefox 15 with about the latest modern releases of Greasemonkey (0.9.22—1.x).

Greasemonkey is officially available only for Firefox, but since SeaMonkey 2.x is not supported by many extension developers, then Philip Chee decided to modify ostensibly free software extensions originally made for Firefox to then post them at xsidebar.mozdev.org for other SeaMonkey users. Some of the extensions are modified by request of other users. So the most recent Greasemonkey version for SeaMonkey 2.3 or newer is 0.9.13.1, which is modern, but by no means the newest fare.

If you think usescripts somehow stopped working, then this is not quite so. Compared to older implementations, Greasemonkey has just evolved and so have ways to manipulate styles with usescripts. IMHO.

The traditional, or classic, way of inserting lines of style code in a Greasemonkey userscript was something like this:

document.styleSheets[0].insertRule('DIV[class=pagecontent] {width:auto !important; max-width:1014px !important;}', 0);

^ Nevermind !important, which was meant to override existing online style rules. Writing declarations with [square brackets] is also clunkier, but more reliable.

Now, there are a few things about the metadata block to remember when composing a userscript: @namespace and @grant.

• @namespace does require that something is written for it. For the example I had, I wrote random, and it works for a test script, but the string can't be empty and has to be meaningful, per instructions given in the link.
• With the second, I set @grant to none.
  T., 29.01.2013. update:
  @grant is a new(ish) security measure to limit API access of a script. With this it's possible to grant none (no API access) and grant GM_*, where script lines starting with GM_* are allowed. One such example is the simplified way of modifying CSS styles through GM_addStyle. To allow GM_addStyle, set

  @grant GM_addStyle

  In conclusion, this is what I think is something that I overlooked when initially writing the blog post herein.

Interestingly, I discovered that @include strings can be equipped with wildcards. This could be an age-old feature, but this saved me a bit of effort in writing userscript code:

// @include       *.wikipedia.org/wiki/*

• By not including http:// and https:// protocols, the userscript should work for domains under both;
• The asterisk * before the primary domain (separated by a dot) allows for inclusion of subdomains. Anyhoo, the new way to insert custom style blocks is this:

GM_addStyle("DIV.pagecontent {width:auto !important; max-width:1014px !important;}")

Works for me.

#Sad

A few weeks ago it turned out that one of my memory sticks got fritzed. I don't know how, but I thought this post would become one of the many on the Internet that will bemoan the loss and give advice as to properly operating memory sticks. Oh well.

Writing this, I feel compelled to listen to soothing music.

Foreword

First off, this memory stick was not new, but had seen several years of heavy use. The stick contained some rare installers of software (freeware and free software), especially drivers, as I knew these would eventually be very useful in the future when trying to connect some device. The Internet is not always helpful, as some websites go down and some change their design and structure. Yes, there are some drivers and installers of which there were copies, but some are gone forever.

Most of all, the greatest damage in losing the data was original content: computer-related stuff and other files that are too difficult to recover. The largest amount of space was taken by family photos, some of which might be irrecoverably gone, as I had selected only the nice ones for safekeeping.

This post should serve as a list of precautions.

Suggestions

It's not easy to pin-point the reason as to what may have gone wrong. So I decided to compile a list of reasons in order of any stick's lifetime.

Where to buy

* Buy from a good store. These tend to have a better selection of quality products.
* I prefer to avoid Internet buying, because a good store/chain with a long-term (brand) presence thinks more of their reputation than an Internet seller.

What to buy

1. When buying a memory stick, always choose a reputable brand name. Yes, most of manufacturing takes place in South-East Asia, but brand-name companies also tend to use top-tier factories, better quality assurance (abbreviated as QA), and perhaps even better fail-safe circuitry. Avoid no-name products or very-very cheap brand names, like Vizio and other cheap brands, even if it's just memory sticks.
Sorry, TrekStor, I now know about two cases where two of your products have failed — No matter the reason.
2. Always buy a stick with a cap. SanDisk, which, I believe, specializes in memory products, offers its memory sticks with spare caps (if one accidentally gets lost), and my seven-years-old stick (from 2005) has not failed me once.

The cap is important, because it keeps the memory stick's USB plug unexposed from elements, including dust and pieces of textiles (if you fancy keeping your sticks in a small watch pocket of your pants, e.g. jeans) that can reach into the plug. In case of dust or textiles, try blowing the dirt out. Or wrap some cotton around a toothpick, and use that to get the excess dirt out. The point is that dust and textiles may hinder proper contact and might possibly cause a short-circuit.

Other elements that can harm a memory stick are excess humidity or excess heat or both, and static electricity. So the cap is as important as a condom.

How to use

Well, the most important advice, of course, is to back up your files, or at least keep some kind of mnemonic of the files you've transferred to your stick.

Safe removal

Well, the main rule is to "safely remove the device" — in Windows parlance. In UNIX/Linux language, the relevant language here is unmounting and ejecting. For some reason, I have usually only unmounted, but maybe I will have to start ejecting a stick, too. The command-line commands in Linux are

umount /dev/sda1

and

eject /dev/sda1

Depending on the system, /dev may instead be /media and sda1 might be something else. UNIX/Linux users are already familiar with these commands and storage drive naming nomenclature.

If the stick appears to be 'under use', restarting the operating system (in case of a PC) should help, as that would force an unmount of the drive.

File system

Consider using a better file system. The downside is that then the stick won't be recognized by most widely-used operating systems. Partitioning might be helpful.

Sensitive data

Properly encrypt all sensitive data. Or use a different memory stick for sensitive data. For example, have one memory stick for extensive/regular use (and data transport), and another for sensitive data, as such data might be perused with less frequency.

Extensive usage

If you're using the stick to write and delete and move fairly large amounts of data to it (know that deleting data is also writing to the stick), then know that the memory chip will experience wear, and after a certain amount of write cycles, the chip will become unwritable, and then in quick order unreadable, and then completely inaccessible. Take care to back up any and all data from a stick like that.

Places to avoid

— or where not to stick a memory stick with useful/rare/original data on it

* Hot computers (that are fairly warm to the touch). Those may have inadequate ventilation; A hot (inadequately ventilated) computer may cause the stick's innards to overheat through the USB plug. So, if you're not using the stick to transfer data, keep it off the machine.
* (Very) faulty computers. This matters, because computers that overheat and/or hang much too often, are likely to have serious issues with power distribution and may inadvertently fritz your stick, even if the computer was reliable before. If you really need to, use an empty memory stick or one without important data on it. If you can't use a memory stick, use network-based file transfer as a work-around.

Storage and transport

If you like or have to keep your (capless) memory stick in a small pocket (in jeans) for transport, some heat (during Winter) and safety, then don't keep your memory stick in the pocket forever. As stated above, textile discharge and dust can easily enter the USB plug and most people don't pay attention to that. If you're at home, take it out, as you would a phone, for example. If a small "watch" pocket is still the best place when moving around away from home, then with a capless memory stick, it's better to keep it in a minigrip plastic bag.

The first sign of danger can be the most important one

It's when you encounter errors writing to the memory stick, whereas you haven't seen errors with this same stick before.

If you see such an error, then if the computer storage is sufficiently under your control, copy over everything, or at least the most important data. With everything, it may take a while. If there's an error copying everything, (some contents of some directory can't be copied), then copy directory-by-directory — mostly it's good by directories in the root directory.

Keep a spare storage unit at hand, especially if you're copying with/to a computer that's not yours, but you need the data copied ASAP.

And if things go really wrong...

If the stick is still recognized as a USB device by the operating system, then user-operated data recovery can be performed.

If the stick's USB plug is hot (or very, very warm), then consider yourself out of luck (at least this is what I learned when researching the Interwebs). Data recovery from such a stick is almost impossible, or very, very expensive.

Anyways, you might be willing to take your memory stick to a computer repair shop or a data recovery company. Make sure at least, that the sensitive data you have is encrypted in the first place.

Hope?

If it's not a hardware problem inside a stick, then there are ways to get to using the stick again, at least temporarily to recover data.

Some sticks' contacts get wear and tear after extensive use, so perhaps it's best to clean then up with alcohol (for example). I'd use a toothpick, wrap some some cotton around it and moist that in alcohol, and then clean the contacts inside the plug. Avoid too large amounts of alcohol, but just enough to keep the cotton moist with alcohol. If the fluid drops off the stick, let it drop somewhere safe (a small saucer or some fluid container), but not back into the alcohol bottle, so as to keep it clean. If you don't specifically have pure alcohol, then plain vodka is just as good. Take precautions wrt static electricity (touch a free-standing metallic item; like a screwdriver, or wear an anti-static wristbelt on your arm).

There are memory sticks that are compromised by viruses; some other sticks' file systems are compromised. With all these, data recovery can be possible.

Possible causes for minor reductions in Firefox market share

This was first intended as a reply to the Firefox developer mailing list, but then I decided to post it here first.

Personally, there have so far been two gripes with Firefox that I've taken some issue with:
* One was the disabling of on-demand loading of pinned tabs after session restore (between versions 9–11);
* The other is the current brouhaha over Adobe's Flash crashing the plugin container process, which is really not the fault of Mozilla. (more below)

Sometimes it's not users leaving Firefox, but some of them starting to use Chrome as their very first browser. Well, Chrome coming around is a good thing, because this gives people more choice as to which browser they want to use, as Chrome and Firefox both possess unique and attractive features that meet their users' different needs.

HTML5 video
The current situation with Flash crashing the plugin container in Firefox is coincidentally a good cause for moving to HTML5 audio and HTML5 video, specifically Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and WebM, which are free and especially license-free formats.

YouTube's work in converting most of its videos to WebM reduces the immediate requirement and sometimes unpleasant chore of installing Flash on Linux, thereby increasing adoption of Linux, as other sites will hopefully follow suit in adopting free formats.

If we exclude the Summer low and the current Flash issue, then the next reason behind a reduction in Firefox usage could be the choice of format in sites using HTML5 video — most users tend to choose the browser that plays back whatever their favoured media site offers, with variations (mobile/desktop) of Chrome being in a rather advantageous situation right now, as it has built-in support for Flash.

Yet the situation with HTML5 video seems to be split right now along the lines of which HTML5 codecs are supported by which groups of browsers: Safari and IE vs. Opera, Chrome, Firefox and its derivatives.

The choice of YouTube and DailyMotion to offer videos in license-free formats is highly commendable. Now, if YouTube could actually stream high-profile events using HTML5/WebM in addition to Flash...

Desktop to mobile/tablet
Yet another reason in reduction of Firefox market share could just as well be the transition of people's major computing devices from desktops (including notebooks) to hand-helds (smartphones, tablets), nearly all of which currently have WebKit as their main rendering engine (in the form of either Safari or Chrome). I do not know if there has been a separate browser market share comparison for just desktop computers, because I understand that general tallies have usually encompassed both desktop and mobile spaces, with mobile being the separate segment.

Ultimately, as Mozilla and then Firefox were introduced, it was hoped that the browser market would eventually take the shape that it of recent times has started to form (at least worldwide) — in that no one browser would completely rule the market to be in its singularity the one to hold back innovation, and the one to pose itself in unintended consequence a widespread vector for malicious attacks.

So, in conclusion, the situation in my humble and perhaps half-informed opinion, is quite a bit more mixed with regard to what may be the possible causes of Firefox browser market share reduction this Spring and Summer.

Installing free and orphaned extensions to Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat

In part, this also applies to Mozilla Firefox.

Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat are browsers code-compatible with Mozilla Firefox. For those not in the know, they are both like Firefox, but rebranded, just as some shops order produce from a producer (whether or not they produce generic or their own brand-name products), and the shops then rebrand said produce as "their own". The reason with Mozilla Firefox is that it's a registered trademark that belongs to Mozilla.

There are a number of free extensions and themes for which their publishers don't have their own home pages anymore, and download links from the Internet Archive might not work for various reasons (the most common being that the files were not captured into the vault). These add-ons are generally available from addons.mozilla.org, but the site tends to shut out Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat.

Granted, some large Linux distributions have their own repositories that host compatible addons for a specific distro version's specific version of Firefox, but distribution maintainers move on, and repositories that cater for older distros with older Firefox versions are EOL'd, as repos have to host files for newer distro releases.

So, here I had a curious case with Go Green, an MPL-licensed theme for which there was no home page anymore, archive.org didn't host the theme's installer, and the only available place is addons.mozilla.org.

There are two ways to fetch the add-on from Mozilla:

One is the easy way, the other way is more complicated, but also
offers more choice.

The ostensibly user-friendly way to installed the latest version of an add-on is thus_

In the instance of the Go Green theme, you can go to

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/

— in which page there are two obstacles: One is that all of mozilla.org always uses the latest Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in formatting its pages, and so the older a version of Firefox is, the less able it is in rendering the pages. Fortunately, Firefox has this great option to view the page without CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

The other is that JavaScript also blocks showing some links, even if the browser is modern.

So, choose to view the page with no styles:

View > Page Style > No Style

In this case, links and elements previously hidden with CSS will be displayed.

Then, to fetch a specific version of an extension, go to see "Complete version history" (you can jump to it using the text find function; link is clickable).

You should reach this address —

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/versions/

Or, if you know the address of the add-on, just add versions/ to the URL to see all versions of an add-on, page by page (much simpler, I might add).

The All Versions page shows which browser versions the extension is compatible with, so the best bet is to choose the latest version of the extension that is good for a browser version that matches the prescribed version span.

At the section of a desired extension version, there's a "Continue to Download" link. The link is not clickable, but you can drag it into a new tab, or into the existing tab's widget to cause Firefox to resolve the URL.

In the Go Green theme's case, this will actually open the "roadblock" page, with this address for the page:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/contribute/roadblock/?src=search&version=1.25

Since you're using IceWeasel or IceCat, you might still be shut out by JavaScript from downloading an extension, with no download button in sight. This is reasonable, as some extensions won't work in Linux, but the script at mozilla.org is not always able to tell exactly that the user is actually running a compatible browser.

When installing extensions made for an operating system different than Linux, then install these at your own risk. It may be easier with themes, but some complex extensions require that you only install the one made for your operating system, especially if it's also been made available for the OS. I've seen this happen with the DOM Inspector extension, which is made by Mozilla, has been included with Firefox, and is specifically tailored to each specific version of Firefox.

As the roadblock page doesn't show the download link when CSS for it is active, choose to use no styles in the page (if you have so far been dragging the links into the tab widget, then the no styles setting for the tab persists)...

The "Download for Windows" link is placed at its coded position, but is not clickable (probably governed so by JavaScript), so drag it into a new tab and save the extension, or if it's already an xpi, install it.

If the add-on installer's filename has a .jar extension, then the extension can be saved as .xpi or renamed later.

This whole option is then simpler, but might not guarantee that you will be getting the right extension that is made for a browser running in your operating system.

With the Go Green case, the theme has only been made for Windows, but if the browser is compatible, it can also be installed in Linux and for Debian Iceweasel. Case in point:

Click for a bigger image.

Downloading the add-on by name from the Mozilla FTP site

To see if a Linux (or Mac) version of the extension is available, you need to find out the add-on's number at mozilla.org. In some cases it's available already in the extension URL, but I think this nomenclature is being phased out from the web front-end.

If you still don't know what's the number of the addon (if the add-on's address is named and not numbered), you can find it out through its add-on icon or other clues, like links and such. See

View > Page Info > Media

Look for an image, the URL of which matches

/addon_icons/

In that URL, the image's filename starts with a number, like

/13551-64.png

^ 13551 is the number of the add-on (64 is probably the native image width). After that, it's easy to find the add-on via mozilla.org's FTP site:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/13551/

The FTP folder there will then display a list of all release versions of extension or theme installers, which are usually JAR or XPI files. If the installer is a JAR file, and you want to install it for Firefox or Iceweasel, download the extension's installer, rename its extension from .jar to .xpi — and then install it in the browser from the directory it's located in.

And to top it off,

The URL for the Go Green theme's latest installer is this:

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/13551/go_green-1.25-fx-win.jar

Windows Me, Netscape 4.x

This text was written as a series of replies I posted in the YouTube comments section of a promotional introduction video of Windows Me, which can be found in the said operating system.

Since the video was not uploaded from the official source, chances are that the video and the comments to it won't be available at some point of time. So I posted them here for future reference.

And since Blogspot does not have limits on the amount of text, then I have edited the replies a bit to add text.

Windows Me was really good on something like a 667 MHz CPU and 128Mb RAM at the time. If you want to run reasonably modern software without swapping much, then you need 256 Mb of RAM (factor in [modern] web browser, IM program, OpenOffice 2.4.3).

Windows Me can run on less, of course, as it was included in computers that only had 64Mb of RAM.

At one point, Windows xp ran fine with 128 Mb RAM, but nowadays it needs 512M RAM as a real-life minimum to keep the system secure & do something productive.

These specs were for a new PC from around 2000 that was first supplied with only 64 Mb RAM. I requested it have 128 Mb, since the lesser setup was slow with multimedia of the time (it had fast Internet, so I knew it was the amount of RAM). After the RAM upgrade, using the computer was a breeze.

I also took very good care of the hard drive and the OS, keeping it updated & secure, and since its users mostly used Netscape for business, then viruses and exploits never made it there.

At that time it [the popular version of Netscape] was Netscape Communciator 4.x. I think on that PC we stuck with 4.79 for a long time (the last of 4.x was 4.8, released in 2002 :-). The 4.x branch was the first to support CSS, but that was the only feature which caused crashes when turned on (especially in 4.0x), so I kept it off on all our Netscapes, which were fairly solid after that. Despite the clunky Navigator, the best part was the e-mail client, which introduced mail filters to fight spam (then seen as controversial).

We skipped Netscape 6, never considered 7.x, and in newer PC's moved instead to Mozilla, the open-source descendant of Netscape and which Netscape 6 and 7 were based on anyway.

As Mozilla Foundation started Firefox, it ceased Mozilla development, which was taken over by others, and Mozilla Application Suite became SeaMonkey.

The last version of SeaMonkey for Windows 98/Me is 1.1.19 ([from] 2010); its Gecko rendering engine is a wee bit newer than that of Firefox 2.0 (Gecko 1.8.1.20 vs 1.8.1.24).

A Slashdotter

This was first meant as a comment to "What Makes a Man?" at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, a blog about fabulous people. The post contains the lyrics of the song, and my comment refers to the song's first verse. The comment eventually became too long, and I moved the inital draft here and then updated it quite a bit.

The first verse of Marc Almond's "What Makes a Man?" reads like the life of a typical Slashdotter :>

/For those not in the know: Slashdot is a technology news aggregation website, where most readers are nerds and geeks, and the site's original or primary readership supports software freedom.

Now, the reason the first verse of "What Makes a Man?" very nearly parallels a slashdotter's lifestyle, is that some of the more obnoxious commenters applied this lifestyle meme to Slashdotters in their attempt to ridicule Slashdotters' use of Linux, a free software computer operating system (free as in freedom; no-cost being a bonus of that).

As much has been admitted by Linux Torvalds himself, at the 25th minute of The Origins of Linux video organized by Computer History Museum on 19.09.2001.

To these commenters — of which some had to have been employees of companies publishing proprietary software — Slashdotters' use of free software (Linux) thus inferred their inability to afford proprietary (non-free) software, which costs money, something a "typical" Slashdotter has little of. In addition to being unable to find a (female) date :>

:	The Linux operating system is reasonably free to obtain, which is a bonus of its being free as in freedom; notwithstanding the existence of Linux distributions that do cost a lot of money when used in mission-critical scenarios.
:	This "typical" Slashdotter meme is certainly true of many of its users and readers, but from the time it was first introduced Slashdot, many of the slashdotters at the time going through such motions early in their life have eventually become reasonably successful in their own right.
:	Given Slashdot's large readership, there will always be a demographic matching the description of the song's first verse.

In Slashdot-type news aggregation,
a news story is submitted for review by readers, and then being voted on by other readers for publication on the front page.

Each Slashdot story contains a leader with original text and includes a comments section below it. The lede almost always links to the original news item. Comments can be user-generated or anonymous. Comments are moderated by promoting or demoting them, so that comments that are informative, insightful, funny, or a combination thereof, get full visibility, while bad comments are linked or placed "below the threshold" (requires more clicks to see them). As far as I know, only once has a comment on Slashdot been deleted (see Wikipedia article linked below).

More about Slashdot on Wikipedia.

How Fast is Your Computer? The Angry Birds Litmus Test

This should serve as a simple test of your computer's internals (CPU, buses, video and audio adapters) to find out how capable your computer is in handling different tasks — audio, video and other activities.

The important bits first.

Requirements:

* With Windows xp (SP3), you need at least 768 Mb of RAM memory (the real-life minimum for Windows xp SP3 is 512 Mb);
* With Windows Vista and Windows 7, you need at least 3–4 Gb of RAM memory (2 Gb is the absolute real-life minimum).

(Your mileage may vary with other operating systems.)

• The latest install of Google Chrome (it's fairly large), and
• the latest install of the Angry Birds game for it (not small either^*); best if a desktop shortcut were created for it, and
• the game launched separately with no other applications running;
• The display setting for the game must be Standard Definition (SD).
^* Well, ok, there is now a large amount of people who already have Chrome or Chromium and Angry Birds installed, so this makes it a non-issue for those who have both.

The answer to the test would be 'fast' and 'not so fast', depending on audio performance. Same if gameplay is slow.

Criterion: If the game's intro music is jerky, or sounds like bad reception in a mobile call, then 'not so fast' is obvious.

For example, before the 2011 (going on 2012) Christmas update for Angry Birds and Google Chrome 17 (or 16), the game ran fine on a decent (but a) six-year-old notebook computer with the following specifications:

* Intel Celeron M 410 @ 1.46 GHz;
* Display adapter: Mobile Intel 945GM Express (integrated, although the manufacturer's specs listed Intel GMA 950);
* 1 Gb of RAM;
* A good hard drive (not that it matters much);
* Windows xp SP3;
* Let's suppose drivers for hardware are up-to-date, too.

After upgrading the game and the browser, the intro music became jerky (had to turn it off) and gameplay became gradually slower the longer the game was played. Yes, the game can be played without sound on, but it will still be slower.

I will not downgrade to Google Chrome 16 and then try out the latest version of the game, but if I ever see a computer with similar or slightly lower specs, then versions 15/16 of Chrome would be worth trying out.

(If you otherwise don't use Google Chrome, then there's nothing to stop you from uninstalling it.)

Even if the CPU is slower, but the computer has a dedicated video card, then gameplay can be faster, since a dedicated video card is typically faster and can therefore process video better than an integrated graphics adapter. — I guess because in part the former uses separate video memory, while the latter relies on the computer's RAM memory to keep video data in it. A dedicated video card also takes away some of the processing overhead that would otherwise be forced on a CPU, especially if the integrated graphics adapter is unable to process some instructions and the processing load falls back to the CPU.

In some ways, new versions of both Google Chrome and Angry Birds for Chrome may unintentionally make a number of nice computers obsolete like that :> — especially notebooks, as these are not easy to upgrade, if at all, or beyound certain hardware limitations.

All this makes the test really a moving target, as both Google Chrome and the Angry Birds game are in active development, and each will take advantage of new processors' instruction sets and new graphics capabilities (such as newer versions of OpenGL) that are implemented by new video adapters, as portions of Google Chrome are coded against them in assembly language.

That the test fails on some computers, does not mean that people should not choose a notebook with an integrated graphics adapter; it only means that such computers of a certain age are just not fast enough and therefore not as future-proof — in terms of years and the modern software they'd be capable of running.

Much of the reason for such a test is that it's more-or-less simple and offers a real-world "case study", as opposed to benchmarking software. I chose Angry Birds for Chrome, because the game peruses the different capabilities of a computer that runs it; Angry Birds uses Google Chrome as the back-end, and utilizes HTML5, JavaScript, and Chrome's integrated audio support (unlike separately using plugins for audio) for all the fancy stuff.

Another reason is that there are folks who are considering buying a used computer or passing one down. Such a test (if allowed to be performed), or published results of such a test on different hardware should inform the potential users as to the viability of having to use a not-so-new hardware combination for the next, oh well, 2–3 years, for example. Maybe even longer.

Conclusion

How the test relates to the computer being future-proof: If playback of sound in Angry Birds for Chrome is fine, then you can rest assured that the machine can be well used for other activities (such as getting to watch videos on YouTube) for quite a while, even if sound may become jerky after both Chrome and the game are updated.

If sound in Angry Birds is jerky on a computer today, then there might be less confidence about whether the computer is fast enough within the timespan of the next five years, for example. That also includes much of the future software.

The backup test would be the YouTube test (if videos play normally at 360p), only that YouTube uses Flash and users can choose which major version of Flash Player they want on their computer (YouTube supports Flash Player 10 or newer).

There is really nothing to stop people from using older and even older machines, so long such a configuration meets their expectations and that these users are then aware that the hardware does or will eventually turn out to have limited capabilities for new functionality.

T., 29.01.2013. update:

Very recently it was possible for me again to play Angry Birds with quite a bit less reduction in game theme playback quality (which to me is often the marker of whether that game is playable).

The conditions where as follows:

• Google Chrome 24.0.1312.52 (the latest stable version);
• Chrome extension ScriptNo installed, with some of the following domains allowed:
  chrome.angrybirds.com
appspot.com
google.com (to login through Google)
• Angry Birds 2.3.3.2 installed (the latest version)
• All other applications were turned off, including even Microsoft Security Essentials (you have to turn that on after you stop the slingshot game.)
• The game window had to be separate (through the Angry Birds shortcut dragged to the desktop), so that only the game would start and no the rest of Chrome.
• The game window had to be in focus and the mouse cursor was not supposed to veer outside the game area to avoid twitchy playback of the theme song.
  
  Thinking that that would be it might be wrong. So I remember now that
• I cleaned up the hard disk a bit to allow for more swap space, odd as this may sound. Defragmenting the hard drive every once in a while is always a good call.

Cannot play videos on Yahoo! News?

Symptom: This often happens with users of Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, when:
• they can't show most news videos on the Yahoo! News website and some other Yahoo! properties;
• the commenting system is not functional (can't properly view and post comments).

Privacy-conscious users, and/or those who wish for their browsers to consume less resources, use a script blocking add-on, such as NoScript. I often have NoScript configured to allow/disallow full domains (like d.yimg.com) and not just second-level domains (just yimg.com).

As it often happens, allowing only full subdomains instead of just second-level domains brings with itself more issues.

By default, NoScript includes a whitelist of second-level domains without which major services' functionality would be wholly disabled. The whitelist also contains yahoo.com, yimg.com, and yahoopis.com). The instructions herein are for users who have chosen to impose a more fine-grained control over the websites they visit.

Right, well, I finally played around with NoScript and found a solution:

NoScript:

In addition to news.yahoo.com and screen.yahoo.com and maybe others, allow the following domains essential for video playback:
• l.yimg.com
• d.yimg.com
• connect.facebook.net (If you're privacy-conscious, then allow temporarily).
  
  
11.07.2012. Update: I later discovered that non-video news items also featured videos, so here's an addition of domains that must be allowed:
• video.query.yahoo.com
• yep.video.yahoo.com
• yui.yahooapis.com (important on other Yahoo properties, even if not using video)
• webplayer.yahooapis.com

Flashblock:
• Allow d.yimg.com

^ Including only that domain in the Flashblock whitelist will have the video area rendered with the Flashblock placeholder. Clicking on it will start playback (note that ads are also played).

• Allow l.yimg.com

^ In regular news items that included video, disallowing l.yimg.com wouldn't even load the Flashblock video placeholder.

If you want video to load automatically, allow the above domains, and news.yahoo.com and screen.yahoo.com (and/or other Yahoo! properties as necessary from the Flashblock toolbar button).

Conclusion

Even if l.yimg.com and d.yimg.com are enabled in NoScript, the crucial part for some erroneous coding reason is connect.facebook.net; If that is not allowed, most video code and commenting functionality won't load. Note that connect.facebook.net is the primary culprit. This has been discussed before at forums.informaction.com (a NoScript and web security forum).

Overview of Nokia phones offered by U.S. carriers on the web

US web offers for new Nokia phones as of 06.06.2012.
The list is very much incomplete, and emphasis is added to phones that don't have Windows Phone 7.5 in them.
This list also reflects which carriers' websites first ask for location without offering their phones first. The carriers whose sites that do that are more likely to offer locked phones and with a fixed contract instead of selling them to someone who would want to use their phone with a different carrier.

Legend:
* "Nokia not listed" means that the website is offering phones by brand name
* "No Nokia phones" means that the website either does not offer phones by brand name, or that Nokia phones were not available.

National

• T-Mobile:
  Nokia X2 (refurb)
• AT&T: Nokia Lumia 900 (doesn't count)
• Verizon Wireless
  Basic phones: No Nokia
  Smartphones: Nokia is not even in a gray list
• Sprint: Personal/Business — No Nokia, has one Sony Ericsson, IIRC
• Tried alltel — service not available at "my" zip code (I used one of Au Sable Forks, NY)
• C-Spire: None (has Sony Ericsson)
• Cricket Wireless — No coverage in the area :(
  According to Wikipedia (as of 31.05.2012), Nokia is not in the current list of phones.

Supra-Regional

MetroPCS — Nokia is not in the listed brands
U.S. Cellular — Nokia is not in the listed brands

Regional

Alaska Communications — Nokia is not in listed brands

Cellcom —
Nokia is listed, but no products shown
• Cellular One
  Locations: Montana, North-Western Wyoming, Texas (TX-10, TX-11), and Oklahoma (OK-5)

  cellonenation.com — Wants zip code
  celloneet.com — Wants zip code

  • cellular1.net (East Central Illinois, device availability varies by location) —

    Feature Phones:

    Nokia 2680

    Nokia 2720

    Smartphones:

    Nokia N8

    Nokia N97

    Texting phones:

    Nokia C3

  • cellularoneonline.com (Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico)

    All mobile phones:

    Nokia C1

    Hearing aid-compatible:

    Nokia 2720

    Nokia 6085

    Nokia 7020

    Nokia E5 (Aspect)

    Nokia E75

  • South Canaan Cellular (Wayne and Pike Counties, Pennsylvania/cellularonenepa.com) — No Nokia phones
  • Choice Wireless (Texas and Oklahoma, cellonetxok.com, models vary based on availability)
    Nokia 2760
    Nokia 5800
    Nokia 6061
    Nokia 6085
    Nokia E63
• Cincinnati Bell — Has landing page, but this can be run around. Nokia not listed.
• Element Mobile — No Nokia phones
• i Wireless
  Nokia 1208
• Immix Wireless
  Nokia C1
• nTelos — Nokia not listed
• Revol Wireless — No Nokia phones
• southernLINC Wireless — No Nokia phones
• West Central Wireless
  Nokia C6
  Nokia N8
• Indigo Wireless — No Nokia phones
• Viaero Wireless
  Nokia 2720
  Nokia 7020
• Long Lines Wireless
  Nokia 7020
• Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative (astac.net) — wants zip code

Sülearvutid, tootjad, Apple vs MS

Jälle läks kommentaar artiklile liiga pikaks ja peale selle oleks see kommentaar olnud kõige viimase kommentaarina artiklile mõnes mõttes ka kõige hiljem kirjutatud.

Kuna vahepeal ei olnud mingi teadmata põhjuse tõttu võimalik Postimehe keskkonnas kommentaare kirjutada, piirdusin ma teiste kommenteerijate kommentaaridele plusside ja miinuste lisamisega ja minu enda kirjutised tuli siia panna. Lõpuks osutusid nad ühe keskmise kommentaari kohta liiga pikaks ja eriliseks, et üldse kuskile kommentaariumi postitada ja iga selline pikem vaimusünnitis leidis oma koha siin ja mujalgi. Nagunii oleks PM-is kommentaar kolm kuud pärast postitamist olnud automaatselt ära kustutatud...

Niisiis...

Üldiselt on nii, et isegi "sel ajal kui müüdi komponentide alusel," siis alati oli ja on olemas ka väga ja väga korralikke arvuteid, lihtsalt paljud kasutajad selliseid ei osta, sest hinnasilt ei ole just kõigile jõukohane.

(Juhtub ka, et korralikku arvutit otsiv kasutaja saab selle korraliku, mida pakutakse, kuid samas leiab korralik kasutaja ka täpselt selle, mida soovib.)

Kvaliteetne läppar maksab ikkagi umbes 1000 eurot ja odav masin 200-300€. Et viimaste seas kvaliteetset leida, tuleb tootjat hoolikalt valida.

Maci kasutajaid kritiseerida pole ka väga õige, sest nad on ostujõulisem elanikkond ja iga ostu eest läheb riigieelarvesse niimoodi suurem käibemaks.

See on tõsi, et paljusid asju valmistatakse Hiinas ja ETV on selle kohta ka dokfilme näidanud. Nii et toodet ostes mõelge alati nendele inimestele, kes selle kokku panid.

---

Foxconni jutud headest töötingimustest on võrreldavad samaga, mida kompartei rääkis siin kunagi N. ajal "ilusast elust". Kusjuures osades tehastes võivad tingimused olla head ja osades mitte, kuna Foxconni enda kõigi töötajate armee suurus ei ole Eesti rahvaarvust just väga kaugel (1,2 miljonit inimest 2011. aastal üle kogu maailma).

Töötingimused on seal muu Hiinaga võrreldes justkui head, kuid ettevõtte suuruse tõttu on võimalik kiiresti korraldada pakasuuhhasid. Foxconni (aka Hon Hai) taiwanlasest juhi Terry Gou suuvärk pole just ainuke kord reha otsa astunud ning see peegeldub ka ettevõtte suhtumises töötajatesse.

Et saada sealsest olukorrast paremat pilti, siis Hong Kongi MTÜ lühendnimega SACOM teeb mandri-Hiina erinevates elektroonikatehastes uuringuid ja avaldab regulaarselt iga linna ja selle tehas(t)e lõikes raporteid nii töötingimuste, elukorralduse kui ka palga kohta.

Parim ettevõte alltöötvõtjate töötingimuste parandamisel ei ole mitte Apple, vaid hoopis HP. Tõsi, ka HP tellib Foxconnilt vidinaid, kuid HP üks peamisi alltöötvõtjaid on minu teada pigem Chicony, mis nimega kaupa peaks olema ka Eestis saada.

---

Et ühed inimesed on ühe tootega rahul ja teised teisega, on võib-olla ehk psühholoogiline efekt, et kasutaja lõpuks omab midagi, mis on täiesti tema oma ja kui realistliku ootuse puhul on ese oma väärtust tõestanud, pole seda asjatult kritiseerida ometi mõtet.

Mul on näiteks üks suhteliselt vana "hiinakast" MP3 mängija, mis on muuseas ka minu esimene selline vidin ning millel on ainult 128 Mb mälu ja mälukaardi võimalust pole. Ning ehkki ma seda praegu ei kasuta, siis selle omamine tähendas seda, et ma õppisin seda kasutama, uurisin toodet ja avastasin selle kohta täiesti unikaalseid asju ja võimalusi, mida võib-olla ainult vähesed teavad.

Seega kokkuvõttes igaühele oma.

Kui juba läpparite soovitamiseks läks, siis minugi poolt mõned soovitused.

Mõeldes Hiina ja teiste Kagu-Aasia töötajate peale oleks siis mõttekam osta väga vastupidav sülearvuti. Odav see muidugi pole, kuid sellisel moel saab masinat kauem kasutada ja nõudlus odava(ma) kauba järele langeb.

• Kes tahab ülivastupidavat masinat, nendele on olemas ka vastavalt ülikallis Panasonic Toughbook. Väga tõenäoliselt on kõik jupid Jaapanis tehtud ning sealsamas ka kokku pandud.
• Kes tahab pikka aega vastupidavat ja väga kvaliteetset masinat mõistlikuma hinna eest, võiks mõelda Lenovo ThinkPad arvutite peale. ThinkPadide tootearendus toimub peamiselt USA-s.
• Kes Hiina omanduses brändi kaupa ei taha, soovitan HP-d juba seepärast, et nad on üks eetilisemaid arvutiettevõtteid üldse. HP valik on suur ja nendel on olemas ka terve posu kvaliteetseid äriklassi sülearvuteid.
• Euroopas valmistatud sülearvuteid teeb ainult Fujitsu (äriklassi mudelid) ning Saksamaal arendatakse ja valmistatakse isegi oma emaplaate.

Nii Lenovo, Dell, HP kui ka Fujitsu pakuvad äriklassi mudeleid, mida on testitud eri vastupidavus-standardite vastu, k.a. mudelid, mis on testitud vastama MIL-standarditele.

IBM valmistab siiani väga võimsaid ja vastupidavaid tööjaamu.
Siemens on keskendunud industriaalarvutitele, millest osad on PC-d, kuid Siemens müüb neid vaid suurklientidele ja alati eritellimuse peale.

Kahjuks Euroopa Liidu ja ka eri liikmesriikide seadusandlus ei nõua, et iga toote puhul oleks juures alates reklaamist ja hinnasildist ning lõpetades tootekarbi ja dokumentatsiooniga selge kiri, mis ütleks, kus riigis toode tehtud on. Jah, see on tihtipeale toote küljes, kuid seda alles pärast ostmist avastada on väga nõme.

ZX Spectrum oli masside arvuti

Kommentaar Delfi Forte artiklile
"Koduarvutite tootjad pole suutnud ZX Spectrumi soodsat hinda juba 30 aastat üle trumbata"

Tuleb lisada, et Suurbritannias oli keskmine kuupalk 1982. aastal £780,79, nii et kui arvestada maksud ka maha, siis näiteks £600 maksnud Commodore 64 hinnaks oli sisuliselt üks [keskmine] kuupalk; tol ajal Inglismaal vägagi populaarne BBC Micro umbes kolmandik sellest kuupalgast ja ZX Spectrum maksis vaid £125.

(Samal ajal valitses Inglismaal mitte just väike majanduslangus.)

ZX Spectrumi kõige odavama variandi selline hind tähendas seda, et selle võis suurema vaevata ära osta ja paljudes kodudes oli see ka esimene arvuti. Nii et Inglismaal tõeline masside arvuti, umbes nagu USA-s Commodore C64.

BBC Micro eeliseks oli selle arvestatav laiendatavus ja vastupidavus ning see läks paljudes koolides esimeseks kooliarvutiks ja seda ei peljatud ka kodudes ära.

Kaks aastat hiljem, 1984.a., lasti välja Amstrad CPC464 koos rohelise monokroommonitoriga, mis maksis £249. (Amstrad arvuteid müüdi vaid ekraaniga samal ajal, kui teised tulid "rasedate kalkulaatoritena", mida sai ühendada teleriga). Erinevalt teistest toetas Amstrad C/PM opsüsteemi, millele oli juba arvestatav tarkvarakataloog juba olemas. Seega Amstradi diil oli nii hea, et Lääne-Euroopas kasutati seda edukalt ka ärides.

Aja jooksul alandati paljude nende masinate hindu, nii et nende kättesaadavus isegi suurenes.

Hiljem turg küllastus, peale tulid juba IBM PC-ühilduvad masinad ja 8-bitised arvutid olid põhimõtteliselt oma aja ära elanud. ZX Spectrumi teeb huvitavaks muidugi see, et sellele arvutile tehakse siiamaani tarkvara; veel 2010. aastal tuli välja umbes 90 tiitlit.

Tänapäevastest uutest tehnikavidinatest võib tõmmata paralleele näiteks Android nutitelefonidega; odavaimad sellised maksavad (uuelt) umbes kuuendiku–kaheksandiku Eesti keskmisest palgast (kui see on 900€ bruto).

Cheat sheet and notes for using Knoppix 6 or newer

This I initially made for myself, but then writing got out of hand :-)

For a full-page treatment, see here.

Flash

Knoppix 6.0.1 includes Iceweasel 3.0.6, which does not have support for HTML5 video, so you need to install Flash to watch multimedia. Granted, these versions of Knoppix and Iceweasel are rather outdated, so Knoppix 6.7.1 (or 7) is often a better choice on a new computer.

Another option is to download and install a newer version of Firefox. See below.

The version of Flash compatible with Knoppix 6.0.1 is 10.3. Download it, extract libflashplayer.so into the
/home/knoppix/.mozilla/plugins directory (the plugins directory must also be created). Restart Iceweasel.

02.05.2013. Update

Modern Firefox

By May 2013, Iceweasel 3.0.6 has become so old and outdated that it's not supported by major websites anymore. This includes Google and all its properties (YouTube, Google Drive/Docs, Blogger, and others). The same applies to Yahoo!, twitter, and many other major sites and services.

Using Synaptic in Knoppix 6.0.1 to upgrade to Iceweasel 17 is impractical on account of the Iceweasel 17 package having hundreds of dependencies that must also be upgraded, which really amounts to a whole operating system upgrade. Therefore it's simpler to get the Firefox Linux binary.

The latest official major version of Firefox that still works in Knoppix is version 17, specifically 17 ESR (Extended Support Release). Newer versions won't work.

Firefox 17 ESR can be obtained from Mozilla's FTP site, and I got the latest version here:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/17.0.6esr/linux-i686/en-US
Since Firefox 17.0 ESR is in active maintenance (17.0.6 released on 09.05.2013., which is very recent), then Mozilla is likely to release newer patchlevel versions.

Since new patchlevel versions are placed in a different FTP directory, then...

...here's a beginner's "navigation how-to" for people unfamiliar with FTP

Primer

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is older than the web, and it has been very useful in facilitating large downloads. The content of FTP sites is structured hierarchically, as in folders in a computer file system. Files and directories are listed in alphabetical order UNIX-style: directories are not sorted first, but like all other files; items starting with capital letters are at the top of the list, then followed by lower-case items. In a graphical browser, file and folder names are linked and thus clickable.

Mozilla's FTP site

FTP URLs are given as examples
As Mozilla releases a new version of Firefox, then all files specific to a version are given their own directory. Genereally, all Firefox versions are placed in /releases folder of Mozilla's FTP site:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases
The latest version at this time is 17.0.6 and you can scroll down the list to enter that directory:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/17.0.6esr

As Knoppix is Linux, choose /linux-i686
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/17.0.6esr/linux-i686

What you get in the /linux-i686 directory is a longish folder listing of different Firefox language versions (Firefox is released in many languages), listed in the format of ISO-639-1 two-letter language code followed by ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes.

The respective code combination for English-United States is en-US —
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/17.0.6esr/linux-i686/en-US

There you'll see the archived Firefox binary firefox-17.0.6esr.tar.bz2 —
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/17.0.6esr/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-17.0.6esr.tar.bz2

Download this file to the Desktop. Once the tar.bz2 file is downloaded, go to the desktop, right-click on the file, choose the Extract > Extract To... command. You'll get a file/location picker and the default should be the Knoppix folder. Press OK to extract.

The Firefox executable is then in the /home/knoppix/firefox/ user directory (knoppix being the user account folder).

Even after Firefox is extracted, a shortcut won't be created to the Knoppix LXDE desktop environment menu.

Do keep in mind that since Iceweasel is code-compatible with Firefox, they both share the same user settings located at /home/knoppix/.mozilla/firefox

It is thus recommended to create a different profile for Firefox.

You can start Firefox from the command line:

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ ./firefox/firefox -P &

./ stands for specifically targeting a folder from within the current directory;
-P forces the start of the Firefox Profile Manager;
& (ampersand) makes sure that Firefox starts independently from the terminal window.

After that, the Firefox Profile Manager opens up and you can create a new Firefox profile. When doing so, assign a new and simple profile name.

If you close Firefox, you can start Firefox again from the command line using the new profile:

./firefox/firefox -P newprofilename &

Alternately, the easier way is to unset starting Firefox or Iceweasel in a profile automatically. That way it's slightly more user-friendly to choose a profile, at least when starting Iceweasel. Whereas with Firefox only the ./firefox/firefox command without can be used without having to invoke additional command-line options.

So much for now. I might continue and expand on this further.

Updates information not visible in Windows Vista

So here's a scenario: When using Windows Update in Windows Vista, and the Windows Update front page shows an x number of critical updates and an x number of regular updates, and you click on either of them, the detailed updates listing is all blank; a user doesn't know then which updates should he choose (or not) to download and install.

The specimen in question was Windows Vista Home Basic Service Pack 2 in a Dell Studio 1535 notebook.

I tried and searched for many solutions, and somehow got the thing to work normally again, but I can't exactly put a finger on what it is that I did, partly because I was too lazy to restart after every move or document too diligently. #tired

Assuming everything else is more or less in order, then —

Services started in-between:
1. COM+ System Application, but didn't set it to start automatically.
2. Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v2.0.50727_X86 (Delayed Start).

I had read somewhere that in Windows Vista, Windows Update for some reason required .NET Framework 2.0 to run.
So, if memory serves me correctly, I did install it one day, but at the time it didn't yield the required effect and I had to let it be...

And yes, there were regsvr32 things started and re-started from the command line, but that didn't quite help.

After a few hours of searching for a solution, with many a discussion thread suggesting starting and stopping services, registering and unregistering system files, I stumbled upon a set of suggestions that matched the conditions that I had. See the forum thread here.

Since there was a match in error conditions registering Windows Update files, I was confident about the solution as much as the tech guys were on the forum.

So the solution was to run

SFC /scannow

in a Command Prompt window run as Administrator. If you decide to do the same, then beforehand, create a system restore point or rely on a very recent one, for example one made just a few days ago.

SFC is the System File Checker command-line tool and its variant in modern Windows versions checks protected Windows system files against tampering and replaces those it that appear to be wrong.

I ran the tool, it took its while, but then it finished.
I also got to check out its logs (requires administrator mode to view in WordPad) and separated the most recent check into a new file for the sake of posterity. I couldn't see any substantial errors when changing files over, but there was a lot of movement going on.

Then did a restart, and lo and behold, details about individual updates in Windows Update were visible again! Yay!