CSV-teksti asetamine Androidi installitud tabelarvutusprogrammis

See oli redditi-lõngas äppide välja lülitamisest Androidis (Android 14 ja varasemate näitel).

Disable-võimalus tuleb ainult sisse-ehitatud äppidele, ning ka mitte kõigile.

Osad äpid, kui nende uuendused on maha installitud, muutuvad süsteemiäppideks, seega tuleb äpilistis näidata ära ka süsteemiäpid.

Kahjuks pole siis ka äpilistis (lausa Android 14-s) kirjas, et kumb äpp on eraldi installitud ja kumb on süsteemiäpp.

Seda muret on võimalik leevendada:

Ostsin endale hiljuti uue nutitelefoni ja siis tuli vajadus automaatselt genereerida nimekirja äppidest ja nende versioonidest, mis telefonis on.

Abiks tuli AppList, mis on saadaval F-Droid äpipoest või samanimeliselt veebisaidilt. AppList genereerib nimekirja automaatselt, kuid tuleb kolme-nupu menüüst valida "System apps", et saaks täielikuma ülevaate.

Siis eksportida nimekiri, mis sisaldab ka infot selle kohta, kas äpp on süsteemiäpp.

Installisin eelnevalt Markor äpi, kuhu AppListi andmed sain eksportida CSV kujul.

See on üks väheseid tekstitoimetamise äppe, mille ma olin uuele telefonile installinud, mis võttis eksporditud nimekirja vastu (õieti, mis oli eksporditava teksti sihtrakenduste nimekirjas).

Mis puutub failihaldusse, siis Markorit esialgu väga lihtne kasutada ei ole.

Markoris saab CSV-andmed kõik valida ja kopeerida puhvrisse. Siis asetada mõnda tabelarvutusäppi, nagu Google Sheets, kuigi mul oli lihtsam see asetada AndrOpen Office'isse.

AndrOpen Office on omanduslik port ja haruarendus Apache OpenOffice'ist (varasem OpenOffice.org, millele eelnes StarOffice). Eelis on selles, et mobiili jaoks mõeldud liidese asemel on sellel pigem desktopi-programmiga sarnane liides, mis on tuttav.

AndrOpen Office'is on reklaamid, aga need ei ole mul nähtavad, sest mul on installitud ja enam-vähem okeilt seadistatud DNS66, mis süsteemiüleselt blokeerib äpireklaamid (v.a. YouTube'is ja mõnes suuremas äpis).

AndrOpen Office Calc-is tuleb kõigepealt valida kogu tööleht ja Format > Cells. Seal tuleb valida "text" (valikuid tuleb kerida), siis ok.

Edasi asetada puhvrisse kopeeritud tekst Edit > Paste Special käsuga, kus CSV-teksti eraldajana tuleb märkida koma, välistada tühikud ja tabeldusmärk (tab), ning siis tee linnuke "format quoted field as text" juurde ja siis lülita välja "detect special numbers". Vajuta OK.

Tulemus:

Finding drivers for obscure devices on Windows 10. A short walkthrough.

This post goes back to "Obscure ways to get and old hp printer driver for Windows XP".

Long story short, aka the quick-and-dirty version:

If a computer or notebook with Windows 10 has an 'unknown device' with this ID:

ACPI\CPL0002\2&DABA3FF&2

Then the Windows Update Catalog does offer a driver for it.

But the following conditions must be met:

• Windows Update is unable to find drivers for this device;
• the maker of your PC does not have drivers available for your model of notebook pertaining to this device. If the maker of your computer does actually provides a driver for this device on the particular make and model of your computer, use that driver and no other;
• you might not be able to tell the make and model of your laptop, because the labels at the bottom of the computer have faded, and so, it's hard to find the correct driver from the PC maker's official website.
• the non-availability of the driver can coincide with one or both following possiblities:
  • Your notebook is no longer supported by the manufacturer; and/or
  • the maker of your PC is not a big-name outfit that is able to reliably provide drivers on its own for this device.
    (I've decided against naming individual PC makers, as some people would specify a search prepending the particular PC makers' names with negative operators, so excluding their name[s] to get a more precise result.)

If one ore more of these conditions are met, go to the Windows Update Catalog, and search using the CPL0002 device ID. (search link here)

In this case, the device ID was the only useful piece of information, and so, searching by device ID is more likely to yield results matching the hardware installed. Searching using the name or make/model of this device may yield incompatible results.

The result is "Compal Embedded System Control" version 1.0.0.4 as 'Other hardware' (listed like that as of 2021).

I picked the latest version, dated 26.11.2015, and clicked on the Download button.

The download is a .cab file that must be extracted with an extractor program of your choice into a separate folder. I used 7-Zip to do that.

Before installing:
• have Device Manager open, to see if there are any changes during install.
• create screenshots of all listed System devices in Device Manager. This ought to help in comparing changes.
• create a system restore point. You will need this, if and when things go wrong.

The extracted contents of the .cab package include four files, among them ENFC.inf. Right-click on that, and click Install.

The Device Manager should display a change, and the identified device should be listed. Other newly-recognised devices may also be listed. Worked for me.

After that, power management in a specific old notebook I have, improved, and the fan began blowing out less hot air. At least it seemed to me like that.

Do keep in mind, that I also did a large number of optimisations in the system to switch off most unnecessary background tasks, which certainly helped to reduce the size of the system commit, and the strain on system RAM and the hard drive.

I also reduced the maximum state of the CPU from 100% to 90% in advanced power management options. It's one of those nice things to have in Windows 10.

As a coda, I cannot recommend this process for upgrading the drivers of all devices inside, or connected to a computer. Because if things work normally, one should not update the drivers like this at all. Usually, and on most computers, Windows Update is good enough anyway at finding the right driver for you. In this very particular case and device, I see Windows Update as having missed it.

Obscure ways to get an old hp printer driver for Windows XP

So, some people are stuck on Windows xp, as may be some computers. But files do need printing. This set of instructions is good for other hardware connected to a computer with Windows xp, but with that operating system no longer supported by the hardware manufacturer.

The combo printer, scanner and copier is hp LaserJet Pro MFP M28w.

Officially, hp no longer supports Windows xp, so they no longer offer drivers for it. Microsoft also seems to have shut off Windows Update support for Windows xp. Otherwise, it would have been possible to use Windows Update to automatically download and install the necessary drivers.

32-bit drivers meant for Windows 7 might not work. In my case, the installation failed because of a file certificate error.

On attempting to launch one of the files extracted from the downloaded printer driver installer for Windows 7, the said file required Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. To be safe, download and install that component first, as did I.

When using Internet search, I discovered, that there are slightly older versions of basic hp drivers for that model of device, but download locations offering that driver version were not particularly trustworthy.

But knowledge of older basic drivers for Windows xp got me the bright idea to check out the Windows Update Catalog.

First, on connecting the printer combo via USB showed me the display name of the printer's model:

HPHP LaserJet MFP M28-M31

("HPHP" is not a mistake; this is how it was actually displayed.)

This proved useful when searching the catalog:

As with any other obscure driver, go to catalog.update.microsoft.com, and search for

m28-m31 xp

in the case of this printer combo. "m28-m31" is the device model range, as displayed in the Found New Hardware wizard. "xp" should be self-explanatory, but searching without it will yield over a hundred results, which would be cumbersome to look through in search for a driver meant for only one major version of Windows.

A helpful demonstration link for this search is here.

The search yielded 14 results with the same file size, so this meant, that the printer combo is made up of several discreet integrated devices, with a driver for each, but in one and the same package.

To be safe, pick the package that does not mention "Windows XP 64-bit" in the table row.

On clicking "Download", I downloaded a 32.8 MB .cab file with a long file name made up of hexadecimal symbols.

Using 7-Zip, I extracted the CAB file into a new folder, and browsed to that folder in Windows Explorer.

Keep in mind, that I usually have set Windows Explorer to show system files, including .inf files.

The extracted folder contains several .inf files, and these and other .inf files in the extracted bunch of files are driver installation files.

Other subfolders were the following:

• amd64
• drivers
• i386
• XPV

Right-click on all the .inf files, and click Install for each of them.

The .inf files should have correct information built-in as to bitness, so, that 32-bit drivers are installed in a 32-bit system.

The XPV folder also contains .inf files, and these pertain to the printing function. Right-click on those, too, and click 'Install' for their context menus.

Restart Windows.

On restart and login, most drivers for the affected hardware should install correctly, but getting the printer to be recognised may require more work, if the printer happens to be not listed in the Printers and Faxes Control Panel folder.

My memory is iffy here, but the basic gist is this:

In that same Printers and Faxes folder, click on "Add a printer" in the left-side Printer Tasks Explorer sidebar, or select File > Add a printer from the menu bar.

This launches the Add Printer wizard. There, click Next.

Select the 'Local printer attached to this computer' radio button. The checkbox to automatically detect the Plug and Play printer is optional (this function might not work).

Click Next to select a printer port.

The "Use the following port:" radio button must be checked. From the drop-down menu, pick the port that displays as "USB00x (Virtual printer port for USB)" (x is a number). Click Next.

After that, installation should commence, and one would then be provided with printer options.

The printer test page printed correctly, and I was happy.

Caveat: If there are two or more listed virtual printer ports for USB, repeat Add Printer routine, and click next. If the printer is already listed and shown as 'not connected' (faded out), right-click on the item, click on Properties.

In the Properties window for that printer, click on the Ports tab. In the list, pick the USB port that works.

A few hours after that, I discovered the driver installation CD for that same printer/scanner/copier combo, but if memory serves, it did not contain drivers for Windows xp when I first wanted to install drivers on Windows XP for that printer several years ago.

The thought of trying Windows Update did not come to mind, because: Microsoft had stopped issuing updates for Windows xp, and there were serious performance issues with Windows Update in that computer, as Windows Update had at times stopped working properly, and was taking up huge CPU resources. Had I not had issues with Windows Update on that computer, I'd have probably tried Windows Update, as it still supported Windows XP at the time.

Eesti ID-kaart ja Knoppix 7.2

Algupäraselt on blogipostitus kirjutatud käigupealt, mistõttu on seesinane küljendamata kujul. Artikkel on mõeldud kõigile, kes oskavad natuke terminali (käsurida) kasutada.

Kindlasti võis midagi kahe silma vahele jääda, kuid suures osas peaks andmed paika pidama.

Intro

Ehk kuidas saada tööle panka sisselogimiseks vajalik ID-kaardi tarkvara Knoppixi 7.2 Live-CD-le, ja millised on selleks vajalikud .deb-paketid. Kuna Knoppix on Debiani-põhine, on artiklis väljatoodud pakettide arv minimaalne ja vaid antud Knoppixi-versiooni jaoks, kuid võib kasuks tulla ka teiste Debiani- kui ka mitte-Debiani-põhiste distrodega opereerimisel.

Sissejuhatus

Niisiis tekkis mullegi lõpuks permanentne ID-kaardilugeja (OmniKey CardMan 1021) ja võib-olla ka võimalus seda kasutada, et sisse logida panka. Nimelt otsustas minu pank koodikaardi võimaluse (need, mis numbritega) ära kaotada. Ainult et mul on Windows XP, ning see pole ID-kaardi tarkvara poolt enam toetatud.

Estobuntu plaadile keevitamine ei aidanud, sest selle versioon on samuti aegunud ja uut pole välja lastud. Kui seda reklaamitakse kui eestikeelset distrot, mis "toetab ID-kaarti", peaks see pidevalt kaasaegne olema.

Estobuntu põhineb Lubuntu 14.04-l, mis lasti välja 17.04.2014. Estobuntu DVD-tõmmise juures on kuupäev 02.05.2014.

Lisaks: Estobuntu 14.04 DVD Live-versiooni puhul sai värskeima Firefoxi installimisel miskipärast mäluruum otsa, sest minu masinal on vaid 1 Gb RAM-mälu (muutmälu). Kõvakettale ma tõmmise sisu ei salvestanud, sest kõvakettal on teine opsüsteem; seetõttu läks käiku vaid Live-variant, mille puhul kasutatakse ramdisk-i.

Seevastu Knoppix Live-CD puhul mälu kohese otsasaamise kartust gigabaidise RAM-mahuga pole. Etteruttavalt võib juba nentida, et Knoppixist oli kasu.

• Knoppix Live-CD (mitte DVD!) ja värske Firefoxi käitamiseks on vaja vähemalt 1 Gb RAM-mälu.
• Estobuntu töötab rahuldavalt, kui arvutis on vähemalt 2 Gb RAM-mälu.

Kaalukausile jäigi Knoppix 7.2 Live-CD, mis on Estobuntust vanemgi, aga ka viimane Knoppixi CD-versioon (24.06.2013. väljalase). Sellel on näiteks Firefoxil põhinev Iceweasel 29.0 21.0.

Iceweasel 21.0 ei toeta TLS turvaprotokolli versiooni 1.1 (järgmist) ja uuemaid. Toetatud on ainult TLS 1.0. See tähendab seda, et arvestatav osa turvatud https: veebisaite ei ole kättesaadavad, kuna: nad kasutavad TLS 1.1 protokolli, nad kasutavad TLS 1.2 protokolli, ning vähesed juba TLS 1.3 protokolli. Google, GMail ja Blogger töötavad, samuti DuckDuckGo otsing. YouTube ei tööta.

19.11.2018. Üks hea uudis ka: Firefoxi ei pea eraldi all tõmbama, sest Iceweaseliga sai panka ilusti sisse. Allpool olev pakettide installimise kadalipp tuleb ikkagi läbida, misjärel Iceweaselis digiallkirjastamise mehhanism pangaülekane (PIN2) tegemiseks erinevalt allatõmmatud Firefoxist isegi kuidagimoodi eksisteerib, kuid ei tööta, ning ma kaldun arvama, et siin on tegemist lihtsalt vananenud lehitsejaga. Üks võimalik lahendus oleks installida Iceweaseli uuendus koos vajalike sõltuvustega ja siis võimaluse tekkides proovida, kas pangaülekande tegemine õnnestub.

Et Knoppix 7.2 on veidi üle aasta vanem kui Estobuntu, ning kuna Knoppix ei ole varustatud ID-kaardi kasutamise jaoks vajalike teekidega, tuleb Knoppixile peale panna terve posu pakette ja omakorda nendest sõltuvaid pakette. (Mitte, et Estobuntuga oleks vähem vaeva, aga Knoppix ei võta kõike mälu endale.)

• Knoppix 7.x versioonidel on probleeme Synaptics puutepatjadega, millest olen ma varem inglise keeles kirjutanud. Ajutine lahendus on kasutada välimist osutusseadet (USB-põhine hiir);
• Tähtsamad käsud Knoppix 6.x ja uuemate käitamiseks, sh. sõrmistiku keele valik ja kasutajakeskkonna välimus (samuti inglise keeles).

Paketid

Synaptic paketihaldurit ei soovita ma praegu üldse, sest pakettide vaikimisi aktiivseks seatud allikatega andmebaasi uuendamisel tuleb Firefoxi (või sellel põhineva Iceweaseli) uuendamist valides ette sisuliselt kogu opsüsteemi uuendamise protsess, sest välja vahetada tuleks liigagi suur arv pakette. Firefox koos vajalike lisadega tuleb installida eraldi, aga sellest jutu lõpupoole.

Osad tarkvarapaketid on Knoppixil juba olemas; siin artiklis tõin välja vaid puuduvad või uuendatavad.

Valikupõhimõtted

Pakettide valikul osutus määravaks versiooniühilduvus, lähtudes printsiibist, et kui süsteemis on juba vajaliku paketi ühilduv versioon olemas, siis ei pea sellele uuendust tõmbama.

Näiteks mida vanem Linuxi-distributsooni versioon, seda rohkem uuemaid ja puuduvaid pakette ja nende sõltuvusi (omakorda pakette) peab peale panema.

Sellest johtuvalt osutus valik vähemas osas Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr (edaspidi Trusty) ja suuremas osas Debian 8 Jessie (25–26.04.2015) distrodele kompileeritud ühilduvatele pakettidele — põhimõttel, et mida vanemale distrole tehtud ühilduv pakett, seda vähem tuleks selle jaoks sõltuvusi tõmmata.

Kompromissi ei saanud teha konkreetselt ID-kaarti puudutavate pakettidega, nagu opensc jt., mis tähendas, et osa vajaliku versiooniga pakette on Debian 10 Buster-nimelisest kõige värskemast enam-vähem stabiilsest distro-versioonist.

Kui mõni muu ühilduv pakett oli vanemas distros olemas, langes valik selle kasuks.

Installimisjuhis ja versioonide kontrollimine

Esialgu on targem tõmmata individuaalseid pakette, jälgida nende sõltuvusi ja alles siis need vaid dpkg kaudu installida nii:

$ sudo dpkg -i paketi_failinimi_koos_versiooniga

dpkg siis vastavalt annab teada, kas install õnnestus või mitte ja mis lisapaketti täiendavalt vaja on.

Ennetavalt on võimalik kasutada dpkg-query võimalust, et teada saada, millise paketi versioon installitud on:

dpkg-query -W paketi_nimi_suurversioon

Esmapilgul vajalike teekide paketid (info sain siit) —

Tsitaat:

* openssl (1.1.0h)
* libpcsclite1 (1.8.23)
* pcsc-lite (1.8.23)
* QT (5.9.4) (Miks küll?) — See muuseas jäigi installimata.

Et hoida kokku vaba RAM-mälu, võib tarkvarapaketid tõmmata ja salvestada mitte tingimata Knoppixi Downloads või Desktop (töölaua) kataloogi, vaid kõvakettale või mälupulgale konkreetsesse kataloogi, mis tuleb ise luua.

Pakettide nimekirja loomine

Terminalis koostatud mittetäielik nimekiri tõmmatud pakettidest koos sõltuvustega, kõige varasemast kõige hilisemani:

08:51 pcsc-lite-1.8.24.tar.bz2 — Selgus, et polnud vaja
09:08 libsigsegv2_2.10-4+b1_i386.deb — Polnud ka vaja

09:14 libpcsclite1_1.8.24-1_i386.deb
09:24 dpkg_1.17.5ubuntu5.8_i386.deb
09:37 libreadline7_7.0-3_i386.deb
09:42 libtinfo5_6.0+20161126-1+deb9u2_i386.deb
09:47 libssl1.1_1.1.0f-3+deb9u2_i386.deb
09:50 opensc-pkcs11_0.19.0-1_i386.deb
14:49 libglib2.0-0_2.40.2-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb

Kataloogis olevate failide ajaliselt sorteeritud järjekord ls käsuga:

Kui käsurea käsklus ls -l näitab nimekirja failidest ja nende atribuutidest, siis -ltr parameetrid näitavad detailset nimekirja ajalises järjekorras vanimast uuemani ("modifitseeritud" ehk salvestamise aja järgi) —

l — list — detailne nimekiri
t — time and date — kellaaeg ja kuupäev
r — reverse order — "taguridi järjestus", ehk vanima salvestusajaga fail on kõige üleval

Kuna ma aga tahtsin vaid kellaaega ja failinime, tuli käskluse väljund lasta toru abil ("piibu", i.k. pipe) läbi awk-i:

$ ls -ltr | awk '{print $8, $9}'

print käseb trükkida, ning $8 ja $9 määravad vajalike veergude numbrid. Veerude number tuleb mõistatada ls -l käsuga tehtud nimekirjast. Koma veerunumbrite parameetrite vahel on tähtis. Ilma komata võib ka, aga siis ei tule kellaaja ja failinime või muude esemete vahele tühikut.

Võib kasutada ka lihtsamat varianti

$ ls -tr

— See koostab pakettide lihtsa nimekirja ajalises järjekorras vanimast salvestatust kõige uuemani suunaga ülevalt alla.

Pakettide asukohad ja nende installimine

Tuleb tähele panna, et antud Knoppix 7.2 on 32-bitine, ning pakettide tõmbamisel tuleb valida i386 arhitektuur. Arhitektuurinimetuse puudumisel on arhitektuuri asemel kirjas all (i.k. kõik).

Vajadus on seega järgmiste pakettide järele (tabel on veel pooleli) —

	Link kirjeldusele			Link paketile
#	Pakett	Vajaminev versioon	Knoppix 7.2-s?	Paketi versoon	distro	distro ver.	Sõltuja
	libpcsclite1 1.8.24-1 — paketis olev üks või enam faile sai pakendatud xz formaadis. Sellest ka vajadus uuema dpkg versiooni järele. Jäi meelde, et see dpkg versioon pidi olema just see konkreetne ja mitte mingi muu. Võimalik, et Ubuntu või Debiani ametlikel lehtedel olevad dpkg versioonid kas (veel) ei sisaldanud xz formaadi toetust, või olid pakettide sõltuvusversioonid liiga suured.
1.	dpkg 1.17.5ubuntu5.8	1.17.5	1.16.10	1.17.5ubuntu5.8	ubuntu	trusty	libpcsclite1
2.	libpcsclite1 1.8.24-1	uusim	1.8.8-3	1.8.24-1	debian	buster
*	opensc-pkcs11 0.19.0-1	uusim	Puudub	0.19.0-1	debian	buster
#

opensc-pkcs11 paketil on omad sõltuvused:

* libglib2.0 >= 2.39.4 (Knoppix 7.2-s: libglib2.0-0:i386 2.36.3-1)
* libssl1.1 >= 1.1.0 (Knoppix: Puudub; on libssl1.0.0:i386 1.0.1e-2)

libglib2.0-0_2.40.2-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb ubuntu trusty

4. Mingi hetk tekkis tahtmine tõmmata peale ka uusim opensc:

opensc (0.19.0-1) debian buster

Sõltuvused:
* libglib2.0-0 >= 2.16.0 — esmapilgul polnud vaja, aga siis opensclite1 (üleval) tahtis ikkagi uuemat.
* libreadline7 >= 6.0 (Knoppix: Puudub; kõige hiljutisem on libreadline6:i386 6.2+dfsg-0.1)

libreadline7_7.0-3_i386.deb debian stretch (i386)

** Omakorda sõltuvus: libtinfo6 >= 6 (Knoppix: puudub; on libtinfo5:i386 5.9-10)

** libtinfo5_6.0+20161126-1+deb9u2_i386.deb debian stretch (i386)

* libssl1.1 >= 1.1.0 (Knoppix: puudub, on libssl1.0.0 1.0.1e-2)

libssl1.1_1.1.0f-3+deb9u2_i386.deb — ilmselt stretch; i386

* opensc-pkcs11 = 0.19.0-1 (Knoppix: puudub täielikult)

opensc-pkcs11_0.19.0-1_i386.deb debian buster i386

Edasi tuli installida opensc pakett:

opensc (0.19.0-1) buster i386 (Knoppix: Puudub täielikult)

Edasi: pcsd
pcscd (1.8.24-1) buster i386 (Knoppix: puudub täielikult)

aga sellel on õige mitu sõltuvust:

* libccid >= 1.4.1~ (Knoppix 7.2-s libccid justkui eksisteerib, aga uuendust sellele on ikka vaja)

libccid (1.4.18-1) jessie i386

* libsystemd0 (215-17+deb8u7) jessie i386 (Puudub täielikult)
Sõltuvused:

** libgcrypt20 (>= 1.6.1) 1.6.3-2+deb8u5 jessie dl (Knoppix: Antud versioon puudub, on libgcrypt11 1.5.0-5 )

Sõltuvused:

*** libgpg-error0 (>= 1.14), Knoppix 7.2-s 1.10-3.1 1.17.3

debian jessie i386

* libudev1 (>= 183) (Knoppixis puudub) 215-17+deb8u7 jessie i386

Kokku on pakette umbes kuue megabaidi jagu.

Firefoxi tõmbamine ja installimine

Nagu ülevalpool mainitud, siis eraldi Firefoxi tõmbamine ei ole tingimata kohustuslik. Seda kahel põhjusel:
*Minu panka sai Iceweasel 21.0 lehitsejaga sisse logitud;
*Eraldi tõmmatud Firefox ei toeta PIN2 koodi mehhanismi üldse. Iceweaseliga oli ka võimatu PIN2 koodi kasutada, kuid peale esmaselt vajalike pakettide installimist esitatakse päring selle järele, kui katsetasin ülekande tegemist. Iceweaseli uuendamisel versioonile 38.0 erilist abi kahjuks ei olnud, kuid asja tasub veel uurida.

Mozilla "FTP"-sait sidaldaaab (jutumärkides, sest see on http) Mozilla Firefoxi ja teiste programmide kõiki versioonie. Postituse tegemise kuupäeval on uusima eestikeelse Firefoxi asukoht see:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/62.0.3/linux-i686/et/firefox-62.0.3.tar.bz2

Kui Firefoxi pakitud fail on näiteks Iceweasel lehitsejaga salvestatud, avada faili kataloog pcmanfm failihalduris.

* firefox-62.0.3.tar.bz2 peale saab ühe korra peale klikkida, ja siis avaneb see XArchiver programmis.
* Alternatiiv on failile parema osutinupuga vajutada ja valida Extract To... käsk, mis aktiveerib XArchiver programmi lahtipakkimise mooduli. Selles tuleb valida Firefoxi installatsiooni asukoht. Kuna tegemist on Knoppixiga, võib Firefoxi rahumeeli pakkida lahti /home/knoppix kataloogi. Seal jääb see omakorda firefox/ kataloogi.

Firefoxi saab edasi käivitada terminalist:

$ cd /home/knoppix/firefox

Minna Firefoxi lahtipakitud kataloogi

$ ./firefox -P &

* -P avab Firefoxi profiilihalduri, sest Iceweasel ja Firefox kasutavad sama profiiliarhitektuuri. Seepärast on parem Firefoxis luua uus kasutajaprofiil.
* & tõstab graafilise programmi eraldi terminaliaknast.

Kuna Firefoxi uuendatakse tihti, siis Mozilla "ftp" releases kataloogis on kõige uuem versioon, aga mitte päris alguses. Otsida tuleb 62.0.3-st edasi.

(Synapticut või muud paketihaldurit ära kasuta, sest see tõmbab kaasa liiga suure arvu muid pakette).

Alles siis tuleb Firefoxi laadida onepin moodul.

Firefoxi ingliskeelses variandis:

1. Mine seadistustesse (about:preferences) >
2. Privacy & Security (ülevaltpoolt paremalt) >
3. alaosa Certificates (lehekülje kõige all) >
4. nupp [ Security Devices...] >
5. uuel aknal vajuta [ Load... ] nupule >
6. tekkinud kastis kirjuta ülemisele reale Module Name juurde mooduli nimi (mul on lihtsalt onepin)
7. Ning siis failikorjajast leia see fail:
   
   /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/onepin-opensc-pkcs11.so
   
   — opensc deb-faili järgi pistab dpkg programm onepin-mooduli installimisel sinna.

Tuleb sellega siiski arvestada, et mooduli laadimise aken (kast) võib kaduda lehitseja-akna taha, kui aktiveerida samas aknas olnud muu vahekaart mõne teise leheküljega. Lahendus on siin Firefoxi aken tõsta allapoole senimaani kuni mooduli laadimise aken nähtavale tuleb.

dpkg-põhise installiprotseduuri kõige lõppeks panin peale ka esteidfirefoxplugin_3.12.2.1145beta-1404_i386.deb paketi, mille tõmbasin Ubuntu Trustyle mõeldud RIA varamust.

Kas sellest ka mingit kasu oli, ei ole selge.

esteidpks11loader paketi unustasingi peale panna, aga tuleb välja, et ülejäänust ja allolevast piisas, et sisse logida.

Selle saab kätte samuti RIA poolt Ubuntu Trustyle koostatud varamust.

Küll panin Firefoxile peale Open-eID lehitsejalisa. Kätte saab selle Firefoxis aadressilt
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/open-eid/

Edasi tuleb Firefox sulgeda, alles siis kaart sisestada kaardilugejasse, ning lehitseja siis taaskäivitada.

Kui kaarti parasjagu enam vaja pole, siis sulgeda terve Firefox ja kaart lugejast välja võtta. Kui kaart on kaardilugejas ja lugeja indikaator vilgub, siis kaarti välja võtta ei maksa. (Kui lamp jääb pikaks ajaks vilkuma, siis tasuks proovida süsteemi kinnipanekut või restarti.)

Vähemalt eesti.ee-sse ja panka sisselogimiseks kõlbab küll, kuigi allkirjastamist pole ma proovinud (näiteks ülekande tegemiseks).

Most supernovae are misclassified as nebulae...

...Because the calculations reflecting the speed of light en route to Earth are off, since they don't take into account the effects caused by the confluence of time dilation and dark matter across the long trip that the photons take.

The title refers to numerous photos of nebulae, which I think are really supernovas in progress. I attribute this misclassification the the sheer distance involved and what I think are inaccurate speed-of-light calculations, because the distance between an event and Earth is so great. So, even a quick event in a galaxy far, far away just appears to happen very, very slowly when viewed from here. — So slowly for that matter, that the event looks to be in a standstill.

Dark matter, black holes, and other crazy theories

What I think dark matter is

Dark matter, in turn, is gravity from black holes (aka singularities) not (yet) manifest in this realm. These black holes are singularities, but not black holes, because they haven't opened up yet, but are close enough to the 'wall' separating them and this universe to cause gravimetric emissions. Alternately, I can describe dark matter as just a gravimetric echo of a black hole not yet manifest.

Imagine putting small magnet pieces on paper and then moving them around using a big magnet on the other side of that sheet of paper. The sheet of paper is that wall.

The black holes themselves don't open up just like that. A typical process in the lifetime of a manifest black hole is first to collect enough matter. And well, if there's no matter, then the singularity won't bother either.

But — if there's enough matter, the gravity of the non-manifest black hole (the 'dark matter') will collect the matter together. The right elements that are easier to attract will congregate into one or more masses, of which one such mass is large enough to be solar-forming.

The catch is, that black holes rotate, and the solar material basically chafes at the fabric of the 'wall' separating ths realm from what is probably another one. One possibility is, that a certain small amount of solar material moves from this realm through an inner back hole (inside a sun) to the other side. Well, enter pulsars. Some pulsars are long-lasting and stable, but emit solar material from the other side transmogrified into very powerful pulsar emissions.

Now, the stars and the suns are just pimples of the universe, which are mostly stable. In some cases, a star runs out of fuel (collected matter) and becomes a dwarf.

In other cases, there is some kind of an imbalance that causes a supernova to happen.

An open black hole sucks everything in; imagine a drain, and water going through it is just space. But in space, it's totally 3-dimensional. |There might be more dimensions.|

For a supernova, one option is, that as the amount of solar material increases, a black hole within the stellar object gets more powerful (and maybe sucks more in). Or that it is sustained, along with the star around it. Once the stellar object runs out of fuel, the opening of the singularity inner to the stellar object cannot be sustained, and as that singularity leaves its 'nest' and closes within the stellar object, the remaining solar material that has so far made up that stellar object — unable to be to be sucked in anywhere — disperses. Often violently.

Imagine a rubber balloon and then applying pressure from its hind end. Apply too much pressure, and the ballooon pops. The rubber pieces of the balloon fly around quickly and sometimes violently, as they hit stuff in their way.

13.11.2016 update.

I later thought about actual open black holes that don't have any light around them. As I'd described stars as pimples of the universe, then I could think of not just one type of supernova, but more than one.

So, one type of supernova is likely to be caused by dispersing solar (and other) matter once a singularity has closed up, but the collected matter around the closing doesn't have anywhere to move. That's described above. To add to that, such a nova happens, if the closing is not safe, or if there's surplus material and gravity, and maybe an imbalance involved, but the hole itself closes.

The other type of supernova is caused by a tear in the continuum. The magnets and paper description might come into play here, as rotating black holes are covered by stars (note, that manifest singularities are circular, but instead of forming a mass, they are 3D drains when open), which avoid, prevent or delay the tear from happening.

So it could be, that a certain star runs out of fuel, but a greater imbalance causes the black hole to manifest.
What may be causes to the imbalance, are unknown. Perhaps lack of sufficent matter to close the hole, if the singularity is too powerful. In that case, it's not so much solar matter exploding outwards, but a violent opening, whereby normal gravity is pushed away, in the process also pushing outwards, but not destroying/extinguishing all extant matter that is in the way. That is disperesed before the hole opens.

At this point, I'm too tired, and the previous paragraph is too illogical even to me. I'd rather read up on Wikipedia about actual discoveries and proofs, but later.

All this from the crazy theories dept. I felt so giddy this hour, that I wanted to put out something off the wall with lots of non-sensical technobabble.

Added minor wording and idea updates a few days later.

Firefox for Android on slow phones. Some practical advice.

This one was supposed to be a quick post; I might update it later on. And then I got carried away, and spent about four to six hours writing the post's content and refining its wording.

* That Firefox for Android can render better than the aged native browser on Android 2.3, is great, but at the moment, I won't go into detail about that.
* This post is not about desktop Firefox. I might write about issues current in desktop Firefox in a future post.

Contents

* What happened
* My phone is slow now.
* What to do. Extensions to speed up Firefox

Until today, I have avoided that "What I Use" post, but every once in a while comes a time, when I am not afraid to write about what I use. Even if it's not the newest kit.

Why I downgraded

After Firefox 45.0 was released, one early and now resolved issue was connection misbehavior with Firefox 45.0 and NoScript 3.5a10. Very soon, NoScript 3.5a11 was released, which fixed the issue.

Then, after upgrading, I also discovered, that Firefox 45.0 turned to using the Firefox-native toolkit for its main menu, which is slower than the natively formatted main menu in Firefox 44.0.2 and earlier.

For this and then-the earlier issue, I decided to downgrade back to Firefox 44.0.2 from version 45.0. The slow and inefficient main menu became cause not to upgrade any further on my device—except for testing.

Note, that when upgrading or downgrading apps in Android, use the overwrite method when installing; Do not uninstall the existing app version to then install a different version, or this action will forever delete all your user data for the app.

Backround

Thus, it slowly dawned on me, that my phone is showing its age. It's a Samsung Galaxy Mini 2, which model was released four years ago,^{[as of March 2016]} but I got it in late 2013 as a pass-me-down, after it had two nearly grave misadventures with its previous owner.

* The Galaxy Mini 2 has an 800 MHz Snapdragon S1 CPU (specifically, MSM7227A), which is on the lower end of processors built on the ARMv7-A architecture, and uses the ARM Cortex A5 processor core.
* The phone runs Android 2.3.6 "Gingerbread", and won't be upgraded to a newer offical Android version.
* The device has just enough minimum required RAM memory to run Firefox for Android.

This soup of specifications essentially shows what the minimum for running a very modern version of Firefox for Android can be.

That major apps — such as Facebook and games — are not present, is a given. I've also excised other apps that I did not deem necessary anymore: BBC, ERR, Postimees, and a local service provider's player app.

What to do

In Firefox settings, disable telemetry and plugins. The Privacy Settings extension will make it simple to turn off other stuff.

Extensions to speed up Firefox

The following details two extensions that I use in Firefox for Android to have a reasonably passable browsing experience.

NoScript Anywhere.

In my phone, NoScript Anywhere ("NSA") makes browsing with Firefox a usable experience:

NoScript blocks scripts and plugins from running, and users can use the NoScript menu item to create an internal domain-based whitelist of sites which won't work without scripts. With this, NoScript not only blocks scripts, but also advertisements generated by scripts.

Another thing that shows the phone's age, is that the local daily "Postimees" launched a redesign of their mobile experience this month, and now their site redirects to their brand-new mobile site, which, if JavaScript-enabled, updates every ten minutes with AJAX, and that slows down the experience and the phone, and presumably eats away at the battery, too.

The obvious solution was to forbid postimees.ee from running scripts, thus removing it from the allowed sites list. This mangled the design somewhat, but at least the site will display reasonably responsively. Yes, it's a simplistic workaround, but it makes it possible to read news there, even if the site is not functional. The functional part was the possibility to rate comments, but "Postimees" removed the ostensibly anonymous commenting functinality. Most people just don't care to create a burner account on social media, and neither do they care risking their primary social media/e-mail accounts.

Privacy Settings

Another Firefox extension that reduces resource usage, is Privacy Settings. It's available at the Mozilla Add-ons site. With Privacy Settings, it's possible to switch off components that I don't have any need for. There are some settings that I have kept on, as switching all things to 'secure' may break rendering or accessing places like Instagram. While Privacy Settings won't work on older Firefox versions that can still run on Android 2.2 or earlier, or on ARMv6 CPUs, the extension's website has a breakdown of some of the about:config settings that one can modify manually.

I'm also considering the Policy Control extension, as it would reduce resource usage even further, and introduce more fine-grained control over which website can use which resources.

How to prevent gwx.exe from running

This affects Windows 7, Windows 8.x, and this post is only about the "Get Windows 10" nag message seen in the taskbar notification area.

04.04.2016 Update: Before even of this post, there have been more sophisticated efforts to keep Windows 10 from automatically installing itself on computers with Windows 7 and 8.x. Never10 is the latest effort. Computerworld article here.

• This post assumes, that the user already knows how to change file permissions and attributes.
• I wrote it from memory, because I used the below method on someone else's computer that had Windows 7 in it.

I won't vouch, that following the below steps will prevent drive-by installs of Windows 10, but in a computer I worked on, the nagging stopped.

There are also several updates that should be hidden, and which one would be smart not to install. Or, if they're there, to uninstall. Upon returning the computer, I instructed the user only to install critical updates from Windows Update, but not recommended updates.

* As Administrator or a user with admin rights, go to the location where gwx.exe is at;
* Go to its file properties and take ownership of the file. The default owner is TRUSTEDINSTALLER
* After that, change file permissions for all users so, that only you or the administrator can only read it.
* Repeat that with other executables in the same folder.

Writing to the file(s) should thus be forbidden, and also deleting it (them).

You or a designated administrator account should be the only ones who can change the file's attributes. I don't know, if prohibiting file attribute changes also affects changing whether rights to the file can be modified in the future.

In total, this should mean, that the file can't be executed and its attributes can't be changed by other users.

I also remember doing some changes at Windows Scheduler as to whether gwx.exe should run, and I remember disabling some of these items, too.

And then restart the computer. After that, the "Get Windows 10" notification did not appear anymore. #worksforme

Independence Day: Resurgence website and Firefox

A quick post: www.warof1996.com might not display in Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers.

The reason is that the site is based on WebGL, and Firefox blocks WebGL, if the GPU (video card) driver is out of date or does not support WebGL.

The solution in Windows is to update GPU drivers either through the computer manufacturer's website or through the site of the GPU supplier — one of Intel, nVidia, or AMD/ATI, but not limited to only these.

Thorough care should be taken to match the driver to the correct display adapter model.

If that doesn't work, the GPU is too old, or EOL'd.

I strongly recommend not to force Firefox to use WebGL, because this move can damage hardware.

The alternative is to use Google Chrome or Chromium, which probably uses a CPU-based workaround; but if either the graphics adapter or the CPU or both are too old, then rendering is unlikely to work, or is too slow.

> Explanation — contains minimum driver versions that support WebGL.

In addition, visit about:support in Firefox and the Graphics section therein, which also recommends the minimum driver version for WebGL (Direct2D, etc). The posting contains the same warnings about possible damage to hardware if Firefox were forced to use WebGL.

System requirements

This table is incomplete. I've only gotten to test the website on three computers (with some reservations), and gotten an external report about another.

PC	Hardware/software specifications
	CPU	GPU	RAM	OS	Fx	Chrome	Notes
ASUS K53SC notebook	Intel Core i3 2310M @ 2.1 GHz, dual-core	i:Intel HD Graphics 3000 d:nVidia GeForce GT 520MX	4 Gb DDR3, 665.1 MHz	Windows 7 SP1	Yes	Yes	Required driver updates: I had to upgrade both Intel and nVidia drivers through downloading them from their respective websites.
ASUS U46SV	Intel Core i5 2410M @ 2.3 GHz, dual-core	i: Intel HD Graphics 3000	8 Gb	Windows 10 (build unknown)	Slow	Not tested	Website opens, but performance is slow and jerky, and the fan began working intensely.
	d:	nVidia GeForce GT 540M
ThinkPad R60e (0657-3WG)	Intel Core Duo T2400 (Centrino)	Mobile Intel 945GM Express	2 Gb DDR2 (an upgrade from just 512 Mb)	Windows XP SP3	No	Slow / ok	Rendering was slow, but the site was usable. Chrome: 48.0.2564.109 32-bit; Blink 537.36 JavaScript: V8 4.8.271.19, (This version already announced that it's to be retired on Windows xp.) Instead of OpenGL, Chrome's default renderer in Windows is ANGLE, which translates OpenGL ES to Direct3D, as it has better driver support. Thus, results for Chrome can differ.
hp dv5204ea notebook	Intel Celeron M 410 @ 1.46 GHz	Mobile Intel 945GM Express	1 Gb DDR2, 266 MHz	Windows XP SP3	No	Too slow	While I did upgrade the driver, its version is still less than required: The latest Windows XP driver for this GPU is 6.14.10.4926 (15.02.2008), but Firefox wants at least version "6.1400.1000.5218".
PC	CPU	GPU	RAM	OS	Fx	Chrome

All this does not yet indicate much as to what the titular website's actual system requirements are. In notebook computers, the default video card used by any program in Windows is the integrated adapter, while nVidia software provides an option to launch programs using its own GPU.

The Asus notebook with greater specifications falls below the threshold, whereas the Asus notebook with slightly lesser specs, an older operating system and updated video drivers shows the website nicely.

Vim tips on searching and replacing

This is not exhaustive or anything, just a memo.
's' means substitute. While it may also mean "search", the search command is usually a slash /, as in

/searchabletext

The simple of it:

:s/whatimlookingfor/whatshouldreplaceit

The slash separates the command, the searchable item, the replaceable item, and additional parameters.

To replace stuff throughout the whole file (or document), use the percent % sign before s:

:%s/whatimlookingfor/whatshouldreplaceit

:s/\&,/^M/g

This replaces commas across one (long or large) line with a newline (carriage return). Breakdown:

s/ — starts the substitute command
after slash, enter search string
\& — all occurrences of desired search string within a line
, — comma is what one is looking for
/ — the next slash separates the search string from the replacement
^M — newline (carriage return). in gVIM (for Windows), it's highlighted, as it's actually entered as <Ctrl+V> <enter>
/g — replace till the end of line. Useful for if there's a huge amount of text in one line.

If one wants carriage returns after a comma, use this:

:s/\&,/&^M/g
— where the usually coloured (and special) carriage return symbol ^M follows the ampersand &. The ampersand is used to to add text: stuff before it is added before the searchable string; stuff added after the ampersand means that instead of deleting, stuff is added after the searchable string.

Convenient.

:s/\&&quot\;/"/g

Here it replaces all " with normal quote characters "
\& — all occurrences of search string within a line;
&quot\; note that the semicolon is escaped.

:s/\&description="/&\t

\& — search in a line all instances of
    description="
/
&\t — As stated above, the ampersand & is used to add stuff; in this instance, a tab \t is added after the searchable string.

Turn highlight off
Like this:nohlsearch
^ Given that all searchable strings found are highlighted. But then it becomes somewhat annoying when proceeding to edit text after things are done. Instructions from the Vim wikia.

Or:

:noh

16.04.2018:
Search for strings not containing a character (search with exclusions)

Search for a line not containing dots (periods):

/^[^\.]*$

Breakdown:

/ — starts a search
^ — start of a line
[^stuff_to_be_excluded] — exclusion [^inside square brackets, starting with caron]
[^\.] — the dot is escaped with a backslash \
* — wildcard for everything
$ — end of a line

Pressing enter/return will get you to the nearest match (if any), and highlight other matches. Move to the next match with the n key.

Social networks and avatars

This was a comment I wrote to someone in a social network where their avatar was somewhat direct in its presentation.

The first thing people will look at is another person's avatar (profile picture), which often reveals quite a bit about that person. For example, if an avatar only shows a face, then the picture says "here I am, this is me." — People who look for meaningful relationships tend to gravitate towards those profiles that only show a person's face.

On dating sites that are often used for short-term liaisons, photos of people are more direct with what they have to offer, because potential dates then look for something else than a face or a personality. — Yet such photos anywhere in a profile are not effective on sites where meaningful relationships are sought.

Tips on making a good YouTube video

In order of importance:

• Use a tripod or something that can hold your phone in place while you're filming;
• When filming with a modern mobile phone, always hold it sideways to avoid 'tall' vids;
• Make sure the aspect ratio matches the YouTube video box, which is 16:9;
• If video aspect ratio is different, then YouTube allows letterboxing;
• Avoid uploading videos in less than 360p; else they will look pixelated in the video box;

Audio

• Do not upload videos with low volume, because most other videos are louder, and so are video ads;
• Avoid excessive audio treble, otherwise 's' sounds are too loud, which might hurt ears;
• To minimize echo, set up an almost wall-height bookshelf full of books or stuff along at least one nearby wall. Keep it clean and dust-free.

Intro and end clips

• Intro clips should be short, at best up to 15 seconds (else boring);
• If intro has music, its volume should fade in from 0 or 25% to normal;
• End clips should always have lower volume than your video;

Text in video

• Do not use cursive fonts, they are hard to read;
• See if you can do without very thin fonts, as these can be hard to read on small displays or from a distance;
• Do not use too large text size, as that's hard to read, too. It's good only for a separate video thumbnail image;
• Try to avoid colouring each letter, because that is also hard to read;
• Consider text contours or text shadow or some translucent text background color if video content changes from light to dark at text position;

You

• You may look gorgeous, but if you have an important message, then keep your shirt on like Russ Marine (now Civilian) does, so that your listeners won't get distracted.

Other people

• Avoid publishing videos with your own or anyone else's children in them. They are not your dog or cat, and they need privacy, too, even if they don't yet understand what it means — Small children are unable to give consent, as they don't yet have the concept of public/private and what consent is.
• A child of school age can be taught these things, so they will eventually learn to understand, so they can make their own choices.
• There are times and places when publishing videos with children in them are necessary:

If you happen to document any kind of abuse with anyone anywhere, then be ready for the following: You need to have a device of insignificant cost, good recoding features, fast connection, and instant upload to a throwaway account for backup, because authorities are very keen on gatherng evidence.

Speech manners

• When talking,
avoid using words like "don't", "doesn't", "didn't", etc., because these can be misheard wrongly. Try instead "do not", "does not", "did not", and so on with 'could', 'should' and the like. Unless you want to be ambiguous on purpose.
• Do not confuse 'may', 'can', and 'might': Avoid "bad people may or can do something", as if you might be giving them permission, and use 'might' instead; whereas "really good people _can_ do something good."

HDTV. UHD. Eesti.

Tarbija24: Eestlased ostavad aina nutikamaid telereid. Jätsin kommentaari siia ka, et see hiljem ära ei kaoks.

Eestis on võimalik üle kaabli (Starman) või ka IPTV (Elion) vaadata HD kanaleid küll. Esialgu on nö uuematest tehnoloogiatest laiemalt saadaval vaid FullHD.

See-eest UHD on alles verivärske ja seda sai näha näiteks FIFA jalgpalli maailmakarika ülekannet vaadates — nendel, kel vastav aparatuur olemas.

UHD standardeid on kaks: 4K ja 8K. Jaapan läks kohe 8K peale üle, teised maad ja riigid on nagu kahevahel, et kas valida 4K või 8K.

YouTube muuseas toetab 4K-d, kui video on selles resolutsioonis üles võetud. Vaja on vaid, et toru oleks lai.

Eestis on minuteada DVB-T digistandard koos MPEG4 AVC pakkimisega, mis peaks võimaldama HDTV-d, aga ma ei tea täpselt, kas see on Eestis digiantenniga vastuvõetaval HD-kanalil ainult 720p, või pigem 1080i või 1080p.

HDTV on DVB-T standardi ja MPEG-4 AVC kodeeringuga võimalik, kuid DVB-T läbilaskevõime võimaldab korraga vist ainult ühte-kahte HD kanalit. Ühe multipleksi kohta mitme kanali jaoks on tarvis DVB-T2 saatjaid, aga meil on vaid DVB-T, mille läbilaskevõime on väiksem. Tõsi küll, MPEG-4 AVC kodeerimine on tõhusam kui MPEG2, mis võimaldab veidi rohkem.

Sest soomlastel on alumises otsas DVB-T koos MPEG2 kodeeringuga, mis on vanem kui meie variant, aga nad juurutavad juba DVB-T2 saatjaid ja paljudel sealsetel telekatarbijatel on see mure, et tuleb välja vahetada digivastuvõtjad või üldse uus teler osta. Mõlematpidi on kulu.

Eestis oli üleminek digitelevisioonile ses mõttes ratsionaalne, et analoogiga võrreldes muutus ülekandmine kõigile odavamaks ja nii sai ka kulusid kokku hoida. Nii riik kui ka eeldatavasti erakanalid.

Eestis on alles neli aastat möödas digitelevisioonile üleminekust, mille hulka kuulub DVB-T saatjate paigaldamine (infrastruktuur) ning tarbijate poolt digibokside ja/või uute telekate ostmine.

Ma ei kujuta üldse ette, et kas ja kuidas ja millal oleks peale selliseid kulutusi otstarbekas DVB-T2-le ja seeläbi UHD-le üle minna. Et kui, siis loodetavasti toimub see siis juba järk-järgult, nagu kunagi ammu oli näiteks mustvalgelt värvitelekale üleminek.

Installing the GIMP FFT plugin (in Windows)

The short of it: to install the Fourier FFT transform plugin into GIMP, download the latest version from here (registry.gimp.org). (I chose the Windows distribution, 32 bits).

From this gimpchat.com forum post I learned that both fourier.exe and libfftw3-3.dll must be placed into the GIMP plugins folder (specifically
C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins).

Unfortunately, when starting GIMP again, I got the error that the file libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll was not found, so this meant that the filter wouldn't work.

To get the libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll file, this instruction on another GIMP plugin suggested how to get that file: download the x32-4.8.0-release-win32-sjlj-rev2.7z package from Sourceforge (36.1 Mb); then you need to open the compressed file with 7-Zip (if you don't have it, download and install it separately beforehand), move to directory x32-4.8.0-release-win32-sjlj-rev2.7z\mingw32\bin\, and there's the file.

Extract only libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll to C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins .

I became interested in the FFT plugin from a Wikimedia Commons Help section offering instructions about image manipulation, introducing the plugin here and in the next section.

List of Canadian carriers that offer Nokia mobile phones (April 2013)

22.04.2013

Rogers Wireless
Residential
* Nokia E5
· Nokia Lumia 920
Business: Small Business & Enterprise
· Nokia Lumia 920

Fido (subsidiary of Rogers): No Nokia phones

Bell Mobility - No Nokia phones

Telus Mobility
* Personal - Nokia Lumia 620
Prepaid - Nokia Lumia 610
Pre-Owned - Nokia Lumia 610 (web-exclusive)
* Business - Nokia Lumia 620

SaskTel Mobility (Saskatchewan) - Website is "temporarily down for maintenance.
23.04.2013 update: No Nokia phones anyway.

Wind Mobile (Southern Ontario and elsewhere; website does not work properly with Firefox 20.0.1) - Nokia not listed and no Nokia phones available

MTS Mobility (Manitoba) -
* Personal
* Nokia 6350
* Nokia Surge
· Nokia Lumia 710
* Small and Medium Business
* Nokia 6350
* Nokia Surge
· Nokia Lumia 710

Videotron Mobile (Québec and Ottawa) -
* Residential
· Nokia Lumia 710
* Business
* Nokia C7-00
* Nokia E73
* Nokia 500
· Nokia Lumia 710

Mobilicity (urban: Greater Toronto area, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Vancouver) - No Nokia phones

Public Mobile (urban: Greater Toronto area, Greater Montreal and most of the Niagara region) - No Nokia phones

MVNO-s

7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless (uses Rogers) —
* Contract phones via cellstores.com, which defaults to the U.S. territory
Accounts: New, renewal/upgrade, more lines, replacement device
· Nokia Lumia 810 (T-Mobile)
· Nokia Lumia 822 (Verizon)
Prepaid devices/no contract:
* Nokia X2 (T-Mobile)
· Nokia Lumia 710

Brightroam (uses the Rogers network, offers 'inernational cell phones') —
* Nokia 1280
* Nokia C2-01

Chatr Wireless (Rogers) —
* Nokia 1616
* Nokia C2-02
* Nokia C3 + free Bluetooth headset
(and one Sony Ericsson)

Cityfone (Rogers) — No Nokia phones

CityWest (Bell) — Does not visibly offer phones on its website.

Clearnet (subsidiary of Telus) — phone offer links direct to Telus' own website.

DCI Wireless (Rogers) —
* Nokia 1100
----
Other European-brand phones:
* Siemens CF62 (refurb)
* Siemens S66 (refurb)
* Siemens SL56 (refurb)
Other interesting brands:
* Panasonic A100
* NEC e132
* Palm Treo 650 (part of specials, while quantities last, no rainchecks)

KMTS Mobility (Bell)
* Personal
* KMTS Mobility (CDMA, a division of Bell Aliant) — No Nokia phones
* NorthernTel (HSPA, a division of Bell Aliant) —
* Home: No Nokia phones
* Business: Phone offers take to original NorthernTel catalog
* Business — Takes to KMTS/NorthernTel choice page, so defaults to above information

KooDoo Mobile (Telus) — Wants location, chose BC
* Prepaid phones
* Certified Pre-Owned — Nokia Lumia 610
* Certified Pre-Owned — Nokia Lumia 610

Northerntel Mobility (Bell) — see above

NorthwesTel (Bell) — No Nokia phones

PC Mobile (Bell) —
* Nokia 7230

Petro-Canada Mobility (Rogers) — mainly sold in-store
* Nokia 1616
* Nokia 2220 (limited quantity, but hey :)
* Nokia 2720 (in limited quantities)
* Nokia C3

Primus Canada (Rogers) —
* Residential — No Nokia phones

Roam Mobility (T-Mobile USA) — No Nokia phones

SearsConnect Wireless (Rogers) > Cityfone — No Nokia phones
SimplyConnect (Rogers) > Cityfone — see above

Solo Mobile (Bell) — Not taking on new customers, directing those to Bell Mobility — No Nokia phones

Talk & Earn (Rogers) > Cityfone — See above for cityfone
Talk & Save (Rogers) > Cityfone — See above for Cityfone

Télébec Mobilité (Bell/Quebec, division of Bell Aliant) — No Nokia phones

Virgin Mobile Canada — No Nokia phones

Eastlink (Rogers) — Website not available

Fleetcom — No Nokia phones

ICE Wireless (Rogers) — Does not offer any phones

Keewaytinook Mobile (Rogers) —
* Nokia C2
* Nokia Asha 311

Lynx Mobility (Bell/Telus) — No Nokia phones

Sogetel Mobilité (Bell/Quebec) — No Nokia phones, but one Sony Ericsson W508

TBayTel Mobility (Rogers) — only 4G HSPA+ (smartphones, but apparently no featurephones)
Residential —
* Nokia Lumia 920
Business —
* Nokia Lumia 920

Good2Go Mobile Canada (Rogers)
* Nokia 1616
* Nokia 2720
* Nokia 2220

KORE Wireless (Rogers) — non-residential service

Mozillale NoScripti installimine Windows Vistas

Seesinane on siis eestikeelne kokkuvõte oma varasemast ingliskeelsest blogipostitusest. Alguses kirjutasin selle kohta ühele sõbrale, ning kuna tekst osutus siiski pikemaks, leidsin ma seejärel, et jutt vajab avaldamist.

Hiljuti ühes Windows Vistaga masinas avastasin Mozilla 1.7.13. Tegemist on siis tarkvarapaketiga, mille lehitsejamoodul on sama vana kui Firefox 1.0.8 (Aprill 2006; esitlusmootor pärineb 2004. aastast ja Mozilla enda arhitektuur 2001.-st aastast).

Et Mozilla mõnede lehekülgede JavaScripti pärast kokku ei jookseks, läks alguses palju aega, et kuidas sellele NoScript nii peale panna, et töötaks, sest umbes sama vanale Firefoxile Knoppix 4.0.2-s (2005) sai küll. Lõpuks jätsin asja katki...

Mõni kuu hiljem leidsin lahenduse (Mozilla tuli käima panna administraatori õigustega) ja siis panin peale NoScripti, aga nii, et see tuli kindlasti installida Mozilla kasutajaprofiili kataloogi.

SeaMonkey 1.1-ga sellist probleemi ei tohiks olla, sest SeaMonkey 1.1 ja Windows Vista arendus/väljalase langes umbes samale ajale, et põhimõtteliselt sai seda Vista jaoks siis veel kohendada nii, et oleks parem ühilduvus.

SeaMonkey 1.1.19 on üks viimastest vabatarkvaralistest graafilistest lehitsejatest, mis töötab Windows 98/Me peal.

Tools to uninstall extensions in Mozilla 1.7.xx and SeaMonkey 1.x.

Mnenhy

In Mozilla Application Suite and SeaMonkey 1.x, removing extensions is not as easy as it is in SeaMonkey 2.0, given that the latter uses Firefox-based infrastructure.

First off, there is Mnenhy, which has many modules and which is more geared towards expert users. The important module is the Chrome Manager, which is accessible from the Tools menu.

* For SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6.666 (Can't remember where I got the version with the .666 patchlevel, but this should be the one for SeaMonkey 1.1.xx);
* For Mozilla 1.7.13, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6

Mnenhy 0.7.6 is compatible with Mozilla 1.7 and SeaMonkey 1, and it can be downloaded from mnenhy.mozdev.org

Extension Uninstaller 0.2

Unlike Mnenhy, this is one is more user friendly and even has easy-to-read error logs in case something doesn't work.

Extension Uninstaller 0.2 also requires the Extension Uninstaller API, which should be installed first.

Now, the problem with getting Extension Uninstaller is that its original website with
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller/ and
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller_api/
URLs is offline.

The only relatively good references I found to it are in
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=365228
— where only the addons.mozilla.org extension pages are references, but these are unfortunately closed, too.

The solution is to peruse the original official URLs in the Web Archive.:

Snapshot from 2010-03-04

There, scroll down to the Install section, see the "Install For:" Mozilla link. Right-click on the link, choose "Save Link Target As..." command to save the XPI.

It's a bit more difficult With the Extension Uninstaller API .xpi, which can be separately had from archive.org.

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.

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