Posts by Dan 55

Are you under the impression that NPAPI on Firefox doesn't have a sandbox?

Google proposed something different to NPAPI because NPAPI was NIH.

Re: Any way to tell?

If they've made that choice it's probably in spite of enterprise, not because of it. If Mozilla were bothered about enterprise they'd have left a lot of things alone and made other changes instead (separate about:config pref to enable Java plugin, allow older/weaker certificates on the LAN, official MSI support...).

Re: Any way to tell?

Use the Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on to check add-ons compatibility status.

Use about:config > plugin.load_flash_only = false to turn all NPAPI plugins back on.

When you update to Firefox 56, switch to manual updates only. When Firefox 57 comes out, install Firefox ESR.

Finally, when Firefox ESR is obliged to throw out old-style add-ons...

- If you can live with your reduced selection of add-ons, continue with Firefox ESR or go back to Firefox.

- If not, look for another browser (completely different add-ons) or continue surfing unprotected against the newest CVEs.

Oddly enough Flash support in Firefox will continue until 2019, which is fucked up.

Re: Now you see

How can they be conveniently ignored when most of the population has one of a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Reddit account?

These are people in the real world with a vote posting things which are read by other people in the real world with a vote.

Re: Skype for business is pretty sad

2-3. It's not a Bluetooth problem because it also happens with me with a Logitech headset and their USB dongle.

Seems if the connection to the headset cuts out and returns for whatever reason, Lync doesn't realise that it's come back and just carries on piping silence to the call.

As for network configuration, no other IM/voice call/video call seems as flaky as Lync. You are forced to make sure layers 3-4 are set up just right for it because layers 5-7 can't cope gracefully with errors.

The thing is, Lync got renamed to Skype for Business and had a UI makeover to match Skype's Fisher Price UI (the one that got introduced when MS bought it and version numbers started getting shooting up for no good reason).

At the same time, Skype has just had a Snapchat UI makeover on mobile and Desktop will follow. It makes Skype's UI even worse, if that were possible.

What does this mean, that Lync will also get a totally unusable Snapchat UI makeover in a later Office version because marketing insist both programs be called Skype and look more-or-less the same?

Meanwhile, audio problems, group chat problems, headset problems, stupid messages saying stuff might or might not have been delivered, false presence info (online/away), file transfer, single thread UI, lack of shared chat history between devices, etc... still make Lync a crappy experience.

The best chat program MS ever did was MSN Messenger, but it seems nobody at MS even remembers it.

Re: Prices going up, customers going down (by one) ...

They do, but the price difference is not as much as you'd think.

Re: Reminds me of

MobaXterm will get you a UNIX-style shell environment running on the Windows file system and it's up and working faster than Cygwin. It can even run xeyes which Windows 10 won't be able to according to MS' release notes.

To be honest there doesn't seem much to recommend Windows 10 over MobaXterm or Cygwin given all the limitations listed.

Re: Devuan smugness

Distrowatch's search page allows you to search distributions by criteria. It's got an init field where you choose the inits you're interested in... and "not systemd".

No other init has a "not" field, only systemd, for some reason.

Unfortunately it lists 177 active distributions with systemd and 94 active distributions without systemd. That's how much this disease has spread.

Re: I wonder what the cost of living is there...

The British government have heard your plea and are currently working hard on driving the UK's economy down to third world levels.

... and he was from Atos or something?

Re: As usual .....

This has the whiff of marketing/PR strategy placement bullshit about it.

They really want to push people to have a MS account and at least look at the store. They're now reduced to putting basic tools into the store to do this, possibly adding ads too, because why not?

Re: I like Firefox

about:config > plugin.load_flash_only = false

Restart.

That'll get you the plugins back on the non-ESR version (until they completely disabled them).

Re: IMO It is an engineering fault for their failure...

I would absolutely agree that they've got an engineering problem. They throw out everything that makes Firefox different for one of two reasons:

1) they just straight out admit they don't know how to maintain stuff any more,

2) they claim metrics say a feature is hardly ever used and maintaining it would take resources away from something else, but they forget that metrics can be disabled, some options they remove are corner cases but very useful, and the Venn diagram of people doing both probably shows quite a big intersection.

Also, the world is crying out for a feature-complete and easy-to-use mail client and Thunderbird was so near, despite it being ignored for years by Mozilla.

Re: What are they thinking?

It's one of the first programs used at my kid's school, but if MS get rid of it that means that people learn to look for alternatives at a young age, so it's probably a good thing.

Want a backup? Save to OneDrive. Only £x a month. Or to save even more money, Office 365 + OneDrive. Only £y a month.

The monetisation of Windows continues apace.