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October 16

Wikipedia Tours by DailyLit

I have just found the following resource.

• DailyLit Read Wikipedia Tours Books Online by Popular Authors

Are the tours based on Wikipedia:Books?
—Wavelength (talk) 01:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think so. All they're doing is having what amounts to a blog where they show the first paragraph of a given article, its contents, and a link to the en.wikipedia page for that article. Then they syndicate the blog by email or rss. The programme they follow seems to be their own (they have, for example, a Grand Tour tour, and I can't find a Wikibook that delivers the same articles). As their syndication mechanism is a bit clumsy I've not looked through a feed long enough to figure out how it's made - it may be that they've curated it themselves, or it may simply be an iteration over a mediawiki:category. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 01:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Ubuntu ftp server problem

Hi,How could I restrict user1 into /var/www/user1 directory and user2 could use /var/www and all of it´s subdirectories. I´m using ProFTPd. --Olli (talk) 07:02, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Does gmail ever ask about your birthday before you're allowed to log in?

A couple of weeks ago, when logging in to my gmail account (or possibly Google docs, not 100% sure), I was asked about my birthday. At the time, I thought it actually was Google who were asking, but I've begun to worry if my PC is infested with malware that somehow intercepted the browser, and asked this question for whatever reason (identity theft comes to mind...). There was no way to opt out of supplying a birthday, so I entered a fake one. This occurred when I was using an XP machine, with automatic Windows updates and Microsoft security essentials. Firefox, most recent version at the time (automatic updates).

Now, after having become suspicious, I checked out my Google account, "Show data that are stored for this account" (translated from Norwegian, the English wording may be slightly different). No trace of any birthday.

I've done a web search for similar incidents, and came accross this page, which shows exactly the screen that I was presented with. By searching for the wording in the screenshot, I found this thread, and that's all I've been able to find about this problem.

What's going on here? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem with this kind of thing is you put in a fake DoB then later Google ask you to verify your identity for some reason or other and you can't remember your fake birthday. Perhaps good if you're 14 years old and are looking for porn (Google claim it is so they can provide age-relevant content); but it's not so good if you're a security conscious adult and they lock you out of your GMail account. Frankly, your date of birth shouldn't be any of Google's concern. FWIW, I told my new ISP I was 150 years old when they asked the same thing :-) Astronaut (talk) 15:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks (I chose a DoB that I'll remember). After some more searching for Google and birthday's, I see that Google now require that you provide your DoB when opening a Google account, and that they do not permit you to change it afterwards. I'm pretty sure that was not the case when I opened my account. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Since nobody yet has answered the question in the title, I assume that those who have given the question some thought, are uncertain about whether it is Google or a scammer who presented me and the blogger that I linked to with this screen. Taking Google's birthday policy into account [1], I find that the most likely answer to my question, is that it actually is Google who are doing this. Your opinions about the likelihood of this being a scam would be most welcome. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Well a quick search for 'google ask date of birth' finds [2] which suggests they do ask for the DOB sometimes. [3] suggests it's for COPPA compliance. Nil Einne (talk) 21:35, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! If it is Google, I find it pretty arrogant to suddenly pop this screen out of the blue, apparently at a subset of their users. The screen is impassable to people who for moral reasons do not want to lie, and who are serious about their privacy, and consequently decline to give a date of birth. Such persons will from then be in a blackmail situasjon being forced to chose between lying, complying, or saying goodbye to their email archive. Do no evil, my arse! The second link was interesting, as it is similar to my situation, in that the persons who were asked had coworkers who had not been asked. My wife uses gmail, and has not been asked the question. I assume that some of the WP:RD/C regulars also use gmail, and would have told us here in this thread if they had experienced similar situations.

So, if this is google then (which I suspect), they are presenting only a tiny subset of their users with this question. Why would they be enforcing their birthday policy in such a way? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

No idea. I just opened a GMail account today, and had to provide my birthday. —99.99.216.248 (talk) 03:44, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Portable browser for linux

What is Linux equivalent of those portable browsers (like USB Opera or Portable Firefox? I need something that can be used from my Live-USB and that can be dragged to the HDD (and used from there, obviously) without WINE. 88.11.244.183 (talk) 12:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Your question is a bit unclear, because you refer to your "Live-USB", which suggests you are using a bootable usb-stick on which you have installed Linux, and that you use to boot the PC's you are using. If that is the case, you could just install your browser of choice to the Linux live usb-stick, and have it available whenever you booted from the usb-stick. Then you write that you want to drag the portable browser to the hard disk of the host computer. This suggests that you are using more than one PC which boot into Linux, and that you are using the usb stick passively, as a transport medium for the software, and want a browser that will run without installation on the Linux PC's you use. Could you please clarify:

• Do you want to boot from the usb-device or do you want to boot the native OS'es of the PCs?
• If you want to boot the native OS'es of the PC's please specify what OS'es these are.
• If neither of the above describe the situation, please try to explain in a little more detail what you want to achieve.

With some more info, it will be easier for us to answer your question. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:33, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so far. So, here the answers: I want to boot from a usb-device. Yes, I know that I could install any browser on it, but then this browser would be the same for all users: same bookmarks, same cookies, etc. And the usb is read only. So, users are able to use to boot their PC, go online, but not to leave any trace on the live usb. Just imagine it were a live CD, but you wanted to give people the possibility of using a browser and customizing said browser. 88.8.75.87 (talk) 17:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok. The scenario you describe is not directly comparable to a portable application under Windows, since a Windows portable application runs from the host OS, whereas you want an application that runs from the OS that is installed on your read-only usb device. I think your requirements for saving bookmarks, etc, would be met if you created persistent home directories on the hard disks of the PCs that you boot with your usb-device. I believe such settings would be stored in "hidden" (i.e. beginning with a dot) folders under your home directory, like ~/.YourFavoriteBrowser/. From the host OS, the persistent home directory, with its contents and sub-folders, would be just a file. I don't have much experience with this, but I remember trying it out with Puppy linux a couple of years ago. Which distro are you using? Have you checked if it supports persistent home directories? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

You are right on this one, but that makes my situation easier, I think. I am trying it with Puppy linux too. I check this things of persistent directories. 88.8.75.87 (talk) 20:48, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

x86 and x64 virtualization efficiency

Does the following statement have any truth in it? I can't seem to find any source confirming or rejecting the statement.

… 32-bit OSes run much, much more efficiently in virtual environments. (Microsoft told me it was able to literally double the density of VMs on Hyper-V by switching from x64 to x86 versions of Windows.)

— Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows, http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/mailbag-windows-8-developer-preview-140659

Please elaborate with sources if possible. 180.254.71.106 (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I know this doesn't answer the question but unless the site has some further evidence for their statement, I would suggest they're drawing a conclusion with insufficient evidence. It claims "32-bit OSes run much, much more efficiently in virtual environment" but the only evidence it seems to suggest for this from your quote is "Microsoft told me it was able to literally double the density of VMs on Hyper-V by switching from x64 to x86 versions of Windows". There is at least one possible (edit:)obvious explaination for why the second statement is true but not the first, i.e. Windows x64 is designed in some way that makes it perform poorly on Hyper-Vs (or to put it more succintly perhaps Windows x64 is just a POS). BTW in case there are any complaints, I'm not trying to turn this in to a 'Windows is crap' thread, in fact I use Windows x64 all the time. Nil Einne (talk) 15:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Nil. My guess is at most it's true of Windows only (or they've only checked with Windows only, why would they have for anything else, they're Microsoft). It's true there are still lots of computers out there with only 32-bit processors, and lots without virtualization extensions, and for these virtualizing a 64-bit guest will definitely be less efficient than doing so with a 64-bit proc/with virt extensions. Hopefully they aren't daft enough to be lumping that in with this statement, however. I'm also pretty sure the percentage of programs on an average 64-bit Windows system that are actually 64-bit is also going to be much lower than on an average 64-bit Unix system (which is likely to have [conservatively] over 90% purely 64-bit software). ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Ready boost by using USB Flash drive

I am using USB flash drive (1 GB) to get additional memory in my system. While using ready boost feature windows recommend me to use 869 MB. If I reduce the size shall I get more speed? Thanks--180.234.74.133 (talk) 14:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

No. A larger cache won't slow down your system. Our article on this is ReadyBoost, which has lots of detail you might like to read. Note that ReadyBoost does not give you "additional memory in your system" — it uses your USB flash drive to store a "disk cache", which speeds up many file operations, because your USB flash drive is much faster than your hard disk. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Also note that many cheap flash drives are slower than common hard drives, so they may actually cause the system to slow down if used with ReadyBoost. —99.99.216.248 (talk) 03:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

typeface identification

Hello computing reference people! Can anyone identify the typeface used in this book? It seems to be commonly used in computer science and linguistics. Lesgles (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Computer Modern. It's basically a sign that says, "this was typeset using LaTex," which is common in the sciences. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Aha, that makes sense. Thanks for the quick answer! Lesgles (talk) 17:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

October 17

PS Home vs XBox Live

I don't have an XBox, but I have a PS3. I have seen PS Home. I have been asked how similar that is to XBox Live. Does anyone here have experience with both? I need to explain what XBox Live is all about to another person who only knows PS Home. -- kainaw™ 00:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Xbox Live is just the online service. You know how when you plug your PS3 in you can play online games, and buy downloadable games? That's what X-Box live gives you.

The X-box has 3d avatars, and if you're on Live then your friends can see yours, but they're not in a 3d environment. They're just standing there on the menu screen. (They can also be used in certain games, like Wii avatars.) They're essentially just portraits that animate a little.

XBox Live is not a 3d walking around virtual environment like PS Home.

Did that answer your question? APL (talk) 05:27, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, there is something called Avatar-Kinect, which I think is something like PS Home. To be honest, I haven't tried AvatarKinect yet. APL (talk) 05:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

APL is correct about all the above. Xbox Live comprises all the online services you can get with an Xbox. It is free if you want a "Silver" account, and it is US$60 per year for a "Gold" account. Unlike on the PlayStation Network, you have to pay (i.e. subscribe to a Gold account) to play multiplayer Internet games over Xbox Live. A gold account also gives you access to Netflix and Hulu Plus and other paid services. Xbox Live is also a "walled garden" with no direct access to the Web or other Internet services outside of Xbox Live; you can't look at Web pages on an Xbox, for example. Microsoft has decided upon the philosophy that the avatar environment of PlayStation Home is not what gamers want — they think gamers want to play games rather than walk around a mostly-empty avatar environment — so Xbox Live features include things like an "Xbox Live Party" where a group of friends can play a game together over the Internet then all switch to some other game as they chat over their headsets. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:54, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all. I will explain that Xbox Live is basically like Playstation Store. I noticed the comment about paying to use Netflix. On the Playstation, Netflix is free to use (assuming you've paid Netflix). Do you have to pay both Netflix and Microsoft to watch Netflix on the Xbox? I remember that Playstation users griped at Sony because Xbox had Netflix built in and Sony still required a stupid CD to run Netflix. I assumed, from those complaints, that running Netflix on Xbox was free. -- kainaw™ 16:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, a Microsoft employee would have a heart attack upon hearing you describe Xbox Live as PlayStation Store. Xbox Live also includes any network communication with Microsoft or any other Xbox customer; all these network communications are encrypted (and not hacked yet, unlike PlayStation Network). On the Netflix question, you have to have an Xbox Live Gold account (US$60/year) and you also have to have a paid Netflix account. Probably you should scan the table that is at Xbox Live#Xbox Live features. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:33, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It would more accurate to describe xbox live as the equivalent of the PSN, but you know, not free--Jac16888 ^Talk 17:37, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again. It doesn't matter now. She mainly wants to watch Netflix and doesn't want to spend $60/year extra to do so. So, she is trying to trade the new XBox for a PS3. -- kainaw™ 12:40, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Mac keyboard problem

Recently, when I restarted my computer, I had to restart all of my applications (FireFox, iTunes, etc.) However, whenever I type the "F" key, it automatically opens up the "Documents" section of Finder. Can somebody please help me with my issue? It is much appreciated. -- Luke (Talk) 01:28, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Are you hitting the F key while in Firefox, iTunes, etc? Or are you in the Finder at the time? Also, is there a command key that is stuck? Command-F is the find command for the OS. Dismas|^(talk) 02:00, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I tried to press it while on all of my applications running in the background. At first I thought it was just FF. The weird part is that I can do the capital "F", just not lowercase "f". -- Luke (Talk) 02:08, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Now is your excuse to give up on facebook. Astronaut (talk) 14:54, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I got it. -- Luke (Talk) 23:59, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Deleting corrupt wiki page

I want a second opinion on this: would deleting and undeleting fix database corruption affecting a Mediawiki page? I'm referring to Confusion Gate on the La-Mulana Wiki, where the latest page is inaccessible and doesn't permit regular users to touch it. Prior versions of the page still work. What's the worst that could happen? --Sigma 7 (talk) 02:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I blame it on MediaWiki 1.12.0. →Στc. 03:07, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

VPN troubleshooting

I recently set up a new box to be used as a file server, its running a windows 7 professional x64 and I set up a VPN as per http://www.pcworld.com/article/210562/how_to_set_up_vpn_in_windows_7.html these instructions, the client connects fine (I can tell because I see the connection appear in the Network connections window on the VPN host computer, yet the client computer can't see any shared folders or the host device when I go to map a network drive, and also can't ping the host device even though its clearly connected to it. Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated, i've spent a few hours troubleshooting now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.81.234 (talk) 05:04, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you changed the windows firewall to allow ping and drive sharing? Have you shared a drive or folder so that it can be accessed from a remote box? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:48, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you enabled the File Sharing options in Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Advanced sharing settings ? Nanonic (talk) 06:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

how do i set cookie exception in firefox

for locally hosted files? tried localhost, file, 127.0.0.1, c, all do not work. all punctuation is truncated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.187.1 (talk) 07:39, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

In Firefox 6 and newer, there is a utility called about:permissions. Simply type that into the location bar to start the Firefox Permissions Manager utility. Read here: "How do I manage website permissions?" This interface lets you simply set up your cookie preferences for localhost, 127.0.0.1, or any other address you are using to access your locally-hosted server. Nimur (talk) 17:28, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

best data card (price+speed)

i want to buy a datacard for my laptop but unable to decide which one to go for whether for aitel,aircel,tatadocomo or somethng else,,please help me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 42.107.101.233 (talk) 08:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It depends on where in the world you are, how much you want to spend, and what you define as "best". Astronaut (talk) 14:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Unix time

I've been reading the Year 2038 problem article and I don't get it. It says that after 2038 unix time won't work because it's too big. But it's a number, and numbers are infinite aren't they?

It isn't really a number, it's a representation of a number stored in a computer. Usually computers reserve a definite number of bits to represent a number, and when the number is too great to fit in the number of bits that have been reserved, the program gives erroneous results. It's really no different from US gasoline pumps in the 1970s, where there were only three digits to represent the price of gas, in cents and tenths of cents. When the price exceeded $1, the pumps had to be replaced. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It's the same thing as the Year 2000 problem, but applied to a different number and domain. Imagine I wrote a program that stored all years in a two digit format — 45 for 1945, 60 for 1960, and so on. When I go over 99, I'm back at 00, and lack the capability for 2000. "No big deal," you say, "just make sure the number goes to 100 and then work backwards." Yes, no doubt, but that requires re-writing the software. The Year 2038 problem is the same way: it is totally and completely fixable, but it will require re-writing a ton of code to make it backwards and forwards compatible, and replacing that code in every system that runs it will be non-trivial. It's not that Unix is incapable of understanding dates beyond that point — it's just that the specific way it stores dates runs into problems after that point, and just jumping in and saying "make the number bigger!" will actually break a lot of older programs. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:11, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

To further explain why it breaks old programs, here is a rather simplified example. You have a program. It stores your birth month followed by your birth year. It has 2 digits for each value. So, in memory (or in a file or in a database) it may have 0385 to indicate a birth date of March 1985. You decide to "fix" the 2-year problem by allowing for three digits in the year. But, you don't go back and fix every single program. So, your program here gets a month of March (03) and a year of 100 (for the year 2000). It stores the 03. Then, it stores 100. The result is 0100, which indicates a birth date of January 1900. If it stored the year first and then the month, it would end up with 0300, which is March 1900. You need to go into the program and, anywhere it stores year, expand the storage to 3 digits. That is a lot of work in a lot of programs. As for the Unix time issue, it is a matter if increasing storage space also, be it in memory or on a disk or in a database, etc... -- kainaw™ 17:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The good news is that fixing the Year 2038 problem is relatively simple. Simply storing time as a 64-bit value instead of a 32-bit value should suffice, and even C's primitive type system will help programmers do this correctly. It requires changing existing code, but at least the changes are minor. Paul (Stansifer) 19:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

That fixes the programs, but what about stored values. If you try to pull a 64-bit number out of data where it was initially stored as 32-bits, you'll get unexpected values (unless you are very lucky and the 32 preceding bits all happen to be zeros). -- kainaw™ 19:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Many values are stored in text, in which case there's no length limit. If they're stored in a database, the database software knows how to handle these issues. If it's stored in (ick) a custom binary format with fixed-widths, the storage format will have to be changed, but that's going to go along with the change to the program itself, which is probably poorly-enough-written that it's already done far more damage than any date troubles will cause. Paul (Stansifer) 21:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

With some exceptions, Unix, unlike the mainframe world, has a strong tradition of plain text storage formats, so I expect the Y2038 problem will be much less of a big deal than Y2K. --Sean 14:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

database

I want to download a url page every hour and store it. I was advised by a friend to use a database. How?

I'm not sure you need to use a database. What do you want to do with the stored pages? You may just be able to save them in a folder. Hard Boiled Eggs [talk] 14:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The advantage of a database is that it lets you organize the information with a bit more granularity and subtlety than a directory full of what will over the course of a few weeks become hundreds of static files. The disadvantage is that you've got to know how to set up and use a database, and that might be more trouble than whatever this task requires, if you don't already know how to do it. In the end I would suggest setting up some sort of system (e.g. with cron) that downloads all of the pages as text files and gives them useful names (e.g. a timestamp). Later if you want to upgrade and import all of those into a database, it will not be very hard by comparison. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

If you're use MacOS or something else Unixy, just open a terminal window and type this:

 while true; do
   name=$(date +%F-%T.html)
   wget --output-document $name
   sleep 1h
 done

--Sean 14:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

How To Calculate Total Computing speed of a computer

Hi,

I know to calculate multicore processor speed but nowadays computer boards are coming up with many cards with built in processor like for 3D and other thing so it increases the spreed so how come one can calculate that. Is there any particular formulae for that.

I will appreciate if you can help me on this.

Thanks & Regards K.S.Sailesh — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.116.227 (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

In short, there is no easy formula. You must define the compute-task, and specify a large number of parameters, before you can correctly calculate the execution-time for any particular program on a modern computer.

You need at least a rudimentary understanding of computer architecture if you want to quantitatively analyze the computational speed of hardware. As computer architectures become more complicated, it has become more difficult to tell you one number that accurately portrays the computer's "speed."

I highly recommend the textbook, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, by John L. Hennessy, who made a very successful professional and academic career out of explaining just how fast a computer can compute.

You might also start by reading instructions per second and instructions per cycle. Read about pipelined calculation. Read about memory hierarchy, Non-Uniform Memory Access. Read about computational scheduling; particularly, throughput as opposed to latency. Learn about modern hardware implementations that make use of asynchronous digital computers, and frequency scaling. Understand microarchitecture, and understand that software and hardware abstraction exist at many levels of the compute platform. Also read Amdahl's law.

As I said, there is not a simple formula to account for modern hardware: there's a very complicated formula (and it varies for every combination of hardware and software). It's based, at its core, on the relation between a computational task, defined as an algorithm, and its mapping onto a particular instruction set architecture; and finally, the implementation of the ISA in hardware, which defines the wall clock time execution speed. Nimur (talk) 19:08, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Windows now displays a simple numeric score, as of Windows Vista and Windows 7, called the Windows Experience Index, with the intent of having software publishers (especially video games) specify that you need a "4.1" or higher score in the "Gaming graphics" measurement, instead of having to talk about the graphics card's fill rate, polys per frame, texels per frame, GPU clock speed, GPU memory, and all that stuff that regular consumers will never understand. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, video games publishers are ignoring this 'feature' of Windows, on the basis that it is actually of little use when determining whether software will run on particular hardware. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that you can no longer ask "how fast is this computer", but "how fast is this computer at a specified task". Graphic cards (GPUs) in particular will give you large speed-ups for some applications but will be next to useless for others. Same is true (if to a lesser degree) for multicores. The way out is to define a benchmark program (i.e. something that simulates a typical application that you want to use the computer for) and simply time with a stopwatch how fast that will run.

In the world of supercomputers (i.e. the list at www.top500.org) the benchmark used is LINPACK (pure number crunching, which is typical for the use of these machines, but would not be typical for a gaming computer). Indeed top500 lists for every machine its theoretical peak (i.e. just adding up the speed of all computing cores regardless) and the LINPACK speed.

Of course even a benchmark only gives an indication of what is achievable with a well written program. If your given program is lousily written, having all that extra cores and GPUs may make no difference whatsoever. 109.148.237.59 (talk) 23:36, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Firefox zoom

I hit the wrong keys (command-shift-something, or command-option-something, or ...) and Firefox's content pane expanded to fill my whole screen. Since I didn't know what I'd done, I couldn't reverse it except by quitting Firefox.

Anyone know what the keystroke was? I might someday have a reason to do it intentionally, and I can't find anything like it in the menus. —Tamfang (talk) 17:38, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

That would be the "fullscreen" option in the View menu, usually accessed with F11. If it happens again, you can move the mouse up to the top of the screen and a menu will pop up -- or you can just hit F11. Looie496 (talk) 18:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks but F11 in MacOS does something else entirely, and my hand wasn't anywhere near F11 when it happened.

... Now I see it in the View menu: command-shift-F. Funny that I couldn't find it before. —Tamfang (talk) 21:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Any way of formatting SDHC card to work in SD card reader?

Bought an SDHC card by mistake and fell foul of SDHC#SD_and_SDHC_compatibility_issues. Any way to format the card so that the equipment I need to use it in will recognise it as an old-style SD card? I'm not fussed if I lose some capacity. Or is there some sort of adapter I can buy? It's either that, or put it up on eBay and take a loss on it (can't take it back to the shop as I've unsealed the packet). Thanks. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. You can't change the card back to SD format, you'd need to change the reader to one that supports SDHC. If you just to connect it to your computer then you can just buy a cheap USB SDHC card reader, but I'm guessing you probably want to put the card into a camera or something else so this won't really help you :(  ZX81  ^talk 21:20, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

CD player, actually. I can read the thing in my computer just fine. Nothing exists that plugs into an SD card slot that you can then plug the SDHC card into? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I've personally never seen such a thing, but I'm sure someone else will point out if one does exist. You could try creating repartitioning the card so that it's a single 2GB FAT16 partition (and lose everything else), but I doubt that it'll work (and that assumes your CD player can support up to 2GB).  ZX81  ^talk 21:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Are there any Facebook App games that teach us Hindi and how to use the stock market?

Since Hindi and the stock market would apply to what I hope to master in real life, I wonder if there's a language game and one that I can learn how to use a stock market from. If they engage me for hours, then they'll also help me learn in better ways than I've found thus far.

A search for them on there didn't pull up any promising results last time. Maybe I didn't use the right set of keywords? --70.179.174.63 (talk) 21:28, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

This is a Web game minus the Facebook friends, but HSX is a stock-market-like game where people buy and sell shares of movies that have not come out yet. You can go long or short, place market orders and limit orders, and there are call and put options. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:55, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

October 18

External link rot detection

On pages of Wikipedia, internal links to non-existent pages are easily recognizable their red color. However, external links to non-existent pages are not recognizable. Is it possible to make them recognizable? That would make the checking of lists of external links much easier. (For recognizing a link to a non-existent external page on a second external website, would suggesting such a feature to the World Wide Web Consortium be advisable?)
—Wavelength (talk) 00:35, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you probably want Wikipedia:Village pump rather than the reference desk, but I don't think it's likely to get added simply because of the bandwidth issues. Wikipedia knows what pages exist on this site so colouring a link is easy, but to verify external links it would literally have to connect to those other sites to check. With the millions on external links all over Wikipedia that would be rather a lot of bandwidth and even more if it were to keep checking the links to make sure they're still valid.  ZX81  ^talk 00:57, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

...and it still wouldn't be protection from losing a source, only archiving a copy can do that. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:06, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

If you're only interested in checking lists of links, there are tools that can do that. There are probably GreaseMonkey scripts out there that do this if you want them to. (In fact, Googling "Greasemonkey dead links" pops up a specific tool for finding dead links on Wikipedia: [4].) The processing problem (it is probably not a bandwidth issue, but it would take a lot of little scripts whirring away) is if Wikipedia starts trying to do that itself for all of this links — that's a lot of links, and you'd have to check and re-check on a regular basis. For individual folks like you and me, it's not a lot of bandwidth to check as we go. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:13, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I have found Wikipedia:WikiProject External links and Wikipedia:Link rot, but neither of those pages mentions the feature which I have in mind.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Security risks from AI, neural interfaces etc.

What work, if any, is being done to prepare for the security risks that technologies such as strong AI, neural interfaces, mind uploading and nanorobotics are likely to introduce as they develop? NeonMerlin 00:45, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this stuff is really on the radar screen yet. The technologies I've seen security people start pre-emptively discussing are mostly nano-, cyber-, and synthetic-bio- related, because those are either here or just-about-here. Even in those arenas you're still talking about mostly theoretical discussions, not concrete measures. There is a lot of work being done regarding thinking about nano, both from a safety perspective (what happens if you inhale a bunch of nanobots?) but also a security perspective (what if nano lets you generate viruses on the fly, or enrich uranium really easily, and so on?). My understanding — perhaps I am out of date — is that the only concrete things being proposed at this point are sketches of safety plans. (You might want to add "quantum computing" to the list of "things that aren't current security risks but might be in generation." I'm not sure mind uploading is quite on that level, though — that strikes me as quite a ways off. Ditto strong AI.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Keeping Windows 7 updated without installing Service Pack1 ?

Resolved

Some programs that do work under Windows 7 RTM do not work under Windows 7 SP1. Therefore I wonder:
Is it possible to keep Windows 7 updated (using Windows update or in other ways) without installing Service Pack 1 ?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 04:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it; you're essentially asking to keep Windows updated without updating it. Just turn off automatic updating, or download a fix for the offending software.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:12, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

When a new service pack is released, Microsoft supports the old service pack for 24 months after the new service pack. (see "Service Pack Lifecycle Support Policy") [5] I presume this applies to RTM releases as well but I'm not certain. If it is the case, you probably have until 21/02/2013 before Microsoft drops support for Windows 7 RTM. There is obviously a time for which the RTM release remains supported after the SP because otherwise all enterprise and other customers would have to update as soon as the service pack is released which is not generally considered viable. I can't remember whether the service pack is an optional or recommended download on Windows update but either way you should be able to reject it while still using Windows update. Do remember this is only Microsoft's policy, other vendors may refuse to support Windows 7 RTM long before 24 months in their products (for that matter Microsoft can as well). Also there is obviously some fixes including I expect some security related which are included in SP1 but not offered by Windows update [6]. Nil Einne (talk) 09:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! :-)
--Seren-dipper (talk) 01:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Zensar or CSC...........

One of my friend got placed in both software company through collage campus recruitment..CTC of both company is same... Now he is confused that which company should he join....so that he can have better growth opportunity... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 14:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

We have an article on Zensar, and I assume by CSC, you mean Computer Sciences Corporation. (Our CSC article lists many companies with that acronym.) Unfortunately as outsiders there's really no way for us to give advice on this, much less with a reference. It depends a lot on the sort of group that your friend joins, on his or her manager, and on which company's culture and needed skill set are a better match for your friend. The friend should ask a lot of questions of the hiring manager at each company to try to figure out which would be the best company for his or her career growth. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

850 Mhz processor for Android 2.3

I am planning to buy a smartphone that is samsung Galaxy Y having 850 Mhz processor and running on Android 2.3 OS. I want to know is 850 Mhz processor sufficiant for running Android 2.3 efficently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 14:39, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

That really depends on how much you expect of your phone, and how much you want to do with it. Just as important as the processor is the amount of RAM the phone has; the Galaxy Y has 256 megabytes. The Galaxy Y has a faster processor and the same amount of RAM as the Motorola Droid/Milestone, which was the premier Android smartphone two years ago.

Of course, most Android phones today are running at 1 GHz or higher, and many are dual core. RAM has increased up to 1 GB in many cases. Will the Galaxy Y run Android as well as they do? No. Will it run Android well enough? There's no reason why it shouldn't, as long as you accept that you can't do as many things as you can on a high-end smartphone.

However, effective speed sometimes doesn't correlate well to stats. Many people complained of lag on the original Galaxy S, despite having a very fast processor and lots of memory. This was due to a software design choice with the filesystem. The Droid, on the other hand, was considered to be very fast, despite a considerably slower processor.

The best way to learn this is to read a reputable review of the phone; however, it appears the Galaxy Y is not yet available. gnfnrf (talk) 23:43, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Too many fonts?

Hello. In my graphic design work, I use a lot of different fonts. For some of the more unusual fonts, I download them from my collection that I have on CDs, then delete them when the project is done. Sometimes I am working on multiple projects, so I have the fonts for all of them on my hard drive. Loading and unloading fonts takes time, and sometimes I forget to remove some. My question is: Is there anything that can happen to my computer if I have a large number of fonts on it? What is the maximum number I should have so that nothing goes wrong? Thank you. — Michael J 20:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Having huge numbers of fonts can slow things down and cause weird glitches due to hard-to-diagnose corrupt fonts. Most designers swear by font manager programs that take care of the loading/unloading and let you set up specific sets that can be all loaded together and so on. I've mostly muddled along with too many fonts, but have definitely noticed negative side effects (e.g. some software — yes, GIMP and Inkscape, I'm thinking of you two — will just lock up during their font loading phases). --Mr.98 (talk) 00:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

October 19

High Memory Usage by IE

Over the past week, I have been getting message stating the there is high memory usage by IE and that it is recommended to close IE and re-start it. Can anyone tell me what this is all about and how to fix it if necessary?

99.250.117.26 (talk) 09:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a virus attempting to sell you a "fix". What specific version of IE(Under help-> about internet explorer) and windows do you use? i kan reed (talk) 15:26, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

See memory leak for background. When this question was asked on the Microsoft support site, the answer was a pointer to this page. Your best bet might be to increase the amount of memory in your computer, if that is possible, or to upgrade to a more recent version of IE, if that is possible. Looie496 (talk) 16:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The message he's referring to is not any standard windows error message I'm aware of since at least windows 2000 onwards. Even remotely recent versions of windows use a swap-file to page large chunks of low-use virtual memory, freeing that space from physical memory. Very few applications outside of video games directly access physical memory on windows. On an even remotely modern computer, there is not really such a thing as "running out" of RAM. It seems likely that this is bogus to me. Again we might be able to tell more with the precise versions of the software he's using. The exact text of the error message would be really handy for verifying whether this is a legitimate message as well. i kan reed (talk) 16:34, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

A little Googling suggests that the message might be coming from Norton Internet Security, which includes a performance monitor. Agree that it would be nice to have more specific information about the error message. Looie496 (talk) 19:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Everyone. If and when it shows up, I will try to get the exact wording before it fades away. I am using IE 8. 99.250.117.26 (talk) 07:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

What is a Reasonable Contention Ratio from My ISP?

I am being marketed at by a few high pressure ISPs notably BT. They all try to sell based on the speed of their internet connections, and some offer unlimited downloads in their price. But it seems to me that a high speed doesn't mean much if there is a massively high contention ratio and I'd love to be able to ask them what their ratio is. The problem is that I have no idea what a low, reasonable, or high ratio would be. Can anyone help please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gurumaister (talk • contribs) 10:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It's too bad you're in the UK. In the US, our Federal Communication Commission just completed a massive scale analysis of performance on a variety of different factors. this website will at least give you some numbers for comparison in your search, though overall U.S. bandwidth is generally a little worse than the UK, meaning you should expect more. i kan reed (talk) 14:45, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

BT's contention ratios on ADSL were 20:1 for business and 50:1 for domestic customers. (From experience, I can tell you that neither theoretical speed nor contention ratios mean much if you are connected to your exchange by a long low-quality copper wire!) Dbfirs 17:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

This site used to the be place to go to for comparisons of various UK ISPs. Personally, I think the quality of their reviews and comparisons has worsened over the years (it used to list contention ratios, but I can't find that info now), but there might still be some useful information there for you. I also agree with Dbfirs' point that if you are at the end of a long copper wire, you won't get anything like the advertised speed. At least my ISP (Plusnet) was honest about this, saying "up to ..."; the speed I actually get isn't such a surprise. Trouble is, too many people just look over the headlines in the advert and then sign up without ever reading the terms. Astronaut (talk) 17:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Google's storage

Dear Wikipedians:

I am really confused as to how Google's storage works. They say that if you shell out extra for their storage, the storage you purchase is shared between Gmail, Picasa and Google Docs. However, right now (as a free user), I can clearly see that I can't use the 7GB+ of Gmail storage towards Google Docs purposes. What gives?

Thanks,

L33th4x0r (talk) 13:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly as intended. It's supposed to be a selling point for google's services. If people pay google once, they don't have to worry about any of their services running dry. If you want to share storage, you pay them, it's called an incentive. i kan reed (talk) 14:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify each service has a free allowance. If you buy additional storage then this is used by any application that exceeds the free allowance. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

But each service's free allowance is only applicable to that service and cannot be transferred to another service (like using my unused Gmail space for Google Docs?) Wow, this doesn't make a lot of sense. L33th4x0r (talk) 18:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

They give you some space for each product, but if you want more, you have to pay for it (and as a bonus that space can be used across ALL the services). It's not in their interest to let an free user share the space because then a lot less people would actually buy it.  ZX81  ^talk 19:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

They're basically banking on being able to boast 7GB or whatever of Gmail space while knowing the average user won't even get anywhere near that limit, whereas many users could store 7GB of photos. 192.84.79.2 (talk) 09:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, what can I say, Google is cheap in this regard. No wonder Gmail bans you if you upload a massive amount of files to it in a short period of time (I was trying to use Gmail as a file storage device by splitting up big files into these floppy-disk sized packages using WinRAR and uploading them 10 at a time to Gmail in order not to exceed the attachment limit. And when I'm up to the 180th file Gmail banned me for an hour). Anyways, I guess it's back to Dropbox for me. L33th4x0r (talk) 13:40, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Internet troubles on gf's computer

So my gf's comp, which runs Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate, is not connecting to the internet. It displays the connectivity issue icon (yellow box with exclamation point) and when she attempts to connect to any wireless network, it does not go through). She has tried restarting, resetting the wireless, running diagnostics, disabling her Comodo Anti-Virus. This is a new problem that she has had in the last two days. Any way Ref Desk can help? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 15:04, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Diagnosing network difficulties is not exactly easy. How do you know the wireless network in question is connected to the Internet? If you can be certain of that, is it possible the password has changed? What physical hardware are you using to connect with(Built in laptop radio, dongle, etc)? i kan reed (talk) 15:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Not me, her. I assume it is built in to the laptop given that it is new, and as I have said, she has tried multiple networks, which she would of course have access to (she is not an idiot). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 15:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I assume that the networks she has tried are ones that she has previously connected to without difficulty. Windows 7 diagnostics usually sorts the problem if it is software-related, so perhaps there is a hardware problem with the wireless transmitter or receiver (the wireless router status will record bytes sent and received -- are both shown as zero?). Does the computer connect successfully with a wired connection? Dbfirs 17:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yep, from the sound of it it was both her home networks and also in her base. She lives and works in Israel as an Air Force Officer, so I can't actually assist her in person atm. She is currently busy, but I will ask her to try a hardwire connection at home (I'm not sure what she can do at her base, if she has her own office). I'll also talk to her about accessing her router, though she seemed to be having trouble with the old http://{IP address} approach. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 17:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

She tried a direct hookup, but nothing happened. Apparently it is a problem with her IPv4 and 6 and it also says her DNS might not be available. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 04:58, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Anyone? Not sure where else to ask. Everyone in Israel is on holiday atm so she can't take it to her base techies. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 20:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

If your girlfriend is an officer in the armed forces in Israel, perhaps she could ask a fellow officer (or regular soldier) who is knowledgeable on network setups and computer issues? General "won't connect" problems are extremely hard to diagnose without access to the actual equipment. Franamax (talk) 21:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

She's kind of at the start of the second day of a three day weekend, and is not anywhere near her base, sadly. :( Ya I know what you mean about that. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 00:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Why you have to waggle in sports games

I have never encountered an explanation about why you have to waggle in sports games, but I have a theory about it. In contrast to platform games, which test your dexterity, or puzzle games, which test your cleverness, sports games are suppose to test your physical strength. But physical strength is inherently a real-world attribute and cannot be transmitted via a computer controller. It would be all too easy to win every single event just by keeping the controller held in one direction continuously. So to actually present a challenge, sports games require the player to waggle their controller from one direction to another. Am I correct here? JIP | Talk 19:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it more likely to be about reflexes, which can be tested on a computer, than strength, which cannot? Bielle (talk) 19:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I haven't noticed anything different when it comes to playing a sports game versus other action video games. What do you mean by "waggle their controller"? —Akrabbim^talk 20:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for modern sports games, but the running simulation of ancient games like Hyper Sports was something of a simple rhythm game - one pushed the left button for the left foot, the right for the right foot, and had to do this repeatedly in order (LRLRLR) to run. If one missed the rhythm, or missed a footfall (LRLRLLR) the running figure stumbled a little and slowed down. As the player picked up speed, the required cadence increased. In combination with the action button (for events like javelin) there was some skill involved, and a good run-up and throw "felt" rhythmically correct. When these arcade (button) games were ported to home computers the left/right action was often implemented using the (digital) joystick, where the player waggled the stick back and forward. This all remained an exercise of rhythm and coordination (and Hyper Sports on the C64 was just as playable as its arcade equivalent had been). Other games tried to extend this control scheme to longer running events - Summer Games had a fairly lengthy swimming section, and Daley Thompson's Decathlon has the 1500m. That last one was more an endurance challenge than anything, as maintaining the high cadence needed to win over the several minutes it took to run was tiring (and rough both on the palms and the joystick). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The most extreme (and entirely ridiculous) example of this is QWOP, where getting the rhythm needed to run a single footstep is quite an achievement. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Waggle certainly isn't unique to sports games. A lot of Wii and PS3 games have waggle elements. Even somewhat serious games like Resident Evil. It's an easy to detect motion gesture, so it gets used a lot. APL (talk) 00:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't actually know what JIP means by "waggle" — does this mean the motion detection of Sixaxis and Wii controllers where the player actually tilts the entire controller left and right rapidly? In any case, I don't agree with the original claim that sports games are "supposed to" test physical strength; this is obviously untrue; and just as in almost every other category of computer game, dexterity (especially getting the timing of a jump or a juke right) is a proxy for the physical strength of the character. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

By "waggle" I mean repeatedly moving the controller (usually a joystick) left and right. Various sports games mentioned in this very section have been known to break joysticks because of extensive waggling. In a platform game, to move your character right, all you have to do is hold the controller to the right. But in sports games, that won't do, instead you have to waggle the controller between left and right all the time. Your comment about timing a jump or a juke right is of course true for such events, but what about events that only consist of running? If it weren't for the "waggle", wouldn't they just consist of keeping your controller held right all the time? JIP | Talk 22:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

October 20

SPACE BAR

I started looking for a better answer than Shantavira's, but even the space key of the Hansen Writing Balls of the 1870s just has a big space on it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Why the space bar on a computer key board is not marked? Any idea? Thank you.123.231.41.145 (talk) 06:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Mine has a big space on it. What else would you mark it with?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

A possible ident could be ANY, because non of my keyboards have had an key marked as such. Yet during an install when the comand comes up to press the ANY key, just pressing the space bar always seems to work. --Aspro (talk) 20:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Humans are inconsistent. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Mine is marked with "␣" 66.46.213.4 (talk) 20:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Tradition is involved, as with many other aspects of keyboards (e.g. Querty). In the past, keyboards were designed for trained typists, so there wasn't a requirement for the keys to be clearly understood by people glancing at them. Particularly when touch-typing, there's no need to mark it. For some manufacturers, there are probably internationalisation issues - an A is an A in any language, but "space" is something different in German (these days keyboards are very language-specific, but in the old days when you'd type diacritics by backspacing and overtyping, you could type most European languages on the same typewriter). Some typewriters didn't mark the shift key either.[[7]] --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:49, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Doing something a second time in java

Why does a java program or a specific part of a java program usually run much faster the second time it is run, than the first time it is run? Widener (talk) 08:58, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Probably because Java is a runtime compiled language; the first time its run the Java Virtual Machine is actually having to interpret the java byte code, on subsequent executions of that section of code its already compiled and in memory. Benjamint 09:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Just-in-time compilation is our article on this. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

SLI

Resolved

I just bought a 27" 2560 x 1440px monitor so my old GTX 460 won't quite cut it for Battlefield 3. I've just had a quick read up on SLI, and it seems that since either scan lines or frames are shared between the cards there would be no point getting a second card better than the existing one (e.g. a 560). Am I right that running in SLI the 560's performance would be limited to what the 460 can do anyway? Benjamint 09:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• Will SLI be smart enough to give the 560 a larger share of the workload than the 460 or shall I just save the $40 and get a second 460?

• I see you can actually only run two of the same card in SLI anyway. -- Benjamint 07:59, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Internets

[edit conflict] how internet function? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.210.139.39 (talk) 09:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• Feel free to elaborate on your question, its hard to answer with no context. Benjamint 09:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
• Data, e.g. Websites, are hosted on server computers. When A browser on a device, e.g. home computer or a phone, accesses a website it sends the address to a DNS which gives an IP Address which can be used to find the server hosting the website that we are looking for. The device can then request to be sent the website data from the server, and the web browser can then interpret that data and display it in a human readable form. Benjamint 09:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

That's how the World-wide web works, not the Internet. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:58, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked at our article on Internet? It is rather extensive. Please feel free to ask us to clarify anything in that article. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Does Internet ever has a plural form? 88.8.75.87 (talk) 13:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Internet (with a capital I) is what we call "the Internet". However, internet (with a lower case i) is a network of computers that usually use the Internet Protocol (commonly referred to as TCP/IP). So, it is possible to refer to a bunch of internets since there are more than one of them. -- kainaw™ 13:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

So George W. Bush was not wrong when he said: "We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent. " or "We can have filters on internets where public money is spent. " 88.8.75.87 (talk) 14:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Referring to the Internet limits what you talk about to strictly what we call "The Internet". If you say internets, you are referring to all networks running Internet Protocol. When I work with the military, I often refer to "internets", not "The Internet". Usually, a couple newbies giggle and assume I'm an old fart that doesn't get it. This happens all the time in politics. For example, a very good explanation of network slowdown due to exceeding network bandwidth is stating that it is like having your pipes clogged. But, as soon as an old politician refers to excessive spam as "clogging the email pipes", everyone laughs and says he is an old fart that doesn't get it. -- kainaw™ 14:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the incident you're referring to involved a series of tubes, not "pipes". Still, fair point, to some extent. Even Dan Quayle's famous remarks about Mars, though poorly expressed, were not entirely wrong and did relate to some good reasons for a mission. --Trovatore (talk) 02:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I've mentioned this beofre somewhere... The common mocking of the tubes bit as suggesting he had no idea idea what he was talking about is misplaced even if it is funny. However the statement still reveals he had no idea what he was talking about as his 'internet' arriving 4 days late was most likely little to do with saturated connections (i.e. not counting servers) anywhere nor streaming movies. Even if the delay was caused by someone overloading email servers by sending lots of movies, that's not exactly 'streaming movies'. (That's presuming it really arrived 4 days late and it wasn't that his staff simply had taken to pretending they'd sent stuff earlier if they got behind schedule since they knew he wouldn't realise.) Our article mentions both points. More generally it seems clear he didn't really get what net neutrality or the bill either and I think many on both sides would agree with that. It's not like companies just dump stuff in to the 'tubes' or don't pay at all, ultimately both sides have to pay for their connection and the reason why the tube is filled with streaming movies is because one side is requesting the content from the other side. Nil Einne (talk) 06:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Sending SMS for free

Do these web-sites offering to send SMSs for free have to pay for sending the SMSs? Somewhere down the line, they will have to connect to a the cell-phone network and pay for it, wouldn't they? 88.8.75.87 (talk) 13:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Most (if not all) cell phone companies that support SMS also support email-to-SMS. So, you send a "free" SMS by actually sending an email that the cell phone company converts to an SMS. Soon, this nice service will be killed off by spammers, but for now it is working well. -- kainaw™ 13:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Microsoft Office 2010 Product Key

Resolved

I bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 with my laptop and activated with the product key. I've been using MS Word and Power Point happily for almost a year now. I've just tried to open a MS Publisher file (I've never used this program until now) and it's telling me that the trial version has expired and is asking for my MS Office product key again. I can't find the box anywhere. Is there a way of seeing what product key I entered originally? — Fly by Night (talk) 15:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Publisher is not always part of Microsoft Office and might not be covered by your license. See the Office Edition Comparrison Table TheGrimme (talk) 15:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I've just twigged... I have the Home version and not the Professional one. Thanks for the speedy reply. — Fly by Night (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Permissions on a moved NTFS hard disk

Argh. I've removed my Windows Vista hard disk from my laptop, installed a new hard disk, formatted it, and installed Windows 7 from scratch on the new disk. I installed the Vista hard disk in an external USB case, plugged it in, and can see it as F:. My Windows 7 account is an admin account. When I try opening F:\Users\Tuttle I am told "You don't currently have permission to access this folder. Click Continue to permanently get access to this folder." After clicking Continue, I get another amusing error dialog saying "You have been denied permission to access this folder. To gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab." Hmm. I didn't use BitLocker, so that's not the problem. OK, so I right-click "Tuttle" and pick the Security tab and click the "Continue" button that says it gives me admin privileges to change the security settings. I choose "Add" then "Everyone" and choose to give it the defaults: "Read & execute", "List folder contents", "Read". I say a short prayer to Kali and click "Apply". I get an "Error Applying Security" alert saying "An error occurred while applying security information to: F:\Users\Tuttle\AppData\Local - Access is denied." That's funny; I thought I was an admin. I click "Continue" and get the same error dialog for a different folder, but this time instead of "Access is denied" at the end, I get "The system cannot find the file specified." Each time I click "Continue" I get a new one of these, either saying that access is denied or the system can't find the file. This repeats hundreds or maybe thousands of times.

Googling and the lamentable Microsoft Answers support site have not helped. Help! Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:58, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You can go through the security dialogs, but I use the Take Ownership reg file to just do this quick and simple. See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/ ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:38, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually the problem is that the security dialogs aren't working. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Right click on the drive or folder, select properties → security → advanced → permissions → change permissions → select the name → edit. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

This worked! Thank you! I don't know why this didn't work without the "Advanced" controls. I still got a number of insanely great error dialog boxes complaining that access was denied on particular files, but this time it was only for those "special" shortcuts like "My Pictures". Thanks! Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:56, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. I can't remember what the difference is, but sometimes you just have to start the process from a different point. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia atom

After suggesting to another user to use atom to see changes in real time, I tried it today. Everything I've tried to view either the atom or rss feed, I have found a delay of up to 10 minutes between the time I see a change on Wikipedia and the time it becomes available in the feed. I have hit refresh/reload on the feed to update them. I've quit and restarted programs to refresh/reload the feed. Nothing gets the latest changes. So, is there a delay in the feeds? If so, can the delay be shortened? -- kainaw™ 17:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any delay. The following Python program fetches the changes ATOM feed for User:Finlay McWalter/sandbox and shows changes immediately.

#!/usr/bin/python

import feedparser,time
known=set()

while True:
    #print 'fetching...'
    p = feedparser.parse('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Finlay_McWalter/sandbox&feed=atom&action=history')

    for x in p['items']:
        v = x.title+" "+x.date
        if v not in known: print v
        known.add(v)

    time.sleep(10)

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It must be built into the readers. I gave up and wrote my own reader. It updates in real time. The annoying thing is that all the readers have a "refresh" button, but when you click it, you don't get new items in the feed. They must be caching the feed and refusing to load a new copy. -- kainaw™ 18:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

"True" automatic line breaks

Greetings and salutations! I have a query regarding a method to "truly" force line breaks after a given character space. To clarify: I am using WordPad to create .txt files which are later supposed to appear on the web, among other things (and yes, this should be TXT, not HTML, anything but TXT is out of the question). WordPad has a nifty function to automatically break lines at the ruler, window edge, or other such places as defined by the user. Problem: These aren't really line breaks. When I open the files in WordPad, sure, the breaks are still there. But if I open it in Firefox, the line breaks are gone, and since I have whole paragraphs, you can imagine what a horrendous horizontal scroll space this causes. However, I have seen numerous TXT documents on the web before which were much longer than my document but had a regular line break inserted after a certain length, which looked exactly like the WordPad one, but it also displayed that way in Firefox. Considering the length of some of these documents, I strongly doubt the breaks were inserted by hand. My question, thus: How do I do this? Is there a function for it in WordPad, or do I need an additional application for it? --89.204.152.53 (talk) 18:54, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that you are creating txt documents in an rtf writer and then trying to view them in an html reader. The html reader will absolutely ignore line breaks. That is by design. It only responds to the <br> tag. The rtf writer adds overhead to the file that has preferences about the display, such as word-wrapping. It will wrap long lines of text on the screen at a specific point. That is stored in the preferences for the program, not in the text file itself. The txt file, if it is truly a txt file and not an rtf file with the filename abused to have a txt extension, will have no formatting at all. It is just long lines of text. So, the html browser obeys and shows the long lines of text.

The solution depends on where exactly the problem is - since it can be anything along the line from a messed up writer to a messed up file to a messed up reader. The first step is to open the txt file in notepad and see what it looks like. Notepad is a txt writer, not an rtf writer. That will give you an idea of that is actually in the file. After doing so, please let us know if it is long long long lines of text or if it is broken up. Is there overhead stuff in the file besides just the text. Very important, does anything have < and > around it? -- kainaw™ 19:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No, no, don't worry. I know my stuff in that regard. It shows up in Notepad exactly the same way it does in Firefox. There is nothing except pure text in that file. I know what the problem is, myself: The line breaks aren't in the file, they are generated by WordPad's interface every time I load the file. What I am asking is: Where can I find a program that, rather than making automatic line breaks in its layout, will actually insert line breaks into the text and save them as such.--89.204.152.53 (talk) 19:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The difference is commonly referred to as a soft-break vs. a hard-break. A soft-break is just a visual thing in the interface, not in the file. A hard-break is in the file itself. I do not see any way to force either WordPad or Notepad to do hard line breaks. I searched for text editors with hard line break capability, but I didn't see any for Windows. I assume a programmer's file editor will have that ability. Have to keep searching. -- kainaw™ 19:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

If you were in unix/linux etc. you'd use the fmt command, e.g.: fmt -w 70 foo.txt to break at words with a max width of 70 chars. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Try Notepad++. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Wordpad, assuming you save as a text file (suffix ".txt"), it does not remember the choice of word wrapping (set with the "view" menu) according to the file name, it remembers it according to the view that was last used, no matter what file was being edited.

For a free editor, available for Windows, that will insert hard breaks, try "Emacs". In Emacs, the process of inserting hard breaks, and redoing them when inserting new text, is called "filling". However, the user interface for Emacs is much different than other Windows programs; it can take a long time to learn. (On the other hand, it does have a choice of several ways to edit Wikipedia articles). Jc3s5h (talk) 22:27, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

SciTE will also do this - select some text, then do edit->paragraph->split. Oh, I see Notepad++ is Scintilla based, so I guess this is not surprising.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:32, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Command to start applications in Linux

Is there an easy way to find out what command I would use to open a file or start a program in Linux? For instance, if I want to watch a movie, I can type totem foobar. But what if I want to open Open Office's document writer? Or what if I had a pdf file that I wanted to open from the command line? Is there a list somewhere? Dismas|^(talk) 22:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The UNIX philosophy really discourages the strong linkage between program and data - the idea is that the same data can be processed by many different programs. Historically, that was particularly true for the UNIX "everything is a bag of bytes" text-oriented data formats, but in a lesser sense is still true today. You can open a PDF with xpdf or ghostview or evince, or any number of ImageMagick programs. If you have an existing launcher on a Desktop system like Gnome or KDE, you can usually right-click it and go to "Properties" or similar, which will show the command associated with the launcher. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:18, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Specifically, OpenOffice.org writer is oowriter. PDFs can be viewed with evince, okular, xpdf, gv, google-chrome, or acrobat (and opened for some kind of editing with gimp and inkscape). More generally, you can see which binary is invoked from a given GUI menu option with the graphical environment's menu editor (on GNOME 2 platforms that is Alacarte; I dunno about others). Now to which program(s) have told the GUI they can deal with a given file: on GNOME 2 (which means the file manager, and desktop shell, is Nautilus) you right click on a file of a given type, preferences, openWith. I don't know of a way to see the full list that shows all the extensions and their related types (it's a config file somewhere). The full list of executable programs on your system is unhelpfully vast (the bash interpreter on my desktop reports 4704 binaries or scripts on my $PATH). But mostly there's no shame in Googling. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses! Dismas|^(talk) 02:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Another good method is to use your distribution's package manager to search by description. For Debian derivatives (including Ubuntu), use apt-cache search search-term; e.g. to find a PDF reader, you can use apt-cache search pdf. The advantage is that if you don't have a program installed to do the job, you can immediately see which ones are available for installation through your package manager. Also, if you know which package needs to be used, but the command is different from the package name, your package manager should have a command to display all files installed by a package. You can use dpkg -L package-name for Debian/*buntu/anything else using APT. Grepping for "bin" will probably help filter the output of that; e.g. dpkg -L imagemagick | grep bin. --Link ^(t•c•m) 11:53, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

October 21

Tyical pronunciation of RAR

Regarding RAR files, is RAR pronounced by most speakers in the know: Arr-A-Arr? Rare? Rahhhr?--108.54.26.7 (talk) 01:46, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The third from what I have seen. It's actually part of an internet meme where one says "You winRAR". Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 01:49, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you!--108.54.26.7 (talk) 02:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Please note though that that is the only context I have actually heard it pronounced in and that pronounciation was mostly for the purpose of the actual joke which was supposed to be a sort of roar. It might be best to ask the fellow(s) who made it via email. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 06:18, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"RAR (as in car)", asserts a site [8] selling a RAR archiver.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Display preferences for downloads

Is there a way to set my imac preferences on downloads to display the detail of the kilobytes or maybe megabytes? What I mean is this: right now I'm downloading a file that is 1.5 GB. The display says (frozen at a moment in time) "1.3 of 1.5 GB (357 kb/sec)" I would much rather, instead of it climbing by tenths of gigabytes, it climbed by kilobytes or at least by megabytes, so that I could actually follow the download more closely, that is, when it's at 1.3 and will next hit 1.4, for example, I can't see where it is until it changes which, takes quite a while and wish it said instead "1,368,486 kb of 1.5 gb (357 kb/sec)" or "1,368 mb of 1.5 gb (357 kb/sec)". The answer may be that there is no way but I'd like to know if there is. I looked for a way to change the display but didn't find any options like that.--108.54.26.7 (talk) 03:23, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I've been using Macs since the early '90s and have never seen a way to change this. There may be some little known command line way of changing it but as far as the GUI, it's not an available option. Dismas|^(talk) 03:56, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

building

I don't know much about building computers but I went to one of those build your own computer sites and managed to create and 16GB RAM i3 processor monster (compared to my shitty 1GB current computer) for just £515. Does that price sound right?

Also, it asked if I wanted to pay for Windows 7 and I said no since I have a Windows 7 disk or might want to try linux. Is that okay? Am I going to run into any big problems doing that, like the hardware saying "no! you must have shop bought windows pre-installed with lots of bloatware!"

Thanks for your help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.182.132.103 (talk) 10:09, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

You may have problems with the Windows7. It may not let you activate Windows on more than one computer. Microsoft wants you to buy a new copy for each computer. Worse than that, if the Windows7 disk came bundled with a name-brand computer (Dell, Gateway, etc) it will almost certainly not work with a computer that's not that same brand. APL (talk) 10:29, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

(EC) 16GB is a huge amount of RAM, while the Core i3 processors are quite a long way from the top of the range. If you want relevant advice, you should tell us what you expect to use your computer for, but I doubt there is any use for which that combination of RAM and CPU would make sense. You should probably check with the company which operating systems are compatible - I have heard that some laptops have security 'features' that make it difficult or impossible to install a different OS, and I am sure there must still be some hardware that Linux doesn't cope with. 130.88.99.231 (talk) 10:35, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, I don't think we can really give you an opinion on the price without knowing the full details of what it includes - monitors and graphics cards in particular can be quite expensive. You can probably bring the price down significantly by cannibalising parts from your existing machine if you don't want to keep it. 130.88.99.231 (talk) 10:44, 21 October 2011 (UTC)