Computing desk
< July 3	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 4[edit]

Unix program head[edit]

Head is a unix program that shows the first n lines of a text file. But I want is to ignore the first 5 lines of a text file and show all the other lines in the text file. I cannot make head and tail to work the way I want (pun intended). Please help. 175.45.116.105 (talk) 00:21, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

tail -n +6 foo.txt --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:38, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bot program[edit]

Hello if anyone wanna help me then please write a program for me to make a bot. NepaliKeto62^{Talk to me} 02:45, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

People have already written numerous automation libraries for Mediawiki that can be used to make bots if you have a bit of programming knowledge. Look at Wikipedia:Creating a bot. There are also programs for semi-automated editing. And nothing personal, but the Reference Desk is intended for non-Wikipedia-related questions. If you have additional questions, you'll probably get more attention at the Teahouse or help desk. See also Wikipedia:Questions. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 05:18, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

30-day buffering on a CAPTCHA[edit]

[I know it's not buffering, but I can't think of the right term]

Trying to submit a question to https://answers.usgs.gov, I made a mistake with the CAPTCHA, and the system told me here was a problem with your form submission. Please wait 2592000 seconds and try again 86,400 seconds equals a day; 2,592,000 is a full thirty days. If we ignore unintentional typos and matters unknowable to outsiders (internal politics, webmaster's desire to reduce contact emails, etc.), why would anyone require you to wait a full month between CAPTCHA failures? Also, what's the term I'm looking for, the term that denotes the waiting period imposed between attempts to solve a CAPTCHA or a password? Finally, the text of my question appears below; it's basically for my own sake (so I can re-attempt to contact them in the future), so you can ignore it.

Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"rate limiting" -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 12:50, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can't think of any good reason. Rate limiting (on an IP or login-cookie) basis goes some way to limiting brute force attempts by bots (e.g. ones with a low but non-zero probability of solving the CAPTCHA scheme) - but these can always delete cookies and shift IP addresses - but that only makes sense with timeouts of the order of a few seconds. I think the software has been misconfigured. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 13:20, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

KiCad problem[edit]

I gave KiCad a spin but the interface icons are too small for me[1], to the point of making the whole program unusable. Is this a bug in KiCad? Or did I misconfigure it somehow? Or is this sort of minimalist look just fashionable in the electronic design automation industry? Crudiv1 (talk) 13:58, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That screenshot resolution is very high. If you didn't upscale it for some reason, and it doesn't look upscaled, you should bear in mind if you're using a 4K 24" inch monitor or something that support for such high PPI monitors can be quite variable. To me, the screeshot looks like it would be fine, if used on a more normal PPI monitor viewed from normal viewing distances (both of which are unlikely but the point stands). Notably, cross-platform APIs may have poor support if they were mostly designed for one platform and just do the same thing on other platforms and no one even bothered to deal with PPI issues. I don't know what OS you're using but since you shouldn't need pixel level accuracy for KiCad you may be able to find someway to fix it albeit with an uglier looking program. Nil Einne (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I encounter similar problems quite often. That is, some program is written with fixed sized text or icons, which were suitable when those icons filled, say, 10% of the width and height of the screen each. Then we get higher resolution screens, and now the same text or icon only covers maybe 5% of the screen in each direction. That makes it 1/4th the size, if the screen size is kept the same. Some ways to deal with this problem:

1) A larger screen is an obvious fix. Of course, there is a limit beyond which you have to sit back farther to see it all at once and then there's not much advantage to the large screen. Large screens are also expensive.

2) Turn resolution down. Of course, then you can't view multiple applications at once. I would turn it back up after using the application in question.

3) Use a screen magnifier. Those can allow you to have the high resolution you want yet still read whatever is under the magnifier. I prefer the setting where you have a magnifying glass that follows the mouse.

If you don't know how to do steps 2 or 3, list your operating system and we can help. StuRat (talk) 19:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]