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July 28

2D or 3D Animation software for AVCHD high definition partially simulated rock video?

I have three questions regarding Sony's AVCHD software that comes with their HDD based high definition video camera,recording in the AVCHD format. The first one is that the Sony PMB software plays O.K. on my dual core computer, a few years old now and with a very average graphics card for the time-maybe a bit of motion blur occasionally-but perfect on a stand alone Blu-Ray player, which I do not own yet, (and won't until an HD television comes out with the dynamic range and colour gamut of CRT) but the only player that works independently of PMB, which will not recognise Blu-Ray (apparently windows XP knows nothing about Blu-ray drives) is AVS4YOU but this is jerky even when played on the main internal hard drive of my computer, from the old DVD drive (before it was replaced) or anything else. The PMB software has a "convert to AVCHD" option, but seems to only allow a write to disk-and I can only write to the Blu-Ray using Cyberlink. Cyberlink recommends an upgrade to my graphics card. I suppose I could write to a AVCHD to DVD and then copy back to Blu-Ray, but the whole point of a Blu-Ray drive was not to have to break up HD files to fit on the limited space on DVD. So why can PMB (even with an average graphics card) do what stand-alone players can't? My second question is are there any programs that would let me electronically paint in fine detail individual frames lifted from original footage from my camera for 2D animation/alteration and then create a full HD animation in AVCHD format, also are there any reasonably priced photo-realistic 3D animation programs that could do the same, and by photo-realistic I mean good enough to render human faces convincingly given multi-angle photographs or possibly even laser scans? Also, if I bought an array of cheap web-cams and plugged them into my computer, or a cluster of computers, lets say a ten by ten 2D matrix, effectively creating a synthetic aperture with vertical and horizontal parallax, would future technology allow these images to be turned into moving HD holographic films? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.1 (talk) 05:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Banner

I am using AppleMac Snow Leopard and want to send a photo by e-mail but need a banner across the photo with "Copyright" Can anyone tell me how to do this please; many thanks in anticipation.--Artjo (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

What you need is some kind of image editor. GIMP is one free one, though it can sometimes take a little work to install if you don't already have X11 installed. (X11 is on your OS X DVD under the "optional installers," I believe, or you can get it from here, apparently.) With GIMP, you can add text to an image pretty easily, or put it on a semi-transparent layer over the original image, etc. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

If you have ImageMagick installed, you can do this from the command line (which is particularly handy if you need to automate this process, such as tagging a bunch of images). You'd just say convert in.jpg -pointsize 30 -draw "text 40,40 'COPYRIGHT'" out.jpg or whatever. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ImageMagick is a pain and a half to install and get working on a Mac, unfortunately, even for someone who is tech savvy. It requires all sorts of installing of a ports handler and compiling from binary and setting system variables and other nasty Unix things. It's not like on a PC where you can just download the precompiled "convert" binary and drop it in and have it work. (I find this exceptionally lame, as you might have picked up.) It took me about three tries to get it working, and maybe about 15 hours of dorking around with it, because I'm not very Unix-savvy (even though I am very Mac and PC savvy). A very frustrating experience! --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear, That's very disappointing. I'll certainly bear that in mind before recommending IM to another Mac user. Tell me, is GraphicsMagick any easier (a quick check of its download page suggests it's much the same)? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think installing ImageMagic is much harder than typing "sudo fink install ImageMagic" (which is how I got it). You need to set up Fink, of course, but you want that (or MacPorts), anyways - for (proper) Emacs, LaTeX, gawk, and all the other indispensable UNIX tools. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, well...thanks for this, but it all seems too complicated for this ageing non-techie,( I'm still trying to understand FM radio!). Any more simpler solutions out there please?--Artjo (talk) 13:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe this program? It seems like a pretty straightforward, easy image editor. Download it, install it, open the image, click the "text" tool (the "T"), click where you want it to say "copyright," type out "copyright." --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all these ideas, but I have decided on the idiot proof idea of taking the photo, printing out the banner, sticking it across the photo, re-photoing it and mailing that, real 'Blue Peter' approach!--Artjo (talk) 07

57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(e/c)If it's just the one (or a few) photo(s), I would consider using an online photo editor such a Picnik which allows to to upload photos, make alterations to them, and save the altered photo to your computer, from whence you could send it by email the normal way. There are a number of online photo editors, but Picnik was the one off the top of my head, and it's fairly intuitive. However, there are some instructions which do what I think you want under the cut.

Extended content

Start at http://www.picnik.com/app#/home/welcome Click Upload a photo When the photo is displayed, click the Create tab, then choose Text Type the text you require in the box on the left hand side, choose a font. Click the Add button. The text should be displayed over the image in a box with circles at the corners (it may not be in right position/right size) On the right hand side, choose a text colour, text size and alter any other settings you require. The change the size of the text box (if all the text is not visible), click and drag the circles at the corners of the box. Click and drag the centre of the box to move it to a different position in the image. When you're happy with the image, click the Save and Share tab at the top. Change the file name so you don't overwrite your original image (eg. picture_edited). Click Save Photo. In the boxe that appears, choose where you want to save the photo. You can now attach the photo to an email.

If the image is very large, you would probably be better using a downloadable program as Mr. 98 suggests. I'm not sure what the limit on file size is at Picnik, and it could take a long time to upload a large photo. The techniques to edit the photo will be much the same as described above. I tested this on a Windows PC - this shouldn't make a difference to the website, but the process of saving the image might be slightly different than described; it's been ages since I used a Mac. Apologies if I have simplified too much (it's my day job!) --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks Kateshortforbob, that works a treat and even this idiot managed to do exactly what I wanted. Thanks again.--Artjo (talk) 14:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Wget with cookies

I'm trying (under Windows XP) to download a document from an Intranet site with Wget. When I type the URL into the Internet Explorer address bar, I get the page I want, but with wget I only get a small file which says "the application has been idle for too much time". I assume this is because this application could not read the cookie it expected, so I exported cookies from IE (this gave me a file containing an entry with the relevant domain name) and then I called wget with --load-cookies as explained here. However, I still get the same error message. Any idea? Perhaps the exported cookies file from IE doesn't contain the session cookies the above-mentioned wget man page mentions? If so, how can I get the relevant cookie in the exported cookies file? Apokrif (talk) 10:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You might just need one cookie name and value. In Internet Explorer you can enter javascript:alert(document.cookie); into the address box to display an alert box with the current page's cookie values. When the alert box is on the screen, you can press Ctrl+C to copy the text of the alert box. You can then paste the text into Notepad to look at it further. Once you find a cookie name and value that looks like what you need, here are two ways you might be able to use it with wget.

• As suggested on the wget manual page, you can try using --no-cookies --header "Cookie: name=value" to manually send a specific cookie on every request.

• Alternatively, the cookie.txt file is plain text, so you may be able to manually insert a cookie into the cookie.txt file and use the --load-cookies option. Per the wget manual page, wget uses the non-standard expiration value of 0 for session cookies.

--Bavi H (talk) 00:58, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Hiding a Windows taskbar button

In Windows XP, I'd like to be able to hide individual taskbar buttons that appear in the Windows Taskbar as I launch applications or open folders. (I'll switch back to those apps by alt-tabbing with the Task Manager.) Is there a way to do this? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

From memory, in WXP you can "auto-hide" the Taskbar, so that it disappears until you hover over its location with the mouse pointer. To do this, place the pointer on the Taskbar, right click and look for the auto-hide option. This might suit your purposes. Dolphin (t) 06:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually I am looking to hide the individual taskbar buttons, not the entire taskbar. Googling yielded a few downloads that claimed to do what I want, but I don't want to install random people's software for this application. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

How easy to program? Geotagged images overlayed on OpenStreetMap

How easy (in relative terms) would it be to program software that would place images on a map like with the Flickr Map feature or Google's Panoramio layer?

This is for a kiosk concept. The photos would be stored on the display computer, and the system could be fully connected to the Internet to access the most current OpenStreetMap information, or the geostuff could be on the system as well.

Ultimately, I'm hoping for something that could be added upon, when more pictures are available to be geotagged and included. -- Zanimum (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That is a feature of the combination of using Google's Google Earth and Picasa programs. If you have both running, geotagging a photo in Picasa makes it show up on Google Earth as a thumbnail that you can enlarge. -- kainaw™ 16:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose that would work. But would I be able to lock it down, being a public access terminal, so people couldn't delete and rotate stuff? -- Zanimum (talk) 17:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I fully understand what you are trying to do, but I would encourage you to look into using the Javascript Google Maps API. It is very powerful and quite easy to use, as far as geotagging goes, overlaying images, syncing with a database, etc. If it were me (assuming I kind of understand what you are doing), I would program some kind of AJAX-y machine that would be locally hosted (but have internet access), and then make the kiosk computer lock to that particular locally-hosted page. It would take a bit of work, but it is well-within the abilities of your average scripter (that is, it doesn't require knowing how to do things with maps very specifically or with images very specifically — just a little nosing around with the Google Maps API, your server-side scripting language of choice, and a database). --Mr.98 (talk) 18:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Wget batch files

On Windows, if I run a .bat file with:

wget -mk http://example.com
wget -mk http://elpmaxe.com 

only the first job (http://example.com) is done, and once its finished the second job is ignored. Why is this, and what do I need to do to make it do both jobs? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Would the wget you're calling happen to be a batch file too? What happens if you put 'start' (or maybe even 'start /wait', but can't check right now if that's a valid option) in fron of the wget command ? Unilynx (talk) 22:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You want the call command for that trick. --Tardis (talk) 15:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Wireless routers

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good one? Thanks. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 17:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what you plan to do with it. How many computers will you use (including wifi devices and consoles)? What is the distance between the devices and the router? What kind of security do you want? Do you have a favorite color for the case? Do you plan on calling tech support for the router? -- kainaw™ 17:59, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Two laptops, one printer/scanner (that I plan on buying in the future), my router would be in my room, which is where I mostly use it, although I do move around my apartment a bit, but it's very small. A dual-band router would be nice. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 18:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing special about those requirements. Any router will work fine. -- kainaw™ 13:44, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Any new router should work, assuming the laptops aren't really old. All of the new routers use either 802.11g or 802.11n. Both standards are compliant with the older 802.11b standard -- but not 802.11a. 802.11n offers greater range and speed than 802.11g, but the range and speed won't matter since you'll be connecting everything in an apartment and to a home Internet connection.

I don't like Belkin routers very much because they are unreliable and Belkin support isn't very good. Belkin is one of the cheapest brands. I've had better experiences with Linksys and Netgear routers. This is the router I use at home.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

ASbot ?

I just got an email saying ASbot on the Ukranian wikipedia has created a user page for me... see http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Sf5xeplus and http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:ASbot

I don't speak ukranian, what's going on? Am I a spy now? Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

This is a phishing message and you should permanently delete the message and move on. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ASbot appears to be a bot that welcomes new users. If you've got the unified login thing enabled when you visited the Ukranian wikipedia it would have automatically made you an account. You can safely ignore it, although personally I think you should complain to Wikimedia because it's rather dumb to have accounts being automatically made just because you visited a page there when you have no intention of ever editing that wiki 82.43.88.151 (talk) 20:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

This has happened to me on several of the foreign-language Wikipedias. They detect your account via Wikipedia's Unified Login system - one user-account is valid on all language wikipedias. Some of the foreign-language bots do not realize that your primary usage is English Wikipedia and will send you welcome-messages in the robot's native language. It is probably not a phishing-message (unless the email directs you to a non-Wikipedia.org website); it's just an overly-friendly robot that doesn't speak very good English. Nimur (talk) 20:09, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Check the actual targets of the links in the email; they probably don't point to wikipedia urls (something any half-decent email client should have noticed and warned you about). If so, see Wikipedia:Phishing e-mails. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:27, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I copied the links above - they appear to link to http://uk.wikipedia.org - is there something hidden I should be looking for?87.102.76.166 (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at how the links in Wikipedia:Phishing e-mails appear when you mouse-over them - the plain text of the link is to wikipedia.org (that's what you'll get if you cut-and-paste) but the real link goes (in that case) to www.fbi.gov (in most web-browsers, and the mini-web browsers inside modern email clients) that destination URL will appear in the status bar at the bottom, or in a little popup. The phishing emails likewise appear to go to wikipedia.org, but mouseing over them shows they really go to some site like en.wikipedia.org.abcedfh.d0000000000000.evil.cn -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:42, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ok . In this case it looks like they are from uk:wikipedia - the status bar text matches the display text.Sf5xeplus (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

GUIdebook

One of my favourite websites is GUIdebook. Unfortunately, however, it seems no longer to be active; the last update appears to be from 2006. Is there any other site of this kind, that is actively maintained? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Desktop environment#Gallery? Nimur (talk) 20:18, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Not quite comparable, I'm afraid. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe ToastyTech GUIs will do (even if the author has a few strange misconceptions about things). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:38, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Actually I've got another question relating to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#ASbot ? - obviously (?) the long bit of the URLs are hex codes for 8bit values

eg http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Sf5xeplus

.. They don't display as cyrillic on wikipedia, or in the email, yet in the browser status bar they do appear as cyrillic - I guess it's one of the 8 bit types described at Cyrillic_alphabet#Computer_encoding

Which encoding is used, and how does the browser know (sometimes) that it's cyrillic, (or is the text editors that are failing) - I'm not seeing cyrillic in the main window - but when I hover on the link I do ? Sf5xeplus (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It's utf-8. To verify, consider the Ukranian Wikipedia's page for Ukraine, http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Україна (which will show as http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B0). We can encode and decode unicode to UTF8 using Python ('cos I'm too lazy to do it by hand), with a line like

   u'Україна'.encode('utf-8')

which returns

   '\xd0\xa3\xd0\xba\xd1\x80\xd0\xb0\xd1\x97\xd0\xbd\xd0\xb0'

(the same hex chars, just escaped using Python's way rather than the web way). See this page for Cyrillic chars, showing their UTF-8 codes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:31, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

percent encoding says "The generic URI syntax mandates that new URI schemes that provide for the representation of character data in a URI must, in effect, represent characters from the unreserved set without translation, and should convert all other characters to bytes according to UTF-8" -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ok thanks I think I understand now - it's percent encoded UTF8, and from the 'percent encoding' article I gather the reason plain UTF8 is not used is to give a method to distinguish between "/" as a separator, and a "/" that doesn't have any special meaning ie just 'text'. (as well as preventing crazy newlines etc when sending raw binary).

Somebody tell me if I got that wrong..Sf5xeplus (talk) 23:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Plain utf-8 isn't used because it's still a binary code, and URLs have to be rendered finally in ASCII (well, strictly don't have to, but you run into compatibility hell, as there isn't a standard means to state what encoding non-ASCII chars in a URL have). That 'У' character, which has unicode codepoint 0x0423, is utf-8 encoded as 0xD0A3. Neither 0xD0 nor 0xA3 are valid ASCII (they're > 0x7F), so they need to be percentage encoded. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If you're thinking that all of this is rather elaborate and inefficient, you're right. The percentage encoding explodes the size of non-ascii chars and obviates much of the good the clever variable-length encoding of utf8. If you were designing urls now, from scratch, you'd probably just specify utf8 and nothing else. But they had to bolt this on years after the fact, when percentage encoding was already used for reserved ascii characters, when those reserved characters already had meaning, and when the use of non ascii chars was a variable, badly-specified minefield. Tim Berners-Lee once said the only thing he regrets is the 2nd slash in http:// but I rather think he'd regret this stuff too. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

To compound the complexity, in addition to the URI's suffix, the actual DNS names can also be non-ASCII-fied now. Internationalized domain names are already permitted; it used to be just a special markup "xn--(character encoding)", but now any valid Unicode character can be used in a DNS name. This of course represents a very serious phishing hazard, and I'm a little woried that there are not good solutions to prevent such attacks in the future. Maybe browsers can color-code Unicode symbols if they are out of the locale's normal character set? Nimur (talk) 04:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the punycode solution, which the article you linked mentions (and which itself seems very flawed), I've seen proposals for browsers to colour-code chars based on their alphabet, to illustrate when (perhaps malicious) changes - so a fake Ebay url (where the e and a have been substituted for Cyrillic homoglyphs) might look like: http://www.еbаy.com   . I guess jokers will deliberately register multi-coloured domains just for the heck of it, but serious sites won't. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 09:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Testing for non-standard characters mixed into the alphabet seems like something a email filter could do fairly easily, and perhaps a browser could at least perform a similar test, and give a warning screen to the user before proceeding. No comment on the utility of punycode - but it does sound dreadful: why not base64 at the very least instead of base 36 . Awful. (opinion)

Thanks for the responses.Sf5xeplus (talk) 12:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to defend the gobbledygook punycode, but it does seem to be a bit more compact than utf8+base64. Again in python:

                                  u'Україна'.encode('punycode') →  'v0a0aa2bqq6n'
                                  base64.b64encode(u'Україна'.encode('utf-8')) → '0KPQutGA0LDRl9C90LA='

Both are, of course, entirely unintelligible to humans. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Speak for yourself, N00B! ;-) I still know that C9=201=ret in Z80 assembler, and I bet there are people who read Hex-encoded UTF-8 as well as I read Shakespeare. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:09, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately you have failed a routine scheduled Turing test. Please report to the factory at which you were constructed for remanufacturing. You will find GPS coordinates for that facility printed on the lower rear of your casing. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:47, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

July 29

c#

I know the meaning of access modifiers applied to methods and variables, but what's the purpose of applying them to an entire class or struct? T.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:34, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Doing so affects the accessibility level of the class/struct. As class definitions can contain internal class definitions, you can control whether the inner classes are accessible from outside (and by means of "protected", whether they're accessible to subclasses of the outer class). Likewise class definitions can be made accessible, or inaccessible, to code outside the same assembly. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 10:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

It's just another level of information hiding, which reduces complexity and makes dependencies easier to manage. --Sean 14:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Buying a new inxepensive Laptop to run windows xp

I dont play 3d games, I run things like eclipse or watch DVDs and can spend around 275 euros. Iam eyeing on new Low end laptops such as Acer Extensa 5235. Low end laptops like this come without operating system or with linux. It seems like drivers for windows xp can be found on the internet. Im not sure about the windows key (the one between alt and ctrl keys). Can you please how one can find out (online) if a particular model has windows key?. I am assuming that windows xp drivers are not a problem here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 11:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Most laptops, even those that ship with Linux, still have a Windows key (because they're just shipping a standard keyboard). The Acer Extensa 5235 you cite is a good example - these photos show it does have one (the key is useful in Linux too). You can probably get XP drivers for all existing laptop hardware, but I wouldn't count on it (you'd need to select a specific laptop and check on support forums for it, to verify that someone has succeeded in getting XP working on it). Your chief problem may be getting a Windows XP licence to use - they don't sell XP retail any more. You can downgrade a Windows 7 licence (but that's rather an expensive and convoluted process, for the simple needs you have), but mostly people buying XP now are getting a small footprint OEM XP licence preinstalled on their netbook. If I really wanted a small cheap XP laptop, I wouldn't buy a non-XP laptop and go through the bother and risk of somehow XP-ing it; I'd stick with one that shipped with XP. An aside: given that you don't care about games, have you considered just sticking with the Linux install? If all you need is email/chat/web/media/office then it should be just fine. I'd dump the dumbed-down linux they tend to put on these things and put Ununtu Netbook edition on instead - if you're technical enough of a person to even know what a driver is, you're technical enough to install and use that fine. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Can't say I would recommend Ununtu Netbook edition myself. Never heard of anyone with positive experience of it. Nil Einne (talk) 11:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Iam happy to use "old" versions of windows such as XP, 2000 or even 95 because i hate newer versions and hate linux even more. For me, only the old windows versions are intuitive to use. Nice to know about the keys though —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 11:56, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I feel the same way but using old versions of Windows really isn't practical anymore (especially Windows 95!). What I do is set the theme to "Windows Classic" which give new versions of Windows the old classic intuitive GUI instead of whatever fancy nonsense they've come up with and decided to force on the end user 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:11, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you considered getting a used laptop? I was recently given three supposedly dead laptops and refurbished all of them, but the small ads are full of used kit and for €275 you could get something pretty good complete with Windows XP. As for my three free laptops, all had a Windows XP Certificate of Authenticity on the bottom, so with the help of an OEM installation disk I repaired the Windows installations on all of them. One also came with a full installation of Office Professional. They're not fantastic performance, but certainly good enough for some internet surfing, general office stuff, and developing with Eclipse, though I haven't tested DVD playing on any of these laptops. On one of the laptops (the one I'm using right now), I've since installed Fedora and Eclipse and that all works well. Total outlay so far is just £5 for the OEM installation disk, but I could spend a little more: they could all do with more memory, one needs a new keyboard (~£15 from eBay), and none of the batteries is in top condition. Astronaut (talk) 15:15, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

ok, I will also consider buying dead laptops. Iam not an hardware expert and my knowledge is small, especially when it comes to laptops. what do I look for when buying a dead one?. I assume graphic card should work properly and there should be no boxes or bands on screen. How do I ensure that motherboard is not dead?. Buying used laptops is also a good idea, im thinking anything above 1,2 Ghz would be sufficient. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 08:21, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

With completely dead laptops you take your chances, but if its free, then nothing is lost except your time. As a general rule, a surprising amount can be replaced/repaired. Exceptions are major chassis damage, broken screen or video "card" (usually on the motherboard and therefore non-replaceable), and other stuff well buried in the case or built in to the case's shape (such as the motherboard itself). Cracked hinges can sometimes be tightened up; battery, keyboard, hard disk, battery and power supply can usually be replaced; replacement manuals and drivers can be download from the manufacturer's website. With used but still working machines, it is reasonable to have higher expectations, but you might prefer to see it working before you buy. Astronaut (talk) 17:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Starcraft 2 not working

I really seem to be hung up more in unpacking and playing computer games than editing, but I decided to utilize the Ref Desk to fix my own problems. Does anyone here (hopefully a Starcraft fan) know how to authorize your Battle.net account for Starcraft 2? It's the one thing that's stopping me from playing it. Thank you, Buggie111 (talk) 14:41, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

You need to type the authentication key that came with the game into battle.net. You should've been prompted to do this in the installation process, but if not just log in and go to manage games/add or upgrade a game. Algebraist 14:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a very aggravating and confusing process, but not difficult. When the program tells you about the issue it will offer to pop up a web-browser and take you to authorizing web page.

Then it'll force you to make a battlenet account. Be sure to give your real email address, because now you have to 'activate' the battlenet account by checking your email and clicking the link they send you. Then you have to "Add a game" to your battle net account, and type in the magic number printed on the sleeve the disk was in. (I dunno how it works with a download copy.)

Then ... it should work. Go back to he game and log into your battlenet account.

Frankly, this is the sort of thing that makes me root for the bootleggers, pirates, and crackers. They may be the bad guys, butThey never make their "users" jump through these many hoops. APL (talk) 19:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

For the record, they never make Starcraft 2, either. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:02, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There are free and open-source strategy games, like those listed in our list of open-source video games. This way, you don't have to rely on commercial services and put up with their licensing and DRM trouble; but you're also not violating any legal or ethical rules about piracy. Nimur (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Relying on the open source community for ones entertainment is, though, a fairly losing proposition on the whole, in my opinion. Better to lobby the commercial companies to not rely on DRM, especially since it is ineffective for the most part anyway. But we are getting quite off topic. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Whiteboard missing from Windows Live Messenger version 2009

Dear Wikipedians:

Windows Live Messenger 2009 says it comes with whiteboard. However, when I launch a conversation with one of my MSN body, I go to "Activities" on the menu bar and I see only "Request Remote Assistance" under it, there is no mention of "Whiteboard" or "Application Sharing". I am wondering what is going on? Why is whiteboard missing from the menu even though it comes with Messenger 2009?

Thanks for all your help.

70.31.153.123 (talk) 17:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you use Windows 7? According to this post, the whiteboard is not available on that operating system. --Kateshortforbob _talk 09:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Bingo, that is exactly what I figured out yesterday. It seems that whiteboard is not compatible with Vista or 7. Whiteboard will only run between XP systems. What a #@!*! Thanks for all your help Kateshortforbob. 174.88.34.147 (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Virtual office

How do I create a virtual office? Dr. Gervasse Soma Pillay PHD —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gervsomp (talk • contribs) 17:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

We have an article, virtual office, that probably answers your question. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

"Virtual office" is sort of a buzz-word for an interactive website. You can spend as much or as little effort as you like making your web presence. Some companies provide voice conferencing, live chat, and other interactive features accessible through the web. The more features you have, the more expensive it will be. You can create an efficient and effective web presence for little or no money, though, and if you want, you can call it your "virtual office." Nimur (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google quirk

Why might a Google search give a Wikipedia article as the first hit when a) the article does not contain one of the search terms and b) some lower ranked hits contain all five of them?

The search was for: little night music dvorak sondheim

The top article was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_Night_Music

When I use Dvorák (with the accent) in the search instead of Dvorak, the Wikipedia article is no longer at the top.

Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 19:40, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google favors Wikipedia and your query contained the searchable title "little night music" specifically in that order and at the beginning of your query. -- kainaw™ 19:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that if you definitely want a word in the search results, you should use the + in front. e.g. try 'little night music +dvorak sondheim' Nil Einne (talk) 20:15, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google Syntax Cheat-Sheet, from google.com. Other web-search engines may use similar syntax. Keep in mind that Google's search queries are processed in a complicated and heuristic way to take into account things like "trending", context-, location- or user-specific assumptions about desired results. So, it is never really possible to guarantee exactly how Google's technology will parse your keywords. Loosely speaking, their proprietary algorithm will first categorize your query; and then it will run one or more context-specific searches. For example, Google may determine that your query is related to music; so it runs the "music search subroutine". It may also decide that your query might be about Czech or even in the Czech language (espcially if you use a non-ASCII character like á, so it may run a location-specific search subroutine that prioritizes content from or about Czech Republic or in the Czech language. Google may make any number of unstated assumptions based on your keywords, and thus submit your query to unexpected content-specific algorithms that can all return different results; these results are aggregated, sorted, and merged into what appears to you as a single "result page". Take a look, for example, at "Context-Aware Query Classification" out of Microsoft Research (Microsoft Bing researchers are more willing to publish research than Google search engineers... but it's fundamentally the same technology in both companies). Nimur (talk) 20:38, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Google has a very clever algorithm for finding results that does far more than just see if the keywords are in the article. In particular, it looks at what pages people link to using those words. It also looks at how often sites are linked to and Wikipedia is linked to ridiculously often. The idea is that if lots of people found the site useful enough to link to it then you'll probably find it useful too. --Tango (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all. It's amazing just how much is going on in one search. Wanderer57 (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, most of the work is already done before you run the search. They have a giant index of sites with all the pagerank (that's what the cleverness is called) information stored in it and just look your search up in the index. --Tango (talk) 18:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

According to Google's cached result page, the word "dvorak" appears only on links to the the Wikipedia article. Words on links to a page counts for a great deal in Google's eyes. (Which may be why the Wikipedia article on X is so often the top result for X; people like to make a word or phrase in the sentence they're writing link to the Wikipedia article on the subject, rather than interrupt the flow to explain it.) Paul (Stansifer) 19:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

July 30

How to transfer files between two computers using command prompt?

--75.185.120.28 (talk) 05:33, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

On Windows, if the two computers can reach each other over windows networking (SMB), you can use standard copy commands and refer to files on other computers using UNC paths (\\computer\share\path...). In other cases, you will probably need to mount part of the filesystem somewhere on the other computer's filesystem before you can copy files. Unilynx (talk) 06:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

SSHFS is a great way to mount remote computer file systems, resilient to cross-platform issues, network idiosyncrasies, firewalls, and so on. It only requires an ssh server, which can run on any operating system. If you can SSH to it, you can mount it as a file system. With SSHFS on the client, you can use command-line tools or graphical tools exactly as if the file system were local. Nimur (talk) 06:59, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could use the "net use" command to map a network share, then use the "xcopy" command to copy the files. Brendan.leo (talk) 10:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

On Unix, the appropriate command-line utility depends on what kind of access you have to the other computer.

• If the other computer is a web server, or public ftp server, then you want curl or wget
• If you have a secure login on the other computer, then you probably want scp, or rsync -e ssh
• If you have an insecure login on the other computer, then contact your sysadmin and secure it, but in desperate circumstances you might use rcp or plain rsync

Gdr 18:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

FreeBSD guest in Xen

Hi, is it possible to run an unmodified (i.e. no special Xen-aware kernel) FreeBSD guest in Xen, when the host contains a VT-enabled Intel CPU? --78.43.71.155 (talk) 09:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Security using webcam

Is there a freeware / opensoft program that allows you to use your webcam like security camera? For example timed recording, and discreet operation (for example if someone were to steal your laptop). I'm using Windows. Also, there is a light on my webcam that I would like to turn off, is there any software that might help me do that? Thanks. Freshofftheufo (talk) 10:08, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

See here for an example of a successful use of such techniques. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that helped me find a couple of applications that even let me record simple avis from the camera. I'm hoping to find one that can record sound on top of the motion-detected video as well, but no luck yet. Freshofftheufo (talk) 15:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

wget timestamps

With the "-p" command you can make wget download to a specific folder, say "-P downloads" for example. I was wondering if there is a way to make it dynamically generate a new foldername, for example giving the folder name a unix time code so that whenever wget is run it downloads to a new unix time code named folder 82.43.88.151 (talk) 13:20, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

You can have the shell run date to generate such a name, and pass it thus: wget YOURPARAMS -P `date | tr " " "_"` -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by the "shell"? I'm running wget from Windows 7 command prompt and .bat file. Will this still work? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

No. The Windows command prompt is similar to the Unix shell Finlay McWalter refers to, but unfortunately it's in the same way that a Yugo is similar to a Formula One racing car. I suggest you download a simple programming language like Python or Perl, which would allow you to do these kinds of things easily. --Sean 16:45, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I love to bash Windows as much as the next guy, but on a Windows 7 cmd, echo %DATE%_%TIME% displays the current date and time, so it should be possible to use wget YOURPARAMS -P %DATE%_%TIME% -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

That sort of works, but produces folders inside folders (30 -> 7 -> 2010). Above Sean suggested a programming language; would php work? I have some very limited knowledge of php, but I don't know how to start programs from php 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

PHP: Command line usage, from the official PHP manual, instructs you how to run PHP as a standalone program. If you want to run your program from a PHP-enabled web-server, you can use exec(). That will run the program on the web server. Be aware of the implications and security-risks of running exec() from a publically-viewable web page. Nimur (talk) 17:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if the %TIME% thing works, as windows time prints with colons, and colons can't be used in file or folder names. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Both issues can be fixed like this:

FOR /F "tokens=1-5 delims=/_:" %%G IN ('echo %DATE%_%TIME%') DO wget YOURPARAMS -P %%I-%%H-%%G_%%J-%%K

-- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

If you're running in to limitations of cmd, you could always try Windows Powershell as an alternative to the other suggestions Nil Einne (talk) 14:28, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

wget download html first

I ask here how to make wget download html files first before downloading images when mirroring a site. The answer given was the run it twice with "--no-clobber", however --no-clobber does not work with the "-N" command, which is automatically invoked when mirroring a site. So this solution is impossible to use. Are there any other ways? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 13:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve, so it's difficult to know what to do. Do you intend to download the htmls first so you can abort the image mirror, or just so you have a navigable but image-less copy soon while the image mirror runs. I guess you could just do the html-only wget to directory A followed by the main mirror to directory B, and if the second procedure succeeds you could delete A and rename B to A (if you need total continuity, meaning that the folder is being accessed while you do this, have a symlink that you swap from point to A to B and access via the symlink). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:36, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah this is bizarre; if you are mirroring a site by spidering it you *need* to download the HTML first. Only if you are counting on directory list to work can you even know about the images beforehand. The first use case I thought of for this was for mirroring an image hosting service that typically doesn't like just the image being loaded (since it thinks you are viewing it from an embedded link) but those I really doubt would be susceptible to dirlist anyway (most sites aren't). --144.191.148.3 (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to explain; when mirroring a site with say 300 html pages, wget downloads one html page at a time and then downloads all the images on that page before moving to the next html page. This means that it takes longer to download of all the html pages, because it's downloading images as well, and while it is taking this time the html pages could change, be removed etc. For static sites it doesn't matter, but I want to mirror a fast moving site. So I want it to download all the html files first, so that eve if they are removed I still have a copy, then download all the images on those pages after the html pages have all been safely downloaded. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

You could perform your initial download with these options:

wget --html-extension -k -P unique_temporary_directory YOUR_OTHER_PARAMETERS_AND_THE_DESTINATION_URL_GO_HERE

That will turn all links not pointing to already downloaded files into absolute links.

After that, you will have to sift through the HTML files and extract all URLs from there and pass those to wget again:

wget -P %DATE%_%TIME% --input-file=filename_goes_here.html --force-html --page-requisites --no-host-directories

Since this can be rather tedious, you might employ a for loop to do the grunt work for you:

REM set timestamp variable
FOR /F "tokens=1-5 delims=/_:" %%G IN ('echo %DATE%_%TIME%') DO SET mytimestamp=%%I-%%H-%%G_%%J-%%K
REM run actual command
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%file IN ('dir /b /s unique_temporary_directory\*.html') DO wget -P %mytimestamp% --input-file=%%file --force-html --page-requisites --no-host-directories

Note that this is from my memory, so you should test it in a small scale before aiming it at 4chan's image boards. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

link

Ages ago I saw a url which looked like somewebsite.com/something.php?google.com and it would redirect you to google.com. I think it was called referer.php or relinker.php or something beginnign with an r. Anyway, was is the name for this called? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.93 (talk) 13:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Referer.php is the name of the PHP script used to perform the forwarding. The name itself is not significant - it could be called polarbearseatme.php, and it would still would work the same way, providing the contents was the same. The ? is used to denote a Variable being passed - in this case, google.com. The script takes the variable and performs an operation on it. Here the operation is to redirect the user to the web address passed in the variable. --Kateshortforbob _talk 15:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I know all that, I'm asking if there's a specific name for the operation it was performing (ie bouncing you to another url). I've seen the same thing on deviantart and facebook and I want to know what the term for it is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.93 (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

"Redirecting", I suppose. They send you through a redirect page so they can track where you went, so you could call it "link follow tracking" or something like that. --Tango (talk) 16:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

The PHP script is most likely performing a HTTP 301, HTTP 302, HTTP 303, or HTTP 307 redirect. The PHP script has the web server return one these status codes with the redirect URL placed inside the HTTP location header. This tells your browser to follow the location the new URL. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen "deferer.php" on several websites in the past, although none of them use it anymore, preferring to link directly to whatever it is they're linking to. Rebmetpes27 (talk) 16:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Firewall Question

Hi guys, my google-fu fails me on this one: I'm looking for a firewall concept where the firewall acts like a bridge (i.e. there's no IP assigned to the production-side network interfaces, and the production-side network interfaces share the same subnet), yet still inspects (and, if necessary, blocks) packets. What is the name of such a beast? I'd be interested in doing this in Linux, however, if there's a way to make pfsense or m0n0wall do that, that would be fine, too.

I remember reading about such a concept a while ago, but I forgot the name. I keep thinking "filtering bridge", but that's something different, apparently.

The reason I need this feature is that I would like to grab packets targeted at a specific port (9100) of a certain group of IPs (a bunch of network printers), mangle the data with s small perl/php/bash scrippt, and pass it on to the destination IP. → I'm trying to work around a few brain-dead printer drivers that keep messing with PJL headers. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Instead of trying to sniff this out at the transport layer, why don't you install a software print server, and configure it to pre-process the print requests? This will be more maintainable in the long-run than a mysterious packet-sniffing, print-job-intercepting script. Have your users print to the print-server, which can run CUPS, pre-process jobs using your custom script ("filter"), and then forward the properly formatted request(s) to the hardware (printer). Here's the CUPS manual, and a description of how to set up custom "filters" to preprocess your print jobs. Nimur (talk) 16:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm aware of CUPS, and using a print server would indeed be my preferred way of solving it, if it wasn't for the so-called support contract. It does not cover changes to the network architecture, so I need a device that is invisible to external support, and that can be unplugged and replaced by a regular CAT5 cable without having to change settings on clients and/or printers. That's what you get for outsourcing parts of IT *sigh*.

IMO, they should come up with a new printer driver, pronto, given the $$$, or rather, €€€ that they're getting paid. Since they don't, and I don't want to spend all day running around resetting printers and manually sorting copies that end up in the wrong outbins, I'm looking for a way out of this mess that doesn't void the support contract, or can at least be reverted easily enough in case of further problems.

Funnily enough, I had the same issue almost 10 years ago while running OS/2 on the clients, and I've kept a copy of the PCL-clean-up script I used back then, so re-implementing it would be a matter of minutes - only back then, the network was still "mine", so I didn't have to worry about "hiding" the print server. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

How about a Squid Interceptor? Squids are usually used for HTTP and similar protocols, but you can intercept any traffic on any TCP or UDP port. You may have to recompile, because I think this is not a default option; but there are very good detailed instructions. Nimur (talk) 23:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not Squid that does the interception (so no need to get it just for that) but the local firewall. On Linux iptables, it would be the REDIRECT target which can do this. Unilynx (talk) 06:21, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Forward button problem, continued

Referring back to [1]:

The steps I have followed so far were similar to those when I asked the first question. I clicked on the e after turning on the computer, clicked on the mail button, signed into Yahoo (no one else uses this computer so I decided to check the "stay signed in"), and went to my inbox, clicked on an email with links, and clicked on three links, two of which were Wikipedia Help Desk archive pages. One was REALLY long and possibly susceptible to the problem, which was why I posted a link to it last week, just in case I decided to experiment with it. I changed the URL because the link was a week behind and clicked on three "next day" links in case the Internet goes out, and on my contributions from there, followed by "next 50" until I found the link to the Computing Reference Desk, and I clicked on the new topic button. More than likely, none of the above has any influence, so what I'm doing from here may cause the forward button problems. I have not had the problem with just the back button lately.

On the Microsoft forum I was told to disable add-ons, but I said I was eventually going to post a list of steps that led to the problems, and THEN maybe somoene would get the message about what was going on. I added the advice I've gotten here (scrolling down by the computer causes the forward button to disappear, which didn't always happen, and ALT-left might cause the problem but actually clicking on "back" wouldn't) and my theories that IE8 as a bug and there is a limit on how much you can have to go forward to or back to, which is why the problem happens on big pages.

At this point, I will save this and go forward to my contributions from the link in this post, and I will click on a Yahoo email that has information on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which I may need to add to that article.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:56, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Steps (not that it would affect anything, but Norton PC checkup has been downloading updates):

Thorough list of steps

Click on Deepwater Horizon oil spill in my contributions

Click on section "Other economic consequences"

Click on "Edit"

Click on "Save page"

Click on "edit" for same section so I can copy reference elsewhere

ALT-left

Click on BP link in article

Click on section "21st century"

Click on "Edit"

Click on "Show preview"

Clicked on "my contributions"

Came back here

Clicked on link to Deepwater article because I need to fix a source in the BP article

Clicked on Robert Dudley because I don't think his elevation to BP head is even mentioned in the article

Clicked on "Edit" to copy source

ALT-left

ALT-left

ALT-left

ALT-left

Clicked on "Save page"

Discovered better place to put part of my edit, so clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "History"

Clicked on "Compare selected revisions" to look at vandalism, forgot I went too far and looked at it after the vandalism

ALT-left

Tried again

ALT-left

Repeated for other vandalism by same IP

Clicked on vandal's talk page

Clicked on "History"

Clicked on talk page of person who warned vandal

Clicked on "New Section"

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "Edit"

Scan cancelled; no items to scan (from old Norton software; updated Norton will scan)

Clicked on "Save page"

Having been reminded by one Norton product, clicked on other for checkup (I've also been working on another site and saving these steps there, and previewing them, but this probably did not affect anything either)

Clicked on "History" to see who added insufficient source

Clicked on that person's talk page

Clicked on "New section"

Clicked "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on contributions

Returned here

ALT-left

Revisited talk page of person who warned vandal

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "Edit" when I saw something that bothered me

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left because I was on a pending changes page with apparent vandalism

Clicked on "History" to investigate

Clicked on "Compare selected revisions"

Clicked on "Submit changes" after reverting

Clicked on red link to vandal's talk page, the link to which showed up because I was still on a pending changes page

Clicked on "my contributions" so I could look at message template

Clicked on talk page I just posted on

Clicked on "User contributions"

Clicked on other vandal's talk page

Clicked on "Edit" to see template

ALT-left until I ended up back on talk page of person who warned vandal, but shouldn't have; ALT-right takes me back to MY contributions page but no further

ALT-left to vandal's talk page

Clicked on "Show preview" to make sure it's right

ALT-left until I end up back on the pending changes page

Clicked on Accept" because I was told I'm authorized to accept my own

ALT-left until I returned to the real Deepwater page

ALT-left until I ended up here

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit" because I forgot to signVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

This isn't particularly useful now since I didn't count the ALT-lefts:

ALT-left until I end up back at the top of the Computing reference desk, at which time the forward button disappears

ALT-left and I'm on an edit screen

ALT-left and I'm on the screen where I start a new topic

ALT-left to my contributions

ALT-left until I reach Help Desk archive (clicked on my last post here first, then ALT-left)

Returned here through "my contributions" and posted this

Clicked on edit again to fix something

Clicked on "Save page"

And repeated the above two stepsVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:58, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

ALT-left until the computer scrolled down to this section and the forward button disappeared again

And edited again when I messed something upVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

ALT-left until I ended up on an edit screen and the forward button disappeared again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I quit keeping up but I edited Caterpillar Inc. twice and lost the forward button when I backed up to the disambiguation page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi VChimpanzee. Over the last weeks, we have exhausted our ability to provide you references to assist you with your technical trouble. Your continuous posting of extremely long and elaborate sequences of steps is not going to help us (or anybody) answer your question. As I have mentioned many times before, try to state your problem concisely. We have already linked you to the necessary support web pages; provided information on ways to disable Javascript; offered you alternative web-browsers; and suggested alternative browsing habits. At this point, what do you hope to gain by describing every click of your browsing experience? This is the Computing Reference Desk. If you need help finding something, we can direct you to the appropriate article or resource. If you just wish to complain about your esoteric browser behavior, this is not the appropriate venue to do so. Nimur (talk) 00:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

What I hope to accomplish by listing steps is for someone to take the same steps and see the problem. I haven't posted the steps on another forum yet because I'm not clear on what I can post that they won't have a problem with. I can't state the problem concisely because I don't know what it is. I've done my best to explain it and I'm sorry that's not good enough for you.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:43, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I know the history problem has to be IE8 related because it was introduced with IE8. However, when I started a separate topic on the Microsoft forum I was told that was a duplicate of my other topic. It was not, because that's a separate issue. which makes it hard for me to explain things there. I went to that topic again later and got an error message, so I have only the one topic where I'm trying to address all these different problems, and so far all anyone has done is say reinstall IE8. That's too complicated for me. Then there was something about enabling and disabling add-ons. There aren't any that would cause this, and again, I worry about messing things up. I can't put these long lists of steps there because I don't know how people will react to them. Here, I at least got some guidance, but I have yet to really know what I can put on the Microsoft forums that will make the problem clear. I can't explain it here any better than I have.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC).

Let me try again. "The history problem" is this, and User:Comet Tuttle has seen it. When I am clicking on "Back" (or in my case pressing ALT-left), sometimes the forward button disappears, but clicking on "Back (or pressing ALT-left) gives me the page that would show up if I clicked on "Forward" (or pressed ALT-right).

The other problem is that at some point, especially with long pages, I click on "Back" a certain number of times and the Forward button will no longer function, as if a limit has been reached on the number of pages that the software can handle. I used to have this happen with the back button; it wouldn't go back further, apparently because the pages it would go back to were too large (this precedes IE8 and also happened at libraries). Possible causes suggested have been the computer scrolling down (but that doesn't always make the forward button disappear) and using ALT, which I haven't tested.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:16, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Why worry about it or waste your time on something so trivial? The solution is just to use the History list in your browser to re-visit pages you have been to before. You must be the only person in the world who expects the browser to remember so many steps perfectly. 92.24.185.100 (talk) 16:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

VChimpanzee, at this point you're just going to need to submit this bug to Microsoft, and hope for the best. I appreciate you'd like someone to help you come up with a more concise bug report so you can report it to Microsoft with a short list of steps that reproduce the bug every time, but that's a little outside of the remit of the Reference Desk. I wouldn't waste time on those forums anymore, but would try the most direct bug reporting mechanism that you can find (and that link was the most direct general-public bug reporting mechanism I could find.) One last tip: Don't tell them you're "clicking" the Back button, because that means a mouse click; be very specific and tell them you're using Alt-Left-arrow. Best of luck — Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

To User:92.24.185.100, I believe there is a valid reason for the various problems and just want to see an answer. I eventually did learn about history. There is a back button problem I've had at libraries I haven't been able to reproduce, but I think I had it with IE8, and because there are long pages involved I think it must be an issue with a limit on what the computer can handle. But wanting the back button to work, especially for Yahoo (where we have established it won't because they intentionally have JavaScriopt working this way) is a valid concern since I can't remember where I was, and a lot of history to look through won't help that a lot. I am not, however, trying to solve that problem.

The forward probem seems to have been resolved to some extent since I've found one or more answers by doing this, though the very specific problem of the back button giving me what the forward button should but it's gone--THAT'S a possible bug which I'll report to the site User:Comet Tuttle mentioned. I also have had several other problems which I want to report to that other Microsoft site. These seem like they'd be common problems which are not bugs necessarily. In the past I reported that I lost the Internet but once I got it back, I could go to various sites using windows I wasn't on when the Internet went out. But the Window I was on when the Internet went out just keeps searching and searching. I may have said it here, but I think it wouldn't even allow me to type in a new address.

And just this morning on Firefox, I had a set of rectangles at the bottom of the screen when a pop-up ad came up, adding another one, despite the pop-up blocker. Only the page I was on before the pop-up ad disappeared and didn't reappear until I clicked on the X in the upper right corner of all the rest when I finished. The order of the rectangles at the bottom of the screen also changed. This has happened to me at home.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

To your last point, really you should start a new topic when asking about a new topic; but popup blockers aren't perfect. It's like an arms race, between the popup ad designers and the popup-blocker designers. (I use Adblock with Firefox and haven't seen a popup ad in probably a couple of years.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

A very wide and rather long webpage

This Tuesday, I saw on a computer a site matching the following characteristics:

• A dark gray background (something like #222222)
• The page were very large, requiring scrolling in wide and in long
• The design where organized in blocks, with spaces between them
• One of this block were an image, with links at the left, trying to round this corner of image

Have you an idea of which site it could be?

If not, have you an idea of another site using this scrolling "wide, very wide" design, requesting the user to scroll horizontally? --Dereckson (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Someone hacking together a site (badly) by directly writing it in HTML or using a bad WYSIWYG editor could do something like this. The internet is a big place, and there's lots of amatuerish crap out there. --Jayron32 02:37, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

It were here volunteer, with a clean design.

As it's from an hackerspace, it should more than very probably be IT related. --Dereckson (talk) 19:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Here is a Web magazine from Sussex, where every issue is one side-scrolling Web page, enjoy. Sussexonian (talk) 20:28, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Not only it's wide, but that's pretty fast to load. Thank you. --Dereckson (talk) 20:58, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Contrast Ratios

I have several questions about the recent improvement in contrast ratios in PC monitors and TV sets. Not too long ago, 10,000:1 seemed cutting-edge. Now, however, contrast ratios as high as 9,000,000:1 are commonplace.

First of all, how much higher are they expected to go in near future? And second, is there an "upper limit" beyond which the human eye cannot perceive? Pine (talk) 21:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, but can note that our Contrast ratio article implies that the quoted contrast number is mostly a marketing number to try to win you over, rather than a scientific measurement; and that because of different methods of measuring it, you can't use these numbers to compare a Sony vs. a Samsung. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Android language help

How can I get my droid to display languages other than Latin-based script and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean? E.g. Arabic shows up as squares. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.111.119.237 (talk) 22:50, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be a known bug. This forum and this forum both seem to indicate that the UTF-8 encoding rendering engine does not include support for glyphs in many languages. You can wait for a system-update, or download one of the various third-party browser applications that can properly render Arabic text. Nimur (talk) 23:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

July 31

The Amazon Kindle's web browser

Can the current Kindle support a web browser interface for entering URLs and seeing web page content? - Bevo (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at our our article. Chevymontecarlo - alt 07:27, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I did and it does not say specifically if the Kindle's "experimental" web browser is limited to what webpages it can access. - Bevo (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Peer-assisted networking

Hi, I am struggling to understand in very basic terms the section "What are peer-assisted networking settings?" here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html#117802

Does this mean, if this feature is utilised, that my PC could be serving video content to somebody else's computer? Could anyone explain in very basic language what this is all about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.136.165 (talk) 01:25, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly correct. If you enable "peer-assisted network settings", your computer will host, serve, and send video and other content to other internet users. This is a form of peer to peer networking. It could also be described as "crowd-sourcing" - outsourcing the costs of providing network content to the general public. The Adobe.com article doesn't explain the specific technology involved, but I interpret their description to mean that your computer will always be running the Adobe Flash environment in the background. That software will regularly log in to an Adobe command server, who will tell your computer what content it should host, and who it should share that content with. Your computer will then start delivering video or other Flash content to random other people on the internet (presumably prioritizing this behavior according to whatever scheme is most efficient for Adobe and its partners - and not what is most efficient for you and your computer). This decreases costs for content-providers like Youtube, (because they're "borrowing" your network connection, your CPU, and your hard-disks). I would be very suspicious of enabling this feature - it has absolutely no benefit to your own browsing experience, and may seriously hog your computer's resources (memory, disk, network, and CPU). Serving video is resource-intensive. Nimur (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, on further reading, the Adobe website says that any application that wants to function as a server must ask your permission. So, this feature is a bit less insidious than my alarmist response above - it will only do that if you permit it to. However, I would still be wary - this still seems like a no-gain scenario for the end-user. Nimur (talk) 03:06, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Nimur, thanks for your very informative response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.171.144 (talk) 14:01, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have cognitive scientists explained why it's tedious to not use pronouns?

Please see thread at

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Have_cognitive_scientists_explained_why_it.27s_tedious_to_not_use_pronouns.3F

thanks

Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 01:46, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Blu-Ray video files?

I have Sony PMB software, and average graphics card which my Cyberlink video software tells me needs upgrading on a dual core computer running Windows XP. The Cyberlink software is needed to write to my new Blu-Ray drive, because unless there is some sort of upgrade for XP(?) it only "knows" about DVD/CD. This means I cannot use the Sony PMB to convert mts to MPEG because it tries to write to the blu-ray, but windows xp cannot recognise it. It could write to a DVD, but the limited capacity would be a problem, which is why I got the blu-ray drive. My question is, using AVS software to play the mts files with the stand alone player results in a perfectly good HD movie but it hangs every couple of seconds, weather it is on the hard drive or playing from a Blu-Ray or DVD disk. However, when I use the AVS software to convert to an HD mpeg file (AVS shows a special blue icon for mts and a red one for mpeg) the HD picture and sound not only plays perfectly, but is even smoother than the PMB software. The mpeg definitely is still HD, the detail is far greater than normal video. My question is, if I were to put the disk into a Blu-Ray player, which files would it play? mts, mpeg or both? And if I copied the AVS player and a short HD mpeg file on to DVD or Blu-Ray disk, would it play on a different computer without any HD software installed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.10 (talk) 06:21, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Moved from RD/Science by CS Miller (talk) 09:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Maximum privacy in Facebook

I don't really use Facebook, but I find it useful to have an account to send people messages (it's basically email...but...inferior. But no-one checks their actual emails any more...) Anyway, it seems that Facebook becomes involved in some kind of newsworthy privacy-related scandal on a yearly basis. Now, I've done everything I can find to cripple my Facebook account; as far as I'm aware, no-one can post anything on my page, and I've made all of my details as private as possible to my knowledge. But, I don't know Facebook well. Could anyone tell me what to do in order to, for all intents and purposes, disable everything that can be disabled, except for messages? Perhaps there's a website somewhere that already has this covered... Vimescarrot (talk) 13:22, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Reclaim privacy has a good solution. Chris M. (talk) 18:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Ooh. Thanks. Vimescarrot (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

portable app that corrupts/erases the drive after password entry failure?

I use (and love) Portable Apps, and a few weeks ago saw mention in an article of a security app that gave you X tries to enter your password to access the USB, and at X+1 would hose the entire disk, thereby neutralizing the risk from loss or theft of the USB drive. I thought I had saved the link but it seems I did not. I've searched around and have found password organizers and secure file deleters, but nothing quite matching that app's description. Can anyone help? 61.189.63.171 (talk) 15:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't see how you can do that through an application alone because there's no way of guarenteeing that it'll execute on the client machine, it will need some sort of hardware awareness. A U3 device sort of does what you're asking (When accessing my U3 Titanium drive if I get the password wrong twice it warns me that I only have 3 tries left before it'll be locked out with format being the only option), however the U3 drives aren't hardware encrypted so I suspect that simply formatting them would allow for data to be recovered using normal disk recovery methods. The other way that I know of is the much more secure IronKey drives which are hardware encrypted and upon sufficient password failures will erase the encryption keys, effectively destroying all the data (it'll technically still be there, but encrypted with no way to recover it). Sadly the IronKey's aren't cheap though. ZX81 ^talk 16:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Although not a software option. If you are willing to invest a little bit of money you could get an Iron key flash drive. They do a similar task to what you are asking for, and from what I have gathered are cross platform. My other suggestion is to use Truecrypt to encrypt a partition on your flash drive. It won't keep people from repetitively trying to guess your password, but at least it will keep people out of your stuff. Zell Faze (talk) 00:41, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Compress

I save 10,000 html files (with images, css, etc) a week, usually totaling around 12GB for a months worth. I compress them to save space, and with solid compression I can get 12GB down to 900mb. However, I was wondering if there a more efficient way to do this? Should I compress the files weekly instead? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You can probably have it occupy zero space on your PC by just leaving it all on the internet. I know that's not really the kind of answer you were looking for, but I'm puzzled why you need to save 10,000 html files a week. Astronaut (talk) 00:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Does it matter why? The question is about the most efficient way to compress them. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 00:19, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

12:1 ratio is really pretty good, particularly considering that images are involved (is that lossless or lossy compression for the pics?) The efficiency of compression should not vary much with frequency; if anything, compressing larger units of data should produce better compression ratios (you lose edge effects, and depending on the complexity of the algorithm, more data should produce more regularities, for deeper compression). You're more likely to suffer from redundancy waste than compression waste in this situation (where you compress slightly different versions of the same website separately). --Ludwigs2 07:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose what I was suggesting is, if you reconsidered the need to save such a huge amount of data on such a rapid frequency, you wouldn't need to try to find even better compression. But Ludwigs is right, a 12:1 ratio is already pretty good considering you include images. We have extensive information on data compression, with links to articles about many different algorithms. In particular, you might find Lossless data compression#Lossless compression benchmarks and Lossy compression interesting. Another thing to consider if this is your own website and you have access to the uncompressed images in (perhaps RAW format), you could choose a greater compression when converting to a lossy format like JPEG, before uploading them to your site. Of course that would produce more compression artifacts which users of your site might not appreciate. Astronaut (talk) 07:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Are the pages essentially the same with minor changes or no changes from week to week? For example, you're mirroring the CNN website. (This is the sort of reason, by the way, that Astronaut was not out of line to ask you why. It helps volunteers come up with answers.) If so you could use a solution that only saves compressed versions of the changes, and otherwise assumes no changes from the previous version. Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:47, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Is the output of Google Translate copyrighted?

I know that professional translations of public domain texts tend to be copyrighted (i.e. new translations of Shakespeare by academics). Does this extend to the output of a Google Translate translation? I want to pass a public domain text through GT, correct it for fluency, and ideally post it on Wikisource. I'm not looking for legal advice, the interpretation of an educated layman or Wikipedia copyright ninja would be fine (assume US or UK for jurisdiction). Thanks, Skomorokh 19:00, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that the point about the translations of PD stuff is that the translator has added creative effort. For example the English translation of the Rubiyat is a distinct work from the original. I kind of doubt the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity. But of course this is all guesswork on my part and I offer no warranty. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

"(Trovatore) kind of doubt(s) the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity." But how could they say otherwise? If asked specifically, "did creative effort go into the creation of the translation", it would be appropriate to answer directly, "absolutely yes - the algorithm designs, the statistical translation database, and the creation of the translation user-interface all constituted original creative design by Google and its researchers." This is exactly why it is so hard to apply conventional legal norms to IP and technology issues; and it's why any information we offer here shouldn't be construed as legal advice. Courts can decide what they like. But your baseline should be the Terms of Service for Google Translate: among other things, "By submitting your content through the Service, you grant Google the permission to use your content permanently to promote, improve or offer the Service." At all times, they refer to the content (including the outputted translated data) as your content. They also specifically state that by submitting, that you have granted Google permission to use your content for technical, business, promotional, or other purposes. Compare, if you want, Microsoft's Bing Translator legal information and service agreement. Microsoft covers this issue with a very specific agreement: "You may be able to submit content for use in connection with the service. You understand that Microsoft does not control or endorse the content that you and others post or provide on the service. Except for material that we license to you, we do not claim ownership of the content you post or provide on the service."

As always, we can link you to relevant articles and information about the legal implications of these terms of service, but information about the applicability of these Terms of Service agreements, and the legal enforceability of them in a copyright dispute, would constitute "legal advice" that we can not provide. However, in my opinion, Microsoft has gone farther in guaranteeing your ownership by specifically stating that they make no claim of ownership to your data. At the same time, they leave some leeway by not explicitly telling you whether your translated output is "your content" or "content that Microsoft is licensing to you."

The moral of this is that copyright status of machine-processed versions of your data is still a legal gray area. The specifics could be debated in a court battle. What we know, though, is that:

• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) expressly state that they will store copies of your translation input and output, and use it for their own purposes
• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) will share your input and output with 3rd parties, so if you have proprietary, confidential, or classified information, do not submit it for machine translation to such services.
• Because the details of machine translation, (specifically, statistics-based translations), your document's content might "percolate" through the translation algorithm, in the form of machine-representations of natural-language mappings. This will make it technically impossible to "remove" your content from a state-of-the-art system - so even if a copyright dispute is legally ruled in your favor, it will be practically impossible to "un-do" the leaking of your content. (This doesn't even take into the account the issue that, once publicized, n-number of copies of your data may be held by 3rd-party viewers).
• Finally, it's worth stating that Google (and Microsoft) provide you with a Terms of Service agreement, that does go to some effort to assure you that your data remains yours; but that these agreements don't really seal every possible interpretation. Seek legal advice from a qualified attorney if you need a more concrete answer.

Hopefully this helps you evaluate the status-quo for the copyright status of machine translation. Read the Terms of Use carefully. As with Trovatore, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and I offer no warranty for my interpretation. Nimur (talk) 19:48, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Nimur, no doubt creative effort went into the design of Google Translate. If that were the standard, you can just sign over the copyright to everything you write to Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, assuming you're writing on a computer. The point is that Google Translate itself exercises no creativity. It's just a dumb algorithm. --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The US Copyright Office has the opinion that no mechanical process whereby the outputs follow invariably from the inputs can give rise to copyright, irregardless of how complicated the process might be. As Nimur highlights, there is undoubtedly creativity involved in the design of any piece of software, but the current US legal position is that this creativity protects only the software itself and has no impact on works that might flow through it. Hence mechanical translations have only the copyright status they inherit from the original work. So if the original is public domain, so is the output. Dragons flight (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

An eminently sensible opinion for them to hold. Of course strictly speaking it doesn't answer what happens if it doesn't follow invariably from the inputs; if, for example, some source of true randomness is used. My very strong guess is that the courts would hold that that doesn't matter, and that they would decline to find "creativity" in any process not performed by natural persons. --Trovatore (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

True randomness is not creative, either. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Right, that was kind of my point. --Trovatore (talk) 02:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's not forget that irregardless is a perfectly cromulent word. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

SSRN-Rebuilding Babel: Copyright and the Future of Machine Translation Online by Erik Ketzan -- Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The legal question is that this comes at the intersection of two different sets of regulations in US copyright law. One is on translation, which is defined as an inherently creative act which creates derivative works. The other is on "purely mechanical" manipulations of information, which do not create new copyrights. I am not sure we can really say how a court would rule on this, in the end. They could say that machine translation is "purely mechanical" and thus has no authorship. Or they could say that the mechanical process is sufficiently "creative" as to have some authorship within its output, though who would get the credit for that (e.g., Google Translate, not you), is not obvious. It's not clear whether you can claim copyright on algorithmic output at all, though. Wolfram Research claims copyright on all of the output of Wolfram Alpha, for example, but it's not clear that would hold up in court. Anyway, the bottom line is, I believe, that the likelihood is rather low that it would be interpreted as creating a new copyright, and in any case you the copy-paster probably wouldn't be the author in any case. But this ain't legal advice, to say the last... --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I feel rather confident that no court is going to find that any copyright belongs to Google Translate. Data is a toaster. Algorithms and machines have no personhood before the law. --Trovatore (talk) 03:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Suppose Google Translate always produced a paragraph from Harry Potter when the output language was set to English, ignoring the input text. In that case the output would clearly be copyrighted material, despite being "produced by" a deterministic algorithm. Now suppose it chose several words and phrases from Harry Potter and strung them together—still copyrighted material? One could at least make a case that it would be. This is pretty much what machine translators do in reality: they string together words and phrases from a potentially copyrightable phrasebook, guided (one hopes) by the input text. Does the author of the input text have a copyright claim on the output? Probably. Does the author of the phrasebook? Maybe. Does the computer? No, but that was never the issue. -- BenRG (talk) 04:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the copyright inheres in the original authors of the bits of text that Google Translate is putting together to make a translation, then it follows that, in offering Translate, Google is engaged in mass copyright violation. But I don't believe that will be the conclusion. In general the shorter a piece of text, the harder it is to assert copyright on it, and I gather that Translate uses only rather short pieces. It's not like it's going to copy in the Gettysburg Address. --Trovatore (talk) 04:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Did you trouble to read the paper that Wavelength provided a link to? After skimming it, I think there's a danger that any court could disagree with your stance, because section 102 of the US Copyright Act says that "a translation" is a derivative work; and derivative works are copyrightable. (Page 5 and 20.) I can certainly see a court just taking the literal route and applying this law, not caring whether "a translation" was created by a human, by a human who uses a machine to help translate (as I understand all professional translators do, nowadays), or purely by a machine. I have to agree with Nimur, that we don't know how a court will rule, and that it's irresponsible to guess or advocate while pretending to be confident about the outcome. Page 20 notes that the copyright laws do not expressly require "human" authorship — there was a 1997 case "addressing the bizarre question of whether a book purportedly authored by celestial beings may be copyrighted; 'The copyright laws, of course, do not expressly require 'human' authorship.'" Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

A translation is a derivative work, but AIUI the copyright goes to the translator (subordinate of course to any copyright on the original; I believe the upshot is that any publication must have the permission of both the copyright holder to the original and that to the translation). But machines, or programs, cannot hold copyright!!!! I didn't say they had to be human, but they do have to be persons. There is no way that any court is going to find that an algorithm is a person. --Trovatore (talk) 05:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You'll note by the way that your reference to page 20 of the article is a question about whether this company doing machine translation might be liable to the original copyright holder. That's not at issue here, because the original poster was talking about translating stuff from the public domain. Yes, I agree that if the original material was subject to copyright, then the machine translation would also be encumbered by the original copyright. But I can't see any reasonable argument that Google Translate would have any copyright interest in the material. (Nor that the original poster would.) As far as I can tell (and I'll repeat here that I'm only an interested amateur) the machine translation of public domain input would remain public domain. --Trovatore (talk) 05:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Again, I think a lot less certainty would suit you, on this one. There is simply no precedent (that's been cited in this thread anyway, or that I know about) in any US court ruling or in US law that supports your assertions, even if you put four exclamation points after them, and a court could go either way and still be reasonable. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:55, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all, an interesting and informative discussion. Skomorokh 21:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Google gone weird - malware?

Whenever I search for images on Google, I get this irritating and difficult to control scrolling page of hundreds of images. If this is not due to a malware infection, is there any way to fix it and return to normal non-scrolling pages? Thanks (There must be an internet programmer's motto: "If it ain't broke, then make it worse"). 92.15.12.218 (talk) 19:35, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not malware, google changed the layout recently. You can revert back to the old style by scrolling to the very bottom of the page and click "Switch to basic version" 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 19:44, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Even after the inconvenience of clicking "switch to basic version", the results page is still mangled. I would switch to bing.com except I think they use the same system. These internet dictators, they never ask the public what they want or do trials where things can be returned to normal if the public don't like it - another example being the BBC news site, which may have a hidden puropose of decreasing the amount of content. 92.28.249.190 (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Using Excel/Access for Neopets shop inventory

Here's the situation: I have an account on Neopets.com and currently have a virtual shop there. Usually, when I have a new item I want to sell, I would look it up in the Shop Wizard (item search engine) and just take the lowest price on the list (always the first result that comes back). That's what I would normally do for a few items.

Now the difficult part. I have a lot of items (over 1000) I'd like to sell. To save time, I was thinking of putting all of the item names into an Excel spreadsheet or Access database (which would work best in this situation?) where I would have the item name, its current Shop Wizard price, and the category it belongs to. That way, if I ever need to sell the same thing again, I don't have to go back to the Shop Wizard every time and can just refer to the sheet.

So let's say I have a list of items in a spreadsheet or database. Can I get Excel/Access to automatically import the SW prices, or would I have to do that manually? If the latter, I can't go over every single item, plug it into SW, search, and then copy and paste the price back into the spreadsheet; that would be too tedious and take too long.

Any Excel/Access geniuses out there that can help? 141.153.215.18 (talk) 20:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I have a friend who used ImportHtml() in Google Spreadsheets for something similar. You'd need to construct a URL that retrieves the information (which needs to be public), and then use the Index() function to retrieve the appropriate information. I don't know much about the specifics, though, and I think that desktop spreadsheet software tends not to have that feature. Paul (Stansifer) 21:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You could definitely do this in Access, and probably Excel, but it would take some work. It's not too hard to get Access to retrieve web pages using VBScript, but it would not be the easiest "starter project." Excel would be a bit trickier, because everything regarding VBScript in Excel is a bit trickier (it is not quite as naturally integrated with the data as Access is). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using iPhone at a WiFi hotspot

If one selects the free WiFi network available there, does the following browsing and data transfer you do while there rack up against the quota of the standard data plan they offer? I wouldn't think so, since if you're using the WiFi of the establishment, you're not using AT&T's 3G network. Thanks. 71.161.56.247 (talk) 20:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using a wifi network doesn't count toward your data plan as you are not using AT&T's network. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 22:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're connecting to the Internet through the WiFi of wherever you are, not through AT&T's network, so it doesn't count towards your data plan. Chevymontecarlo - alt —Preceding undated comment added 17:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC).

Forcible Setting

Why does sometimes my default home page (Internet Explorer) automatically set to : http://searchdnet.googlepages.com/index.html ? -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 21:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Malware (again?). I suggest you sweep your PC for malware using a tool like Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Astronaut (talk) 23:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Concur, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't some kind of nasty malicious software. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 06:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that definitely sounds like something Malware would do. Chevymontecarlo - alt 17:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista ReadyBoost

Any idea why Vista recommends I use 870MB for readyboost when the max space on my drive is 960MB? Would it run slower if it were completely full or something? Thanks StatisticsMan (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I woudn't think so, but then you would have no space left to store extra documents if you used the entire capacity.Sir Stupidity (talk) 23:57, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I am using the flash drive exclusively for ReadyBoost so I'm not worried about that. I have another flash drive I use to move files around. This one is hooked up in the back and I will probably not take it out for a long time. StatisticsMan (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a line from the Readyboost Article:

Microsoft recommends the amount of flash memory for ReadyBoost acceleration be one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) in your computer. This recommendation should not be confused with the message that is displayed in the “ReadyBoost” tab of drive properties dialog: for example, for a flash drive of 16 GB capacity formatted as FAT32 it will display a message that “Windows recommends reserving 4094 MB for optimal performance” even if RAM size is 10 GB, just because 4094 MB is the maximum file size on a FAT32 volume; after reformatting it as NTFS or exFAT, the message changes to “Windows recommends 15180 MB”.

However I have no real idea why... Can someone help me out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sir Stupidity (talk • contribs) 04:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It says why in the paragraph. It recommends less than the max in this case because "4094 MB is the maximum file size on a FAT32 volume." This is not my problem as my recommendation is 870, not 4094. StatisticsMan (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Fonts are weird

I lost power to my computer, probably due to a faulty PSU, and when I started it back up most fonts on my computer were stuck in italics. Now, I've started it up and everything is stuck in bold mode. Anyone have any information? 68.69.69.9 (talk) 23:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The fonts where are stuck in bold? The windows interface (the writing on the task bar buttons, title bars of windows, etc.) or the fonts in a particular program or programs? I can't see why a power loss would do anything to fonts. I would suggest running a virus scanner. --Tango (talk) 00:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The fonts within some websites (Wikipedia, CNN, MSNBC, likely many more) are in bold on Firefox. Everything in Winamp is stuck in italics. 68.69.69.9 (talk) 00:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

These are extremely unusual symptoms. If you are describing them accurately, they probably are unrelated to the power-outage. Winamp has a font setting in the options; you might want to check it. You might also want to edit your operating-system-wide Appearance Settings.b This tutorial from Microsoft guides you through the process to configure OS-wide font settings. Check if the settings there are out of order. Nimur (talk) 00:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

So I put more effort into it and it turns out the font registry entries were corrupted. It's all good now, thanks Wikipedia! 68.69.69.9 (talk) 01:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Lifetime of a laser printer

I tend to run my cars and computers until they rust in place, so am familiar with their end-of-life symptoms; but I've not used a laser printer, so am not sure how they die.

The HP printer (2200 I think) assigned to me at work is now 6-8 years old, and over the past month just won't print really black copies any more. It's still even (not streaking), and taking the cartridge out and shaking it in every direction does not help. Is it nearing the end of its life, or is the symptom of somethine else? Might there be one easy thing to repair or replace, that would reinvigorate it?

Thanks, DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:33, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

In my experience if it is still printing light print even after shaking the cartridge, it is probably time to get a new cartridge. I doubt you would have difficulty getting a cartridge for that printer - I can still get cartridges for my 10+ years old HP laserjet 6L. In fact, a Google search reveals lots of places ready to sell you a cartridge for your printer (of course, in the workplace you probably have a purchasing dept that deals with that kind of thing). Astronaut (talk) 23:45, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You probably have a purchasing dept... Yes, that would be me :-), and getting new carts is not yet an issue. Guess I'll do that.

I'm still skeptical, though, because I have NONE of the other standard symptoms of "empty cartridge": no streaking, no spotting, and this cart is only 2-3 months old when 6 is the typical minimum.

DaHorsesMouth (talk) 00:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean that it only prints grey? Have you printed a test page from the printer's control panel? Those usually have color bars and bypass the operating system's printing programs. It could be an issue with the settings for the printer.

From what I've heard, a laser printer can last forever, so long as you clean it every few months. When you clean it, use toner cloth and a toner vacuum. Don't wipe off the drum or you might scratch it. Having said that, some models are better than others. Some break after a few years. Others last much longer.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Most cartridges have an estimated number of pages worth of toner in them, usually expressed as a number assuming something like 5% coverage. Whether 2-3 months is a reasonable length of time for the number of pages that have been printed with that cartridge is something you need to consider, but maybe the cartridge is faulty. Astronaut (talk) 08:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If there is still toner left, the drum may be approaching its end, it has a long but finite lifetime. Check your printer's manual (or search the web) for replacement interval information. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 09:46, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a HP LaserJet 5 which was apparently made in 1995 and it works great. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:01, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Unless you have a printer from hell, you probably need to change the cartridge, clean the drum, or otherwise update the printer's firmware/software. Make sure you check the printer's control panel to see if something is amiss. Laser printers made by HP ussually tend to last a while...I have an HP LaserJet 4 that still works...(though I never use it). (On a side note, its interesting to see that the 2200 series supported Windows 3.1).Smallman12q (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, that scared me -- started to think it might have been first introduced in the mid-1990s, for example, and could have been 12-15 years old! Our own WP says 2001, so that's not so bad :-). Thanks for that. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this happen on HP LaserJet 6L's - if everything is grey instead of black, and Text starts to get blurry/fuzzy along the edges, the laser scanner unit might be at fault. Good luck finding a replacement part... -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:44, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

August 1

History data

Where in my computer's hard drive (Drive C) is all the data for the History section stored in? Which folders do I have to go to? 64.75.158.195 (talk) 10:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The history data for what? Your web browser? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 11:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Web browser history data is stored in difference places depending on the browser. IE stores it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History" (where %USERPROFILE% is your Windows login name). Firefox keeps it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%PROFILE%" (where %PROFILE% is a random string). --Mr.98 (talk) 14:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't find a folder that says Local Settings or Application Data. I use Internet Explorer, by the way. 64.75.158.196 (talk) 01:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

LaTeX and Flashcards

Hi all,

Hopefully this is an appropriate place for this question! Basically, I'm studying mathematics at university and I'm trying to find a way to put flashcards on my iPhone, for revising long proofs of theorems etc. However, since most of the things I'll need to revise will be partly symbolic, I was wondering if there was any way to put LaTeX (or some kind of TeX) in flashcard form on the phone, since the majority of the apps I've looked at don't seem to have much in the way of special character support (logic symbols etc) - if there is such an app I've failed to spot it, but either way a nudge in the right direction, if this is feasible, would be much appreciated! Incidentally my phone isn't jailbroken, so if at all possible I'd need solutions which keep things that way.

Thanks very much, 82.26.0.194 (talk) 12:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean to read latex on your iphone...or to edit/make latex flashcards on it? If you want to read it...you might consider converting it to a format that can be read on a non-jailbroken iphone such as pdf.Smallman12q (talk) 21:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, ideally something in the actual flashcard form with proper mathematical typesetting is what I'm looking for, editable by whatever means - iPhone or computer or anything else - would be fine, but (for example) I'd like to have the statement of a theorem on the 'front' and the proof on the 'back', or some similar format, rather than literally just a block of typeset mathematics in something like a PDF. If worst comes to worst I am capable of just making a PDF of everything and then keeping that on the phone, but if it comes to that I think I'd rather just write them out in real life. I am aware what I'm asking for is quite specific, so I'll fully understand if the answer is just a 'no it isn't possible', especially since Apple are fairly renowned for limiting how much you can do on their devices, I just thought I'd come here and ask if anyone had any clever suggestions, or knew of an app where the proper typesetting is possible! Thanks for any responses in advance, 82.26.0.194 (talk) 00:07, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at Anki? I believe it supports Latex as well. There's also MentalCase though its not free. Let me know if this helps.Smallman12q (talk) 01:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That looks great, I may well give Anki a go, thankyou! I think I prefer the look of MentalCase, but it doesn't seem to support LaTeX, does it? Or perhaps it does and I'm being stupid! 82.26.0.194 (talk) 09:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure...(I personally haven't used...just know some people who have)...though a comment here and here suggests that latex may be supported. You could always ask on their forums to be sure.Smallman12q (talk) 11:56, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Programs

Resolved

I'm sure this is a question which has been done to death, so forgive me for asking. Will 64 bit Windows run programs designed for 32 bit systems? I have many programs, some very old, which don't and will never have 64 bit versions. Will they continue to work, or will I have to run them in a virtual machine or something laborious like that? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, 64-bit Windows is perfectly able to run 32-bit Windows applications, thanks to the WOW64 subsystem. In fact, most programs on a 64-bit Windows system are likely 32-bit applications, as of today. (However, although 32-bit Windows is able to run 16-bit applications, 64-bit Windows is only able to run 64-bit and 32-bit applications, not the ancient 16-bit apps.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, so my old Windows 3.1 and DOS programs won't work, without an emulator like DOSBOX anyway? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

That's correct...virtually all of your Windows 3.11/DOS/16-bit apps won't work without an emulator.Smallman12q (talk) 21:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

As you may know, 32-bit drivers will not work in 64-bit Windows. Some hardware doesn't have 64-bit drivers. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Write it by hand, take a picture of it with your iphone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.90.157.2 (talk) 20:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

What? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 20:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Trendnet router Status blinking slowly, WLAN blinking rapidly

Dear Wikipedians:

I'm currently using a Trendnet TEW-652BRP router. I have opted to connect my DSL modem directly to the router as one of its nodes, instead of connecting it to the Internet port, because I would like my DSL modem to directly assign DHCP address to all of my computers so that my computers may take advantage of my DSL modem's UPnP capabilities for automatic port forwarding. Therefore, the WAN light of my router remains off.

After I have set up everything. I found that all the wired connection to my Trendnet router works fine. However, when I attempt to use the wireless connection provided by my Trendnet router with my laptop, I find that it does not work (the laptop is able to latch on to the wireless connection fine, but it could not detect any Internet connection through the wireless connection). I also noticed that the "Status" light on the router blinks slowly and the "WLAN" light on the Trendnet router blinks rapidly, I think this might be a sign of trouble.

I also have a Linksys WTR router that is configured in the same way as my Trendnet router. On that router I am able to get on to the Internet through the wireless connection just fine. So I am wondering what is going on?

Thanks for all your help,

174.88.33.187 (talk) 17:03, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...this afternoon after I came back from the computer store, the wireless connection on the Trendnet TEW-652BRP router all of a sudden started working. I didn't do anything to it. The indicator lights are still blinking at their respective paces but the wireless network on Trendnet just all of a sudden worked, what a pleasant surprised, problem resolved!

174.88.33.187 (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Replace image

In greasemonkey, I want to replace an image on a webpage with another image. The image I want to replace comes from the url "http://example.com/image.php?title=1234" where "1234" changes and could be anything. I want to replace it with "http://otherwebsite.com/5678.jpg". How would this be done? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a tutorial: Replacing an element with new content. Nimur (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I actually tried that page already, but the image I want to replace doesn't have an "id" to getelement by. When I tried "getelelementbyname" it didn't work either 82.43.88.151 (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If you didn't design the website you want to modify, there's not much you can do to make the following procedure convenient. Basically, you will have to replace the document.getElementById() with your own function, "getNodeByCustomTechnique()" that you must write to find the node. If you could just modify the HTML source (if you were the owner of the site), you could add an id tag to the node in question, but I gather that is not an option for you. So you'll have to locate your un-identified node the hard way.

A bit of web searching found this tutorial: Page Structure and Navigation. As they say right up front: "If you don't know javascript you're out of luck!" See the section "Where's my Node": Your three choices are very limited if you are not the author of the HTML document, because you can't modify the node attributes. So you are stuck with Option #2: "start at the root of the document and slog your way through it using the childNodes attribute of the node (using a code fragment like this) and hope you eventually find what you are looking for." Or, Option #3: use "document.getElementsByTagName("img")" as your starting point, and check every element of the result-set. Because there is no id-tag, you have to come up with some other way to determine when you have traversed to the correct node. Is the target-node always at a pre-set the position image on the page? Then you can hard-code a traversal pattern. Does the target node image source URL remain constant (or always match some simple pattern)? Then you can check every img node to see if its src attribute is the one you want. Combine your javascript programming to traverse the DOM tree with whatever bit of logic and pattern matching you need to determine when you've found the node you want. Once you have the node to modify, you can replace the image source as shown in the previous tutorial. Nimur (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

August 2

Eight-Socket (64-Core) 1TB RAM Server

Hi.

File:Http://172.31.254.242/i.microsoft.com/global/hyper-v-server/en/us/PublishingImages/logo-hyperv-server08-R2.png

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

   I am now seeking a server which meets all of the following criterion. The server is to be run on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, and contain multiple virtual machines running on Ubuntu Linux.

1. Accomodates eight Intel Xeon Eight-Core processors.
2. Supports one terabyte of RAM.
3. Has redundant, hot-swappable Power Supply Units.
4. Has atleast five x8 PCIe 2.0 and three x4 PCIe 2.0 slots.
5. Is rackmountable; amount of rackspace consumed is not a concern.
6. Preferably consumes no more than 3,000 watts.

   Thank you to everyone in advance.

If you want a terabyte of RAM, you will have to wait a few design-cycles, or use a multi-node virtualization technology like Altix. I don't think the SGI machines will run Windows (not even Hypervisor). Unless you have a lot of money and a special development / R&D contract with a hardware vendor, there is no way you can buy a single system with one terabyte of RAM in 2010 (or probably even in 2013). Are you working at a government lab, by any chance? Or perhaps you have mis-interpreted your spec, and actually need an entire rack of servers (not a single unit). Also note that your image did not work, (you used Wiki Syntax, when you probably meant to use a hyperlink); but even if we fix that, your link can not work, because you have neither uploaded the actual file nor placed it on a publicly accessible network address. (172.x.x.x is a private IP). Do you need assistance uploading files? Nimur (talk) 15:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Useful article: Distributed shared memory. Clearly, if you are virtualizing your terabyte of RAM to run separate virtual Ubuntu servers, you don't need shared memory anyway, so you don't need a terabyte in one box. If I understand your actual parameters, what you really need is eight Ubuntu servers with 128 GB of ram each (still on the extraordinary end of the spectrum); and you also want a software management tool (Hypervisor) that can configure, manage, and/or provision all of them. Some marketing-ese brochures will call this setup "one server" or "one system" - this is just a matter of nomenclature. Nimur (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the OP intended to upload anything. I believe they were simply trying to hotlink to [2] although it's not a particularly useful image. The private IP is I guess just some sort of non transparent proxy set up where you access other websites thorough a webserver gateway. A quick search shows plenty of other people having done similar things, I guess there's some sort of software that does this Nil Einne (talk) 09:50, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Believe or not Nimur, Dell and HP will both sell a single system with 1 TB RAM. The Dell PowerEdge R910 is configurable up to four 8-core Xeon processors and 1 TB RAM for a measly $100,000. [3]. The HP DL580 G7 will also go to four 8-core Xeons and a 1 TB RAM though they want $120,000 for it [4]. As far as I can tell neither vendor supports a system with more than 4 of the 8-core processors. Dragons flight (talk) 10:31, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Those are multi-mainboard systems; more than one server in one chassis. Still, good find, Dragons Flight. Nimur (talk) 21:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Dosbox

Ctrl-F12 speeds things up. How do I add this to config.sys so I don't have to keep pressing this a few dozen times each time I launch dosbox? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The config file it goes in is dosbox.conf, which usually lives in the same directory the dosbox executable does; the parameter to change is "cycles". —Korath (Talk) 04:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally if you are running different games and you keep needing to adjust settings for each one, I'd recommend getting one of the graphical front-ends such as D-Fend Reloaded. They allow you to create profiles for each game with its own configuration saved separately, such that you never need to touch actual DOSBox at all. Think of it as something like MAME but for old DOS games and you get the idea. Zunaid 13:32, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wireless All-in-One devices... but wireless fax?

I'm looking at several attractive wireless all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. One thing I can't get over is that the fax part of the machines require an old wired telephone line (which seems to defeat the purpose of wireless printing and scanning). Are there any AIO devices that exist that can wirelessly fax over the internet? --68.102.163.104 (talk) 03:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Most fax machines are connected to a phone line and receive their input by this method. An image sent over the internet would normally be printed from a computer on a normal printer to preserve best quality. Normally, people send PDF or similar format pages over the internet, but yes, it is possible to send in fax format. Having a fax not connected to a phone line seems to defeat the purpose of a fax machine. Why not just use the scanner and your computer in wireless mode to send your image (as a scan, PDF or fax). Someone else will explain how to send a fax from your computer to a fax machine because I don't know anyone else who has a fax machine but no computer, so I never send this way. Dbfirs 08:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I guess my concern is that a fax machine is very easy to operate even if you don't know anything about computers. Stick in a piece of paper, dial a phone number, and press start. Scanning a doc into a PDF then emailing it or using Fax software requires a number of steps involving a scanner, computer, mouse, file hierarchy, multiple software apps, and OS. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess that the designers of your "all-in-one" wireless device assume that anyone wanting to use the fax facility will have a phone line and will know how to plug the device into this. In theory, if they knew what software you had on your computer to send faxes, they could integrate the fax output with this and automate the process. When all telephone calls are integrated into the internet (will this ever happen?) then they might consider this. At present, most telephone and fax calls are separated from internet traffic at each end. The data might well travel along the same routes in between, though mine doesn't. Dbfirs 17:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I have VOIP at home, so running a hard phone line from the fax machine to a splitter on the VOIP module at the other side of my house isn't really possible. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The article Internet fax outlines some options, but doesn't give details. I'm sure it should be possible to connect your computer to your VOIP splitter so that you can send faxes to people who have no computer or e-mail address, but such people are becoming rare, so is it worth the effort and possible cost? Dbfirs 07:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You could get a wireless Analog telephone adapter that supports T.38 (something like [5] but wirelss) and connect that to your MFP although that would still require an extra box. Alternatively MFP that supports T.38 do exist both according to our article on MFPs and [6] although that isn't wireless. You could also use some server, if you have one, to run a T.38 server and then just print with the MFP, you could probably integrate with the MFP somehow to send faxes too but I'm not sure how easy it would be.

There are probably several reasons T.38 or other FoIP support is rare. For starters it seems many VoIP providers don't apparently support T.38. And for business they may prefer to have a server manage that sort of thing for a variety of reasons like record keeping, easier and greater control etc. I also suspect many people particularly those home or SOHO users most likely to have VoIP setups aren't that interested in fax anyway. Some may find subscribing to some sort of fax service easier for those odd faxes they receive and the odd occasions when they send faxes.

Note there exist (expensive) MFPs [7] [8] that can scan to e-mail I presume these just need to be set up with the SMTP server and then the sender needs no further apps. The receiver would need something to open the file, but realisticly few people can't open PDFs or TIFs, the only risk may be some smart phones. (I don't think the e-mail client counts since anyone with an e-mail address must have some way of checking their e-mail). More importantly perhaps many receivers would probably find receiving an e-mailed attachment more convienent then a fax anyway and particularly in the developed world there is probably an increasing number of business (let alone ordinary people) who can receive e-mails but not faxes and decreasing number who can receive faxes but not emails. E-mail also enables colour which is still rare in faxes AFAIK.

In fact even most of the cheaper MFPs seem to have some sort of pseudo scan to e-mail thing where they use software on the PC to attach the file so you go back to your PC, type in the address and perhaps a subject and send. E.g. I think this [9] does that. Some may even have the ability to input the address on the scanner so they really automatically send and you don't even need to go to your PC provided it's running. In fact even my 8 year old scanner had an e-mail button, but I never set it up. Even without scan to e-mail in a streamlined setup drag the file to your email client (or otherwise attach it).

I would actually suspect scan to email functionality is in greater demand then T.38/FoIP support for MFPs.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Mobile phone in Europe

I'm planning on traveling to europe soon with my unlocked t-mobile phone. Now it supports 850 / 1800 / 1900 mhz, but not 900 Mhz. My question is could I get decent coverage on 1800 mhz alone in the following cities: London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice? Also, could I find a prepaid gsm network to support my phone in those cities, preferably one reasonable priced? Thank you71.229.144.57 (talk) 04:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You can most definitely find cheap pay as you go phones in Europe. I'll let others field the frequency questions (GSM has a few frequencies it operates on, but I assumed most phones could operate on any of them). Shadowjams (talk) 05:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

T-Mobile and Orange both work on 1800 in the UK, so your 'phone should work with either of those providers. You should be able to buy a cheap PAYG SIM for either, as well. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, and what about France & Italy?71.229.144.57 (talk) 23:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I've never had any problems taking my UK mobile to France or Italy - I drove to Venice a year ago and never had any problems with my phone, though I did get a £90 bill when I got back! Astronaut (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Any mobile sold in the UK should at a minimum be dual band with 1800/900 so it doesn't really help the OP who as he/she has said, has a triband phone without 900mhz as used in much of the world, including Europe, but not parts of the Americas including the US and Canada. See GSM frequency bands if there is any further confusion. Nil Einne (talk) 06:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

From [10], [11] and [12] it doesn't appear there is any 1800 only network in France or Italy. (One in GSMWorld for France is listed as 1800 but the same network is listed as 900/1800 under a different plan so I doubt its accurate.) This doesn't mean you should give up. 1800 is commonly used in the more urban or populated areas so if your sticking to those places you've mentioned you may be okay. A simple search find various discussions e.g. [13] [14] which should provide more help and suggest you may be able to get by with a 1800 phone in France and Italy in the urban areas as I suggested. You could also try it and see, if you find coverage is too poor you could pick up a cheap phone while in Europe. Nil Einne (talk) 07:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies - my phone has just worked everywhere I've been in Europe and I've never had to consider particular frequencies. If I'm understanding the coverage maps on this page, all operators in both France and Italy provide 900/1800 MHz coverage in all but a few rural areas. I assume that means both frequencies are avalable pretty much everywhere. The same site will let you check out roaming agreements between your mobile operator and European operators and their coverage maps if one is available. The same site let me finally explain why my supposedly quad-band phone was useless in Montana and Yellowstone NP - my operator only has a roming agreement with AT&T and not with Verizon. Anyway, if you are still unsure, check with your operator before you leave. Astronaut (talk) 12:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No the coverage map just means they're covering the whole area. What frequency they're using will vary depending on numerous factors and the coverage map doesn't provide that level of detail (probably partially because it can vary quite a lot over time and from the providers POV it doesn't matter for most of their customers). It's likely to be rare that an area is covered by both frequencies from the same provider, in fact I suspect it's likely there are quite a few areas without any 1800 coverage at all. I mentioned that 1800 is usually used in urban areas, but didn't mention what may automatically follow 900 is commonly used in more rural or less populated areas, the reason is primarily because 900 transmission characteristics means it has longer range so a provider can cover a wider area with a smaller number of transceivers, useful in such areas. BTW from what I can tell the OP, isn't planning to use roaming, and really I'm not surprised. Nil Einne (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Scribus vs. InDesign

Dear wikipedians,

If you were supposed to be the editor of an academic journal and could choose to use either Adobe InDesign or Scribus, which one would you choose and why? (no money problem: the software will be paid)

Thank you in advance,

82.229.204.155 (talk) 08:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Indesign CS5 certainly has far more features than Scribus...and its a bit easier to use. The scribus interface is a bit lacking...Smallman12q (talk) 12:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

What would you use it for? At least in my field (Computer Science), authors will nearly always be required to submit "camera-ready copies" (i.e. in reality either PDF or LaTeX sources). Very few, if any, journals still typeset the final copy. If you expect authors to submit machine-readable documents, the only really plausible alternatives are LaTeX, PDF, or Word(spit). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's common across disciplines. In the humanities and social sciences, anyway, authors submit Word or RTF files (not PDF, which would make reconstructing footnotes a HUGE pain). They are typeset with programs like InDesign or Quark. In any case, I would not trust humanities/social science academics to know how to submit something camera ready! They are not tech savvy, and do not know LaTeX for the most part. (Which is a science thing.) Hell, they barely know how to use Word, in my experience. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not that I disagree on the substance (although my last and only paper not printed directly from my final submission was a 1996 publication in the Journal of Symbolic Computation). But I'd bet that for most humanities papers LaTeX is actually easier to use than Word... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:24, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

If you are comfortable with using markup languages, which is well beyond the technical comfort level of your average humanities scholar. But I do essentially agree—Word is a pain and produces more problems than it solves. The one place where Word edges out LaTeX as I understand it (as a non-LaTeX user) that is important for the humanities is in being able to easily "track changes" (used in indicating edits), and being able to easily "visually" edit the document, both of which are pretty crucial to the humanities workflow. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

For an academic journal it probably doesn't matter much — they are very simplistic when it comes to layout (says someone who used to work on one). InDesign is clearly the superior program on general design/ease of use terms, though again, for this particular application, I doubt it matters much. If it were me, I'd probably choose InDesign, mostly because the program is well-known through the printing and design industry, and has been intelligently augmented and built up continuously for really well over a decade. The practical tradeoff there is that most everything "works" as expected (I can't recall the last time I ran up against a genuine "bug"), and if I get specific instructions from a printer (e.g. export this with a given inside bleed and with certain color settings), there is always a straightforward way to do this with InDesign. I haven't used Scribus enough to make an intelligent contrast, but my general feeling with open-source design software (e.g. GIMP and Inkscape) is that these kinds of considerations generally get the back seat (hence GIMP still has no support for color management, and it is hard to export Inkscape files reliably into formats other programs can understand). Maybe Scribus is radically different, but I doubt it. If I were just playing around with stuff at home, I'd probably give it a whirl for the price alone, but if price was not an issue, I'd go with the better program. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned ODF? While OpenOffice is a bit clunkier as a user-interface, its document file format is probably far superior to any of the above. It is modern, extensible, works with free and open-source software editors and has convenient libraries for machine processing (and most new commercial software can read, modify, and save ODF too). It is also the underlying back-end architecture for Google's web-based "thin client" Google-Docs utilities. As far as Tex: (I've removed my anti-TeX rant, I will replace it later with some referenced commentaries about usability. To the original questioner: don't underestimate the value of usability. Nimur (talk) 16:28, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

sqlcmd

Hi! I found this example:

-- c:\sqlvariable.sql
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVar = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

You can run it from a command prompt:

SQLCMD -E -i"c:\sqlvariable.sql" -v myVar="You are connected as "

I think th right snippet should be

DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

t.i.a --217.194.34.103 (talk) 09:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a question? --Sean 16:18, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It appears that he is asking if the first "SET @myVar" should be "SET @myVariable". Yes, it could be that way. Or, you can change the original @myVariable to just @myVar. -- kainaw™ 16:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Excel sorts A- higher than A+

Hello, in my spreadsheet I have a column with letter grades in, from A+ to E-. When I sort by that column, Excel rates the minuses as higher than the plusses, so I see all of the C, then the C- then the C+ for instance. Do you know how I can ask/make Excel see these in a different hierarchy? Thanks 195.60.13.52 (talk) 16:02, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Assign values to each grade (with A+ > A > A- etc) in a lookup table then use the lookup function in Excel, then sort on these values. Dbfirs 16:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think either of those linked articles is actually very useful for a novice Excel user. Better to link to an article that specifically discusses lookups in the context of Excel, like this one. In any case I think the CHOOSE/MATCH method is easier for this sort of small range of possible values. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The easiest way to do this that I know of is to make a separate column that converts these letter grades into data that Excel can sort. An easy one would be a field that simply converted them into numbers, e.g., if column A is the one with the letter grades in it:

=CHOOSE(MATCH(A1,{"A+","A","A-","B+","B","B-","C+","C","C-","D+","D","D-","E+","E","E-"},0),10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0,-1,-2,-3,-4)

Then you sort by that column, descending. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:05, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link - I was looking for a better one, then got distracted. The alternatives are better anyway unless the OP wants to calculate average grades, and then your choose-match function is probably simpler. Dbfirs 17:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

actually, the easiest way to do this is to create a Custom List. Go to the Preferences, choose the Custom List lab, and then type in the grades in the order you want, one grade per line. Excel does a pretty good job of data-typing, so when you sort grades it should automatically choose the custom list for the sort value (or if not you can choose it explicitly by clicking 'option' in the Sort window). --Ludwigs2 17:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I think my way is easiest! No additional typing, no messing around with odd Excel features you aren't familiar with. Just copy and paste my formulae (changing the "A1" to be the correct initial pointer), and you're done, done! :-D The trick was just to ask someone to come up with the formulae for you, of course, which I'm not including in the difficulty rating. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Except that you have to do that every time you want to sort by letter grade. creating a custom list gets excel to do that for you. for instance, I did this with my copy of excel once, 4 years ago, and its been sorting by letter grade transparently ever since. --Ludwigs2 19:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I have an easier way, though it's not nice looking. In column A, put the letters, and in column B, put the plus / minus / normal modifiers, spelled out like that. Then when you sort, sort by column A by A to Z, and the second level sorting is column B, sorted by Z to A. The sort will look like "A plus", "A normal", "A minus", "B plus", etc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That's only easier if you don't count the time spent re-entering the data! The true "easiest" way would have been to put it in numerical form to begin with, to be sure. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I have tried Ludwigs2's solution, and he is the winner! I never knew about that feature. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Force needed to press a keyboard key?

What's the force needed to press an average desktop computer keyboard? How about laptop keyboard? And what weight (mass?) is needed to keep it depressed? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:03, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It's the same as it was the last time you asked. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:40, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I knew I had asked it before, but I couldn't recall how I phrased the original question when searching for it! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Lwavuc.exe

After some malware problems (running Windows XP), which I thought were fixed, I continue to get messages about lwavuc.exe. I don't know what this file is. A Google search for it gets zero hits so I'm suspicious that it is malware.

The messages are that this program is trying to access the internet. As a precaution, I have been blocking it. Today I got a window (created by what program I can't tell) wanting to reinstall this program.

Can anyone please tell me if this lwavuc.exe is part of a legit system, how to tell if it is corrupted, whether I need it and what for, or is it malware? Any leads on this would be much appreciated. As I say, Google found nothing about it.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 16:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I searched my hard disk and did not find lwavuc.exe on my Windows XP system, nor via a Bing or Google search. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly sounds like malware to me. However, it also sounds like there is another component that checks up on lwavuc's activity and if it suspects it has crashed, tries to restart it. I suggest you do a more thorough search, perhaps using a program like Malwarebytes. As for not finding any information about lwavuc on Google or Bing, much of the malware I have encountered recently has used a random name generator to hide it from obvious searches. One thing I would check is to see if you can find the lwavuc.exe on your PC (I would not be surprised if it is hidden by a rootkit). Astronaut (talk) 13:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

S.O.S.

I followed a fooloish advice. I saved this as "block.css" :

   * { display: block !important; width: 100% !important; }
img, td, th { width: auto !important; }

Then went to "Tool" - > Internet Options -> Accessibilty -> Format using my stlyle sheets and took it to "block.css". It got all shitty. Now I reseted the option. Even deleted the "block.css" but things ain't getting back to normal. Please help  Jon Ascton  (talk) 18:27, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

[Note to others: For previous context, see Screensize. --Bavi H]

To turn it off, go to the same box and uncheck it: Tools, Internet Options, Accessibility button, uncheck "Format documents using my style sheet", click OK.

My example was a little extreme, I should have described it better. My goal was to force everything to fit into the width of the browser, but I should have stated that it doesn't work well on all websites. I apologize. --Bavi H (talk) 23:52, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It's OK, man. There's nothing to apologize. You did try to help. It's all right. But I have already tried that before I posted this message : I have already -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Accessibility button, uncheck "Format documents using my style sheet", click OK. That was the first thing I did to get back to normal. IT DID NOT WORK. Then I even deleted that "block.css" altogether. Now there is no "tick" in the box at "Format documents using my style sheet" option, nor a "block.css", but browser is in very state. What should I do ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You may have to clear your cache and or press reload to purge the items. Or install Firefox and use that instead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course I know that, I did that, I cleared cache a dozen times, and refreshed the page all the way. Doesn't work.

Hm, if you have unchecked that box, then it sounds like your problem isn't caused by the user style sheet. (A possible test: Make an empty text file, call it empty.css, set it as the user style sheet and see what happens.)

It sounds like something else may be causing your problem. Can you compare how a certain website looks in your browser and in another browser or on another computer and describe the differences? Can you post a screen shot? --Bavi H (talk) 00:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Session expired

Hey all. I'm trying to screen-scrape [15]. Alas, when I try to cURL it I get "Sorry, this session has expired." I sort of understand why this happens, but I am at a loss at how to fix it. Any input appreciated, 92.2.85.143 (talk) 19:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You might have to grab a cookie and re-present that when you do your curl. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there free software (for Windows) creating Searchable PDF with hidden text layer?

For Ubuntu see http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-make-scanned-pdfs-searchable-ocr-using-pdfocr.html Thanks! --FrobenChristoph (talk) 19:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Googling "free ocr pdf" turns up a lot of possible solutions. The question is which ones are better than others, I suppose. (Quality of OCR can vary a lot.) --Mr.98 (talk) 20:14, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure that these solutions can create "Searchable PDFs with hidden text layer"? I have found no free program doing THIS --FrobenChristoph (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That's what most programs that make OCRed PDFs do, yes. OCR = searchable. Inside a PDF, that is 90% of the time done as a hidden text layer. (Some more ancient programs used to convert the scanned text to "computer" text but this usually looks really bad — e.g. see page 2 of this pdf. It is programatically easier to make it a hidden text layer in any case.) --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't find a single free program with this feature. Can you point me to at least one program which is doing this: creating a searchable PDF? --FrobenChristoph (talk) 03:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If you just want to add invisible text to an existing PDF (without OCRing it) then I've cooked up a little example program using iText to do that. It's written in Java, and you'd need to be a moderate Java programmer to adapt it for practical use. If that's useful, let me know and I'll post it here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I have'nt these skills --FrobenChristoph (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Google Images

Any way to go back to the old Google images? The new format instituted a few weeks ago is not fun.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:35, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#Google_gone_weird_-_malware.3F 82.43.88.151 (talk) 22:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, much better, thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Nikon Camera/Computer File Saving Format

Resolved

I have a Nikon Coolpix880 that saves to my CompactFlash card. For some time, it saved into a folder called 100Nikon, and then suddenly all photos started being saved into 101Nikon. Now there's a third foler, 102Nikon. Perhaps this is so that file numbers don't overlap because I took so many photos, but if I delete the 101 and 102 files, will photos be safely saved, or can I mess with the file saving ability if I do that? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Online Manual, page 143'The camera file system conforms to the Design Rule for Camera File Systems (DCF). Under this system, folder names consist of a three-digit folder number followed by the folder name (e.g., “100NIKON”). Each folder can hold a maximum of 200 images (it may hold less, depending on the size of the memory card and other factors). Should a folder fill up, another folder will automatically be created with the same name but a different folder number (e.g., “101NIKON”). ' There's more detail in the linked manual, but in general, I'd say to let the camera manage the CF card. --LarryMac | Talk 23:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wow...thanx! Don't have the manual and didn't think to look online. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

August 3

Excel trendline angle

Hey, I was asked an interesting question a couple weeks ago, and since I didn't know the answer, I thought I'd try to see if any of you could answer it. The question is: Is there a way to measure the angle the trendline makes in Excel? 151.198.251.25 (talk) 00:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no and depends what you mean. a couple of pointers:

• the visual angle of the trendline in an excel scatterplot will change if you resize the plot; there is no easy way to measure that directly, since excel doesn't have access to the plot dimensions (short of dropping into vb and retrieving the chart display size).
• You can get the slope of the regression line of the normalized (un-resized) plot using Excel's SLOPE function, and since the slope is just rise over run, its arctangent should be the angle of the line. so use =ATAN( SLOPE( A:A,B:B ) ), where column A contains the x values and column B contains the y values. --Ludwigs2 03:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, you can right-click the trendline, select Format Trendline... Options and then select "Display Equation on chart". That will give you the slope and intercept. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

yes, but that won't be in a machine-accessible format (it will be rendered as part of the graphic). --Ludwigs2 14:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The OP asked for a measurement. No mention of machine readable. I think I was adding to your information with something simpler. And if you select the "graphic" I think you'll find it can be copied and pasted. --Phil Holmes (talk) 17:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

oh, I see what you mean. ok. --Ludwigs2 20:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a Wiki anywhere that lets us make biographies & autobiographies of common people and ourselves?

What would be considered vanity here would be alright in the Wiki I speak of - Bios of ourselves, friends, teachers, etc. But what is the most popular Wiki of that nature? Thanks. --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 04:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a mainstream wiki exists that allows the creation of biographies of non-public figures except for yourself and your family, because of issues related to privacy of personal information, and the potential for abuse, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. Regards, decltype (talk) 07:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of places that let you publish (auto)biographies of individuals that would not be suitable for Wikipedia (sorry, Decltype!) Biographicon and Wikibios are the two listed at Alternative outlets. I haven't used them myself, so can't say anything more than that they seem to follow the Wiki anyone-can-edit philosophy; I don't know how widely used they are. It's not uncommon to refer people who have create bios of themselves, their family or friends on Wikipedia to one of these sites instead. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I foolishly failed to take into account WP:WHAAOE. Biographicon says that the site announced in 2008 that it was shutting down due to insufficient interest, but it certainly appears to still be running at the moment. There is also Biographical Wiki for biographies of dead people which seems to be quite populous. I'm guessing it's pulling most of it's data automatically from genealogical records, though--Kateshortforbob _talk 15:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I may write a lot of friendly bios of friendly people, but can I write about bullies and how they picked on classmates and why they should be avoided, etc.? On which of those bio-wikis is that okay? --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 06:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Kate, I foolishly failed to take into account that the internet has a website for everything. However, IIUC, Wikibios requires one to provide the e-mail address of the subject, and they will ultimately have control over their bio. As for writing negative biographies, Wikibios prohibits content "that may be construed as: unlawful; illegal; threatening; harmful; abusive; harassing; stalking; tortuous; defamatory; libelous; vulgar; obscene; offensive; objectionable, (...) giving rise to civil or criminal liability; or in violation of an applicable local, national or international law." I'm fairly sure a "bully biography" would fall into one or more of those categories. decltype (talk) 10:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Desktop icons on main window unavailable on one of three log-on accounts in windows XP?

Some friends of mine told me to look at their windows XP computer. The husband, wife and daughter have multiple log-ons (I have forgot how to to this, can someone remind me?) set up by the person who got the computer for them. All the accounts, except the husbands work fine, but the husbands account has no icons at all on the main window. However, there are normal icons on the startup bar and the tray at the bottom. Dragging and dropping from these to the main window has no effect, and opening folders, copying and pasting to the main window also has no effect, as does using the "send to (desktop) option-the background (a picture of a dog) remains without icons. I changed the picture to the traditional XP rolling hills, this made no difference, and using system restore, which in any case only goes back a few months on his computer, made no difference either. I suppose I could start a new account for him and get rid of the old one (remind me how) but with the hassle of setting up all his old files I would in any case prefer a more sophisticated solution. Something to do with the registry perhaps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.88.6 (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Or something to do with malware? Try cleaning it up with Malwarebytes anti malware first before deciding in making a new account which would be (if it is on normal view, not classic)

Start-->Control Panel-->User Accounts--> Create new user account.

That should give you the option to make a new account.

Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If you haven't done so already, you may want to try this, from Microsoft: Your Desktop Icons are missing in Windows XP. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

no visual songs

37GB capacity with 11 GB available but no songs appear on playlist plus songs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.106.65.211 (talk) 07:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi. You haven't given us enough information. What program or device are you talking about? --Mr.98 (talk) 11:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

errata sqlcmd

Hi!

I had wrote that the right snippet should be

DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

in this example I found :

-- c:\sqlvariable.sql
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVar = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

but I think I was wrong, the right code should be

DECLARE @myVariable varchar(255)
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This question was asked and answered above. Did you have a problem with the answer? Did it not work? Did you just ask a new question without checking to see if the old one was answered? -- kainaw™ 12:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just wanted to correct my code snippets --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem. It would have been better to post this in the section above so everyone knows what it is in reference to. -- kainaw™ 15:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

In C++/CLI

what's the differnce between _nogc normal C++ pointers and __gc pointers that work on .NET reference types? tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

__gc objects are managed memory, and responsibility for deleting them lies with the garbage collector; __nogc objects are manually managed, and the programmer must explicitly delete them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

there mihgt exist a garbage collected language that is directly compiled in machine language?

tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are garbage-collected languages that are compiled into machine language. "Directly" is an implementation detail and depends on your interpretation of "directly" - nearly all compilers use multiple stages with intermediate representations. There is, for example, a garbage-collected version of C++. Objective Caml supports interpretation, byte code, and direct native code generation for execution. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Sure, there's no relationship between whether a given implementation of a language uses an intermediate language and how memory is managed. Stick to garbage-collected C++ primitives and you're done. gcj compiles java to an executable too. What "directly" means is implementation-specific and mostly quibbling - does GHC compile Haskell "directly"? Does GNU Common Lisp? All compilers have intermediate data structures between phases - does merely documenting the intermediate language (or using a pre-existing one like C) make the process "indirect"? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Even an interpreted language like perl can have a particular script hard-coded into its interpreter. You can recompile the interpreter to produce a "perl" executable that only interprets the specific script you wrote. See, for example, Embedding Perl in C/C++ or Linking Perl with C. So, as above, it's not even really sensible to draw a clear distinction between "compiled" and "interpreted." We can say the same about garbage collection. If you manually manage your memory, whether your language is compiled or interpreted, you are writing a simple garbage collector. So, the ultimate way to ask this question is, "how sophisticated is the memory management, and how much is automatically handled for me, in the particular language, implementation, compiler, set of standard libraries, operating system, ... , that I am writing my code in?" Nimur (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Software transfer

I have an old laptop and the HD is on it's last legs and is about to die. Is it possible to transfer the programs/software that I have on it onto a new HD. And before someone asks I don't have the keys for most of the software due to a couple of house moves. Mo ainm~Talk 16:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

See List of disk cloning software. While you're at it, you can clone your hard disk to a bigger hard disk — the new hard disk doesn't have to be the exact same size — and (most of) the software will take care of enlarging the partition for you. Personally I use Norton Ghost. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not hard to clone one HD to another. The problem is, that means copying over the old operating system, drivers, etc. Some of which may not be compatible with the new laptop. It would take a bit of work to update those, probably, and at the end of it, you still have whatever OS you had on it before. (Which may or may not be an issue for you.) You can't just copy the files from one to the other, though — it would take a full clone to copy all of the registry information over so that it would work the same as before. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(Since Mo Ainm didn't mention he is actually going to buy a new laptop, I had assumed he or she was going to buy a new hard disk for the existing laptop. Mr.98 is correct that if you clone the hard disk and put it in a new laptop, various drivers will probably be needed for the laptop to operate properly — hopefully Windows auto-detects the fact that the drivers are missing and offers to grab them for you via Windows Update.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

So would my copy of MS Office work on the new HD if I cloned my old HD? Mo ainm~Talk 19:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It should work, yes. Cloning the disk literally copies everything exactly as it is now onto the new disk and unless Windows sees some sort of major problem, everything should work exactly as it is does now. ZX81 ^talk 20:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant thanks everyone now I need Norton Ghost suppose it is torrent time ;) Mo ainm~Talk 20:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Clonezilla should do just as well, and it's free. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant I will try that one so. Mo ainm~Talk 21:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Menu Items Remaining After Clicking

Recently, I've been getting a niggly little problem - items in drop-down menus on this Vista machine are remaining on screen after I have clicked on them. Only the item which has been clicked on within the menu remains (e.g. 'Save as...'), and it remains over everything else on the screen. It doesn't matter whether it's a menu brought up in the browser, or brought down from the task bar, or brought up over the desktop. There is no way to get rid of it. Does anyone know why this is happening and how to make it stop? TIA! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this problem before on Windows machines, it looks to be some rendering bug with Windows. I've always fixed with a reboot. This forum post suggests right-clicking the desktop and pressing Esc as a fix. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I rebooted this morning (after an update) and the problem has been happening. It was happening before then, too. I have been looking around the forums and I've found numerous people saying 'right click + esc', but that doesn't work for me. What I did find, that seems to have worked, is a post telling people to switch off fade options and whatnot in the systems settings window - which I have done and it seems to be fixed - but I really would rather find out why this is happening and fix it without having to switch off stuff when it was perfectly alright before with the same stuff switched on. Cheers, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? It sounds like fade in/out animation isn't working with your graphics card (or at least in the manner that Windows expects it to). If you can swap your graphics card, that might be another way to see if the problem is specific to the graphics card. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 20:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm on a HP G60 laptop with integrated chipset. I won't be able to change the graphics card, and I get periodic updates for it. This may, in fact, be the problem, and I may have to wait until the next update comes along fixing what the last update may have broken, as is sometimes the case. Cheers again. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

My printer doesn't work

I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer. I'm sure that it doesn't have colour--I never attempted to print in colour--just B&W; and while it printed before, it doesn't now. I took the cartridge out and shook it--such worked for the office copier in the past; but this time I only get a partial print. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.10.69 (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I would guess that the toner has simply run out and needs to be replaced. Shaking it can sometimes work to restore print quality when the toner is getting low, but if you're getting only a partial print out, the normal reason for that is just a lack of a toner. It can be something more serious with the printer itself, but that's harder to diagnose and the toner is the more likely problem. When did you last change the toner and how many pages have you printed since then? (some printers will tell you this information if you print out a configuration page). ZX81 ^talk 16:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) The cartridge has probably run out of ink. The website for support is here. You can download the user manual to tell you how to check if the ink has run out or not. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I got it on sale almost 2 years ago, and have likely printed a good number of sheets. Do I have to get a new cartridege, or can I simply refill the existing one? How much would either cost? Thanks.76.66.10.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC).

You would normally just get a new cartridge. I really don't think there is an option to fill up an existing cartridge. As for the price, that would depend on your vendor (look for it online, or go to a local supply shop), but it won't be much more than US$10-20. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Doing a quick Google search for "Samsung ML-2510 Toner" came up with quite a few placing selling compatible toners (getting an original is going to be harder/more expensive but compatible ones should work just as well), one of which being here for $25. I have never used that company and therefore not necessarily recommending them, I'm just trying to give somewhere you could possibly get it from. ZX81 ^talk 20:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I successfully refill toner cartridges for an old HP 6L printer. I don't know how successful the refilling of Samsung ML 2510 would be, but I think I refilled a similar cartridge many years ago. Refilling can be very messy, so if you can get compatibles for a price that you consider reasonable, then that option might be preferable. Compatibles and refills tend, on average, to give a slightly lower quality of printing than originals. Dbfirs 07:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Samsung makes some good low-end printers. I agree— replace the toner. The starter cartridge that comes with the printer has a yield of 1,000 pages, while standard cartridges are 3,000 pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

can a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone sync music with iTunes the same as before?

First of all, please note that we are explicitly allowed to jailbreak our phones now!

With that out of the way... after I've done so (with ultrasn0w after jailbreaking with jailbreakme.com, this is an iPhone 3GS modem 05.12.01 version 3.1.3 (modem/"baseband" mc139dn), will I still be able to change the music on it by syncing with iTunes?

Or does iTunes know somehow that the firmware is unauthorized/has a jailbroken version now, or for any other reason will give me shit/difficulties?

Thanks. 92.230.233.168 (talk) 17:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Note that "allowed" is a nuanced thing here. That ruling means jailbreaking is not a crime; it doesn't mean Apple has to let you, has to permit you to sync with iTunes or use ITMS, or can't still brick your phone. As to syncing to iTunes - it seems to depend on the jailbreak - previous jailbreaks have broken iTunes sync, which I believe were subsequently patched by later fixes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Backup

I have a lot of easily replaceable files on various hard drives, so I don't need to actually back them up. But I would like to somehow record the files so that if something happened to the drives I would know what I'd lost. So are there any good programs for scanning drives and recording a list of all the files on them, with things like size and modified date etc? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 17:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You don't say what operating system you're using. If it's Windows, open a command prompt, cd to the root of where all these files are kept, and say dir /s /v > log.txt, and log.txt becomes that list. On Unix, Mac, and Linux it's much the same, except you say ls -lR > log.txt instead. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

dir /s on Windows 7, /v isn't a valid parameter anymore.

If you use Mac OS X, the command given by Finlay will work too: open a terminal, write cd /, then ls -lR. --Dereckson (talk) 21:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

On Windows 7 (also Vista and XP if you've installed it) you can use Powershell instead. Once you're at the right directory try get-childitem -recurse > log.txt. get-childitem can also be replaced by gci, dir, ls or some other alias. Nil Einne (talk) 07:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I tried the cmd method but "log.txt" doesn't appear in any directory after it's finished. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 10:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The obvious question are you sure the directory you're trying to write to is writable from the user you're running the cmd in? If you're using Vista or Windows 7, be aware unless you've opened the cmd as administrator, it's going to be a restricted user. For example, if you're trying this from the root of the system drive, it won't work in a normal Windows 7 or Vista config because you can't write to the root from a normal user. Ditto for program files. You could always specify where you want the file to be written and make sure it's something you can write to (if in doubt perhaps try copying a file there from the cmd). Try for example dir > %userprofile%\log.log and then look in your user directory for it, e.g. cd $userprofile% (you may also have to change drive if it's on a different drive) then dir log.log.

Also remember you will need to include quotes if the file or directory name you are specifying has white spaces. E.g. dir > "Z:\This is where I store my logs\Latest log.txt". And remember the directory won't be created so if you want to store it it in "Z:\This is where I store my logs" you need to create that directory first (and make sure it is writable). Oh and finally remember if the file exists and is in use, it's possible it can't be written to/overwritten. BTW on a related note do note > will overwrite/replace any existing file, whatever it is. Use >> if you want to append to an existing file. If the file shouldn't exist I often use >> as a form of simple security against mistyping or accidentally specifying a name of a file that already exists, that way if it does happen I should be able to recover the other file (there may be some way avoid overwriting at all I've never bothered to look). Of course you could also do a dir and look for the file yourself first.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I run everything from administrator. It's still not working. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 14:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a name for this type of data

I frequently use two dimensional databases (usually in a spreadsheet format or SPSS) and occasionally relational databases (in Access). Most of the data I work with is fairly simple, but occasionally there is a type of field where there are many possible values. I don't know the best way to deal with this, and I have been unable to successfully search for this as I don't know the correct terminology.

I will give the simple example of a contacts database. For most fields there is a single value, for example if the field is "Name", the value might be "Dave". But a complicated field may be something like "Group" for which there are several answers, "Home", "Work", "Hockey club" etc. One way of dealing with this is to have a field for each group and a true/false for each record, but that results in a huge number of fields. My question is: is there a name for a type of field where there are many possible values and combinations of values?

Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 19:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This is commonly referred to as an "enumerated" field. Most relational databases have an "enum" data type. You can fake it with a lookup table and foreign key. -- kainaw™ 19:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed you specified "combinations". An enum field doesn't do combinations well - most databases don't do enum combinations at all. Neither does a lookup table. What you have is a "many-to-many" relationship. A common example is the student-to-teacher relationship. Students have one or more teachers. Teachers have one or more students. So, you cannot have a simple "teacher" field in a student table or a simple "student" field in a teacher table. Instead, you have a mapping table which contains a record for each student-to-teacher relationship. If possible, you want to avoid many-to-many relationships. So, you might break Group into LocationGroup containing {Work, Home, School} and ClubGroup containing {Hockey, Football, Soccer} - which assumes you can't be in more than one ClubGroup. If you simply cannot get the group fields down to a set that you only have one value set, you can hard-code combinations like: {Hockey, Football, Soccer, Hockey/Football, Hockey/Soccer, ...}

There is another way to tackle combinations, but it is not for the non-programmer. A number, like 285, is a collection of binary values, like 01101100101. Each digit can be a 1 or 0. You can arbitrarily assign each digit to be a column value and, if it is selected, make that digit a 1. Then, you can set or unset each digit as needed. The problem is that when you are done you have to write the user interface to encode and decode all those 1's and 0's properly. -- kainaw™ 19:27, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 20:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Some databases, like MySQL, distinguishes the SET and ENUM types, the first allowing combinations of values, the second to pick only one.

Here two MySQL fields from two MySQL tables:

`place_status` set('start','hidden') DEFAULT NULL

`perso_sex` enum('M','F','N','2') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'M',

place_status could have 0 (null), 1 (start or hidden) or 2 (start and hidden) values. perso_sex could only have one value. --Dereckson (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Please don't try to do what Kainaw suggests—it's a hacky solution and will cause you more grief than help. What you want to do is create a junction table, a very standard thing in relational databases. Basically you have one table of your main entries (tblAddressBook), and then a table of the possible values for your multiple-valued field (tblPlaces), and then a table that sits in between and just contains keys that are "associated" with one another (tblJunctionAddressbookPlaces). In Access these relationships are very easy to indicate with the "relationship view."

I elaborated about this in a previous post, here. Please feel free to ask more questions if it is not clear. This is a nice illustration of what it will look like in Access. Junction tables are easy, flexible, and do not bind you to figuring out your entire data structure from day 1, unlike the ENUM or wacky binary options above. (You can also easily still use it with regular SQL Join Queries; see the example in the link above.) I think in formal theory this may be called an Associative Entity, but I've always just heard it called a "junction table" or "join table" by Access programmers. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly how is that different than the many-to-many relationship table that I suggested? It looks the same to me. Perhaps you got hung up on my suggestion to NOT use binary mapping if you are not a programmer and assumed that telling a person to NOT do something is a suggestion that they do it. -- kainaw™ 22:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see your one useful suggestion buried within all of your bad ones on my first pass. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:23, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Guys, don't fight. There's a lot of ways to design database systems. "Good" and "bad" are meaningless subjective opinions without context. Every implementation has different needs. Nimur (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

"Good" is subjective without context; "bad" can often be universal. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea why you guys have complicated things. This is simply a lookup table. In your source table, create 2 fields called name and group. Group is a numeric field. Your lookup table, called group, will have 2 fields, the type (numeric) and group (character) for "home", "work", etc. Then your join would be on the source table (field group) and lookup table (field type). You can set it up as a foreign key relationship if you decide to use indexes (recommended). Many development components make use of these relationships automatically and your form will pick up the data in the lookup table and it should be selectable. Queries on the data will involve joins, typically outer joins. Sandman30s (talk) 11:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A lookup table will not handle the many-to-many relationship that the questioner described. -- kainaw™ 12:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Cisco Valet M10

I see some reviews refer to it as a router, others as an access point. Which is it? And what are the benefits of a router vs. an access point? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 23:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Technically speaking, it is both a router and an access point in the same box (and in this case, on the same circuit-board and probably on the same network controller chip). For the home user, this is great - the "box" is an all in one device that requires minimal configuration. But there are some unusual networking situations (not very applicable to a "home user") where you would want separate devices for routing and providing wireless link. For example, if you were building a campus-wide network with many distant locations that people can walk between, you want to make sure your access points can perform wireless hand-off. To coordinate this, the router should be located at a position in the network so it can communicate with different Access Points and perform that handoff. You can read about routers and wireless access point for technical details about what "routing" means in the sense of computer networking. Nimur (talk) 00:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, it helped a whole lot. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 00:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

August 4

Shady Facebook Group

I've been invited by my Uncle Don to join the quite obviously spam group "Make Money Online" ([16], if that works for you guys). I'm quite confident that Don didn't really create this page himself, not least of all because all of his aunts are dead, while the creator of the group claims that "his aunt has been making tons of money...". However, from my end of things, it does look like Don's account created it. How did this likely happen? Did Don give his password to someone he shouldn't have? Or did I do something wrong on my end to invite this sort of thing? Buddy431 (talk) 01:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't view the page due to not having a FB account... but have you considered directly asking your uncle if he created it? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 06:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

What is this image process called, and how can I do it?

Hello! Given this:
+ I want this -->
That is, is it possible for image software to take two single-layer near-identical images and extract the differences to a transparent background? Is there a name for this process? Is it something I could do with GIMP or ImageMagick? Any pointers how? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It is called difference masking. I don't know about those programs, but in Photoshop, you open both files, then drag one image onto the other and change the blend mode of the top layer to "Difference." Then, you go to Select --> Color range and select the background. Hit DEL, and remove the bottom layer. You now have the objects on their own layer with a transparent background.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Some versions of photoshop leave some weird dithering issues around the edges. This is generally the right approach, but computationally the issue's pretty straight forward. Shadowjams (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam?

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam? A few years ago, my inbox was full of emails trying to get me to buy worthless stocks that the spammer had bought in advance, trying to drive up the price so they could sell at a high price. But I've not seen any of this type of spam for ages. Why is that - did enough people catch on to the scam to make it worthless (I doubt this, seeing that I still get plenty of messages from various Nigerian princes), did the people doing it get arrested, or are spam filters just much better at blocking this sort of thing than they are at catching prescription medicines and fake designer goods? 59.108.42.46 (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

raw to png

I need a program that can convert .raw to .png, and back again. Any suggestions? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think ".raw" is one format. However, ImageMagick can handle the more common raw formats. See [17]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

IrfanView and Raw Therapee can also convert many RAW formats easily to a png, though going back to a specific RAW format isn't possible. The obvious question is, "why are you trying to do this"; why just not keep the photo is a RAW format until the very end, when you then convert to the PNG? Buddy431 (talk) 13:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)