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October 14

How to fix Windows 7 font

I am having bitter experience in reading fonts in my W7 OS. After installing Microsoft Net Framework 4.0 (64 bit version)and some other software, the font shape suddenly changed and now it looks blur. Even fonts in different website are behaving in same manner. I checked Font folder in "C" drive and also in browser's option (Mozilla and IE8). All of them are in normal state. I couldn't fix them yet. How can I rectify this? I am thinking to reinstalling the OS. Thanks--180.234.32.4 (talk) 05:19, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Try to disable ClearType. 180.11.188.56 (talk) 10:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

• How can I disable it? Where is it located?--180.234.41.149 (talk) 17:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Update: I think the problem's been solved. I have found a solution here. Though, I had to turn on clear type font which brought font in normal state. Thanks--180.234.41.149 (talk) 17:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Choice of data archive format

I have an application that involves a large number of data files, which are grouped into sets. Each set of data files consists of about 1000 files, each of which is about 2 MB. At any time, about 20000 such file sets need to be easily accessible. When a file set is generated, the individual files are generated one by one until the full set is collected. What would be a good archive format for combining the individual files in a set into a single file object? Are some archive formats better than others? Since each file set is built up incrementally, adding a file to an archive should not be an expensive operation. The archive format should also allow easy random access to the files in a set. Any suggestions? My thanks in advance. --173.49.77.140 (talk) 11:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

By my calculations, that is 40 terabytes... which is very high end indeed. I don't think standard file archiving is going to help you very much. What is your budget for implementing a solution? An RDBMS like Oracle can handle that kind of volume with storing those files in LOBs (Large OBjects, or the 'single object' you are referring to)... but it's going to take pretty long to direct-load (incrementally and with simple compression) and your licensing is going to very VERY expensive. Oracle is excellent at reading high volume data with appropriate SQL commands. Then again maybe you meant 40 gigabytes which opens a whole lot of other cheaper and free options. Sandman30s (talk) 13:19, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Most trivial thing is concatenate all the files together from each set (i.e. 1000*2MB=2GB), remembering the length and offset of the individual files within the set. So you have 20k sets of 2GB each. Depending on the data, you might benefit from compressing the individual segments within each set with libgzip or the like. It might also be possible to append to a tar archive without having to rewrite it. I'm not sure of that though. 72.89.106.242 (talk) 04:13, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

'Site Build It' / www.SiteSell.com

What is "Site Build It" ?( company name = www.SiteSell.com ) Found Wikipedia page for Ken Evoy (founder of company / product) but nothing to explain "Site Build It". It is NOT 'software'- NOT a 'download' ( is IS a 'Subscription' e-Learning "Process" I think ?!?? ) It is NOT in your CMS 'computer management system' List - it is NOT an "entry" in ANY of your many 'Lists' or 'Comparables' - It IS a mystery ! Maybe, it IS a "Business Building System" or maybe a "Website Builder" or maybe a "Blog Maker". WYSIWYG - Yes - But also needs SOME HTML knowledge ? Cannot find it in any of your Lists of 'Editors'. Is there nothing COMPARABLE with it ? Is it a Web 2.0 application ? Or something else ? Would be very grateful indeed for your kind assistance, if you can help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.67.57.245 (talk) 11:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

It looks like a small-scale consulting company to help people start websites for small businesses. Wikipedia has a guideline on notability, and is NOT a directory of every existing company, service or product. If you feel that this particular website or company is worth inclusion, you should read our notability guidelines and then you can add the content yourself. Make a strong case for notability, and write in encyclopedic style; otherwise, your additions may be reverted by another editor. Nimur (talk) 15:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

web cache

I read the web cache article but I don't fully understand. Would sending all internet requests through something like Polipo on my own computer reduce bandwidth and increase speed, or are the benefits from web caches only noticeable on large scale implementations? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The portion of content that is fetched more than once is going be the portion of bandwidth that is saved. This is a good application for Amdahl's law. You have P as the portion that is fetched more than once and S as the speedup you get from using cache. ${\frac {1}{(1-P)+{\frac {P}{S}}}}$ is a measure of your overall speedup. By estimating values for S and P, you can see how much of a benefit you would get. -- kainaw™ 14:18, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer but I don't understand maths or equations. Could simplify the answer for me 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:32, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Basically, that equation (a very important formula in studying optimizations and speedups) says that the total speedup is limited by the frequency of the task you're speeding up. Or, more informally, "if you do something a lot, then improving the speed makes a big difference; but if you do something rarely, it doesn't matter how much you speed it up, because it won't make much difference." In your case, caching on your local computer will only make a big difference if you regularly re-load the same data. The cache can only deliver data is has already fetched - so if you request the same data again, the next request is faster. This isn't really very helpful for most single web users. Furthermore, a lot of ISPs are already performing caching for you, so you'd be duplicating their effort. Finally, keep in mind the difference between bandwidth and latency; both can be optimized by a cache, but in different ways. One advantage of a smart cache or web proxy is that it can prefetch - in other words, it starts guessing what pages or links you might click on next, and begins downloading them before you manually request them. This will noticeably improve your browsing latency (but adversely affect your bandwidth). I don't know if Polipo can do pre-fetching, but Squid with Prefetching definitely can. Squid (software) is a much more powerful, industrial-strength program; it is running in many enterprise-scale environments. It can be a little bit more intimidating for a novice, but is really the program to learn/operate if you want a web proxy or web cache. Nimur (talk) 16:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining :) 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:06, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

outlook envelope on the clockbar of winxp pro

I right-clicked on it and selected 'hide'. Is there a way to have it appeared back? t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft's Support site provides instructions - it is a preference setting. Consider using Microsoft's Bing Search with a query like "outlook show icon in task area" or checking the Outlook online help tool by pressing F1. Nimur (talk) 16:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

For future reference (and web-searching) the icons are in the system tray of the task bar. CS Miller (talk) 18:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

(Surprisingly, even though I used the wrong terminology, my search worked out pointing to the right place anyway - but good tip! Nimur (talk) 22:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC))

(The area of the taskbar that shows the small icons is correctly called the notification area but is often called the system tray so searching for either should be fruitful.) --Bavi H (talk) 00:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Yet another C++ question.

I'm sorry for all these annoying questions, but this one is quick. What's the difference between "Coordinates operator+(const &Coordinates);" and "Coordinates operator+(const &Coordinates) const;" ? KyuubiSeal (talk) 18:32, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

the const keyword after any member function (not just operators) will make *this a constant. Thus the function can't modify the object it works on. CS Miller (talk) 18:48, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! KyuubiSeal (talk) 19:21, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The concept is explained in (excruciating) detail in our article on const-correctness :). Ideally, however, it should be neither. The canonical form would be

class Coordinates
{
  // ...
};

Coordinates operator+(const Coordinates& a, const Coordinates& b)
{
  Coordinates tmp(a);
  return tmp += b;
}

// or alternatively:
Coordinates operator+(Coordinates a, const Coordinates& b)
{
  return a += b;
}

In other words, implemented not as a member of Coordinates, but as a freestanding function. This enables implicit conversions for the left-hand argument. decltype (talk) 11:55, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

October 15

Which one should i make? a facebook page,a wix website or wordpress

I want to have a space dedicated to facebook games,but right now i don't have that much money or the technical knowledge required to build a website, so i was thinking which one of the choices above should i choose to make my page\site.thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.50 (talk) 02:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Wordpress is probably best, although if you're specifically looking for facebook games, a facebook group might be a better idea. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 13:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

PuTTY

Earlier today, I downloaded PuTTY and installed it (don't worry about malicious downloads; I got it from http://iuware.iu.edu, since I'm an Indiana University student) for use with a UNIX-related class. Two questions about the program:

1. Why is it called "PuTTY" and not "Putty"? The article explains the etymology, but it doesn't address the capitalisation.
2. I periodically clear my cache to get rid of extraneous temporary files. Does PuTTY have the ability to store anything that could be cached (i.e., or do I always need to remember everything that I put into it), or am I correct in guessing that it's a simple enough program that it's not able to do this? I know that clearing my cache won't affect things on the server that I'm accessing; my question refers to the way the program itself operates. I've used this program before, but only in computer labs, and never before on my own computer. Nyttend (talk) 03:16, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The official PuTTY FAQ explains the etymology. In Unix, a TTY used to be a teletype device, but now tty in general refers to any terminal - hardware or software text input/output utility. It's been rumored that "PuTTY" was originally named "Plutonium TTY" (I recall this etymology from before it was on the FAQ page). For your second question, PuTTY can save sessions - see the documentation on saving configuration. "Saved sessions are stored in the Registry, at the location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions." Nimur (talk) 04:16, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

VBA problem

In VBA, what is wrong with this code?

String("Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Name]&" "& Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Brand]")

Thanking you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.142.17.250 (talk) 13:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The String function just returns a multiple of a string. This one doesn't seem to specify how many multiples; it probably defaults to 1. The rest is just a concatenation of two strings with a space between them. (It looks to me like the syntax is wrong — there should not be quotation marks at the beginning or the end.) It looks like this was done in Microsoft Access, and it is saying that there is a form named "Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF", and on it there is a control named "txtCustomer Name" and one named "txtCustomer Brand". The final string will be the value of the "Name" field, plus a space, plus the value of the "Brand" field. (To reference fields in an access form, the syntax is Forms![FormName]![FieldName]) Make sense? --Mr.98 (talk) 13:48, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread it as "what is going on in this code." What's wrong with it is twofold: 1. String() is a function with two variables (number and string), 2. You have two too many quotation marks, 3. String is a function that returns a value but you don't seem to be returning anything.

If you are just trying to get the value of those two fields, you don't need to use String(). Just do something like this:

nameAndBrand$ = Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Name]&" "& Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Brand]

or...

Msgbox("The name and brand are: " & Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Name]&" "& Forms![Merchant/PSP/Reseller/Sole Trader CCF]![txtCustomer Brand])

Make sense? Notice that I'm assigning the result to something (or putting it as an input to a function), and notice that I've removed the quotation marks at the beginning and end (which are inappropriate since you are referencing variables/objects and not literal strings). --Mr.98 (talk) 13:55, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

PC

PC means personal computer. Both Windows, Mac and Linux can be personal computers, can they not? So why then is PC used only for Windows? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.86.59.249 (talk) 13:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Apple's marketing does not want to advertise "Windows", so they use "PC" when they refer to a Windows product. It also has the side-effect of setting Mac apart as being different than a personal computer. Nothing more than marketing semantics. -- kainaw™ 13:55, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that it comes from the old term IBM PC compatible, which designated a whole series of computers made by different manufacturers which nonetheless shared a common software compatibility. As an abbreviation, "PC" came to mean any computer hardware that could run DOS (later Windows). Now today this is a bit silly as a term since even Apple hardware can run Windows if you want it to, not to mention they are all personal computers in a literal sense, but such is how language and technology change or don't change. The general point that when you run Windows you often do so on totally different hardware (whereas you basically only run Mac OS on Apple hardware, though there are exceptions to that rule as well) is still valid, though calling it a "PC" at this point has moved the signifier pretty far from the referent. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat supporting what others have said, while Apple likes to differentate themselves and use PC to refer to computers running Windows (a practice their more loyal 'fans' often follow), I'm not aware the *nix crowd does so (in fact many may encourage their fellow PC users running Windows to migrate to *nix and proudly tell people their PCs runs *nix), and I'm pretty sure there are quite a few vendors who sell things they call PCs with *nix preinstalled. Wintel used to be another favourite but it hasn't really worked so well since Apple moved to using Intel chips plus has always ignored the other x86 vendors. Nil Einne (talk) 15:56, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The reason PC has stuck is that there's no other east way to make the reference. Apple controls both the hardware and software, so a macintosh personal computer can easily be referred to as a Mac. Windows refers to the software, which can run on a number of different machines made by different companies. so how do you refer to a Windows-running box? PC is easy, if inaccurate. --Ludwigs2 21:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Although as I said, PC also usually refers to *nix boxes. If you're referring to a Windows specific PC, it's probably better then refer to a Windows PC, Windows computer or whatever. Nil Einne (talk) 08:21, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps WinPC? Nil Einne (talk) 15:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Privacy settings: facebook status update

Hi, I've excluded some specific people from seeing one of my status updates on my wall, by using the "Custom privacy" function before i posted. How can i remove people from the "Hide this from"-list afterwards? I can't find out how to edit the privacy settings. Is there any other way, or do i have to post the status update once more? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.215.165.169 (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC) 84.215.165.169 (talk) 14:32, 15 October 2010 (UTC)Claudia

AFAIK you can't change the privacy settings after posting. Maybe as they work on improving their privacy they'll improve this in time to come. At this stage, I'd say it would be easiest just repost with the different settings. --jjron (talk) 02:55, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

what's the real use of the symbol on the key `

The symbol occasionally used for opening a single quotation `like this' (before closing it with a normal single-quote) looks really awkward in almost any font, and the symbol does not look at all as though it were intended for this use. So, if is not a genuine opening single-quote, what is it? (I'm talking about the tilde key without a shift, below the Esc key and next to the 1 on an American keyboard: ` or ~ depending on whether you're holding shift) 84.153.238.22 (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

We have an article `. Algebraist 17:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Duh! I never thought I could have gotten the article without knowing the name of that symbol!!! :) 84.153.238.22 (talk) 17:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Another grave problem solved. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

ah, yeah, that was very acute of you... --Ludwigs2 17:38, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd say our answers have a certain ring to them, but since I am tooting my own horn with that statement, I hope you will let me off the hook for it. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 15:52, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen a redirect like `.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, there was a little square with the symbol below the hand when I clicked.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:26, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That is the expected behavior for all Wikipedia-internal links. Try it on your signature, or my IP - just hover the mouse pointer over it and hold still for a moment. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 10:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I also don't see why people are so surprised of the existance of the redirect. We try to make redirects for everything that is a likely search term and if trying to find out the name or info of a symbol, it's not that surprising you may search for it. The only cases when we won't have redirects would be cases where it hasn't been created yet or it we can't for technical reasons, like #. Nil Einne (talk) 16:29, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The symbol is the grave accent, but the article doesn't explain why it's sometimes (mis)used as an opening single quotation mark. The reason: ASCII character 96 used to look like an opening single quotation mark in some computer fonts. For example, in the image at the top of code page 437, you can see it just to the left of the lower-case a. In modern times, if you see the grave accent used as an opening single quotation mark, it likely means there's some old ASCII conversion routines in place from when ASCII character 96 looked like an opening single quotation mark. --Bavi H (talk) 00:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

In fact, in the ASCII standard X3.4-1968, the character ` is named "grave accent (opening single quotation mark)", so as far as the US was concerned it was explicitly intended for both purposes. Similarly the ' was intended for three purposes: apostrophe, acute accent, and closing single quotation mark. This overloading was not generally copied in other standards that shared most of the same characters. So Bavi's wording "(mis)used" is exactly right. The discussion here may be of interest. --Anonymous, 03:38 UTC, October 16, 2010.

Besides the reasons given above, I often use it for find-and-replace when I need a character that doesn't exist anywhere on the pre-modification page — let's say that I'm trying to increase by 1 many different numbers in Notepad. I'll tell it to replace every occurrence of " 2" with "`3"; because the space before the number is taken up by the `, that new number won't be replaced when I order the program to change the 3s to 4s. As well, if I'm at a long page such as Template talk:Did you know, I'll normally search for my own username (to see what's going on related to the comments I've made), but since any single letter of my username has so many hits that it takes a long time to resume typing, I'll start with the ` character because it's not present anywhere, so the search function won't be delayed in trying to highlight all of the hundreds of relevant characters. Nyttend (talk) 23:01, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The article linked above mentions this, but in LaTeX and maybe some other typesetting languages as well, ` is a special character used to make opening quotation marks. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

What is this bird walking across the screen?

I've only seen it in the web sites of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Asheville Citizen-Times. And I go to those sites only on a Firefox computer. Sometimes the bird is sweeping. But wherever he is, it's on a blank part of the screen.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Is it a pop-up ad? Many websites use animations or Adobe Flash to animate advertisements in distracting ways. Nimur (talk) 18:55, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It is most probably a Flash animation. Roger (talk) 19:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not a pop-up. It appears in the page itself. Here and here are some links. This doesn't guarantee the bird will show up. The first might be outdated but it'll get you to the site.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:19, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Try not to get lost in semantic arguments. By "pop-up", they are trying to tell you that there is an advertisement ON THE PAGE that you are seeing. It doesn't mean that something is literally popping up from the page. -- kainaw™ 20:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Normally, a popup is a new window. That's what I meant.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:18, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That's old school (and blocked by most popup blockers). newer ads use flash/javascript/css combos that build ad content straight into the page itself. Don't see the bird you're talking about, though, so I can't say what it is. --Ludwigs2 21:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I saw him, on the Seattle Pi page, he was mooching about sweeping up and whistling. He was in a white box with, in the top right hand corner, a "folded down corner" and the word "Videoegg". clicking the videoegg thingy brough up an advert for some car or something. I don't think he is a specific breed or species of bird. DuncanHill (talk) 21:31, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey, you're using Firefox! That's great! Now go to the "Tools" menu, click "Add-ons", then click "Get Add-ons", then click the text field labeled "Search All Add-ons", then type "adblock", then choose to install "AdBlock Plus". Most ads will disappear and all the problems you've had in the past with ads will become distant memories. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:00, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm using Chrome. DuncanHill (talk) 00:01, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The same extension in also in Chrome.Sir Stupidity (talk) 03:16, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Responding to Comet Tuttle: they won't block the ads at the library. But that's the only place I've seen this bird. I don't go those sites at home.

I haven't asked a question here lately because ... well, I haven't had any specific new problems at home, and I know the site to go to in order to ask for help. Except I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to anything, but if all they can do is tell me to shut down add-ons and things like that, there's not really anything to solve.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Python question

OK, I'm still learning python and am confused by the following:

>>> a = (1,2,3)
>>> a*2
(1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3)
>>> 2*a
(1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3)
>>> 

Is there a pythonic reason for one of the two expressions not to return (1,1,2,2,3,3)? I am really asking what 'pythonic' means in this context.... Thanks, Robinh (talk) 19:22, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The * operator for sequence types means "take n copies and concatenate them" (ref). So 2*(1,2,3) means (1,2,3)+(1,2,3), which is (1,2,3,1,2,3). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a more pythonic way to achieve the other result than tuple([(x,x) for x in a])? In particular, I find the tuple constructor inelegant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about "pythonic", more "haskellic":

               a=(1,2,3)   # the thing
               f=2         # how many copies
               reduce (lambda x,y: x+y, [a for z in range(0,f)])

Urgh. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:59, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Now you spoiled my appetite! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:03, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and it does not work (sorry, missed that at first). The question was how to get (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3) . --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:06, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought you wanted a "pythonic" way to implement 2*(1,2,3) without the using the *. I'll have to have a think about the latter (but I'm eating, so later). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:14, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Hold onto your lunch:

                       a=(1,2,3)   # the thing
                       f=2         # how many copies
                       reduce (lambda p,q: p+q, zip (*[a for z in range(0,f)]))

Double-urgh. I'm sure there are much cleaner ways than that. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:34, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

OP here again. I don't think I'm making myself clear. Is there a pythonic reason why a*b should not differ from b*a? Robinh (talk) 20:45, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That's just a design implementation - they designed the operator to be commutative. There's no real reason to do it or not to do it, except that most algebraic operators (as opposed to set-theoretic operators) are commutative. --Ludwigs2 20:52, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's defined that way; there's nothing deeper to it than that. Operators are just functions (in this case defined using the __mul__() and __rmul__() functions); they chose to have mul and rmul work the same; they could have chosen them to work differently. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, I get this. So, given that (1,1,2,2,3,3) is apparently hard to get, and there appear to be two ways to get at (1,2,3,1,2,3) [viz, 2*a and a*2], and "pythonic" seems to mean "there is one right way to do things in python and the right way is the python way", and python appears to have the ability to define "*" to mean anything we want, what is unpythonic about defining "a*2" to mean (1,1,2,2,3,3)? Sorry to go on about something which seems to be obvious to the python gurus here. Best wishes, Robinh (talk) 22:03, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

"pythonic" often doesn't mean very much. Sometimes they mean "the thing you'd naively expect to get when you do this". Personally I don't find either the way it does do it to be obvious, nor the way you suggest, and I wouldn't have been surprised if 2*(1,2,3) == (2,4,6) instead. They chose to define this, but not to define (1,2,3)>>1 == (2,3,1), which might well seem obvious or intuitive. Frankly I fear you may be reading some textbook that's waxing lyrical about how semantically pure and wonderful Python is, and may be downplaying how arbitrary and bodgy it is. I really wouldn't worry too much about what is "pythonic", and I'd be suspicious of those who place emphasis on this (at the expense of just getting stuff done); it seems like a driving instructor trying to persuade you of the "zen of driving", when he should be showing you how the gears work. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The use of * to mean list duplication is a pun on the word "times", so there's no strong reason to expect it to behave in any way like multiplication as we know it. The decision probably had more to do with not having too many different kinds of behavior hidden away. In particular, if they assigned particular different behaviors to 2*[1,2] and [1,2]*2, you'd need to memorize which is which. Lots of design decisions wind up being trade-offs between confusingness and power, like this. Paul (Stansifer) 22:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

When programmers design a language they usually have a few different considerations in mind: what will people learning the language expect? what features do programmers want? what are useful functions for the kinds of uses the language is expected to be put to? The python designers either didn't think to implement the particular feature you're interested in, or thought that implementing it that way would be more confusing than the particular implementation would be worth. --Ludwigs2 03:21, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it's more that it plays off the common interpretation of multiplication as repeated addition. e.g. 4*3 = 4+4+4, so it makes some sense that (1,2,3)*3 is the same as (1,2,3) + (1,2,3) + (1,2,3). -- 174.24.199.14 (talk) 16:01, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess there were two considerations that together led to this design choice:

1. Some notation is needed for repeating a string n times. The operator * is the only one that every programmer who does not know the correct syntax and is simply trying things out is sure to try in one of their first attempts.
2. It's hard to remember whether the syntax is "string * n" or "n * string". By making the operator commutative one can ensure that no programmer gets this detail wrong all the time.

These are both writability concerns, while a lot of the original motivation of Python was readability when compared to Perl. But I think they represent a good trade-off. Hans Adler 16:42, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

For python, most of these functions you want can be found in the itertools package:

from itertools import *
print list(chain.from_iterable(repeat(k,2) for k in [1,2,3]))

is most natural than it might seem at first. For Haskell, try

 concat [replicate 2 k | k <- [1,2,3]]

or better yet,

 concatMap (replicate 2) [1,2,3]

72.89.106.242 (talk) 06:10, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

eee pc 1005h ram type

what type of ram does eee pc 1005h take? Mine has 1 gb in it that it came with, is it hard for me to upgrade? What is the most ram I can put inside, and how much will that ram cost me? If it is very complicated to install, how much would a service center be likely to charge me for installation of the ram? Thank you. 85.181.50.90 (talk) 19:51, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Crucial.com has a form you can fill in to find out what kind of memory can go in a given computer. According to it, for yours, "Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-6400 with a maximum of 2GB per slot", and there is one slot. Looie496 (talk) 21:51, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

...And memory is easy to upgrade even on a netbook -- all you need is a little Phillips screwdriver and an ability to avoid static discharge. You can look at the back and see the little compartment that holds the memory chip. Looie496 (talk) 21:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That explaination is incomplete. A netbook will almost definitely have SO-DIMM (although I'd check first instead of relying on me) so buying normal DDR2 DIMM would be a waste of money. In terms of the upgrade [1] may be helpful even if you don't understand German and will probably answer the question of how many slots and whether it uses SO-DIMM (my internet is slow at the moment and I pay for data so I can't be bothered watching it). BTW if it supports DDR2 you would normally be fine with any speed RAM. If it's slower then PC2-6400 your RAM speed will be limited which may affect performance (although I suspect not that much for most purposes in a netbook) if it's faster your RAM will be limited to the lower rate so it may be a waste if it costs more (but it may not). Occasionally with DDR I've heard of RAM not supporting lower rates by which I take it to mean it's not officially supported nor are there any SPD settings so your motherboard may not know what to do. Never heard of this with DDR2 although I'm not saying it hasn't happened. Nil Einne (talk) 09:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

October 16

DVD drive won't read certain DVDs

My DVD drive on my computer won't read certain DVDs. It reads some of them just fine, but there's two that I have right now (Leviathan (film) and Outland (film), if it makes any difference) that it won't read. It will spin up like it's reading them, for maybe 8 seconds, and then stop. After that, it will repeatedly spin up for maybe 3 seconds, stop for a second or two, and repeat. It could just be dirty DVDs I guess, but it seems odd that three of them (Outland has two sides) wouldn't work at once. I tried them in my friend's computer's DVD drive, and it reads them just fine. My drive's not totally shot, as it plays another DVD I have (The Postman (film), again, not that it matters). It's also reading my game CDs fine. I don't have any music CDs to try right now. I could understand if my drive was failing, but it's consistently able to read certain discs, and consistently unable to read other discs, which is really weird. I went to the device manager and looked for any driver updates; it said that I was up to date. All the DVDs say that they're region 1. I'm running Windows 7 on a U81A Asus laptop that I bought in August 2009. Any help would be appreciated. Buddy431 (talk) 00:03, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Discs are subject to errors and quality variations. Not all commercially pressed or stamped discs will be of the same quality, even when fulfilling their quality control parameters. Drives will also have differing capacities in their capability to handle these variations in disc quality. It sounds like your drive is not exactly faulty, but let's say sensitive. Your friend's drive less so. These discs are possibly at the lower end of the quality scale, thus why you're only having issues with some of them. I have had similar problems. One CD player I have first 'rejected' a disc that worked on some other players about 15 years ago, but to this day still works fine for most discs, so it's not necessarily that your drive is about to fail. FWIW - and entirely anecdotally - in recent times I've been noticing increased error rates on new discs (legally produced and purchased), I'm guessing as a result of cost cutting on production as sales prices have dropped, especially those in multipacks and ones that try to squeeze on a lot of content. Giving the disc a good clean (which shouldn't be necessary for brand new DVDs) sometimes, indeed often, fixes issues. Compact Disc manufacturing is probably the best article we have on this. --jjron (talk) 02:52, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The so-called DVD "copy protection" works basically by introducing errors on the disc, which tends to frustrate not only reproduction software, but also playback in sensitive drives. There is a great variation in methods used, which means that some discs will play and some won't, and the methods get more and more aggressive over time, which may be one reason why jjron observes increased error rates on new discs.—Emil J. 12:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft and the VPN

Here's something of a conundrum. I live in the UK. I realised I needed to re-register an old hotmail.com (the .com part is crucial), which I'd used for a service in the past, and which I'd let lapse. Note that HoTMaiL considers foo@hotmail.com and foo@hotmail.co.uk to be entirely distinct, and allows them to be owned by different people. When I visit hotmail.com, the server figures out that I'm in the UK on a BT connection, redirects me to the live.co.uk website, and there I can only register a hotmail.co.uk address. So I signed up for StrongVPN, with a point of presence in New York state. I'm signed into that now (if you do a whois on the address I'm posting from, you'll see that it's registered to reliablecomputing (who own StrongVPN). Web based services like dnsstuff.com and Hulu concur that I appear to be in New York. But if I visit hotmail.com, it still figures out that I'm in the UK, and still only offers me a UK address. I'm not worried about the email address (I've since found another entrance into MSN which didn't have these smarts, and so I've managed to register the address I needed to). But I'm still curous about how hotmail.com is figuring out where I really am. Here are some details (which serve only to reject the more obvious ideas I had):

• my PC (it's windows 7) is behind a NAT - so even if a flash script or something is sending the machine's local address, it's a non-routable one (10.0.0.201 or the like), which gives hotmail no information
• I'm using Firefox (so I can't blame any scary privacy-leaking function of IE)
• As I've said, services like Hulu don't see a UK IP, so the VPN must be rewriting the addresses in the IP packets I'm sending, as you'd obviously expect it to.

I'd welcome any ideas anyone might have as to how this could be. Thanks. 173.195.1.144 (talk) 15:32, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Try clearing browser cookies. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Other then cookies, perhaps Hotmail is just deciding your in the UK because your prefererred language is en-GB (which I'm guessing it is) which is actually a bad idea since many people not in the UK may have that but since it is Hotmail, who knows... Nil Einne (talk) 15:49, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Not that likely, because an Australian user for example would also use en-GB but not be directed to the UK site. Being Microsoft, maybe it's possible (and I have no idea whether or not they actually do this) that they are detecting that your version of Windows was registered in the UK, and they are basing it off that? --jjron (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Well that's what I said isn't it? I presume they might use IP address in the first instance, perhaps turning to language if the IP address is in the US but the language is something else. Sounds like a bad idea but who knows. AFAIK, the registration location of the OS isn't intentionally given away by any common browser which is why I didn't mention it although I've now found out (actually should have occured to me) the timezone is [2]. (I use intentionally since you never know what your browser is giving away somewhat unintentionally e.g. [3] [4].) It seems in HTML5 there's also support for the browser giving geolocation info, whether from GPS, wifi hotspots or whatever to websites [5] but most would ask before they do so. Nil Einne (talk) 07:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

No, you said 'who knows...'. Well I know because I know that Hotmail in Aus doesn't direct you to the UK site. :) If anything, sites like that almost always default to the US site if there's no Aus version, not a UK variant. Now if they based it on the timezone, then surely the OP could change their timezone to a US setting and give it a try (works for that browserspy site). I'd find the timezone theory unlikely though, given how many other countries share the same timezones. --jjron (talk) 10:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The 'who knows' bit was referring to the fact that given we are talking about Microsoft, they may do odd things which you wouldn't think make sense. I thought it was obvious from my statement that I'm well aware the method wouldn't work in many cases (hence why I said "since many people not in the UK may have that"), apologies if this wasn't as clear as I thought. FWIW I live in New Zealand and used to live in Malaysia so I'm well aware plenty of people outside the UK have their language as en-GB (mine is), in fact it was on reason it occured to me. Note that you appear to be presuming there's only one method of detection. This may be the case, it may also be that Microsoft use multiple different methods depending on the specifics. It's easily possible for example they use a system, IP = UK, language = en-GB, timezone = BST/BDT, .uk; IP = US, language = en-GB, timezone = GMT/BST, .uk; IP = US, language = fr, timezone = CET/CST =.fr; IP = US, language = en-GB, timezone = NZST/NZDT, .uk). I don't really think this is that likely, but again, given we are talking about Microsoft, who knows (without proper testing of the possibilities). Again, I thought all this was obvious from my earlier statement, apologies if it wasn't clear enough. P.S. Bing used to direct me to the UK site IIRC. P.P.S. I've just found out hotmail does in fact offer a .uk address to me and suggests I'm in the UK... Nil Einne (talk) 10:55, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I just found out I may have been right all along. If I delete all cookies for live (not sure if it's necessary but easier since I already have a cookie manager) and set en-US as my first/top language it offers hotmail.com/live.com, if I set en-GB as my first/top language it offers hotmail.co.uk/live.co.uk, if I set en-NZ as my first/top language it offers hotmail.co.nz (no live.co.nz). I'm fairly suprised it ignores my IP address which easily identifies me as being from NZ, but again as I said, with Microsoft who knows?

This also confirms what I expected that there is indeed a hotmail.co.nz (I initially suggested I would be offered .nz but upong checking found out I was offered UK) but given Microsoft's bizzarre system I suspect a lot of people don't have it even though they may want it.

Mind you, it seems this depends on your browser. Firefox provides "language" and "accepted languages" from [6]. language is I guess the version of FF you download (mine is en-GB whatever I do), accepted languages includes whatever you've set (in order). IE provides the additional strings 3 system, user and browser. Browser and language are en-US in my IE (again probably reflecting that I have the en-US version of IE). Accepted and the other 2 are en-NZ in my case, I presuming going by my system settings. So for people with IE they're fine if their system language agrees with where they live and they do indeed want a domain for where they live. (English speakers in places like Malaysia where there's no appropriate recognise local English variant like en-MY may screwed unless they know to temporarily set their language to Malay.)

I'm not sure what's going on in your case. Whether for some strange reason it ignores IP for me but not for you (again with Microsoft who knows?). Or whether you were in fact mistaken about your language and/or not being offered .uk. BTW, the simple way to test this is to try to sign-up for an account and see what they offer you. You will always be on the live.com site from what I can tell (note that as we've discussed before on the RD in the modern era it doesn't mean you're on the same web server as someone in Timbuktu). Obviously if you already signed up for an account you will have whatever domain for the account when you signed up.

On the plus side, I have found out you can set languages for Firefox including en-NZ.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:29, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly I'm not the first person to document this behaviour [7]. I should have searched earlier. [8] also mentions this behaviour albeit in a different context. I suspect this also explains why I used to end up at bing.co.uk until Microsoft realised that going by IP as everyone else does makes more sense (although I'm not sure if they used to have a NZ variant) Nil Einne (talk) 11:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

October 17

windows vista wifi problems

I'm trying to figure out why my brother's windows vista laptop suddenly won't connect to the internet any more. The connection would be through the wifi access point which is in the same room and which works fine with other computers. It worked fine with my bro's computer until yesterday or so, but he seems to have screwed around with some settings or something, that messed it up. Now the laptop's connection manager finds the AP and connects to it just fine, but the browser (IE8, I think) says it can't connect, and "diagnose problem" gives a useless message like "windows can't resolve this problem". More generally, what kinds of methods does one use to diagnose this type of thing? I don't see any way to get any indication of what is actually going wrong. Windows Vista doesn't even seem to have a way to get a DOS prompt any more (or anyway I don't see it in the start menu, but I'm a Unix user clueless about Windows in general). Thanks. 72.89.106.242 (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

First, move the laptop next to the WiFi transmitter, just to check that there aren't any problems with interference. Then, in Windows "Network and Sharing Centre" (from Control Panel), click "Manage Wireless Networks" (on the left). The WiFi should show here, and you can configure the laptop to connect automatically (and even if the network is not broadcasting). In "security", you can check that the correct encryption is being used by the laptop, and the correct security key (check with other connections). The "diagnose and repair" option should then reconnect, but, if it doesn't work, try resetting the network adaptor, and try disconnecting, then reconnecting manually. I have regular problems with my WiFi and I often go through these processes (in desperation, probably unnecessarily). Vista on my laptop keeps losing contact, but in my case it is probably a weak signal (through two walls) and a dodgy WiFi router, plus an intermittent internet connection.

Vista has an emulation of the "DOS prompt". Just click "Start" then "Run", and type "command". You will then appear to be in DOS and can "ping" etc. (though everything is passed to Windows routines to execute the commands). Dbfirs 08:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Run "cmd", not "command". "command" brings up command.com, the old 16-bit command prompt from Win9x, running under NTVDM. "cmd" brings up cmd.exe, a Windows application that will work better and faster. -- BenRG (talk) 18:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Go to the command prompt as described above, then type "ipconfig /release" (without quotes) and then "ipconfig /renew". This might clear whatever problem the connection is having. Also check Internet Explorers proxy settings and make sure that it's got the right settings 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:24, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Router (India) Santhosh.Sharma (talk)

I have been using for the last few years a router with two ethernet ports for connections and a third one for management, and this router has been used to connect two Local Area Networks, but now we also need to connect another LAN as well as to the internet, so can anyone here recommend a router with atleast four GbE RJ45 ports plus one for management configuration. Many thank you very much.

Are you saying that you need to connect a third LAN to the internet, or do you want to combine the three LANs into one bigger LAN and connect that to the internet? Rocketshiporion♫ 08:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Each the three LANs has servers which must connected to the internet in order to service the internet to each of their desktops so their users can use the internet. These are under three domain names servers. Santhosh.Sharma (talk) 08:28, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean that each of the three LANs has a DNS server which needs to connect to the internet? If this is the case, you may want to connect the three servers to a high-speed switch, and connect the switch to your router. Rocketshiporion♫ 08:32, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

convert dvd camcoder to memorystick type..

Hi, i have a dvd -rw type sony camcorder.its dvd is quite costly and the model i have is also no more produced by the company.is there any way to convert or attach a memory stick to it.I have a sony dvd-dcr-705.Kindly help .. Thanx in advance..

59.93.129.55 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC).

I'm no expert, but I don't think there is any way of attaching a memory stick to it, no. If it has no USB port on it, then you can't stick a USB memory stick in it. Apologies. You could always go about buying a Flip camcorder. They're cheap and have a built in memory stick.--Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 16:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

That model apparently was only sold in Latin America and I can't find documentation for it, but the model with the most similar number (DCR-DVD010) was apparently capable of using memory sticks as storage devices, as described at this page. Looie496 (talk) 17:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

If your camera doesn't support memory sticks, a more plausible possibility may be hacking it to support normal DVD-RW. DVD-RW are hardly that expensive, even 8cm ones which I guess the camcorder takes although storage space is gonna be a bit limited compared to many memory sticks. See [9] and [10] for example. Remember of course you can copy the contents of the DVD-RW and re-use them many times if you keep them in good condition. BTW I don't know about the accuracy of the claim it was 'only sold in Latin America' as I find references to it in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. [11] for example doesn't say it supports memory sticks. [12] in the US mentions is as a PAL camcorder so perhaps it was sold in many or most PAL countries. BTW I justed noticed that Amazon and the earlier the Australian link mentions it supports DVD+RW as well as DVD-RW so I guess you may have both as options. And BTW are you sure you need to use the Sony branded media? I find references (the Verbatim media link for example) which suggest at worst you may have the camcorder complaining ("Sony disc recommended") if you use non Sony branded media. Have you ever actually tried non Sony branded media? If not, perhaps there's no need for hacking at all. Nil Einne (talk) 09:24, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Can I make an audio file?

Can I make an audio file out of spoken word, as produced in TextEdit (OS X, Mac computer), that can be put onto my iPod? Bus stop (talk) 11:48, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused as to what you want, but it sounds like you either want text to speech software (of which there are many free options), or, if you are talking about simply recording spoken words, a program like Audacity will easily do this. iPods accepts a variety of file formats; mp3 is pretty common. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:30, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

As I read it, you're looking for a program to record the computer generated speech as it 'reads' a text file. Again Audacity could help you here as it can record streaming audio (effectively whatever is coming out of your computer's speakers). --jjron (talk) 14:26, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

At http://etc.usf.edu/techease/4all/learning/how-do-i-use-the-speech-service-in-mac-os-x-to-record-text-into-an-audio-file/ you will find instructions for doing exactly what you want to. Looie496 (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Looie496—I don't know what I'm doing wrong. It doesn't work. I'm referring to the supposed ability to add TextEdit files to iTunes as a Spoken Track. I've gone through all the steps, carefully, several times. But iTunes is not opening as it should (at the point at which you click "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track"), and no recorded track is to be found in iTunes.

I also downloaded Audacity, but I haven't looked into it much, so far. Bus stop (talk) 21:24, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I only did a Google search and found that page that claims to do what you want, I have absolutely no understanding of it. Looie496 (talk) 21:35, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. It's great. It seems perfect. Maybe Apple disabled it or something. Thanks again. Bus stop (talk) 21:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

How to install Java?

I am using Linpus Linux. I think it's Red Hat or Fedora-based. Anyway, I need help, because, as per usual, these instructions are written for people who know more about UNIX. Now, I'm not UNIX-illiterate, I do understand some of it, but this is just confusing. Where the hell would I find the /usr/java directory?! Can someone please point me in the right directions?--Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 16:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Right, more detail now. I do have a /usr/ area, but there's no /usr/java. The bastard's not letting me create a new folder, either. Any suggestions?--Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 16:27, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

On Linux, normal users can't edit /usr/ for security reasons. Use either

su -

or

sudo bash

to become the root user (system administrator), and then try the instructions again. The first method will want the root password, then second your password. When finished, enter 'exit' to become you again. CS Miller (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

You can find very detailed and straightforward instructions at this page. Looie496 (talk) 16:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Since Linpus is based on Fedora, you might find this page more helpful. Fedora has packages for Java which work better with the OS than something you'd install manually. -- JSBillings 14:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

cost to replace a netbook's lcd screen

if a netbook (eee pc in my case) has a cracked lcd screen, is it even worth replacing? How much would that cost, including parts + labor (unless I could do it myself without too much trouble). The model in question is this one. 188.174.74.76 (talk) 16:52, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Unless still under warranty, replacement screens for laptops have traditionally been very expensive from the original manufacturer. They are available on eBay (for example, this advert suggests prices around £60 + shipping), but you would need to fit it yourself - something that is not easy to do. If you do go for this, I suggest you download a service manual first and study it very carefully until you are sure you are able to complete job, and only then order the replacement screen. Astronaut (talk) 20:01, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Visual C++ equivalent to Eclipse's Outline View

Yet another question. Again, I'm sorry for all the questions. Is there such an equivalent? KyuubiSeal (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Questions are welcome...you may be looking for Visual C++ Class designer, Visual C++ Class viewer, or Object Browser. Smallman12q (talk) 23:20, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thank you! KyuubiSeal (talk) 20:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

ethernet switch

I ask this question previously about hubs, and people said to get a "switch". Today I finally managed to get an "8 port fast ethernet switch". So the question is; can I plug a cable modem into the switch, then plug two computers into the switch as well, and they will share the internet connection? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 18:55, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I might be wrong on this but I don't think that it will work (i'm open to correction though) as you are trying to use the switch as a router but I think you could designate one of your computers as an Internet host. Then Install a second NIC in to this computer and plug your modem into that. Set up Internet Connection Sharing, and then connect the other computer to the host through the switch. Mo ainm~Talk 19:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

If your PC has an IP address in the form 192.168.???.??? then it will work, otherwise you'll need a machine to do Network address translation (NAT) for the machines. If your cable-modem also has WiFi or mutliple ethernet ports, then it will NAT, if not then it may-or-may-not. CS Miller (talk) 19:26, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Usually not, since switches can't normally handle IP addresses. They usually only work for local networks, and address computers by using their MAC addresses. What make and model of switch is it? Most people who use switches connect the switch to a router and then the router to a modem. They do this because a router usually only has four ports on the back. So, if you run a company with more computers, you'd need either a second router or a switch (or even a hub) to connect to the router.

Also, why did you decide to buy a switch? It's actually kind of hard to find switches in retail stores nowadays, since routers have become so cheap, and since routers are more powerful than switches. Hubs are even more rare, so I'm also curious who told you to buy a hub before this.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The make is "Edimax 8 port fast ethernet switch 10/100 mbps, Palmtop size". I can't find a model number on the box or on the device. I got the switch because people said the hub I had would cause collisions of data and was outdated, and I got the hub because people said just connecting a normal ethernet cable between two computers wouldn't work. This was the thread. Anyway, so the switch can't be directly connected to the cable modem? Ok, thanks for the information 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Wait, wait, wait. The above answers are mostly nonsense. Every cable modem I have experience with over the last 10 years can be connected to a switch, and then you can connect multiple computers to the switch to share the connection. The cable modem itself (not the switch) acts as a DHCP server and each computer gets its own IP address in this situation. Best Dog Ever: You must be confusing switches with hubs when you claim it's hard to find a switch. I buy switches every month from the local computer store. Original poster: Just plug it in and see. It should work fine. If you were to get a router instead of a switch then you'd have a 100% chance of success. Without knowing what cable modem model you have, I'll say that using a switch in the way you describe carries about a 98% chance of success. The only way this will fail is if your cable modem lacks the ability to be a DHCP server, which I'll say has a 2% chance of being true. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Given the fact that I'm a CCNA, rest assured that I know the difference between a hub and a switch. Also, all of the cable modems I've owned can't be connected to a layer-two switch. I have seen some cable modems that are also routers, but my ISP will only give you one of those if you request it. There are some layer-three switches that can assign local IP addresses, but I don't think the Edimax 8-port fast ethernet switch is one of them. The switch I own (Netgear DSS-5+) can be connected to my modem, but each computer connected to it will get a separate public IP address. And, since I'm allowed only one public IP address, only one of those computers will be able to connenct to the Internet. The switch does not have a built-in DHCP server. Layer-two switches are called that because they operate at the second layer of the OSI model. MAC addresses work at the second layer. IP addresses work at the third.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 17:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I concur with what Best Dog Ever states above and I was also going on the assumption that it was a Layer 2 Switch. Mo ainm~Talk 18:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know why Best Dog Ever thinks combined modem/routers are rare things. Every broadband modem I've seen in the UK has had at least two, and more usually four, ethernet ports on the back, a built-in DHCP server and NAT addressing - maybe the situation is different elsewhere in the world. Unless you have other network devices there should be connectivity for your two computers to share the one internet connection through the modem/router and for file/print sharing across the network as well, all with no need for an additional hub, switch or router. Astronaut (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

My cable modem only has one ethernet port 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

What happened when you hooked up the switch to it, and hooked your PCs up to the switch? (And if you are hesitating to try the experiment for some reason, we could put this to rest if you could tell us the manufacturer and model number of your cable modem, so someone can go look up whether it's a DHCP server.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The model number is "ambit e08c013". I have not tried connecting the switch because the last time I tried connecting different things to the cable modem I lost the internet for hours because the "host table" on the ISPs server had reached it's maximum allowed allocation of ip address. I want to be sure it will work before risking that again 82.44.55.25 (talk) 23:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

From a quick search I think your SOL, the ambit e08c013 appears to be a modem only from what I can tell. You can either buy a router (whether 1 port in which case you'll still need the switch or multiple port in which case you probably won't) or set up one of your computers to function as a router (which will mean the computer will have to be on for the internet on the others to work and may also post security concerns if you're only using one network adapter for both the connection to your LAN and your modem) whether via software for the computer or something in a VM (e.g. m0n0wall). Well if you have a spare computer you can also set it up to be a standalone router (I use m0n0wall as my router for various reasons even though I actually have a 1 port ADSL2+ router/modem). If this spare computer has 2 NICs all the better. Nil Einne (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Mandelbrot set

Does anyone know where I could download an SVG of the Mandelbrot set from? ╟─TreasuryTag►constabulary─╢ 19:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

It's just not something that lends itself to a vector format(see caveat below); it's an intrinsically bit-mapped format. You can always force a bitmap into SVG, but it's not a good idea - the 800x600 jpg version of File:Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg, when turned into a SVG by ImageMagick's convert, balloons from 41K to 26M; that's because it's been rendered in SVG as about half a million tiny circles (and the resulting SVG is, unsurprisingly, entirely unviewable). Caveat: strictly, I suppose someone could write a Mandelbrot (etc.) engine that a priori targeted a vector format, it might (I'm just guessing, really) be able to produce a multi-scale (but not deeply so) vector image. While this might be fun to write, it'd likely produce an image quite unlike what you're used to (perhaps rather Braque-y), and surely still much less space-efficient than a bitmap. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:03, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I doubt an SVG representation would be doable or visually meaningful. the Mandelbrot attractor is (if I remember correctly) everywhere non-differentiable, so one can't break it down into simple arcs or lines as an SVG does. further, the coloration is usually based on escape trajectories for points not in the set itself, and I have no idea how you would capture that in SVG format. --Ludwigs2 21:22, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

geometric construction of fractal curve with circles

If you're willing to really have just the set, rather than pretty pictures that really show the execution of the algorithm, it's possible to analytically construct a mandelbrot with (I think) just cardiods and circles. Circles are SVG native; I don't think cardioids can strictly be represented with the splines SVG uses, but it's possible to hack them up (like this). Illustrated right is a comparable rendering, just with circles, of a similar fractal. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:55, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

computing - software

to whom it may concern

my question is simple.

why is software written in English. in the sense that commands and actions are in this language

thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.59.20.61 (talk) 20:44, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

You might find the Non-English-based programming languages article relevant. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Also see English in computing. This is probably due to the fact that English was among the first languages to have Character encoding and early computers did not have sufficient capacity to store multiple character languages. Also, early computing made heavy usage of assembly language which was also written with English characters. You should be aware though that though software is written in English, or other languages, it is usually compiled to binary code which is language independent.Smallman12q (talk) 23:30, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I interpreted this as a question about user interfaces, not about program source code. User interfaces are not always in English - it's just that much software is written by English-speakers. Internationalization and localization is the process of designing software to be easily translated for users of different languages (and regions). But, it's expensive - it requires technical rework of the code and detailed knowledge of foreign languages. Hiring programmers who speak multiple languages is prohibitively expensive for many companies (and free software projects). But many commercial softwares (such as Windows and Microsoft Office) as well as many free softwares (such as Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org) are available with user interfaces in dozens of languages. Nimur (talk) 04:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

You don't need a multi-lingual programmer. What normally happens is there is a look-up table for each language. Each table contains multiple StringID:Translation entries; the program loads the appropriate table for the language it is using at present. When it needs to display a string, it looks up by the StringID (which is fixed for each message), gets the human-readable string, and displays it. The initial table is normally written in English, and the English look-up table is sent to a human translator to convert it one of the targeted languages. This is repeated for each supported language. However, hiring the translators is expensive, and each time the UI messages are changed, the new messages need to be sent off to get translated. Also, as the displayed length of the messages changes per language, the dialog boxes need to be checked in each language to see that they are laid out correctly, which adds to the testers time. CS Miller (talk) 10:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

<rant>Seperating programmers from translators is not always a bright idea. Firefox 3.6.10, to this day, contains a bug when you try to save a bookmark - the title of the pop-up screen where you can enter the description for the bookmark probably says "set bookmark for this page" in English, the German translation turned it into "Lesezeichen für diese Seite gesetzt" ("Bookmark for this page has been set") - when it clearly hasn't been set yet. Clearly, the translator had no idea where the string belongs in the application, and, lacking context, picked a wrong translation. Not sure how QA is implemented in the Firefox translations, but this bug going unnoticed/unfixed for so long, when it's in such a prominent place, is pretty disappointing.</rant> Now, does anybody know how to quickly file that bug without jumping through various you-need-to-create-an-account-first hoops? -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the English text in 3.6.10 is "Page Bookmarked", and I think in earlier versions of the new bookmark dialog it was "This page has been bookmarked" or some such. I think it's bizarre too, but it's not a clueless translator, it's a clueless UI designer (or clueless users who don't see that this is really a good thing). -- BenRG (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

If the translator is given the the application and user-manual in the original language, and instructions on how to access all the dialog boxes, then they can see all the messages in context, and thus make a better translation. CS Miller (talk) 21:24, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

English is the lingua franca of programming language keywords and library functions. The advantages of a common language far outweigh the disadvantages in a situation like this. English won out because so much pioneering work in programming languages happened in the U.S., though why that's true I'm not sure. -- BenRG (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

iPhone Clones

I've seen some iPhone clones that run Android and more that run Windows Mobile, but what operating system(s) do the other iPhone clones run? I've identified that a few of the big iPhone clones (namely, Sciphone and HiPhone) that are made by CECT—which is a subsidiary of ShenZhen HuiTimes Technology—run an operating system called MTK, a variant of Nucleus developed, I think, by MediTek, Inc., but what about the iPhone clones such as ePhone, Miphone, or iiPhone? --Melab±1 ☎ 22:27, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

MTK isn't the operating system but the chipset. The vast majority of cheap Chinese phones, including iPhone clones do use cheap MTK chipsets with Nucleus RTOS. The MTK chipsets are cheap and usually I think one chip solutions and MediaTek themselves provide a relatively complete solution including I think the OS and software for phones so it's easy for manufacturers to put something together, see [13] for example.

Also the SciPhone and HiPhone and likely all of the complete clones are not made by CECT. The CECT branding is just as fake as any Apple branding. Very often no one really knows who makes these phones and there are many makers and different clones of the clones as for example firmware makers like Javquisoft and astute buyers have found out.

In the case of the Sciphone, the originals appear to come from [14] who call themselves "Shezen Bluelans". [15] also has some helpful info on the phones (can't comment on their other stuff) although it may be getting a little outdated, and finally there are plenty of forums dedicated to discussion of clones.

Nil Einne (talk) 06:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Free software java application for editing PDF file properties

Is there any (tiny) free/open source software, GUI, java application availabe, that comes in a .JAR file, and which lets me edit only those document properties of a PDF file that are stored inside the PDF file? (That is: I do not want the file properties that are handled by the operating system where the PDF is residing at the moment, because those will disappear when I send the file somewhere else).
--Seren-dipper (talk) 23:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

You're probably looking for software to modify PDF metadata...have you tried googling for a pdf metadata editor?Smallman12q (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

October 18

Besides the iPhone, what is considered by reviewers to be the most beautiful smartphone...

purely from a design perspective?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 01:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

weird way to say it, but I think I know what you're trying to ask. probably the Xperia. 173.180.219.65 (talk) 02:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hah, good luck with that. Beauty, it would seem, is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps you are looking for simplicity in design, by way of small shape and sleek lines? Or screen quality? Or durability? Or versatility? What is beauty to you? --Jmeden2000 (talk) 20:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think a computer should look like a PS/2 and a mobile telephone should look like an SCR-300. Current market trends do not seem to satisfy my aesthetic needs. What happened to all the buttons and knobs? Those were the hallmarks of quality and configurability. Nimur (talk) 22:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

You can have your buttons and knobs! 173.180.219.65 (talk) 02:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

trick gmail into thinking iphone is a computer

Hey, as you may know, gmail has a "fully" featured iPhone interface for gmail, but it doesn't contain a lot of the features from the desktop version (I'm mainly concerned with the "call phone" feature here), and although there is now a "desktop" view (button at the bottom of the page), it's still a simplified gmail with no google talk functionality. Safari is a fully functional browser with HTML5 support and all that, so it should be able to handle all the same feature that firefox can. Is there any way to trick gmail into thinking I'm not on an iPhone, i.e. by using a special URL or something? I have no reason to believe that google is actively blocking iPhone users from accessing the fully functional gmail interface, though I can't say I ever really know what google is thinking. Thanks! 173.180.219.65 (talk) 02:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Get a user agent switcher and make safari tell gmail that it's actually something else, like chrome or firefox. As for "call phone", this will not work, since the feature requires a browser plugin, which i don't believe exists for the iphone. 76.10.146.121 (talk) 06:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Call phone doesn't need a plugin, only the video feature does! BUT, I did find a user agent switcher (thank you!), and now it thinks I'm on Safari 5, and everything works BRILLIANTLY, BUT!!! call phone requires flash... doh! I think there is a way to get flash working for jb phones so I'll get to work on that. 173.180.219.65 (talk) 06:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "jb phones", but the iPhone specifically doesn't support Flash. In fact, the notorious section 3.3.1 of the Apple developer agreement for the iPhone appeared to be a heavy-handed way to insure that Flash never made it onto the iPhone in any way. Paul (Stansifer) 12:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess that jb is the OP's shorthand for jailbroken. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and there are now multiple band-aid solutions to the flash problem, though none of them are able to display all modern flash apps (understandable, since they are basically emulators), and unfortunately gmail detects them as lower versions of flash, so no "call phone" feature for me, yet. 173.180.219.65 (talk) 02:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

screen blanking app - multiple screens

I have a TV hooked up to my laptop in a dual monitor setup, and I'm wondering if there's a little taskbar app/shortcut setup that will allow me to selectively blank (make black) either one of the screens; effectively putting half of the screen into screensaver mode. Thanks! 173.180.219.65 (talk) 05:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Would you want to revert to a single monitor desktop, or just blank the screen and keep what's underneath?Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 13:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Just the blanking yeah. Sometimes I do have stuff opened on the other screen, I just don't want it glowing while I'm watching a movie or something like that. Also, switching to one screen takes a few seconds (longer if the memory is being taxed!). 173.180.219.65 (talk) 02:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Function pointer

Moved from the language reference desk. JIP | Talk 07:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello Friend,

Can anyone tell me ? What is the purpose of using  pointer to function?

And void pointer function in C?

like void (*func)(int a, float b);

what is the difference between normal function and pointer function?

Regards, Antony Prabhu.M —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.53.225 (talk) 05:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

You'll have more luck asking this at the Computing reference desk. My intuition about this is that using a pointer to a function allows the function to be defined at runtime rather than explicitly in the code (similar to Python's lambda functions) but I am not an expert on this so you'd be better off asking one of the computer people. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

C does not allow the creation of functions at runtime. A pointer to a function is used for passing a pointer to an existing function as an argument to another function. A well-known example is the implementation of sort functions, such as quicksort (part of the standard library). Its prototype is

void qsort( void *buf, size_t num, size_t size, int (*compare)(const void *, const void *) );

The last argument is a pointer to a function written by the user of the library, which specifies the sort-criterion to be used. In this example, the void* arguments of the compare function are pointers to the data elements that are to be compared, and void* buf is the start of the array to be sorted. A pointer to void in C is a "generic pointer", it can store an address to any data type, and will need to be converted a pointer to the correct data type before being used. Conversion is done using a typecast, or (in C, not in C++) implicitly in an assignment. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 06:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

C does not allow creating functions at runtime, but with function pointers, it allows switching between already created functions at runtime. You can define a variable of a function pointer type, and then assign any compile-time created function you want to this variable, as long as the signatures match. Calling this function pointer with the () operator then calls whatever function it is currently pointing to. JIP | Talk 12:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

VBA problem part 2

Hey, I want to move selected data from one table to another OnClick. The code that I'm trying to use at the moment is this but it's not working:

INSERT INTO Table![Merchant CCF] ([Customer Name], [Merchant Type], Partner, [Merchant Sector]) SELECT [Merchant Name], [Merchant Type], Partner, [Merchant Sector] FROM Table![Main Table]

Could someone perhaps let me know why it's wrong? Thanking you! Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 12:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Full code is :

Private Sub CmdAddRecord_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_CmdAddRecord_Click
 
    DoCmd.GoToRecord , , acNewRec
    'Prevent user warnings
  DoCmd.SetWarnings False
 
Dim SQL As String
SQL = "INSERT INTO Table![Merchant CCF]([Customer Name], [Merchant Type], Partner, [Merchant Sector]) SELECT [Merchant Name], [Merchant Type], Partner, [Merchant Sector] FROM Table![Main Table]"
 
    DoCmd.RunSQL SQL
 
'Allow user warnings
  DoCmd.SetWarnings True
 
Exit_CmdAddRecord_Click:
    Exit Sub
 
Err_CmdAddRecord_Click:
    MsgBox Err.Description
    Resume Exit_CmdAddRecord_Click
 
End Sub

Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:12, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you getting an error message? Are you sure it is not actually working (modifying the table) and just not updating the form? If I recall, if you do SQL operations in Access/VBA you usually need to have the form manually refresh its recordset before it'll show the new data. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not getting any error message at all but the table isn't updating either. It's very odd. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I thought as an alternative I'd try the following:

Private Sub Command83_Click()

Dim strSQL As String
Dim strCriteria As String

strSQL = ""
strSQL = strSQL & " INSERT INTO tblMerchant_CCF ([Merchant Name],[Merchant Type],[Partner],[Merchant Sector]),"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT ([Merchant Name],[Merchant Type],[Partner],[Merchant Sector]),"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM tblMain_Table"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE (((tblMain_Table.ID) = me.ID AND ((tblMerchant_CCF.Test_ID) = me.Test_ID)))"
DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL

End Sub#

But I'm getting a run time error on that. Any ideas why? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:52, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a superfluous comma at the end of the first line after [Merchant Sector]). What's the error message? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:58, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I fixed the commas but now it's saying: Compile Error: Method or Data Member not found. Eep! Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed the commas, I've fixed the errors with the data, now it's saying that it has a problem with the last line of code. At the moment it reads as follows:

Private Sub Command83_Click()

Dim strSQL As String
Dim strCriteria As String


strSQL = ""
strSQL = strSQL & " INSERT INTO Table![Merchant CCF]([Merchant Name],[Merchant Type],[Partner],[Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT ([Merchant Name],[Merchant Type],[Partner],[Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM Table![Main table]"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE (((Table![Main table](ID)) IN ' & 1-5000 & ' AND ((Table![Merchant CCF](Test_ID)) IN ' & 1-5000  & ')));"
DoCmd.RunSQL (strSQL = [Yes])

End Sub

I also tried the alternative

DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL

No luck there either. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 10:27, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Once again, you really need to tell us the exact error message you're getting, not just "it has a problem with the last line of code" or "no luck". I don't have Access installed here so I can't try this out, but I believe the last line should be DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL, False - the second parameter indicates where the command is part of a SQL transaction, which I presume is not the case here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:47, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The error on the last line simply means that the SQL doesn't make sense (this error will always be vague). "DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL" should work if the SQL is good. I can see several issues with this SQL. First I'd suggest using the .dot syntax instead of the !bang. "Table" should probably just be "[Main table].ID". Second thing, "me.ID" is unlikely to mean anything within a SQL statement. It should probably be outside the string if it refers to the form. Third thing, "IN ' & 1-5000" probably translates as "IN -4999". I'm not sure if "BETWEEN" works in Access/VBA, but it's worth trying (BETWEEN 1 AND 5000). I'd suggest using the second example code, with the comma fixed, with the last line like, " WHERE ( (tblMain_Table.ID = " & me.ID & ") AND (tblMerchant_CCF.Test_ID = " & me.Test_ID & ") )"

Having made the changes both of you suggested (and thank you very very much for your patience) I now get Error 3134, Syntax error in INSERT INTO statement. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:07, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest posting the latest version. I'd also suggest, just before the "DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL" line, insert "MsgBox strSQL". A close look at the resulting SQL will probably reveal any errors. You can also get the SQL by adding a breakpoint (press F9) in the code editor at that point; run the code and when it breaks enter "?strSQL" into the "immediate window". -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

This is the latest version:

Private Sub Command83_Click()

Dim strSQL As String
Dim strCriteria As String

strSQL = ""
strSQL = strSQL & " INSERT INTO [Merchant CCF]([Merchant Name][Merchant Type][Partner][Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT ([Merchant Name][Merchant Type][Partner][Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM [Main table]"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE ((([Main table](ID)) BETWEEN 1 AND 5000 AND (([Merchant CCF](Test_ID)) BETWEEN 1 AND 5000)));"
strSQL = strSQL & "MsgBox strSQL"
DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL, False

End Sub

Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Modified (assuming all the field names are correct). Please note the changes:

...
strSQL = "INSERT INTO [Merchant CCF] ([Merchant Name], [Merchant Type], [Partner], [Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT ([Merchant Name], [Merchant Type], [Partner], [Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM [Main table]"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE ( ([Main table].ID BETWEEN 1 AND 5000) AND ([Merchant CCF].Test_ID BETWEEN 1 AND 5000) )"
MsgBox strSQL
DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL
...

-- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

SVG unique Id's

This should ba a relatively easy question to answer but I simply can't find the answer anywhere. I have given everything in my SVG file a unique ID and wish to reference the shape over and over, just changing its position. For example if I wish to recall the following.

<circle id="0_logo" cx="190" cy="405" r="10"
style="fill:#000000;stroke:#FFFFFF;stroke-width:2;fill-opacity:0.1;stroke-opacity:1;"/>

Is this similar to when you call, for example a gradient.

<circle fill="url(#grad)" cx="410" cy="285" r="30"/>

Thanks in advance :) 195.49.180.89 (talk) 13:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry - I eventually found it :)

<use xlink:href="#0_logo"/>

195.49.180.89 (talk) 13:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Full disk encryption

I was considering full disk encryption (via TrueCrypt, on a Mac), and had some basic FAQ-style questions that I thought people might be able to help me with.

I know the upsides of FDE. But what are the practical downsides of full disk encryption? Is there a large performance hit? Where would the performance bottleneck be located (e.g. RAM, CPU, HDD access)?

If I went with FDE, how hard would it be to reverse if I decided that I didn't like it? Is it the sort of thing you can just say, "OK, disable it now," or would that require a whole lot of work?

Thanks in advance. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It depends a lot on your CPU which will be doing a lot more work (the bottleneck is in the CPU). Truecrypt encrypts everything prior to writing to disk, and decrypts when reading...so it will make your comp appear slower (cascading will make it even more slow). Truecrypt comes with a benchmark tool, so you can see what your speed will be. As for undoing it, its a fairly straightfoward procedure...just takes a while (however long it takes to encrypt your entire hardrive + whatever else you add)...you really need to see what the benchmark tells you. Just remember that with truecrypt, if you forget your pass or the MBT and your rescue disk breaks...you can't get your data back. Smallman12q (talk) 14:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I've found truecrypt on Windows to be essentially transparent. If you use AES, it's been optimized to the point that the CPU hit is far less than my disks seem to put through. I've never had an issue. I don't know about on mac, and it has had some "concerns" from some linux distros about its license, although that's given their somewhat different standards. Shadowjams (talk) 09:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

As for undoing encryption, truecrypt does not support decrypt in place. (If you decide, that you do not want encryption, all data will have to be copied to unencrypted backup and orginal encrypted disk formatted (and data copied back)) -Yyy (talk) 09:58, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually I'm pretty sure it does for system disk encryption. On windows at least. Shadowjams (talk) 10:14, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki api in C++ language

hello... i usually develop in c++ using Qt framework. i want to make a tool related to mediawiki\wikipedia which require interacting with API and a login to the system .however, i cant find any wrapper for mediawiki api in c++, and i dont know any web language like PHP java Actionscript etc. Does anyone know of somehing like this or even an example using cURL library --Umar1996 (talk) 15:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I can't find a C or C++ library that wraps the API, but all is not lost. The API is fundamentally an HTTP GET that passes what you want in the URL and spits the data back in a variety of formats. If you can't locate a library, it's not terribly hard to do what you want yourself. Essentially you can

• perform a query with an HTTP library, retrieving the contents of a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&titles=Area_51&rvprop=content&format=json
• parse the content with an XML or JSON library (e.g. json-glib, libjson)

It's certainly more knuckledraggery than using a wrapper that abstracts this, but it should work. I'll have a check through the archives of http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api and see if anyone has done this already. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Saving information from a html form

Can I update a text file or even a SQLite file with html alone? (it would be a local html page saving the information into a local file).--Quest09 (talk) 15:52, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Not really. HTML does not have the capability to save to a file by itself. For security reasons, JavaScript cannot open/save files. It can open/save cookies. You could install something like WAMP and then use a back-end scripting language to handle the file interface while HTML handles the user interface. That is rather common. -- kainaw™ 19:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

On Windows, you can create HTML Applications which lift almost all security restrictions, and allow you to access filesystem objects and start processes through JavaScript. I've successfully used it to launch a few curl sessions and monitor their download progress by watching the download folder. To access SQLite, you would have to have it wrapped as an ActiveXObject Unilynx (talk) 22:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

HTML is a markup language; it can't specify actions. However, it's possible to embed JavaScript and ActiveX and Flash into HTML, and the web browser viewing the page has the option of executing them. In order to affect "outside" things, it's necessary to disable security restrictions, as Unilynx said, which will make it possible (in IE on Windows at least; I don't think I've heard of other browsers having that option), but I suspect that it's awkward to do things this way. Paul (Stansifer) 11:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

A HTML application is a bit different from normal HTML - it uses a .HTA extension instead of .HTML, and disables almost all restrictions by default - no restrictions to disable. But it indeed doesn't work outside of Windows or IE (although other browsers won't take over the HTA extension unless you ask them to, so anything deployed as a .HTA is quite likely to work on Windows, even if the default browser is changed.) Unilynx (talk) 15:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

PXR format, why still in Photoshop?

Curious, why would Photoshop support the PXR image format, when less than 300 of the Pixar Image Computer systems were ever sold? Why not make it just available through a plug in? -- Zanimum (talk) 19:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Aren't all Photoshop image format support via plugin? Nil Einne (talk) 20:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay well I checked in case Adobe changed things since the many years ago when I last looked and in CS4 I'm still right, all file formats are indeeded support via plugin including Pixar (pixar.8bi) Nil Einne (talk) 20:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Because Adobe never removes features from Photoshop. For example, if you go to Image --> Image Size..., there still is the "Nearest Neighbor" option within the drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog. Nearest Neighbor is less sophisticated than the other options in the list. But, it is great for expanding screen shots, because it simply enlarges pixels. Photoshop is used by creative professionals, who find creative ways to use old functions in Photoshop. There's usually two or three ways to do the same thing in PS, because of the retention of old ways of doing things.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 20:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Taking a guess at what Zanimium's question was... A perhaps useful thing to remember here is the feature was probably implemented in the late 80s. At a guess it wasn't that hard to get Adobe to add support for file formats in those days. Provide the code for the plugin and provided it's decent code and the format not patent encumbered Adobe may be willing to include that plugin as part of their official plugin code. (Of course it's also possible Adobe coded the support themselves.) Particularly if you're developing $120k machines in those days. (Remembering of course Adobe doesn't have a crystal ball, part of being a good company is predicting what your customers may want before they want it, and while it seems Pixar file format support wasn't that important it wasn't a bad guess from the info at the time it may be and anyway despite the limited success of the Pixar Image Computers, the format may have been important enough for whatever effort Adobe put in to it.) Heck, I don't actually know if it's that hard to get Adobe to support an image format nowadays.

In terms of why they haven't removed the plugin, well other then what BDE has said, the code is very likely rather simple since the format is uncompressed (on x32 and x64 CS4 Windows the plugin is the second smallest after WBMP) so likely not that hard to port between platforms or versions. I don't know enough about the 8bi plugin format but it's even possible there's no effort needed.

Also while I don't know that much about software development, from what I know in general in large organisations for a variety of reason, some bureaucracy may develop. So for people in Adobe removing any file format support may not be just a matter of doing it, even agreeing in a meeting may not be enough, perhaps someone will need to write a document explaining why they're removing it which needs to be passed up the chain. (The only real reason to remove the format may be KISS and security reasons but given the likely simplicity of the code, these probably don't matter much.)

More to the point (and somewhat in line with what BCE said), the people who did use Pixar Image Computers were likely large organisations who would be important customers to Adobe, customers who don't like unexpected changes, and customers who may sometimes maintain legacy stuff long after they were largely obsoleted. So while it's possible no one would care if pxr was removed, it's possible someone will and finding out after you removed it would be a bad idea. Sure you could survey all your customers, or hunt down whoever has ever owned Pixar Image Computers and ask them but that's will likely annoy them and it's a lot of effort for something (maintaining the support) which as I've said, is probably very little effort. And of course some people who never had Pixar Image Computers may have used (or even use) the format, as I said a lot recently, who knows? (It may even be someone in Adobe.)

P.S. I didn't notice the header of this question until now. A reminder it's always helpful to mention anything important in the actual signed question.

Nil Einne (talk) 21:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Other languages that can do COBOL business things

1) COBOL is an old language. What other languages can be used in place of COBOL (supersets of COBOL?), while still having good handling of dates and financial functions?

2) Is it really true or not that most serious business applications are still written in COBOL in the 21st century? Why? Even though COBOL may be a legacy language, why are not new programs written in something else? Thanks 92.15.28.219 (talk) 20:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

What's a serious business application? Nil Einne (talk) 20:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The sort of things that merchant banks or insurers might do for internal use. I do not mean websites. 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The largest businesses in the world typically have contracts with major software and technology services companies - like, for example, IBM. IBM writes most of its application code in the Java programming language. As mentioned earlier on this desk, Java is currently the most widely used business programming language ([according to many surveys). That means new business programs are written in Java. It is difficult to estimate the quantity of legacy systems that still run COBOL programs; I am suspicious of commonly-repeated, vague claims that 40-year-old software still runs unmodified. Some existing systems certainly do run COBOL; there are probably even new programs and modifications still being written in COBOL; but these are exceptions, not norms. Consider IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS - the objective of this current product is to help integrate COBOL systems in to (reasonable) modern platforms that use Java and XML. Other COBOL tools exist, and the market is not "small", but it is hardly the mainstream. Nimur (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Although Nimur claims that Java is the most popular business language, the reference he/she cites in support of the assertion appears to be for any programming, not just business, and is therefore invalid. Whereas this http://www.cobolportal.com/developer/future.asp?bhcp=1 says that COBOL is the most popular for business applications. 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I would think that most applications that would in ancient days of yore have been done in COBOL would nowadays make use of databases and languages such as SQL. Looie496 (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The link the argumentative OP cites is to a "survey taken of professional business and industry employers who are using COBOL in their information systems". Presumably if you surveyed "professional business and industry employers who are using JAVA blah blah blah" you'd get a completely different impression. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I think SQL does not have any financial functions, so it would not be much use. 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It is true that there is a lot of COBOL code lying around: [16]. But, I think that those programs are mostly old apps. Hardly any new programs are written in COBOL. Many of the old COBOL programs in use aren't being updated or even patched. If you look on job web sites for COBOL positions, you won't find very many. Most job openings are for other technologies like Java and .NET. I haven't worked with Java much, but .NET contains quite a few financial and temporal functions and data types, making it popular with businesses.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 21:12, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Reading the article you linked to (aqnd ignoring the slight spin put on by the author) gives the opposite impression: eg 62% of organisations use COBOL, and it is the 2nd most popular language. 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

On CareerBuilder.com, you will find 550 jobs if you search for the term "COBOL." If you search for "Java," you will find 7,431 jobs. If you search for ".NET" you will find 3,179 jobs. If it's the second-most popular language, why is it the least in-demand language in the workforce? Employers must not need much COBOL to be written, either as patches or new programs. Although there are programs in use that were written in COBOL, there are not many new programs written in COBOL. That's the conclusion I come to after reading that article and looking on a job board. In the article I linked to, there is a chart at the bottom showing that only 58% of the companies that use COBOL are using it to develop new applications.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

"Only" 58%! Thats over half of them! 92.15.28.219 (talk) 22:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

If 62% use COBOL, and 58% are writing new COBOL applications, then at most only 6% of COBOL users are dropping it for something else. 92.24.191.1 (talk) 09:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Considering the job market for COBOL (it took me seconds to find an ad for a contract Cobol/CICS developer position in France, among many others) I would say there is still plenty of need for development in Cobol. Though, I strongly suspect most of the roles are related to maintaining legacy code rather than developing completely new systems. Astronaut (talk) 21:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

On CareerBuilder.com, you will find 550 jobs if you search for the term "COBOL." If you search for "Java," you will find 7,431 jobs. If you search for ".NET" you will find 3,179 jobs.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers to question 2). Are there any answers to question 1) please? 92.24.191.1 (talk) 09:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Why do you ask? You seem to have already made up your mind. You probably knew the answer to both long before asking about them here. Nimur and I both suggested some languages, but why would you listen when you already know everything about it?--Best Dog Ever (talk) 09:44, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't know the answers - be pointless asking wouldnt it? Nobody has confirmed that SQL or Java include the similar date and financial functions that I assume COBOL has. People have seemingly just plugged their favourite language. I'm doubtful if a database language would have financial functions, but I do not know. 92.24.191.1 (talk) 10:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

No-one buys into your assumption that such functions are a necessary precondition of the language being of use in financial software contexts. In short, you assume COBOL has some functionality and you assume that JAVA does not, and so you reject the clear and repeated answer to your question. Somewhat solipsistic. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:53, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Surely having financial and date functions makes writing a financial application easier and quicker? I cannot imagine that anyone would prefer to use a language that did not have them. (I'll ignore the personal digs, and bow to your superior vocabulary). 92.24.191.1 (talk) 11:17, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Having special functions for specialised needs does of course make things easier. That's presumably why we find the ability to add libraries of such functions to JAVA. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. An answer to 1 is SQL and JAVA. All of the work I've known about or been associated with for financial institutions (e.g. Nomura, Goldmans & others) has used these two. You harp on about "lack of date and financial functions" as if entirely unaware that should there be need for functions unsupported in JAVA, these can and are added as class libraries. We can only answer the question so many times before we get bored with your rejection. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think mentioning it once counts as "harping on". 92.24.191.1 (talk) 10:53, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

An anecdote: Because I am a good Cobol programmer, I have had three Cobol contracts in the last ten years. All three were with large organizations (two companies and the government). All three jobs were basically the same. They have a Cobol application that has been in place for decades and they want it rewritten in Java. So, I do a rough rewrite and then a team of Java developers come in and pretty up the thing. I see Cobol turning into the same type of language as Ada and Mumps. There will always be organizations using Ada (Air Force) and Mumps (VA), but use is shrinking, not growing. -- kainaw™ 12:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

At various times throughout the discussion, I prepared a response, but decided not to submit, because I believe the OP does not want to hear reality and may be trying to spark a debate. But I can't hold back. Like Kainaw, I have seen wild COBOL in its native habitat - large organizations and the government, and seen the functions it provided being actively replaced by new, better software. Java provides extremely powerful, simple, and localizable, compatible time, date, and calendar functions. It supports all types of mathematical and financial calculations. And it is a modern language with an enormous reservoir of talent. Java is also compatible with all the gimmicky fad-technologies of the day - simply because more Java is being written today. But not all technology progress is a "fad." For example, the Java language also seamlessly provides the facilities of the internet protocol - something COBOL will struggle with, even in today's latest and greatest COBOL incarnations. The oft-repeated claim about "banks and insurance companies" who have mysterious vaults of System-360 machines from 1967 is a misrepresentation of reality. Large organizations like banks and insurance companies have lots of money to invest in the newest, latest, greatest hardware and software - and can afford the consultants, contractors, service-company affiliations, and in-house developers to upgrade their systems. Production data centers are more like a factory-floor than a cathedral crypt. Old and outdated cruft gets replaced, not worshipped. COBOL had its strengths, and still serves in some cases where a suitable alternative has not yet been feasible, but it is severely diminishing in importance as new languages like Java and .NET steal the big "business software" market. Probably most surprising to the OP is that most COBOL currently runs in a Java virtual machine - and probably on ia32/ia64 hardware on linux. (Because of virtual machine advances - it doesn't matter what platform/architecture your code targeted). Our article, enterprise software, might help you gain some contextual insights into what business software actually looks like in 2010. It is still quite different from ordinary application-programming, and some specialized hardware still exists, but there are very few shops that still seek to buy "mainframes" and run COBOL on them as if it were 1980. Nimur (talk) 14:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

There are possibly more things that can get you into trouble if you naively program in Java. Rounding and formatting are the two where I have seen most errors. Java is quite capable of doing these but if you take a "general purpose" Java programmer and give them a financial application to write then there is a fair chance they will trip up. Also one of the difficulties is that often new programs have to be wedged into old systems, which means reading fixed format records, etc. These again can be done in Java but they are the "bread and butter" of Cobol and seem a bit unnatural. For a completely new application you would probably use XML in Java, which is much more flexible than fixed format records but almost impossible to deal with in Cobol. The company I work for has written tactical new programs in Java, while our long term strategy is to move to a Java/XML/SOA environment. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Toy language or game to teach Object-oriented programming?

I started amateur programming before any object-orientated languages were around, so the OO methodology is new unknown and confuising to me. I tried to learn it by reading a book about it, but it was heavy going and I gave up after a few pages. Is there any easy instructional language or game that would teach me about OO programming? I am happy to use things designed for kids. Thanks 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you will find this Object Oriented COBOL tutorial helpful? Nimur (talk) 21:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Joking aside, if you want to learn an object oriented language, there is no surrogate for Java. It is entirely free software - the specification and its implementation are both freely licensed (see OpenJDK); and there is also widespread commercial support in the form of service companies and commercial implementations of the language and its platform. Furthermore, the official Java Tutorial sequence is free and includes everything you need to know - from design paradigms to syntax to complete working code examples. The "Specialized Trails and Lessons" section has complete tutorials for a variety of the most common O.O. tasks - making a web program, making a graphical user interface, making a small game, and so on. Nimur (talk) 21:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

No need to keep on plugging Java, thanks. In any case it is not the toy language or game I was asking about. 92.15.28.219 (talk) 21:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

This sounds exactly like Smalltalk. Smalltalk is simple and elegant and frequently thought of as a teaching language. It's not designed for kids, though it's sometimes used for teaching kids, and Squeak is much more brightly-colored and cheerful than, say . It's also truly object-oriented. Java and C++ are messy compromises (C++ was once famously described as being object-oriented in the sense that nailing four legs to a dog makes it an octopus) with huge specifications. Smalltalk is therefore much more pleasant to work in, at the expense of running slower. The main disadvantage is that if you ever have to sit down to write some Java and have to type out for(i = 0; i < something.length(); i++) { you will know what you're missing. However, knowing a programming language's weaknesses makes you a better programmer, so the fact that simple and elegant languages (Scheme, Smalltalk, and even C) are rarely used should not dissuade you from learning them. Paul (Stansifer) 03:11, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree Squeak could be a good idea for this purpose. Like all early Smalltalks (as far as I know), it provides basically a wiki-like programming environment, and this is essentially where object orientation started.

Of course there are various degrees to which a language may or may not be object oriented. You might want to try Lua (programming language). This is a minimalist language very close to the spirit of BASIC, so it is extremely easy to learn. Like Perl, Python and Ruby, it has a certain degree of object orientation which is built from hashes + syntactic sugar. The basic idea is that you can write hash.field for hash["field"] and you can store functions and objects there just like a number or string. Then if hash.field contains a function that takes two arguments, you can invoke hash.field(x,y). An object is simply such a hash that has a number of such functions. Since several objects typically form a "class" of objects/hashes that share basically the same functions, it is convenient to write the functions so that they can be shared, i.e. hash1.field = hash2.field. But typically the functions need to know which hash they belong to, so you pass that as the first argument: hash1.function(hash1, x, y). And because this occurs so often, there is an abbreviation for it: hash1:function(x,y) = hash1.function(hash1, x, y).

I think this implementation-based approach to object orientation should be a lot easier for getting started. Once you have become accustomed to that, you can still read the religious, dogmatic accounts of object orientation and concentrate on the various sects with their different attitudes to inheritance. Hans Adler 07:56, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

You might be interested in BlueJ. APL (talk) 04:27, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

What do people think of Etoys (programming language)? 92.24.191.1 (talk) 09:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't programmed in Squeak/Etoys myself, but I know a few who have, and they spoke highly of it. You might also want to consider Alice, which I use to introduce some of my students to OO programming in first year, as it provides an easy interface and a quick, but fairly solid, introduction. A few of my students have also tried Game Maker before they arrive at uni, and I gave my son a shot at it - he seemed to enjoy it. I've only coded enough in it to help him out, which wasn't much, but it is OO and would probably do what you have in mind. - Bilby (talk) 09:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Is Logo at all OO? 92.24.191.1 (talk) 11:07, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

There are a few versions that are OO, from memory. Object Logo springs to mind, although I don't think it is still supported. I wrote my own OO-ish Logo interpreter some time ago, but it isn't really suited for anything but demos of how OO works. Interestingly, Etoys is pretty much Logo, so I'd lean towards that per your suggestion before. - Bilby (talk) 11:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

October 19

Windows application icons

What does it mean when Windows, instead of using a program's regular icon, uses that generic looking icon for a program? I can't really describe what I'm thinking of... And the signal to noise ratio on searches for "windows icon" is too high to come up with anything useful.

Let me describe what I saw and maybe it'll help understand what I'm thinking of. I just saw my manager's laptop desktop. On it was the installers for iTunes, RealPlayer, FlashPlayer, two different versions of Firefox (one of them was Firefox 2), and three different versions of Adobe Reader. A utility for setting up a WLAN and another for adding a printer (neither of which he ever has to do on any sort of timely basis). In addition to all that (amongst the 40+ icons on his desktop) were those generic Windows icons.

Would they be shortcut icons for programs that no longer exist and therefore don't have the proper icon? Dismas|^(talk) 00:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Was it one of these standard Windows icons? If a program file does not contain the icon, or specify the external location for its icon properly, Windows will default to one of its shell icons. The specific icon used will depend on file type, shell settings, and so on. Nimur (talk) 00:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep, it looked like the icon in the first image at location (0,-2), if we're using a standard (x,y) Cartesian coordinate system. I'm figuring that he deleted the programs that they were tied to but didn't get the icon on the desktop. Dismas|^(talk) 00:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

That would cause the effect you described. It may also have had some other issue loading the proper icon and given up. There are exotic possibilities, but a common one would be that they were links to programs on a network drive that wasn't currently connected. APL (talk) 04:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Or a Removable Drive. Or the target has been moved somewhere else or deleted. Sir Stupidity (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

gcc problem

Hi. I'm trying to compile gcc 4.5.1 (needed for emacs) and SVNed that latest revision (165682). Although it configures fine, compiling throws the following error:

/home/rksh/scratch/gcc/host-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/gcc/xgcc -B/home/rksh/scratch/gcc/host-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/gcc/ -B/usr/local/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/ -B/usr/local/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib/ -isystem /usr/local/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/include -isystem /usr/local/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/sys-include    -g -O2 -m32 -O2  -g -O2 -DIN_GCC   -W -Wall -Wwrite-strings -Wcast-qual -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wold-style-definition  -isystem ./include  -fPIC -g -DHAVE_GTHR_DEFAULT -DIN_LIBGCC2 -D__GCC_FLOAT_NOT_NEEDED   -I. -I. -I../../../host-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/gcc -I../../.././libgcc -I../../.././libgcc/. -I../../.././libgcc/../gcc -I../../.././libgcc/../include -I../../.././libgcc/config/libbid -DENABLE_DECIMAL_BID_FORMAT -DHAVE_CC_TLS  -DUSE_TLS -o _muldi3.o -MT _muldi3.o -MD -MP -MF _muldi3.dep -DL_muldi3 -c ../../.././libgcc/../gcc/libgcc2.c \
          -fvisibility=hidden -DHIDE_EXPORTS
In file included from /usr/include/features.h:371:0,
                from /usr/include/stdio.h:28,
                from ../../.././libgcc/../gcc/tsystem.h:87,
                from ../../.././libgcc/../gcc/libgcc2.c:29:
/usr/include/gnu/stubs.h:7:27: fatal error: gnu/stubs-32.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[5]: *** [_muldi3.o] Error 1
make[5]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/scratch/gcc/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/32/libgcc'
make[4]: *** [multi-do] Error 1
make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/scratch/gcc/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/libgcc'
make[3]: *** [all-multi] Error 2
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/scratch/gcc/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/libgcc'
make[2]: *** [all-stage1-target-libgcc] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/scratch/gcc'
make[1]: *** [stage1-bubble] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/scratch/gcc'
make: *** [all] Error 2
HPS223:~/scratch/gcc%

Googling seemed to reveal that others have had similar problems, but no solution. Does anyone have any ideas? Robinh (talk) 08:30, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

(OP here). Thanks to a local guru, I have answered my own question: the trick was to install glibc-devel-32bit, which was unintuitive seeing as my system is a 64 bit SuSe installation. Thanks anyway, Robinh (talk) 08:43, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

AVG slows down my computer significantly

I've had various versions of AVG Antivirus Free on my Vista laptop since I bought it in late 2007 or early 2008. Yesterday, I downloaded the 2011 edition, and since that time, my computer has been functioning far slower: it's almost as slow as the computer used to be when the full computer scan was running, but I've checked and confirmed that the scan is not running currently, and the slowness continues. Any ideas what I could do to improve performance? I downloaded this program from the AVG website, so I know that it's not some odd sort of virus in disguise. Nyttend (talk) 12:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I used to use AVG too and found it slowed the computer an unacceptable amount. I switched to Avira which is a free (for non-commercial use) antivirus program that runs so much faster and uses less memory. I know that's not the best answer to your question considering you obviously want your paid for AVG to work fast, but if you run out of other options give Avira a try. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:14, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

wget time-stamping

With the -N option in wget it checks whether the remote file is newer than the local file, and downloads it if it is. However it also checks the size of the file; "If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps say." I've found with some sites that the size of the remote html files sometimes change (presumably adverts or something) but the page has not been modified in any way, the content is exactly the same, and the last modified headers are the same as they were previously. In these instances wget downloads all the pages again. How can I stop this? I want wget to only check the last modified headers, not the size of the files. I've looked through the wget guide but can't find any way to stop this. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I may be confused but how can the remote HTML file size change but it not be modified in any way? Surely there must be some difference even if only in blank spaces or links to ads or whatever? Nil Einne (talk) 14:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

In terms of the wider question, I can find several people who've asked but no one has offered any suggestions other then use something else. That and the lack of anything in the documents suggests to me it isn't a currently supported option. Nil Einne (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

If you care that much about it, why don't you just recompile wget? Surely the part of the check that looks at the file size in addition to date must be like ONE LINE, and you comment it out and it's done. It'll take you like 2 minutes to find that line, and if you're on Windows and haven't used Linux or C before, like no more than 200 hours to be totally used to your Linux environment and to recompiling everything from source, along with learning enough C to be able to make meaningful source-code changes. That's the beauty of open-source. Get to it -- you won't have much of a beard after just 200 hours, and if you wanted to make meaningful kernel-level changes we're talking more like 20,000 hours, but we all had to start somewhere...84.153.229.95 (talk) 15:54, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

cURL is a bit more modern alternative to wget; so consider checking it. I can't see an exact option for what you want, but the cURL documentation is extensive, and I haven't checked it all. cURL also has a programmer's API so you could write custom logic to analyze the HTTP metadata libcurl returns. Or you can call curl from the command line to spit out headers or HTTP metadata and process that with a script. Nimur (talk) 15:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

.bif file

Hi! do u know where can I find the bif file on a sd mem card? T.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 15:58, 19 October 2010 (UTC)