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November 18

Post compile array size definition in Pascal

I'd like to create an array such as the type:

truthtable : array [1..n,1..x] of boolean;

in pascal after having used readln(n), and x:=n-1 to get the variables.

As far as I can tell the compiler only allows constants in the definition. Excluding creating a block of memory at run time and not using an array is there a work around ? 83.100.237.223 (talk) 01:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You should use a dynamic array:

var
  truthtable: array of boolean;
begin
  SetLength(truthtable, n, x);
  // Now you got truthtable as an array[0..n-1, 0..x-1] of boolean
end;

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks . Actually worked with

var
 truthtable : array of array of boolean;
 ...etc

83.100.237.223 (talk) 18:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Programming language

So I'm thinking about learning a more "hardcore" programming language.

I work on a Mac (so no Visual Studio products). I am pretty proficient with PHP, Javascript, VBScript, and Actionscript. I can meddle with VB.NET but I haven't used it as much as I could. I pick up things pretty quickly and have a fairly good programming mind. I know the basics of programming logic and object oriented programming. Of the languages I know, I find PHP the most straightforward and VBScript the least straightforward. What I like about PHP is I find it very easy to translate the logical structure in my head into the code on the page, without having to jump through too many jargony hoops, if that makes sense.

What's a good next step? I'd like whatever language I use to not involve too much meddling with the nuts and bolts of computer memory. I'd like it to be cross-platform enough to develop on my Mac, but to make programs that could theoretically be ported to PCs. I'd like it to be able to create GUI programs that look pretty good. The programs it make ought to be easily distributable as binaries.

I'm not 100% sure what I'd use it for at this point — I make lots of little things, and find that obviously having the capacity to use the language inspires me to have ideas as to what to make with it. My general model will probably be to get a "how to learn language X" book and work through it first, whatever the language.

I'm leaning towards Java. It seems to allow more portability than most others, seems to be relatively flexible and popular, and seems like it would open up opportunities for using it, say, in conjunction mobile apps.

Any other suggestions, thoughts, warnings? I understand this is entire subjective. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:57, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

If you are programming applications for "PC users," I would vote for Java as the best all-around power and tradeoff between portability, functionality, performance, and (this is critical), quality of free tools and documentation. If you decide to program embedded devices at a low level, there's no substitute for C. But nowadays, many "mobile" devices like phones and ipods provide platform-specific programming environments - so you often have to target a specific brand/technology and use that set of tools. Nimur (talk) 02:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

At first sight there doesn't seem to be much choice for languages with good GUI support, (no .NET on the mac). As you don't want nuts and bolts C++ sounds like a non starter - the main difference is the need to do memory management yourself - depending on the scope of your programs that might not be a big issue, or you might find you enjoy the task. There are some other options though, notably Ada and Lisp which can be used with the Qt widget toolkit amongst others.

I guess that when you say 'hardcore' you mean faster. Ada is fast, and a nice easy language to read, unfortunately it doesn't have a total feature set on either GTk of Qt widget toolkits according to the wikipedia articles. Lisp is well supported (in terms of GUI stuff etc) and is a totally different kettle of fish, it's just something you'd have to look at yourself to see if you think it'll be useful to you. There are also some other ALGOL descendents that have 'rapid gui development tools' - such as pascal + Lazarus (software) or other gui builders. Pascal is a bit old though, I'm not sure how well it would adapt to a network type setup. None of these would be of much use on a mobile device though as far as I know.

The page Comparison of integrated development environments might be useful - not all the IDE's listed will have the features you want - but it's a good place to start browsing.83.100.237.223 (talk) 03:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what would constitute a "hardcore language"...especially since you don't want to learn pointers. Java/.Net would be pretty good... REALbasic also has cross-platform support. You might also want to see Comparison of C Sharp and Java.Smallman12q (talk) 15:10, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I just want to note that I've played with REALbasic before and found it too primitive for my needs, and not cross-platform enough where it counted. It's like VB6 that works on a Mac, basically, which will get you so far but what I'm hoping for is something that lets me not rely on third parties to write plug ins and things like that so heavily. There are things it can't do at all (like adequate PDF support, or even the ability to use standard PDF viewer plugins) that are kind of musts for anything I want to invest a lot of time in. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

C, Perl. Java™ isn't remotely hardcore, it's what they teach kids at university instead of Pascal, because after a long time people figured out Pascal wasn't hardcore, so they had to switch to something else, and they'll have to again, eventually. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Java, or at least give it a gander. I appreciate your taking the time to try and make sense of my notably subjective terms and requests. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

External SATA + operating system

About 8 months ago, I bought a used computer which came installed with Windows XP or Vista (I can't remember which; probably the latter). You can actually read about it here (although I ended up buying a d620 not d520). As such I have two SATA hard drives:

• One 250MB, which I use primarily and run Ubuntu on
• One ~80GB, which is collecting dust in storage

I have a few questions about this setup:

1. If I place my secondary hard drive into an external USB like this[1], will it work?
2. Is it possible to run Windows from a USB while I have the first hard disk still attached? Windows is pretty pissy about sharing a computer with another OS. And is it wise to run Windows from a USB? I'm only doing it because there are games that can't play on Linux (Wine is utterly resistant to fixing the bug plugging up Sims 2 [2], and I don't have enough knowledge of remote programming - let alone modern 3D graphics - to fix the bug for Wine).
3. Will I run into any sort of issues with the Software Protection Platform locking me out because the hardware configuration has changed (the product key was activated by the vendor before they shipped me the laptop)?

Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:28, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

For Question 1 : While yes it seems to work (All SATA drives) Are you sure it's two drives or is it just 2 separate partitions? Just check if you are not sure (Seems you don't have XP. If you do, go to Disk Management)

For Question 2 : Yes, but it may be laggy. It depends on the disk speed (most likely 7200 rpm) of the hard drive, but I don't think there would be any problems. Just make sure the hard drive is not one of those eco ones that just go to standby and takes a few seconds to spin again, or you may see lag. But that's unlikely.

No idea for Question 3, sorry. Good Luck! General Rommel (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, considering that the other disk is collecting dust in the basement, yes, I'm quite sure it's not a virtual drive. ;) Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Also some searching finally turned up [3], but I don't think I have the CD. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Here at work, I use Ubuntu as my primary desktop environment. The machine also came with a separate partition with Windows XP installed, and GRUB gives me the choice to boot into Ubuntu or Windows. That's fine, but I have need of more regular access to Windows XP without leaving Ubuntu (mainly because the company's Exchange server works so much better with the Microsoft Outlook mail client than, say, Thunderbird), so I have switched from the dual-boot setup to running XP in a virtual machine, and I must say it is pretty seamless. I would recommend you give it a go, and you can always delete the virtual machine if you find it's not for you.

As for potential problems with SPP, I think you would encounter some problems but you should be able to simply re-activate it (though you might have to call the activation helpdesk and explain you have shifted it to a virtual machine). 212.123.243.220 (talk) 12:30, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, if you don't have an XP/Vista installation CD and you don't have the Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity still attached to the machine, you might not be able to install Windows in a virtual machine. 212.123.243.220 (talk) 12:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

No, I use VirtualBox, but it has no support for DirectX. Virtual OS's are not good for gaming. Magog the Ogre (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm moving this section back to the bottom to get more input. Magog the Ogre (talk) 02:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Samsung Syncmaster 797MB monitor OSD

What does NP, PP and NN means in following context?

81. 3k 100 hz NP

60. 0k 75 hz PP

56. 4k 70 hz NN

Jib-boom (talk) 04:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

81.3k is 81.3kHz the frequency of the signal the monitor receives through the VGA cable

100Hz is the monitor refresh rate

NP refers to the polarity of the input signal (eg N negative, P positive)

If you follow this link [4] you can read what it say in the manual (page 33) - though it doesn't say a lot.83.100.237.223 (talk) 05:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

How to reset game in old Xbox

How do I delete game memory in my Xbox so that it resets to default? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.255.2.65 (talk) 08:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Go to memory, select the game slot and click delete.

No add/remove programs in my settings folder!! what can i do to uninstall?

it's win 2003 srv std ed. thanx --217.194.34.103 (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps discuss it further? Has this occurred recently, has other strange things happened? Perhaps there is a virus? General Rommel (talk) 11:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c)

Is the icon itself missing or is the problem that when you click on the icon, the add/remove programs pane does not appear or is not populated with programs? If the first, searching suggests these possible solutions:

Make sure you are logged in as administrator

Make sure the icons are not appearing out of order (ie. the add/remove programs icon is there, but the icons are not sorted alphabetically)

Run "appwiz.cpl" (no quote marks). Does the Add/Remove programs dialog start? ([5]) - some other options there, although it is not aimed at Windows Server 2003.

If the second, consider this. Also consider rolling back any changes you have made recently. Depending on your setup, it could also be caused by a group policy setting. --Kateshortforbob _talk 11:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Count valid English vocabularies

10,000+ strings consisted of a-z are generated randomly, and all of them are shorter than 5 letters. Now I want to count how many strings are valid English vocabularies, so I need a method or a program to do this work, could you help me?--Merry Rabbit 09:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

There are many. First you need a list of valid words - see e.g. this page. The simplest solution then is to just read the word list into an efficient data structure (a Python dict or set would do fine), and then check for each of the generated words if it is in the word list. If your data structure is O(1), the word list has n elements and your test set has m elements, overall performance is O(n)+O(m) (n for loading the dictionary with the n words from the list, m for checking each of the m words). Here is an example implementation for recent Linux/Python systems using the normal /usr/share/dict/words list as the source and a hard-coded file name for your candidates:

#!/usr/bin/env python

english = set()

# Use UNIX word list - probably not the best...
fp = open("/usr/share/dict/words")
for i in fp:
    english.add(i)
fp.close()

count = 0
english_words = 0

# Hard coded, one word per line.
fp = open("mywords")
for i in fp:
    count = count+1
    if i in english:
        english_words = english_words+1
fp.close()

print "Read ", count, " words", english_words, " are english words"

--Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

If no string appears twice in the list, you can make do without any programming. Let a be the file with your strings, one per line, and let b be a reference list of English words in the same format, such as /usr/share/dict/words suggested above. Count the number of lines in a, in b, and the number of distinct lines in their union:

$ wc -l a
10000
$ wc -l b
479625
$ sort -u a b|wc -l
487576

Then the number of English words in a is the sum of the first two numbers minus the third number (in my example, 10000 + 479625 − 487576 = 2049).—Emil J. 15:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Now that I had a look on the first few pages of my /usr/share/dict/words, I wouldn't consider most of the garbage listed to be actual English words, so this is not a particularly reliable source to obtain a meaningful answer.—Emil J. 15:07, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Encryption master key held by the Chinese

New York Times informs that the Chinese rerouted much of the Internet traffic through Chinese servers on 2 occasions last spring. The article notes that "While sensitive data such as e-mails and commercial transactions are generally encrypted before being transmitted, the Chinese government holds a copy of an encryption master key, and there was speculation that China might have used it to break the encryption on some of the misdirected Internet traffic." What key is that? What's the point to encrypt secret military emails with a code that could be broken by the Chinese government??? 93.172.63.225 (talk) 10:43, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

While "the Chinese government holds a copy of an encryption master key" is most likely true in the literal sense, it's also irrelevant. The internet is an end-to-end network, and all really sensitive data should be encrypted directly by the participants, using trusted encryption methods which do not have or require a "master key". Most protocols use asymmetric public key cryptography to transmit one-time session keys, and something like AES for the actual data. The NYT article seems to be badly confused, as it speaks about "web traffic routes" - there is no such thing. They probably mean IP routes. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not at all clear what that means. I suppose the following might be what they mean is that, in addition to being able to route all traffic, read and change unencrypted traffic, a government-backed attacker can also compromise a certificate authority based in that country (something that's very very difficult for anyone else to achieve). That could, kinda, lead to some capacity to "intercept" SSL traffic, but at a cost. The report talks about China, which would entail compromising China's CA, and as there isn't a shred of evidence that that has happened, I'll write an explanation for the imaginary country of Brobdingnag, whose top-level name is .bro, and in which BROBNIC is the country's domain registrar and certificate authority. Here we go:

• agents of the dreaded Brobdingnag intelligence service hack into ISPs and force traffic to be redirected via a datacentre in Brobdingnag
• you visit gmail.com (with unencrypted http)
• the server in Brobdingnag sends your browser (again unencrypted) a redirect, making it go to googlemail.co.bro (a server they operate) on an https connection
• your browser tries to verify its SSL key with one of the certificate authorities it knows about a priori (e.g. Firefox's list is https://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/included/) - you'll have to imagine BROBNIC is also listed there
• for that domain the certificate authority is registered with a certificate authority: BROBNIC
• as BROBNIC has been leaned on by the Brobdingnag intelligence service, it confirms the SSL certificate and says the certificate is owned by "Google Inc."
• your browser then establishes an SSL connection with that service, which acts as a man-in-the-middle proxy between you and the real google mail; they're one end of that connection, so they can read (and change) your gmail traffic.

But that article says it's all "speculation" (twice) and that there's "no evidence" of any of this actually having happened. If the above happened, lots of network admins would have noticed that the wrong CA was being asked for sites, and big sites like Google would have noticed (by dint of their own automatic testing) that stuff that should have been going to gmail.com was going somewhere else entirely. This would have immediately implicated the compromised CA. So browser manufacturers would remove BROBNIC from their list of trusted CAs. That would mean no-one would be able to establish a verified SSL connection with any .bro domain. This ruins the reputation of BROBNIC and the entire internet industry of Brobdingnag. Note this all holds for the public-key infrastructure that allows you, a regular person, to find out the SSL public key for Google using your web browser (it does entail you trusting the CAs). A more secure network (which surely any decent military operates) can rely on clients having more a priori knowledge and using clients that insist on connecting to an IP address they know with a key they already have (in practice they'd have a VPN to a specific IP with a specific key, which can't be fooled by the above mechanism). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Your answer is excellent and clear 93.172.57.34 (talk) 13:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

PPP connection with Ubuntu II

Follow-up to: [[6]] above.

Now, I am at list getting the IP and some traffic is flowing through the network.

Extended content

GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Ignoring malformed input line: ";Do NOT edit this file by hand!" GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Cannot get information for serial port. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Initializing modem. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Sending: ATZ GNOME PPP: STDERR: ATZ GNOME PPP: STDERR: OK GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 GNOME PPP: STDERR: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 GNOME PPP: STDERR: OK GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Modem initialized. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Sending: ATM1L1DP*99# GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Waiting for carrier. GNOME PPP: STDERR: ATM1L1DP*99# GNOME PPP: STDERR: CONNECT GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Starting pppd at Wed Nov 17 21:59:09 2010 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Pid of pppd: 7875 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Using interface ppp0 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Authentication (CHAP) started GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Authentication (CHAP) successful GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> local IP address 212.169.177.2 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> remote IP address 10.64.64.64 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> primary DNS address 85.62.229.133 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> secondary DNS address 85.62.229.134 GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Script /etc/ppp/ip-up run successful GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Default route Ok. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> warning, can't find address for `www.suse.de` GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> warning, address lookup does not work GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Nameserver (DNS) failure, the connection may not work. GNOME PPP: STDERR: --> Connected... Press Ctrl-C to disconnect

But, I still cannot navigate. There's a problem (see above at the end) with the DNS and the browser cannot resolve any address.

My config file for wvdial is:

Extended content
[Dialer CARREFOURINTERNET] Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 Baud = 115200 Init = ATZ Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","CARREFOURINTERNET" Phone = *99# ISDN = off Username = '' Password = '' New PPPD = yes Stupid Mode = 1 Dial Command = ATDT

I have the impression that the problem lyes in the init strings, since when I changed them, I also got an IP. By the way, what do this init strings mean anyway? Mr.K. (talk) 10:55, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Solved, I added ,,0,0 at the end of Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","CARREFOURINTERNET". However, why did this ,,0,0 work? Mr.K. (talk) 13:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems that CGDCONT thing sets up the PDP Context; this article shows the meanings of the values of its parameters, and this explains (a bit) more. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Saving Hotmail emails to hard disk

What is the best way to save Hotmail emails to hard disk? Not doing them manually, as that would take weeks. I only have Outlook Express available (but not used) as I deleted MS Office some time ago. I'd prefer some freeware gismo that would just do it without too much complication. I use WinXP. Thanks 92.24.187.23 (talk) 13:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You could use Windows Live Mail to export the messages.Smallman12q (talk) 15:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Easy script language to back up data to a pen drive

I use WinXP. I have a small pen drive pernamently stuck into the back of my computer. I would like to be able to copy c:/mydata to e:/backup. In fact I'd like to copy to backup2, then when that is copied without any problems to delete backup1; and then next time to copy from mydata to backup1 and then delete backup2. What would be an easy script language to write this in please?

I would like this script to operate as part of the closing-down procedure of the computer: how do I get it to do that please? Thanks 92.24.187.23 (talk) 13:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You'd like to make a copy of your entire hard drive each time you shut down(this would be inefficient)? Or a specific directory?Smallman12q (talk) 15:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Just the small directory mydata. 92.15.5.101 (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, what script languages can copy directories and their contents easily (eg "copy c:mydata e:backup"), and would be suited to the above task? Thanks 92.29.125.34 (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

A Batch file, Shell script, or a macro language such as AutoIt. Smallman12q (talk) 14:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Would FreeBasic be a macro language? Thanks 92.24.181.96 (talk) 23:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I think there is a windows port of rsync. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 07:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Camera timer capture and filenames

I want a Windows program which can take a picture with an attached digital camera every 1 hour. So far in my searches I've only found this which works perfectly except that it overwrites the image each time it takes a new one. I tried using %date% %time% as the filename in the save as dialogue box, so that each time the program takes a picture it doesn't overwrite the previous file, but it doesn't work sine %date% and %time% output using : separate the digits, and : is not allowed in Windows filenames. Are there any other programs which I could try, or perhaps a way to get a timestamp from Windows without : in it? The OS is Windows XP 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

What you want is a webcam program. There are literally thousands of them. You want one with archiving capability. You won't be saving the image to a webpage (the webcam part), but you will be archiving it locally. I use camE, but I use Linux, not Windows. Searching for "webcam program with archiving" will locate more programs that you will want to look through. -- kainaw™ 15:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

what percent of the area of a 17" macbook pro scren does a 15" macbook pro screen have?

Thanks. 84.153.193.81 (talk) 16:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like homework. You know that both screens are rectangles and that the width measurement is from one corner to its opposite at a 90º angle. Do a little trig and it should be no problem to figure out their areas and thus the percentages. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

No trig required, surely ? Just use area ratio = square of linear ratio (assuming screens have the same aspect ratio). Gandalf61 (talk) 16:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't sure they wanted to make that assumption. (All Macbook Pros probably have the same aspect ratio, but not all Mac laptops.) It's worth noting that the 15" is really 15.4" when you get down to it. Of course, if you wanted to take the really easy way out, you can get the pixel counts from the MacBook Pro article. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

it wasn't homework, but I have mild mental retardation and am not able to do "trig" or other math like that, I just wondered what the screen percentage is. Thanks for your understnading. 84.153.193.81 (talk) 16:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

If you look at MacBook_Pro#Technical_specifications, you'll see that that a 15.4 inch screen(1,440 × 900) has 73% of the pixels of a 17 inch(1,680 × 1,050).Smallman12q (talk)

...or, in round terms, about three quarters. Gandalf61 (talk) 17:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Hang on if you want to compare screen size by area, are you sure both have exactly the same Pixel density? Nil Einne (talk) 07:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

If the screen do not have the same pixel density, and you are comparing them by screen area, then the 15.4" screen has approximately 82% of the screen-area of the 17" screen. This is, of course, presuming that both screens have the same aspect ratio. Rocketshiporion♫ 03:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Flash ad archive

Is there a flash advert archive somewhere online?Smallman12q (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Coloribus maybe? 92.15.13.70 (talk) 20:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting site, but it doesn't seem to have flash ads, only tv/print ads.Smallman12q (talk) 21:46, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Restrict printer

I have a printer set up on my house PC but the kids keep printing out picture using up all my ink, is there a way I can prevent them from printing from their user accounts, their user accounts are not set up with admin privileges. Mo ainm~Talk 19:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Probably, but first you need to tell us what version of Windows you are using. XP, Vista, 7? --Mr.98 (talk) 19:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Low-tech solution.... Take away network access from them. No Facebook. No Twitter. No games. It won't take long for them to agree to stop printing just to get back online. -- kainaw™ 19:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Tried a clip round the ear and that didn't work ;) Thought about removing network access but then they hit me with "I need it for school" so thats not an option. Using Windows XP. Mo ainm~Talk 20:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Allow them to use it for school but nothing else? If that doesn't work you may have other problems, but a quick and dirty solution is just disable stuff they won't need for school like Facebook, twitter, Youtube, etc. Anyway as for your question, I would guess in most versions of Windows just click on the properties of the printer and disable all permissions for the printer for accounts you don't want to have access. Of course you need to have the security tab which may not show up in some versions of Windows. See [7] or [8] for XP specific info. Nil Einne (talk) 21:15, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Images not showing up

One my website, Leubantia Wiki, the flags of Republic of Macedonia, Paraguay, Honduras, Romania, Croatia, Nigeria, Belgium, Estonia, Slovakia, Peru, Republic of Ireland, Gabon, Costa Rica, USA, Algeria, Georgia (country), and many, many more images are not showing up. I do not have a clue why so many images are not showing up. My computer must, but maybe not, have a virus or something... Also, when I try to re-upload them, they still don't show up. There has got to be a bug. Also, my stupid compute is making TYPOS!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Velociraptor888 (talk • contribs) 21:46, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I can see the flags of the Republic of Georgia and Algeria perfectly fine, as an example. I'm not about to speculate on a cause if I can't reproduce the error, and I fail to follow the logic that leads you to conclude that your computer has malware. As for the computer "making typos" -- are you sure it isn't a problem with the entity between the keyboard and the chair? Have you tried cleaning the keyboard with a screwdriver and compressed air? Xenon54 (talk) 22:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, I concur with the conclusion of PEBKAC, except for the possibility of a malfunctioning keyboard or (in some applications, such as word-processing) an AutoCorrect option being turned on in the wrong language (e.g. US English instead of British English). Rocketshiporion♫ 03:13, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

November 19

TinyC for loop problem

ie Tiny C Compiler - even this doesn't work:

#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  for (int a=0;a<10;a++)
     printf("%d\n",a);
}

sorry forgot the error.. identifier expected in the line with the for statement. Works on LCC, what obvious error am I making, thanks in advance.83.100.237.223 (talk) 08:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you're typing in what is like "Borland C". I remember Microsoft Visual C being aghast at my same attempt. Anyway, I run tinyc, all I did was change your code to:

#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  int a;
  for (a=0;a<10;a++)
     printf("%d\n",a);
}

and it works fine... 84.153.193.81 (talk) 10:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC) And

It's only since C99 that the first expression of the for-statement may take the form of a declaration. According to our article, the Tiny C Compiler is a C89/90 compiler with some C99 features. decltype (talk) 10:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's it.77.86.15.94 (talk) 17:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Cloud computing question

tell me about cloud computing and software as a service(saas) model. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pawantechdell (talk • contribs) 10:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Cloud computing and Software as a service. Once you've read those, if you have any specific questions feel free to come and ask. --jjron (talk) 13:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! In addition Cloud computing and Software as a service, you may wish to read our articles on Cloud applications, Cloud clients and Cloud APIs. Rocketshiporion♫ 13:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

BBC News website stats

Hello all, I'm trying to find some reasonably accurate stats for visits and unique visitors to the BBC News website. I've had a look at Alexa, but it only offers figures for the entire BBC site (www.bbc.co.uk), and in any case, these figures appear to be listed in terms of percentage-reach rather than actual figures. I have a few free toolbar apps from SeoBook installed, but they also only offer stats for the entire site. I was wondering if any of you super-helpful Wikipedia Computer Helpdesk folk know of anywhere I could get some figures from.
To Summarise

• I'm looking for the number of page views of the bbc.co.uk/news directory (A recent as possible, and doesn't have to be 100% accurate, but would be good if they were reasonably indicative)
• And the number of unique visitors

Any help, or any direction to useful tools or apps is much appreciated. Thanks all, Darigan (talk) 11:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• • Call their ad sales department and ask for the figures. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 07:46, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
    • The minor flaw in that plan being that the BBC doesn't run advertisements. The BBC News article says it gets around 14 million visitors every month; that is sourced to this BBC News article which has a little (very little) additional information, but it's from 2005. Some digging through the annual report and accounts for 09/10 might be fruitful, but I haven't found anything yet. Finally, you could make a Freedom of Information request at this page. The BBC also puts previous FOI requests on that page, although there doesn't seem to be one relating to the information you're looking for. --Kateshortforbob _talk 16:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Kateshortforbob, they're some quality links :) Darigan (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Screen resolution with two dissimilar monitors changes on reboot

My working environment at work consists of a Dell Optiplex 755, running Ubuntu 10.04, which drives two LCD screens through a DVI splitter cable. The primary screen is a Dell 24" monitor connected to #2 on the splitter cable, and the secondary screen is a Dell 17" monitor connected to #1 on the splitter cable. I use the big monitor for software development and the small monitor to display a virtual machine running Windows XP. I occasionally have to reboot (usually when required by a Ubuntu update) and that's where the trouble begins. After rebooting, both monitors display in 1024x768 resolution. The last few times, it has taken several reboots and much messing about with Ubuntu's monitors preference panel to get the big monitor to display in 1920x1200 (and have circular objects shown as circles instead of ellipses) and the small monitor to display in 1280x1024. Is there a way I can get Ubuntu to recognise my monitors' correct resolution after a reboot, or at least have it remember my preferences? Astronaut (talk) 12:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit xorg.conf. I don't know the details, but google is your friend. --85.77.53.134 (talk) 14:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Does Ubuntu still use xorg.conf? -- kainaw™ 16:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I was about to say yes, but it looks like its gone now. Paul (Stansifer) 20:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Xinput has replaced xorg.conf for input device configuration a long time ago, but I think you can still use it for monitor settings. I'm not sure if the file exists out of the box. --85.76.179.108 (talk) 08:11, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Is the problem that the preferences you set in Display Preferences aren't "sticking"? Take a look at the file ~/.config/monitors.xml. Is it correct now? When the displays go back to the wrong settings, check to see if it changed also. Paul (Stansifer) 20:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

TBH, I can't tell if the preferences are not sticking or if the computer is trying to "read" the first monitor it sees and guess the required resolution from that (the smaller monitor wakes up several seconds before the big monitor). Another weird thing is the big monitor is connected to #1 on the splitter cable; if I swap them around, the menu & icons end up on the small screen. I would have thought the "main" monitor would be on #1. Unfortunately, I'm away from my desk right now. I'll be able to check if I have xorg.conf, Xinput or ~/.config/monitors.xml on Monday. Astronaut (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Saving all glipper (or clipboard) items

I have Glipper installed (in Ubuntu), but do not know how to save all the items at the same time in it. Apparently the program doesn't have a function for that, only allowing picking individual items from a list.

Does someone know how can I save all glipper (or clipboard) items? Copy-and-pasted items must be in some file somewhere, but I don't know where...

I would also be happy about alternatives to save a series of copied items into a file (without going through the list one by one, of course). Mr.K. (talk) 17:25, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Facebook apps that tell you who visited your profile?

That's a rumor in my eyes. Would anyone please confirm or deny whether there is such an application that lets you see who has visited your profile? (An account, or an IP if someone was logged off while visiting it.)

If there is such an app, please link. Thanks. --129.130.252.148 (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It can't possibly work. Facebook's privacy policy shields this sort of information. ╟─TreasuryTag►Africa, Asia and the UN─╢ 18:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Someone said in one of the app games I play that the one player they were talking about could see me visit their profile. I asked, "You mean he has an app that logs visitors and tells him who viewed his profile?" Their response was, "Who doesn't?" How are you so sure that such apps can't possibly work? Why couldn't those apps circumvent the "privacy policy shields?" --129.130.252.148 (talk) 19:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

How are you so sure that such apps can't possibly work? You asked the question. I gave the answer. If you don't believe me, that's fine. If you think that Facebook would accept applications actively violating its terms of service, feel free. But you'd be wrong. ╟─TreasuryTag►UK EYES ONLY─╢ 19:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Just because it shouldn't be able to be done doesn't mean it can't be done. Over the years there have been loads of facebook hacks ranging from seeing private photos to updating peoples profile status without logging into their account. Facebook usually patches these fairly quickly, but no doubt there are more undiscovered hacks perhaps being exploited by people, privacy policy or not. 58.9.2.225 (talk) 19:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It's true that Facebook has tended to be very 'leaky' and has had many flaws in their privacy and security code (I don't know if I'd call many of the things 'hacks' per se). However I can't find any evidence of any leak on who visited your profile. hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Get-A-Facebook-Tracker (blacklisted site) shows someone who looked over a year ago with no luck. [9] mentions there are many scam apps which claim to do so which may be the source of such rumours. Nil Einne (talk) 20:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

One such app I noticed about half a year ago was something like 'which friends are viewing your profile the most'. A few of my 'friends' activated this and I was, let's say, interested to see in my feed that I was listed in the top 20 out of about 400 for a friend whose profile I'd only viewed about once or twice previously, probably on the day she friended me about 8 months previously, and maybe a second time when she changed her profile pic. So either she's not getting many friends viewing her profile or it was simply randomising a top 20 list from all her friends. I'd never even commented on anything on her profile, so it wasn't even that sophisticated in generating the list. This randomising theory was confirmed when a second friend ran it twice within about an hour, producing two entirely different lists. --jjron (talk) 02:50, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yahoo! Chat changed years ago. Why?

Sometime in 2005 or so, I could no longer access chat the way I used to. Why did they change it so substantially? What can you tell me about the history and circumstances behind the change of Yahoo! Chat? --129.130.252.148 (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

In 2005, Yahoo started making a lot of changes so it could work with other services and be accessed through a web interface. The main idea was interoperability. While AOL was making it difficult for others to work with their chat, Yahoo decided to invite interoperability. -- kainaw™ 19:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

<personal rant> IMO Yahoo! have progressively worsened their service over the years, whether by design or accident I don't know. For example for ten years I was able to have the apostrophe in my surname in my profile, a couple of years ago they 'updated' their service, and the apostrophe now displays as an ASCII code markup instead, meaning I have to spell my name incorrectly (sans apostrophe) in order to keep using their service. This is pretty unacceptable in this day and age. When I complained they made some rumblings about looking into it, but never did anything - surely this should be a simple fix? Then about a year ago when trying to introduce their social networking feature, they basically said they were going to make email address books public, listing all your contacts, unless users opted out (talk about aping Facebook). I of course opted out, and I've attempted to basically shut down all 'social networking' features on Yahoo! related to their email, including Chat, as I'm not at all comfortable with their security any more. Maybe this drop off in personal security is related to the interoperability Kainaw talks about, but if anyone from Yahoo! is reading this, please lift your game - you used to be a lot better. --jjron (talk) 03:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC) </personal rant>

I don't work at at Yahoo! and never have... but interestingly, the company I am currently working for moved into the building Yahoo! vacated, during the massive Yahoo restructuring after the dot-com bubble-burst (around 2003- or 2005, when their software also started suffering badly). We still have Yahoo!-colored purple walls and break-rooms. The decor and furniture is all purple and yellow and green. I have also worked in one of the original Fairchild Semiconductor buildings - (not the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, but the one they moved to a few years afterward). If there's a point here, I guess, its that these vacated buildings are artifacts of companies that have passed their prime, and been replaced. It happens to the best... Nimur (talk) 05:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

forget SQL language - what IS, mathematically, a relational database?

Forget sql. Could you briefly SHOW me what a relational database actually IS, mathematically, by writing pseudocode implementing any part of it. It can be very high-level pseudocode, English if you want, and you can refer to any mathematical concept and I will go look it up and learn it if I don't know it already. Thank you SO much. (this is not homework). 92.230.70.89 (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

First some links Relational database gives an overview, but Relational model is the better article for a more mathematical or abstract description.

To get a feel for it I recommend looking briefly at other database model types - eg Hierarchical database model and Network model (database), after which it should be clear (if it wasn't already) what the 'relational' part of 'relational database' refers to.

To a attempt a brief description - a relational database is a computer implementation of a table (not necessarily 2 dimensional - could be a single column, or have more dimensions) - to cap it and make it a database the idea of a key is added ie an ID (such as an account number or National identification number) which is used to link items between sets of tables. (typically a relational database will consist or more than one table)

In computer science terms each table is basically some sort of array.77.86.15.94 (talk) 20:48, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The article Database model also looks helpful - the images look as if they will be self explanatory.77.86.15.94 (talk) 20:59, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think a mathematical understanding is not really the best way to understand what a relational database is. It's not an equation or a function. It's a means of organizing and cross-referencing information. If you're interested, I'd be happy to elaborate. I find the best way to explain them is through analogies to "real life" datasets. For example, if your Rolodex was cross-referenced with the list of people who you call every day, and that was cross-referenced with a description of all of the subjects you like to talk about. The relational database lets you hold all of that information in the same place and have it operate together seamlessly. It's really just about as simple as that — multiple tables of data that have defined relationships for how the data co-exists. Math or even code are not the best way to understand the database structure itself; the code just lets you manipulate the data or ask questions of the database, but it doesn't really define the structure of the database, which is more of an abstract entity that sits above the code you actually use to access it most of the time. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you familiar with C/Java-like programming languages? A table is similar to a C struct type (or a class with public data members), and each row is similar to an object of that type (except that tables know their own rows, while classes don't usually keep track of their instances). A key is essentially a pointer, a foreign key is a field of one struct that points to another struct, and referential integrity means that there are no dangling pointers.

The programming language Prolog works a lot like a relational database, and you might find it easier to learn and experiment with than your typical RDBMS. -- BenRG (talk) 23:29, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

...and forgetting relational databases, what is screaming fast?

If we move away from relational databases. What kind of database, then, has a reputation for being screaming fast? 92.230.70.89 (talk) 20:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm assuming you didn't mean what brand, or what type of hardware implementation.. Although I can't answer this properly it's worth pointing out that most non-trivial database querys will involve iterations to find matches - and this is improved by additional indexing (as a first resort, other stuff helps) - the indexing includes such things as storing entry points into tables of data as sorted by various values (eg in a table of people by name, address, town, fav. color etc index points for entry to the table sorted by each field can help, along with linked-list type data structures that connect similar fields - eg a linked list for each fav. color that connects each sub-set of people)

The overall effect of such optimisations is to overlay on top of the original relational database additional supplimentary database structures that are conceptionally pretty much the same as hierarchical or network based databases.. similarily you can probably think of examples were adding an indexing overlay of a relational type could help searches within a hierarchically organised database

So the best type is a mix - what I've described above are simple optimisations - I see that I haven't really answered your question at all, but seeing as you asked above about implementations of databases I though this might be useful (There's a brief introduction to when to index here [10]. There's always more ways to optimise.

In case you didn't know a good search term for this (the equivalent of Mips Flops or Mhz in processors) is "Database transactions per second" like Ghz the figures are not necessarily meaningful in the real world. Apologies if all of that was irrelevant to your needs.77.86.15.94 (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It kind of depends on what you want to do with it, is not a very helpful but a somewhat more optimal answer. If you are really concerned about database performance, the trick is to figure out how to divide up the data in clever ways that optimizes for the kind of usage you're going to use. That will vary depending on the data in question. This is a separate issue from hardware and software performance, which are largely separate from the question of structure. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Screaming fast is the kind if fast that makes you scream and would cause instant death should it stop suddenly... like a reaaaalllly fast rollercoaster or a sportscar driven in a manner likely to get you an instant driving ban, or that plummet towards the ground attached to a bungee rope. However, in terms of databases it is really just marketing speak for "we have made some effort to make our database seem faster than some of our competitors". Ignore such hyperbole unless you are in the business of selling databse products. Astronaut (talk) 01:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Generally, this is very much dependent on the task. If we go with searching (as there are a number of factors the affect speed of updating and inserting data), the primary question is what you will be searching on. If your intent is to search on a single index, and you need a lot of data, then flat file databases are extremely good. The search algorithm for an ordered list is quite fast, and a flat file database doesn't need to make the joins that would be required in a relational database. However, if searching for a non-indexed term in a large flat file database, the format can become very slow. The smaller data sets in a table in a relational database can have the advantage here, especially if you don't need to make a join. Optimising relational databases for speed involves, amongst other tasks, the reduction of the number of joins required for common queries (noting that this can increase the size of the database as a side effect), so if you search doesn't involve joins you can expect a nice speed increase. - Bilby (talk) 01:24, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

November 20

Uses of Microsoft Silverlight

I just downloaded and installed Office 2010 Professional (don't worry, as an IU student, I'm allowed to download it free from http://iuware.iu.edu), and it came with Microsoft Silverlight. Not being a tech savvy person — I can't use Excel or Access beyond putting data into the cells, and I'm hopeless with Powerpoint — I don't foresee a use for this program. Any ideas if I'm likely to encounter situations in which I'd find this program useful, or would it be more helpful for me simply to uninstall it? Nyttend (talk) 02:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I recently had to install Silverlight to view a particular graphics rich website. Basically I think this program is much more about viewing certain graphics rich websites (much like Adobe Flash) than using your standard Office applications. In other words, I'd suggest to leave it. I haven't heard of it doing any harm. --jjron (talk) 03:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

It is (as above) pretty much a competitor to flash (as used on Youtube, and many other places on the web) - in my experience its use is very rare - there's some examples here. http://www.silverlight.net/showcase/ also found this http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ via a forum.

In general its use is very rare, you can almost certainly uninstall without noticing the difference if the disk space is valuable to you.77.86.15.94 (talk) 03:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Notably, Netflix uses Microsoft Silverlight to stream subscription videos using digital rights management. Nimur (talk) 05:54, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

One of the most conniving puzzle games on the net uses it (highly addictive, click through at your own risk!): http://robozzle.com. Also I've seen online mind mapping software use Silverlight (kind of like a Google Doc or Office, editing live on the net). As mentioned, it is a competitor to Flash, might as well leave it installed, you'll need it one day for some website anyway. Zunaid 07:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

MSN utilizes silverlight as do certain other Microsoft subsidiaries/partners.Smallman12q (talk) 14:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

During the Olympics, I need Silverlight to view videos on nbcolympics.com. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 18:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Faceboook - suggesting people you may know

Hi How does Facebook suggest people you may know? When a person displays my profile, does it mean that later Facebook will suggest me adding this person to my friends? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.181.131.108 (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

We've speculated on this before and we aren't sure. Some of the suggestions are clearly friend-of-a-friend or "went to the same institution/work/town" as you. But some seem to be really off the wall and unrelated to that. I don't think it has to do with you visiting anyone's page. But we don't know the "secret sauce" behind the algorithm. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

watch

how do i watch this

<rapidshare .avi.00# links culled> --Mr.98 (talk)

You download all of the component files. Then you have to combine them. Google ".001 joiner" or "file splitter/joiner" and you'll find lots of programs that can do this. Then you open the resulting .AVI file with a movie viewer. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

An easy to to do this is with JDownloader. Enter the links into it and it will download and extract them all for you. On rapidshare free service this could take several hours, so Jdownloader is so much better than doing it manually. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:50, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Windows - No Disk - Exception Processing Message

This message pops up on the screen at the end of the Windows boot process (after it is populated with icons);

Windows - No Disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf9c 4 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c

There are buttons to Cancel, Try Again, and Continue, but clicking on them is rejected with a loud buzzer. The same with the X delete at the upper right of the information box.

Ordinary applications at first glance seem to work okay. System functions: I was able to free up disk space but defrag and backup are not responsive.

Any ideas what's happening and what I might do? --Halcatalyst (talk) 16:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

What version of Windows? What sort of hard disks are connected to this system? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's Windows 95. One hard disk -- standard issue on this inexpensive HP desktop machine. --Halcatalyst (talk) 03:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Clicks Agent

Clicks Agent is a company said to have been developed by a teenager in his bedroom and sold for $40million. 1) Am I correct in thinking that its business model is that you pay it some money, and it gets traffic to your website? 2) Why was someone willing to pay $40M for it rather than replicating it themselves? I mean, it was created by a teenager in their bedroom so it can't be too difficult. 3) Where does the traffic come from? Thanks 92.15.27.119 (talk) 17:56, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

1) yes. 2) it was paid in the form of stock, so in reality was less than that. Replicating the technical side might be easy, but you'll also have a portfolio of clients, portfolio of contractors, a brand name. 3) I guess from pop-down, pop-ups, parked urls, and so on. Mr.K. (talk) 21:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

laptop cannot see dvd writer

Hi I have a Samsung R510 and I've had to remove the default Vista and install Windows 7 64-bit on it. Now everything works except the dvd writer... it cannot be seen in devices and cannot be seen by Nero 10. Samsung official website does not have drivers for it. Any ideas please? Sandman30s (talk) 18:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Try this tool: [11].--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:50, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks but that tool does not detect the writer. It's weird, sometimes device manager detects the writer and when I click on properties of the TS-L633B device, the device manager hangs. The latest Samsung driver update says 'target device not supported.' Sandman30s (talk) 14:20, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Python + Ubuntu + controlling a program

I know that you can start a program or execute a command within Python with (stream = os.popen('myprogram or command with parameters'). The result of that is a wrapper object stream. However, if I want to interact with the program, (for example, get information from this wrapper object), how do I proceed? Mr.K. (talk) 21:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe that os.popen has been deprecated in favor of subprocess.Popen (which is a class). Once you have a Popen object, you can use communicate() on it. Paul (Stansifer) 22:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks so far.

I am trying:

import subprocess 
stream = subprocess.Popen("klipper", stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
stream.communicate()
???

And then? How can I interact with a concrete program, (Klipper in this case). Mr.K. (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

popen is for processes that run in a terminal window and interact via stdin and stdout. It won't be much use for a GUI app like Klipper. You could try using the dbus package for that. -- BenRG (talk) 00:04, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Dbus is probably too complicated for me (I only need it for a while). However, I can substitute Klipper for a command-line tool: xclip.

import subprocess 
stream = subprocess.Popen("xclip", stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
stream.communicate()
???

Normally, xclip outputs what I have in the clipboard. But stream.communicate() does not output this information... :( Mr.K. (talk) 01:40, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

To output what's in the clipboard you presumably want "xclip -o", not "xclip". The first value returned by communicate() will then be the clipboard contents. In this case, since you're not sending any data to the process, you can just say f = subprocess.Popen("xclip -o", stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout and then read from f like any other (read-only, unseekable) file. I think that all of this is explained in the documentation, with examples. -- BenRG (talk) 09:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that "xclip -o" instead of "xclip" doesn't work (it raises an error). And "xclip" does not produce any result (without raising an error). :( Mr.K. (talk) 13:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Strangely, the os.popen version (which is deprecated) does work. However, for subprocess.Popen I probably need more variables that I got wrong... Mr.K. (talk) 14:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Generally, it helps to mention what error you get when something goes wrong. However, I think I can guess what the problem is. You probably want to write Popen(["xclip", "-o"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE) instead. That is, Popen requires that you give it a list whose first item is the program name and whose subsequent arguments are the arguments to the program (but as a special case, if you don't want any arguments, it lets you give it just a string instead.) This makes it look a little different than what you'd enter at the shell, but it saves you from having to worry about escaping issues in some cases. Paul (Stansifer) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Amazing. You are a mentalist. You guessed my mistake over the Internet. Thanks. Mr.K. (talk) 20:13, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

How to move a macro in Microsoft Word

This seems like a very silly question, but I cannot make it work. I have a macro that apparently is saved in Normal.dotm. It is accessible from every Microsoft Word document I create. However, I only need it in one particular document, Document.docx, say. Is it possible to move the macro from Normal.dotm to Document.docx, so that the yellow warning message doesn't appear for every Microsoft Word document I create/open?

I have tried to open "Mallhanteraren", as it is called in my Swedish copy of Microsoft Word 2010. ("Template Manager" is a direct translation. This dialog box can be opened using a push button in the Macros dialog box.) In "Template Manager", under the tab sheet called "Macros", there are two list boxes, called "In Document.docx" and "In Normal.dotm". Between these list boxes, there are three buttons: "Copy", "Remove", and "Change name...". One would expect to be able to use this dialog to copy the macro from Normal.dotm to Document.docx, but the problem is that the Normal.dotm list box is empty, even though Microsoft Word itself tells me that my macro is indeed stored in this very document/template file (when looking in the "Macros" dialog box, for instance)!

What can I do? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Try hitting alt+f11 to bring up the VBA (VisualBasic for Applications) screen, and see if it has modules on the left pane. If it does you can usually right click -> export and save it to a file, which you can then import using similar steps. 22:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Actually, a simple drag-and-drop inside this list did it. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

November 21

Full Disk Encryption: RAID Controller & Self-Encrypting HDDs

Hello Everyone,

   This is not a homework question.

   The objective is to create an RAID array with hardware-based encryption. Will either or both of the following configurations work?

1. Encryption-capable RAID Controller, with Self-Encrypting HDDs.
2. Encryption-capable RAID Controller, with regular (i.e. non-self-encrypting) HDDs.

   Thanks in advance to all RefDesk volunteers. Rocketshiporion♫ 03:35, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Both will work. Each has potential security holes but will be much more secure than using no encryption. In particular, hardware disk encryption usually uses ECB mode. See that article for related issues. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 07:25, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Core i5 vs i7

I have an option of a laptop with an Intel Core i5 460M processor and one with an Intel Intel Core i7-720QM Processor.

• Core i5 460M- 2.53 GHZ Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHZ
• Core i7-720QM- 1.6 GHz Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz

The normal speed of the i7 (without Turbo Boost enabled), i.e. 1.60GHz, is far less than that of the i5, so why is the i7 more expensive and supposedly more faster? Thanks. --119.155.8.225 (talk) 05:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The i5-4xxM has two processing cores while the i7-xxxQM has four processing cores. Dragons flight (talk) 05:22, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

So the i7 has a max speed of 11.2 GHz while the i5 has a max speed of 5.6 GHz (half that of the i7)? --119.155.8.225 (talk) 05:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

That's like saying a fleet of four 60mph cars can go 240 mph while two 60 mph cars can only go 120 mph. It's more accurate to say the 4 cars can take 2x as many people as 2 cars in the same amount of time. They are still all going 60 mph. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 07:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The smaller clock rate is the maximum sustained clock rate with all cores active. The "Turbo Boost" rate is the actual maximum clock rate. Because the i7 has twice as many cores, "all cores active" means roughly double the heat production at a given clock rate versus the i5. Power increases as roughly the square of the clock frequency, so the i7 with four active cores runs roughly a factor of √2 slower than the i5 with two active cores. It's not actually slower in any meaningful way. With two active cores it will run at at least 2.53 GHz, and probably at 2.8 GHz since the active cores can be cycled around to spread the heat better. -- BenRG (talk) 09:34, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

cell phone as workstation

Current fancy cell phones are comparable in power and capacity to desktop computers of maybe 5 years ago (1 ghz processor, 1gb ram, 32gb flash "disk"), and some run various Linux-based OS's. Some of them have HDMI output also. Does it sound practical to set one up as a general purpose Unix workstation, using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and an HDMI monitor? Thanks. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 06:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

What exactly would you use it for? Also, I'm not aware of any cell phones with 1 GB of memory. I know of some that have 512 MB of RAM. It's confusing because manufacturers in the cell-phone industry call secondary storage "memory." You'd be able to use a cell phone like that for checking your e-mail, word processing, and browsing the web. But it wouldn't be ideal for 3D, gaming, or editing video.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like MyTouch 4g has 768mb but 1gb certainly has to be coming soon. Yeah I'd want to run browsers, text editors, compilers etc. Not games or video editing probably. If I can run the stuff that ran tolerably on 2005-era laptops then I'm more than satisfied. Although, some of those phones can do realtime video encoding with accelerators on the cpu. My main question is whether a phone HDMI output can run a 1920x1080 computer monitor the way a fullsize computer can. Thanks. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 07:36, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Droid phones only output photos or video to external monitors. They can't output their home screen. They act like remote controls for TVs. As for a bluetooth keyboard, yes, you can use one of those. The Freedom Pro is a popular choice. This seems academic, though. The average desktop sold in 2005 had a 2 – 3 GHz Pentium IV with around 256 MB of RAM. But, yes, most of those applications would work fine except perhaps compilation. I doubt a 1 GHz CPU would be ideal for compiling a Gentoo installation. A top-of-the-line smartphone costs about $200 with a two-year contract. The contract is for both a voice plan and a data plan. The voice plan is about $40 a month on Verizon. The data plan adds at least $15 to the $40. So, it makes me wonder why you'd want a smartphone for something you could do on a used desktop that costs perhaps $100 off of Craig's List.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 08:15, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The smart phone is much easier to travel with. Just get hold of a monitor and keyboard at the other end. It occurs to me that the phone screen itself could be used as a touchpad. But, not being able to show the phone screen on the external monitor would seem to kill the idea. Is that just some Android software weirdness? Maybe there is a workaround. I'm actually more interested in Meego than Android anyway. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 10:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

One of the big problems with these "smart" phones is that they are unable to use standard wireless network access. All network traffic runs through the telephone company. So, that will greatly limit your ability to use it as a workstation. My experience with phone-based Internet is that it is somewhere between dial-up and 802.11B. If the phone did have capability to use modern wireless, it would be usable. -- kainaw™ 14:08, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry? Many or even most expensive smart phones (and increasingly even the cheaper ones) have wifi (usually 802.11B only I believe). That includes the myTouch 4G which the OP has. I mean even the original iPhone known for excluding features most other phones already had, and all the iPhones since which have sometimes improved but still often been behind, had wifi. And Blackberrys seem to mostly have wifi too [12] [13] [14]. Frankly if I was spending the amount of money that many of these phones cost (unsubsidised) I don't see why you wouldn't demand wifi. Of course what the phone can actually do with the wi-fi may sometimes be limited although I believe most genuine smart phones allow apps to use the wifi and in any case if you want to do what the OP is planning I presume your planning to root your smartphone anyway. Having said, I'm not sure if things are as easy as the OP thinks. Bluetooth wireless keyboards do exist (including some very expensive ones for media PCs) and are used by some game consoles, but even many wireless ones are not Bluetooth even if they use the 2.4ghz band so just finding one where you go may not be easy if you aren't willing to buy one. Nil Einne (talk) 14:27, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Copy alternate rows in Excel

I have a spreadsheet which contains data imported from a web page. I have create some charts using this data. But half of the rows alternate ones) contain junk data which I do not want to be displayed in my chart. I can of course filter out alternate data. But the data is not fixed; it changes when I refresh the connections. I need some formula to copy only the alternate rows to another sheet so that I can use this sheet for my chart. Is ther any way to do this? That is, from a sheet like the following

Day 1	Cost
Junk	Junk
Day 2	Cost
Junk	Junk

I need to get

Day 1	Cost
Day 2	Cost

I can use =Sheet1!A1, =Sheet1!A3,etc. but it doest get automatically filled up (with odd rows only) when I use Fill Handle and drag. 180.149.48.245 (talk) 11:17, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

You could put the values (say) A1, A3, A5 in one columnm, and then use the indirect() function to reference those values. Using the drag to extend these now provides references to only the odd numbers. --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:10, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

One way is to start by linking all the cells in Sheet1, so you have Sheet1!A1, Sheet1!A2, etc, which you can extend by copying. Then delete the junk rows, and you'll be left with Sheet1!A1, Sheet1!A3, Sheet1!A5, etc. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:21, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

.png vs. .jpg

.png images seem to take longer to load on Wikipedia pages than .jpg - why is this? (And, as a corollary, why are .jpg images being replace with .png ones here?) Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 13:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

JPG files are supposed to store photographic images, and nothing else. JPG utilizes a lossy compression that is barely visible on photographs, but would look terrible if used on an illustration containing straight lines, text etc. PNG files, however, are used to store illustrations, screenshots, etc. PNG does not utilize any lossy compression. Therefore, if one would save a photograph as a PNG, the resulting file would be bigger than if saved as JPG. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

See: lossy compression. — Fly by Night (talk) 15:29, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Image use policy#Format and Wikipedia:Preparing images for upload. —Bkell (talk) 00:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Language specific search in Google from the search box of Opera by adding code

I would like to be able to do a Google search in a specific language by adding some code next to the searched phrase in the search box in Opera, like this:

"stuff i want to know about" lr=lang_hu (or something)

I created a custom search engine in Opera using the

www.google.com/search?q=%s&lr=lang_hu&

syntax and that works but I'm curious if it is possible to do it as I described at beginning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jib-boom (talk • contribs) 19:17, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

a web browser can run different javascript every session, can a program run different code each session (as downloaded)?

So, if you have a web browser, it can go to different sites and run different code.

Could a program do the same thing, downloading a small amount of bytecode to run directly, which can be different each session, without tripping all sorts of antivirus and Windows warnings? There is nothing nefarious here, I just want to be able to update the exact code for evaluating certain formulas transparent to the user. Obviously I can do that if it is fully interpreted code (i.e. interpreted by my program), but can I also do that if it is directly machine-executable code and I just download the code and run it? It would be from my own server, so trust is not really an issue, and since it is just doing math calculations, the actual behavior would not trip any antivirus heuristics. The only thing I'm curious about is whether like windows vista or antivirus users will get a lot of messages if I'm downloading bytecode and running it to get a value? (The downloaded code will not do anyhting else other than compute with a better function than I have on hand now. I would like to ship the program with what I have, finish working on the better formula, if I can, then let users download it when they chart those kinds of functions.) Thanks a million! 84.153.230.45 (talk) 21:44, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Javascript is an interpreted language. If you don't plan on using an interpreted language, or writing your own interpreter/parser, you'll need to use dynamic loading with have a dynamic-link library which you'll download as the update. Using dll or parser probably won't get antivirus messages, though it depends on the vendor you're using. However, if you choose the approach of polymorphic code, you will likely trigger every antivirus program=P.Smallman12q (talk) 23:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, "polymorphic code". Rather than being truly polymorphic, is there any way that I could allocate an array, fill it with some code I just downloaded, and run it? Or, would that also count as "polymorphic" (even though my executable, nor the footprint it started running with, is not changing at all!) In other words, can I just execute some of my data, which I happen to be downloading? 92.230.67.51 (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

p.s. Again, the newly downloaded data won't do anything but calculate, i.e. return a value to me. Rather than trigger obnoxious virus warnings, I'd rather write an interpreted language, and then interpret the new data, rather than running it. But can't I just run it, somehow? Do I have to go the dll route, which seems needlessly complex to me me, and not even remotely cross-platform. Thanks. 92.230.67.51 (talk) 00:22, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

As you asked about javascript I assume you mean something like this:

<html><body> <script type="text/javascript" src="b.txt"></script> //Here "b.txt" is the name of the file which contains the code you might change later <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("When function is called with 10 the return value is:"); document.write(dynfunc(10)); //"dyncfunc" is the the name of the dynamic function </script> </body></html> when the file "b.txt" contains: function dynfunc(x){return (x+1);} Obviously you won't use "b.txt" but an url to your website where you host the function that might be updated. (in practice it may need some fall back for when the user isn't connected to the internet..) I don't think it will trigger any problems with vista - as for an antivirus - I'm not sure - it obviously contains code, but then so does a standard webpage. I doesn't seem likely to be problematic. Is that what you meant? For an offline non javascript program it doesn't seem problematic either - basically it seems that you're describing something very similar to an auto update - except every time the program is run it connects to the internet to look for a new version of a function - possibly this could trigger a firewall - ie the program might need to be added to an exception list.

I collapsed bit because I think I misunderstood your question initially.

77.86.15.94 (talk) 01:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Native code downloaded and run in a browser is possible in several browser-dependent ways, all requiring the user's permission (or else it is a security hole). See browser plugin, ActiveX control and related articles. Note that the latest browsers have tremendously optimized javascript interpreters with embedded JIT compilers to run the javascript as fast native code, so you can do some fairly computation intensive things in browser javascript these days. 69.111.192.233 (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Nothing but calculate? You're probably looking for the equivalent of eval in your programming language. The dll route isn't terribly complex, though a java library might work as well (it's cross-platform).Smallman12q (talk) 02:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

more info (from OP

This is C++, and the browser-running-javascript was just a metaphor for getting the code just-in-time. C++ has no "eval" or other obvious way to interpret anything. 92.230.67.51 (talk) 03:23, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Can you explain the application? As in, "what is it about javascript that fails to do what you want"? The usual way to run code in browsers is javascript. What you want to do that standard browser scripting doesn't give you? 69.111.192.233 (talk) 05:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It certainly can be done, but you may not be able to do it very easily. If you want to compile and run C++ code on the fly, you need to link your program with a C++ compiler that supports that. The most popular C++ implementations (gcc, MSVC) like to run in a separate process, read their source code from disk files and write machine code to exe/dll files (or the platform equivalent). You could try using LLVM and a C++ frontend for it, I suppose. If you have a memory block full of machine code for your platform and you want to run it (generally a bad idea), it might be as simple as ((void (*)()) memory_block_addr)();. But that may fail on systems that (for security reasons) mark data blocks as non-executable by default. In that case you need to ask the OS to reclassify the memory. On Windows the function for that is VirtualProtect. Technically, the cast I wrote above is not legal C++, but it works on popular compilers. -- BenRG (talk) 11:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, you may write the function in applescript/vbscript/powershell and call the script function from your program. For updates, you would simply download a newer script. This won't be the most secure method (in that people may be able to view the source unless you obfuscate it...but it will work). See here, here, and http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/177177-vbscript-call-function-from-c-dll-library-from-vbscript/ here] for example.Smallman12q (talk) 13:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

If you just want to evaluate infix expressions like 1+2*3, it's pretty easy to write an expression parser in flex and bison. It's a standard example in tutorials, and it might even be in the official documentation (I haven't looked in a while). -- BenRG (talk) 22:15, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

November 22

Is this a fast Internet Connection?

Using Speedtest.net, I test my university's campus wired connection and received the following results:

Download: 68.6 Mbps
Upload: 19.29 Mbps
Ping: 5 ms

Am I correct in assuming that this is pretty damn fast?

Acceptable (talk) 00:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Fast is subjective. It's a lot faster compared to say a normal home internet connection, but very slow compared to popular website (google, wikipedia, facebook, etc) connections or FTP servers which are usually many Gbps 82.44.55.25 (talk) 00:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. That would be a very fast connection for North America. In my area, the fastest connection you can buy downloads at 50 mbps for $99 a month. I believe that you can get a connection that fast in Japan, though. So, like the guy above me said, it's all relative.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

your connection is still faster, because he only has to share with other university students, staff and faculty, but you would have to share with EVERYONE in your household. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.230.67.51 (talk) 03:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

As my internet connection is 7.2Mbps on paper (although I've never seen it go over 2.4Mbps in reality), I would personally say that your internet connection is very fast. Rocketshiporion♫ 09:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

That's light speed compared to what we have in South Africa. Stop showing off grrrr.... Sandman30s (talk) 11:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

You upload 20 times as fast as I can. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

There's a relevant article at Internet in the United States.Smallman12q (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is how to know if it's really fast: Look at the server the speedtest app picked for you, then manually select a server on the opposite side of the country. Test it against that, then pick one more server somewhere in between. If all 3 tests are within a reasonable range of each other (say 20%), your internet connection is indeed fast. The only thing the first test proved was that the connectivity between you and the speedtest server (could be right on your campus for all you know) is quite fast. --144.191.148.3 (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

HP dx 2480 Desktop PC

My hp dx2480 desktop pc was working fine, but if i want to add external cards like DV Card or Ethernet Card it was not support. After fitting the external card, while booting it shows error, "Hardware error, call for hareware vendor" But While install Intel ethernet card or Zotac Graphics card, the error not coming. Give me solutions to rectify the problem —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rosewood260 (talk • contribs) 13:03, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

What sort of 'external card'. Do you mean some sort of ExpressCard or something of that sort? Or a simple USB device (often these aren't in card format)? And why are you using external cards on a desktop PC? Or did you mean an internal card by chance? In which case I presume it's PCI express? Nil Einne (talk) 15:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Line breaks on Polldaddy comments

Is there a way? Double newlines, <br> or <br/> don't work. I am bamboozled. --62.142.167.134 (talk) 14:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Free tools for converting HTML to ePUB on OS X?

Are there any free tools that can take an HTML file and convert it into an ePUB file on OS X. I'm looking for something that's not Calibre. --CGPGrey (talk) 15:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

The things listed ePUB#Editingsystems under Mac OS X (or perhaps Web) and that are free perhaps? I would guess many can take HTML in some way. I fooled around with Sigil (application) once and it seemed decent enough although I can speak directly to how well it does HTML conversions. Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

keylogger

i need a keylogger like this http://www.refog.com/home1.html except i need to be able to send them a email link and it will install it on their computer. i cant manually install it on their computer. i need it to monitor a employee of mine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kj650 (talk • contribs) 17:14, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

You don't have manual access to your employee's computer? You're probably looking for Privacy-invasive software. If it's the employee's personal computer, you'd be violating information privacy laws. Smallman12q (talk) 17:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Do not remove answers it is rude, if they are not satisfying to you clarify, comment and discuss. Basically I think Smallman12q is right it is illegal in most circumstances. In any case if you let your employee do work from a computer that will covertly install programs when opening email you have bigger problems than how to install spyware. --Gr8xoz (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

it is a company issued laptop, also i dont live in the usa. it is legal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kj650 (talk • contribs) 19:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

If the "Company" owns the laptop, then it is entitled to recall the laptop at any time to install any software. Any other procedure sounds illegal (or at least immoral IMHO). Dbfirs 21:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

If you disregard privacy info, just go to their computer after working hours, and install it. However, I really think that is not a good idea, because mt may pick up passwords, etc (haven't checked the program yet), and it's not right unless you ask him/her. General Rommel (talk) 00:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

they take it home with them, so they can do work at home. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kj650 (talk • contribs) 01:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Facebook

I'm strong limerence with a girl I know, though I have never expressed my feelings to her and she has never rejected them; I am just content to have her as a friend. I don't have a Facebook account but I often check on her profile to see if she has updated anything, her profile pic etc as her profile is only semi-private which lets non-registered users view certain parts. Today I entered the url as usual but was taken instead to the facebook home page. I tried several times with the same result. However if I view the same link via a proxy her profile is displayed as normal, so obviously she has not changed any privacy settings. Has Facebook detected that I regularly visit her page and blocked me? Will Facebook tell her about it and warn her about stalkers or something? I'm worried because I don't want her to know that I check her page, feel creeped out by it or be offended and confront me over it in real life. I just wanted to keep up to date with her, I didn't intend anything nefarious. 109.104.186.182 (talk) 18:54, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

If you don't have a Facebook account, then I don't see how Facebook could identify you to this girl, so she'd never know it was you. Might I suggest it would be easier to make your own Facebook account? If you add her as a friend, your Facebook homepage will tell you about any updates to her profile. Vimescarrot (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Networking a Macintosh with Windows NT server; let's all (not) samba

Evening all.

I have a machine which previously was running Mac OS Leopard, and was able to connect quite happily to a large corporate network running on NT boxes. Connection was via the smb:// protocol, dialogue appeared wherein one entered domain\username and then password, all much as you would expect.

However, on installing Snow Leopard on the Mac box, this no longer works; an 'invalid username or password' alert appears.

Any ideas what's occuring? pablo 22:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

November 23

Web hosting services' choice of their (virtual) dedicated servers' Linux distribution

I wonder why certain web hosting services still offer less stable, outdated, and short-lived Linux distributions (like an old version of Fedora) as an operating system choice for their (virtual) dedicated servers. Aren't such configuration particularly risky and inefficient (especially for public, Internet-facing servers like web servers), because either you get a less stable system, don't receive the latest security updates, or have to upgrade (and reconfigure) the operating system every so often in order to keep receiving the updates? 118.96.162.121 (talk) 01:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Domain hacks and political instability

Two hypothetical questions that just floated in my head:

• If I visited, say, a website with URL of http://example.ex/, what does "country .ex" (i.e., its government, military, and intelligence agencies) know about my visit?

• Suppose the "country .ex"'s government is overtaken by an "evil regime", what the worst can the said "evil regime" do?

118.96.162.121 (talk) 02:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Country .ex know nothing about your visit. Your internet service provider keeps a log of all sites you access and the site you've visited may keep a log but the country whose country code the site uses are never involved. bit.ly is a service for shortening URLs. .ly is the country code of Libya, however the site is based entirely in the United States of America (country code .us), in New York City. It would violate many international and domestic laws if Libya were able to see who was accessing the site bit.ly worldwide. The Data Protection Act of the United Kingdom springs to mind.
• If an "evil regime" were to take over the country I live in, the UK, then they'd be able to gain access to everything I had visited simply by talking to my ISP, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. I'm not sure what they'd do with that information though. (I'm 17 - they could probably have guessed my internet history would be revision materials and porn). I think they're much more likely simply to cut all access to the internet (or excessively censor it) in order to prevent you from expressing your opinion about their evil ways.

Hope this has answered your question. --tb240904 ^{Talk Contribs} 04:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)