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August 16

Google's purchase of Motorola

Florian Mueller (FOSS Patents) thinks that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is more than just about defending Android and some commenters on sites like Facebook and CNET on saying things like "no more locked bootlaoders, plz" and "googlephone yeah" (misspelling intentional). The articles I have been reading have brought up the question of whether this will distance other Android device manufacturers like Samsung and HTC now that Google might become a manufacturer of Android devices and take advantage of being the owner of Android. Also, some analysts are saying this might be a big mistake on Google's part. Isn't this similar, though, to what Nokia had going with Symbian? Nokia owned Symbian and manufactured Symbian devices, while also licensing it to other manufacturers? Did that lead to Nokia's flop or was that something else? --Melab±1 ☎ 01:07, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nokia's recent losses are generally attributed to Symbian being out-of-date, hard to use, and lacking in features compared to Android or iOS. Many different morals can be drawn from the history of Symbian, which is complex with changes of ownership, multiple versions, fragmentation of the platform, different licensing models, etc. It was initially created by Psion, who didn't make smartphones, and licenced much like Windows Mobile; in the early 2000s different companies, principally Ericsson and Nokia, developed separate versions with different UIs and apps; it was owned by a separate (but largely Nokia-owned) company for a while, then open-sourced, then more recently Nokia has taken it over and done an impressive but too-late overhaul. Possibly, the frequent changes in Symbian's organisation impeded attempts to modernize it, and the fragmentation prevented wider uptake (compare Windows Mobile, which is much more unified across platforms).

It's probably true that few other companies used Symbian because it was so closely associated with Nokia, and the fragmentation of the platform meant that other companies' phones wouldn't necessarily run Nokia applications. You could compare Palm and its Palm OS, which it spun off, tried to license, and later re-purchased with similar confusion. Android is much newer, and Google has so far had quite a firm control on it (while the OS is open-source, Google has developed important proprietary applications); the frequent updates to Android also discourage differentiation by making it much harder for companies to keep up to date. Android's principal goal so far is to sell users to advertisers, not to sell phones. What will happen to Motorola and Android in the future is a matter for speculation, and the Reference Desk is not for speculation about future events. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:08, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What (known) hurdles must this pass in order to be finalized? --Melab±1 ☎ 16:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read our article on mergers and acquisitions? There are several legal and regulatory stages in the process. The relevant law is very complicated; many parties are involved, including shareholders and board members of both companies; the Federal government, usually represented by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other government agencies. You can read the official press release, (the official official press release, filed with the Government), at the SEC website: DEX991 Exhibit 99.1 GOOGLE TO ACQUIRE MOTOROLA MOBILITY and read other EDGAR filings to see all the relevant and public-record materials related to this acquisition. The associated document, Form 8-K, informs you of the legal-ese: Form 8-K for the Google acquisition of Motorola. Nimur (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

need help

trolling

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

i used brake cleaner on my keyboard and all my keys are stuck together I am using on screen keyboard to type this please help me ????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.83.112.39 (talk) 05:20, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that this really happened? If it did then I think you need a new keyboard. Dbfirs

When you get your new keyboard, be sure to read the cleaning instructions.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:09, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Brake cleaner can contain both acetone and toluene - both of which will dissolve most plastics. Toluene is especially nasty, I would actually advise against using brake cleaner indoors at all due to the dangers of inhaling it. On your keyboard it will have probably partially dissolved the plastic on the keys, which then fused as the plastic resolidified when the solvents evaporated. As suggested above there is probably not much more you can do at this point except buy a new keyboard (and some keyboard cleaning wipes!) Equisetum (talk | email | contributions) 10:16, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Break out the dremel with mini-saw attachment. And only use that type of cleaner for the break key. (P.S. GIFs or it didn't happen.) Rich Farmbrough, 11:34, 16 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Is it just me, but are we getting a lot of these 'PC broken in bizarre way' queries recently? All from either the same IP, or same subset. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:08, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, maybe someone's just learning? That's good, right? KageTora, I had taken the liberty of closing your 'small' tag. Anyway, for my part, I just wash the keyboard in the sink/under the shower. This may be advanced maths for some, but once you get the hang of it it's easy. First you unplug the keyboard from the computer and disassemble it carefully, place the screws in order so that they all return to their original holes. If this is a wireless keyboard remove the batteries as well. Only clean the plastic components (use washing-up liquid and warm water). When doing the dismantling remember the order of all components, because that might be tricky. Be careful not to wash any of the electrical parts, as this might be disastrous for them. Then put it all back together in order. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:16, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just learning. It's a set of increasingly unlikely and ridiculous computer questions. See here for more examples. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:08, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

C/f [1] and SPI Chzz ► 16:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers - I hadn't realised this had already been logged. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:45, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

omanual file format

This question was originally posted on the English Wikipedia Helpdesk [2], and I moved it here. Chzz ► 15:55, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

omanual - freeware need (container)or Program to open it.

hello My Name is Nathan L King I'm trying to find more Info on a new file ext.(?). I down lodead a omanual from internet archive.org on several ifixits to repair Sony Playstation 3's,Canon cameras and there in a omanual format witch is a xml and something else. I'm not sure how to do what im recomending so im just doing something in hopes it gets to the right person to get things asked the right people. I use your en.wikipedia all the time and try to use freeware in the hope that someday will be able to DONATE someday. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.135.163.250 (talk) 15:49, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See XML.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:42, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can you be more specific about where you got it from? There's a lot of stuff on the internet archive. Emeraldemon (talk) 19:06, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop battery - left plugged in and running

Does it hurt a laptop battery to have it plugged in and on most of the time (24 hours most days). My wife insists that this hurts the life and rechargability of the battery. I just had to replace one, so is that right? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:32, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OR, but I leave mine plugged in and on for 24 hours a day, and I've had it over three years and no problem with it (HP G60 - except that it gets very hot, but apparently this laptop is well known for that anyway). Also, I never thought rechargability would be a problem, because I leave it plugged in and on all the time - I would never use it on battery anyway. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:36, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you never use it on battery, how do you know running it plugged in all of the time doesn't hurt the battery? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:25, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to be honest, on the rare occasion that I have to take it on the train and need to do work while I'm there, and haven't been lucky enough to find a seat with a power socket, I have been able to use it with no problem, for anything upto two hours, after which I've switched it off, still with lots of battery left. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have a laptop plugged in and running 24x7 except when there's a power cut. When this happens, the battery appears to function as normal.--Phil Holmes (talk) 15:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OR again -- My laptop instructions advised against this practice, but I ignored the advice and have had it plugged in (with the battery in place) almost continuously for four years. I have used the battery power occasionally, but the life has gradually reduced to less than half an hour. Charging circuits and battery life-expectancy vary between models, but I think the detriment to the battery is probably marginal and mine would probably have been near to the end of its useful life even if I had followed instructions. Dbfirs 20:48, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Security implications of a poor-man's proxy?

As part of my endless effort to subvert university IT (don't ask, long story, lots of existing posts on here about it over the course of a few years now), one thing I'd been playing with was creating what I am calling a poor-man's proxy.

Essentially it is a PHP script that scrapes content from another server and displays it as its own. So if you went to http://edserver.edu/program/events/, it would really display content from http://myserver.org/events/. This is accomplished by some mod_rewrite rules that send all queries to http://edserver.edu/program/ to a PHP script that then scrapes the end off of the URL (in this case, events/) and then plops that onto the end of the source URL (in this case, http://myserver.org).

It's a pretty simple script, in the end, and the site does not require any complicated user interactions (no form submissions).

The IT people are mulling this over. I think they'll be most concerned with the potential security issues. I'm hard pressed to think of any that are serious — the PHP script does not allow any modification of the .edu server whatsoever. There are no passwords being sent anywhere or anything like that. There is no user interaction at all other than static browsing. Worst-case scenario, the security on the .org server is compromised, and the .edu server displays false information for awhile? That seems rather minor. The PHP script just accesses the source (.org) server through regular HTTP requests — it doesn't have FTP access or anything special.

Am I missing anything obvious? Or unobvious? What's the worst you could imagine doing in such a situation? --Mr.98 (talk) 23:13, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What if the server you're scraping from contained malicious code i.e. something that took advantage of a browser vunerability then you'd effectively be passing it on. Depending on the security of the local network it's possible that edserver.edu is completely trusted since it's assumed to be internal. Or perhaps all web filtering is normal performed at the gateway and in this case it's been bypassed (again assuming the .edu server is internal) so unless they're running antivirus on all the client machines it wouldn't necessary need a browser vunerability, it could just rely on user error (because they assume it's a local server so if it says to run something then that sounds okay). ZX81 ^talk 23:37, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What if PHP has a bug involving a particular type of malformed URL, and when edserver.edu goes to fetch the URL, the bug triggers, and the geniuses who wrote this exploit put some executable code in the malformed URL which, because of the spectacularly bad nature of the bug, then gets executed by edserver.edu? Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:51, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These two seem like rather obscure possibilities that don't increase the security too much from hosting a PHP-laden site in general. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just send the URL suffix as an HTTP argument, and load the PHP page directly? For example, http://edserver.edu/program?url=/events/, which will load the URL "program" (your PHP script); and supplies "/events/" as the argument. Here's the PHP manual for GET variables (everything in the URL after the ? symbol). Use the syntax $_GET["url"] to refer to "/events/" in this example. Then, implement the screen-scraping in PHP. You can specify a mod-rewrite in Apache so that it looks like you're not using a "?" ; but this is purely cosmetic; and it requires the assistance of whomever manages your Apache configuration. Nimur (talk) 00:12, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's entirely cosmetic, but it's to preserve old links (and because cosmetics matter). It doesn't require that much assistance — they just need to enable local .htaccess files, and mod_rewrite does the rest. (The script I've written generates its own .htaccess files, which makes it even easier.) But that wouldn't affect the security situation. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The following assumes that the server starts in a secure configuration; proper file-permissions; no untrusted access; etc.

mod_rewrite uses regular expressions, so make sure your regexps are well-formed. Some regexps are able to hang during processing; I don't know if mod_rewrite will behave well (your Apache.conf or platform-equivalent should have a HTTP request timeout, so this isn't a "security risk" in most cases). Your rewrite may collide or alias another valid URL; which will confuse users if they hit "reload." In my assessment, none of these are a significant security risk; in that, they probably won't result in privilege escalation, data leaks, or other compromises to the system; but they are security risks insofar as "they might make otherwise perfectly good PHP code behave strangely." That sums up the risk from the mod_rewrite directive. This says nothing of your screenscraping (or the rest of the PHP script) - make sure that code is free of security risks. Pay careful attention to string-sanitizing when you are including/delivering content from a server that you don't control. Nimur (talk) 01:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. (The nice thing here is that I do technically control both servers, which reduces the danger to the "one of them gets hacked", which is really no different than any one of them getting hacked, except there are two of them.) My mod_rewrite expressions are pretty simple, just:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase $base/

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . $base/index.php [L]

</IfModule>

Which were just taken from some tutorial on the internet somewhere. I'm no reg_ex guru (at all) but the simplicity of it ("go to index no matter what") seems to make it appear a bit safer than otherwise, but I don't know. The $base gets filled in by PHP (it is the .edu domain). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:53, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 17

Most likely thing to die in a PC from a power surge

Of course the cause of death is the power surge, but in a case where the thing now does absolutely nothing when you press the power button, what is the most common thing or set of things that that surge has done to kill the PC? Is it most often frying of traces on the PCB, unviewable damage to the CPU, the chipset, or what? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Power hits the power supply first. The power supply is designed specifically to kill itself in order to save the rest of the computer (otherwise, we wouldn't use power supplies - we'd just run power right into the motherboard). So, the power supply is the most likely thing to die in a power surge. -- kainaw ™ 13:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is some hopeful news, Kainaw, but one thing I noticed while looking at the motherboard and plugging and unplugging the power cord is one really tiny square green light that still comes on when it's plugged in but goes out when I pull the plug. Would that fact take away the possibility that it's just the power supply, or can power supplies too damaged to let the thing turn on right still provide some power to the motherboard? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:55, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It could still be the power supply. It could also be that the power supply failed to protect the computer and there are more bad parts. I always start by swapping out the power supply. If it has a separate network card (which is rare now), I swap that out too because almost nobody puts a surge protector on their network cable. Then, I swap out the motherboard if it still doesn't work. Then, if there are still issues, I keep swapping out parts. -- kainaw ™ 14:19, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Something quick to check is the power cord itself, including any power bars involved. It's less likely than the power supply, but it's a simple check and a cheap fix if it turns out to have been fried. Matt Deres (talk) 19:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all of the above. You can also check your physical switch and the wire that connects it to the motherboard. I've had this switch melting before. Power surges are one of the banes of modern man. Sandman30s (talk) 15:28, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Someone sending emails from my Outlook

Tonight I wrote and sent a single email. It was the only email in my outbox but the send/receive process seemed longer than it should be. The notification in my systray said "sending message 3 of 3". I definitely did not have 3 emails to send and my 'sent' folder shows only the email I knew about. Could someone be using my Outlook to send spam emails and also be hiding the evidence so I can't see them? If so, how can I see what has been sent and how can I prevent it happening again?

I hope you can help. Gurumaister (talk) 17:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you're using Outlook Express, it has an option to "Break apart messages larger than" that lets you specify a size in kilobytes. When you send a large e-mail, this option will split it behind the scenes into separate e-mails under the size limit. When this happens, you'll see something like "Sending message 3 of 3" when sending, but the Sent Items folder only shows the 1 message in its original form. Maybe an option like this is the cause of what you saw. --Bavi H (talk) 01:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bavi H - I hope that was it. Gurumaister (talk) 18:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reversi Bug

Hello. On occasion, at the end of my Reversi gameplay, the last pebble placed on the board switches colour between black and white. How can I fix this bug? You may access my source code at http://sites.google.com/site/superaec and download the files that come with the package (i.e., Clap.au, Hi.au, Lo.au, Manual.pdf, Oops.au, and Reversi.java). If you need more time to answer this question than it can last on the reference desk, please email me through my talk page. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 18:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that you only set the color in one place: line 139,

  cell [i * DIR [b] + box] = me;

Is that line of code always valid? In other words, under what circumstances would i * DIR[b] + box be invalid? Under what circumstances would me be opposite what you expect? If you can define the answers to those questions, you can set a conditional breakpoint to automate the process of trapping the error-case.

Debugging your code for you is sort of out of scope at the Ref Desk; but I can recommend this tutorial on using the Eclipse Java IDE for debugging: The Eclipse debugger and the Debug view, from IBM. Use the step-debugger to trace your code execution; use the variable watch window to investigate the values of variables at runtime. Debugging computer code is a very valuable, very difficult-to-acquire skill. Nimur (talk) 18:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A computer without a chassis?

As I've assembled two computers from individual components inside chassises (chasses?), I got to think, would it be possible to assemble a fully working computer entirely without a chassis? Just the components connected to each other, lying on the desk or on the floor. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of such a thing? I can think of two advantages - better airflow and saving the cost of a chassis - and one disadvantage - the system takes up more room and is harder to transport. Are there any other things to take into account? JIP | Talk 20:41, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When Google started, they laid bare motherboards on baking sheets (I think with a rubber mat between the MB and the sheet). They then racked the boards in dense racks, and ventilated them wholesale from the side. They were mostly doing this for reasons of density. Having just a few, which you intend to transport, it'd be bonkers to not have a case. Cases are relatively cheap, and they protect the delicate PC components from ESD, thermal, and mechanical insults. And don't assume that the case hampers cooling - often the opposite is true. When electronic devices are designed the heat dissipation is modelled on a program like FlowTherm, which tracks where the air from fans goes, and analyses how the heat from components dissipates. The case is part of that equation; if you remove it, you risk the fans blowing air straight off into free space, rather than over all the components they're supposed to be cooling. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:54, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you should watch the film π ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:15, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You lose proper cooling air flow circulation. As well as protection from dust, falling objects, and spilled food and drinks. Likely shortened lifetime of hardware, due to pieces of your flaked dead skin and other such gunk accumulating on delicate circuit boards and causing erratic currents. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 00:38, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure cooling is as much of a problem when it's not in a plastic box? I had a friend who was into the whole "totally silent computer" fad awhile back (or maybe it is still going on?) and he had a whole, non-chassis computer laid out in such a way that he didn't need any fans, or something like that. So yeah, you could do it. But there are obvious disadvantages to having all that stuff exposed. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Over the years i've gotten used to working with open-chassis machines, and by my experience they do cool quicker and better than if they are still in the chassis. However, if i were to set my machine on the floor, it'd gather way more dust than it does on the desk. Still have to be careful with the drinks and all, but unplugging it and dusting it once in a while does the trick. Removing the chassis altogether seemed pointless for me, so I just removed the top cover and side panels as much as was possible without hassle. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another disadvantage comes to mind. If you accidentally kick a computer chassis over, the computer inside it will probably still keep on working. But if you accidentally step on exposed computer internals, you risk damaging them beyond repair. JIP | Talk 19:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A friend of mine has his home computer zip-tied to a peg board and attached to the bottom of his computer desk. It is all spread out on the board and the fans are still there blowing over the main components. The disc drives are mounted at the front of the desk right next to his keyboard tray. It creates a very clean environment. Since the pegboard is hinged to the front of the desk, all he has to do is unplug his monitors and the board swings down so he can work on the components. The only issue he has had was he used a wide ribbon cable to extend his video card off his PCIE slot and at full speed he would get video problems. So, he lowered the video card speed (which is fine since he doesn't do any gaming) and all has worked fine. -- kainaw ™ 19:30, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finding and configuring certain hotkeys

Is there a way to find out what key combinations do what? For example, whenever I press AltGr+Shift+E, whatever window is currently in focus becomes out of focus. The key combination was once used to open up ASUS WebStorage, which I have since uninstalled. However, it seems that Windows is still expecting WebStorage to run or something of that sort, which might be why the window blurs. 141.153.216.54 (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 18

changing name of wireless router

How do i change the name of my wireless router? 72.235.221.120 (talk) 02:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In general, you will log on to the router using a web browser on one of your PCs that's connected to the router. The default address is often http://192.168.0.1/ but this depends on how the router is set up. If you tell us the make and model number of your router, we can be more specific. Comet Tuttle (talk) 08:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Geomedia Professional

In Geomedia Professional 5.2 I am not able to laying over the image one to another . Please help me how to do this — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.99.192.246 (talk) 03:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, to start a new question, please use the "ask a new question" button near the top of the page. I've fixed the format for you this time. Vespine (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with [3]

When I try to go to [4] with Internet Explorer of any version, it redirects me to [5]. Use other browsers, it does not redirect. How do I fix this problem? 125.235.108.75 (talk) 09:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use another browser. The owners of the site have deliberately designed it to not be compatible with Internet Explorer. This has the unsurprising effect that it can't be viewed with any version of Internet Explorer. What problem do you want to fix? --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Go to http://theie9countdown.com/#ie to avoid the redirect. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like other browsers because they are not 64-bit. 125.235.165.163 (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They are 64-bit, and have been since before IE9 existed. The 64-bit versions just aren't well known to Windows users because Windows users wouldn't want it, because Windows doesn't really have 64-bit Flash as other OSes have had for some time. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure about that? I have used x64 Firefox before (since long before the release of Windows Vista), but it was an unofficial build. [6] suggests things have improved slightly in that Mozilla is now working on and releasing nightly builds of the x64 version but there's still no stable version or official support. [7] suggests things are no better and probably worse on the Chrome front and [8] (admitedly undated) suggests the same for Chromium. You can of course use nightly or unofficial builds and I presume you can use a 64 bit version of whatever code base was used for the official build it isn't really the same thing as the officially supported IE6/7/8/9 64 bit versions and so just saying 'They are 64-bit' is IMHO a bit misleading. Incidentally if you want to use unofficial or unsupported builds there is a beta version of the x64 Flash plugin for Windows [9]. Nil Einne (talk) 12:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, do what you want to do. But they've set up the site so you can't see it with IE. So I guess you're going to have to use something else to view it with, if you're going to view it, eh? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Remember, different browsers render the same web page slightly differently. How do I get Trident to integrate it with Firefox? 125.235.165.163 (talk) 14:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To integrate what with Firefox? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The page in question is an "anti-Internet-Explorer" activist website. It complains about standards-compliance shortcomings in IE9, but makes no specific claims. Overall, the case presented is very weak.

It may interest the OP to note that the page in question does not load properly on Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 8 - nor on iOS with Safari, nor on Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Firefox, nor in Safari, nor on Lion, with Safari, nor in Firefox 6. My friend's HP WebOS phone has an error displaying the banner/countdown. On Ubuntu 11.04 with Firefox 5, the page loads okay, but the banner countdown times out. In Lynx, well, ... the page "loaded" but was unusable. I think what we have here is an "activist" who is very incompetent. He claims that Internet Explorer is not standards-compliant, but to make his point, he has created a terribly broken piece of ... "HTML" - and then asserted that it's IE's fault for rendering poorly. And, apparenlty, the user has not verified his own work in many web browsers at all. I have found that many incompetent web designers blame large organizations, like Microsoft, for the shortcomings of their own web page design, instead of diagnosing and fixing their errors.

But http://theie9countdown.com/ie-users-info is valid. That's the point. 125.235.103.251 (talk) 11:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Standard HTML can be validated at validator.w3c.org. As you can see, the creator of your website has malformed script tag syntax - he forgot a quote character. This page should, and does, fail in most browsers.

It's pretty inane to complain about pedantic implementation details of specific web layout engines, when such an egregious and amateurish error remains uncorrected.

On the same topic, why do you need a 64-bit browser? Do you (1) know what this even means, and (2) can you name any specific reason why you need it? Nimur (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You need a 64-bit browser to view web pages that are longer than 4 Gb. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why would anyone want to view web pages that are longer than 4 Gb? AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps they have a "non-standard" use case. In any case, it is not strictly true that your browser must be targeted for x86_64 in order to use more than 4 GB of memory. It depends on your operating system, and the desired purpose for such a large amount of memory. For example, a browser that wants to stream a large video could consume several gigabytes, if the plan was to put the entire video in memory at the same time. More realistic design patterns stream content, caching to a hard disk drive if necessary. This allows manipulating several gigabytes of content without requiring simultaneous residency in physical memory. And, it has nothing to do with 64-bit architecture. All modern file-systems allow very long file offsets. The assertion that the machine must be in a 64-bit mode to view a large website is incorrect. Nimur (talk) 13:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would note that while 4 GB sounds a lot, I think I've seen around 2GB+ usage when you have a lot of tabs and complex pages. If your browser uses multiple processes like Chrome or IE this should effectively split-up the usage somewhat but Firefox still does not. Plugins don't help although if your browser uses a seperate process/sandbox for that, then it may be a seperate issue. Nil Einne (talk) 12:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

parchive

I might have asked this question before, but I can't remember nor find it in the archives. As far as I understand, parchives can find a missing data from looking at the two bytes either side of the missing one. Would this mean that a parchive could be half the size of the original file and still be able to fully restore it? Sort of like compression? 82.43.90.27 (talk) 10:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well the parchive article says: "With the introduction of Parchive, parity files could be created that were then uploaded along with the original data files. If any of the data files were damaged or lost while being propagated between Usenet servers, users could download parity files and use them to reconstruct the damaged or missing files."

So you need both the original file/s and the parity file/s. The parity file simply is used to correct errors if the data file is corrupted. You can't construct the original data solely from the parity file. So while the parity file may be smaller than the data file, you still need both data and parity to reconstruct the original data if the data file's corrupted, which is more space, not less; therefore ultimately no, it's not really like compression. --jjron (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can recover a file solely from the PAR files, but only if the total size of the PAR files is at least as large as the original file. PAR files do work by a kind of interpolation, but you need N data points, from either the PAR files or the originals, to determine the correct interpolation function which allows you to recover the N original data points. There's no free lunch. -- BenRG (talk) 20:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot stream video from A&E family of websites

I'd like to see if anybody else is having this trouble or has any advice. I updated to the latest Flash, Firefox, and Chrome, and made sure there was no ad-blocking. This is on XP Pro, and I have no trouble with other video sites like Youtube and Hulu. I'm in the USA, so region should not be an issue. None of the videos at mylifetime.com or aetv.com will play except some very short thumbnail previews that have no ads. The page and video window comes up, but the window is black and the play button doesnt play anything. They use Brightcove, and I went to Brightcove's website and their test videos play just fine. I downloaded their debugger, and get a lot of messages about preroll ads and playing ads in external players, just status messages, no warnings. I'm guessing that it can't get to the ad server or can't find a player for the ad. Anyway, does this ( Russian Dolls, BTW ) work for anybody? [10] Squidfryerchef (talk) 11:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Turns out it needs Flash cookies to work, something which I normally disable. Squidfryerchef (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Zip file

A chum has gathered a number of jpg files together and sent them to me as a zip, using weTransfer.com. In downloading them, the file has got stuck at 1.2mb out of 59 mb. Why might this be happening? How do I recover from this? Kittybrewster ☎ 16:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about the service you mentioned, but a file getting "stuck" and never resuming is a 30 year old familiar problem. The usual solution is to cancel the download and start again from scratch. That was the way you always had to do it with classic FTP; more recent implementations (which I think means "a mere 15 years old" now) would let you identify and resume a suspended download. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are certain download "helpers" which allow resuming a partially downloaded file, but the host server needs to support it. If the host serves the file through a dynamic link, like a lot of the file websites that offer "premium subscriptions", it won't work. Vespine (talk) 01:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem seems to be caused by a setting which is wrong on my router. What setting might this be? Kittybrewster ☎ 11:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Raised this below under "Router settings" Kittybrewster ☎ 21:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can't install Windows XP x86 on Windows 7 x64 as a second partition

I'm trying to install Windows XP x86 on a Windows 7 Samsung RF711 laptop, as a dual boot partition. However, the installation isn't working at all. Windows Setup does not find any mass storage devices, despite me having tried to either slipstream the drivers on the installation, or burning them to a CD. I can't switch to IDE as well. The BIOS is as barebores that you can get.

The drivers: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads/NP-RF711-S02US

My specifications aren't exactly the same: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/samsung-samsung-17-3-laptop-featuring-intel-core-i7-2630qm-processor-rf711-black-rf711/10167692.aspx (but I assume they're the same drivers) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raskolkhan (talk • contribs) 17:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't see a storage driver there that's listed as compatible with XP. You could try the driver from intel.com, which does say it's compatible. -- BenRG (talk) 20:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like such a newb. Thanks, I owe you a beer. Raskolkhan (talk) 04:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Power Supplies for laptops

This is more of an electrical question, but i suppose it would be appropriate to place it here...

I have an old laptop whose power cord is a bit mangled on the DC end.... I'm wondering if its feasible to use a different power cord until i can fix the mangled one....

The original power supply is 19V, approx 3.15A, with the newer power supply at 19V, approx 3.42A. (the amps are approximated because i dont remember the exact numbers off hand, but they should be within 0.1A of what i gave.)

I asked my dad (who is fairly good with electronics) about this and he said it would work as long as the voltage of the new supply was the same and the amps were at least the same as the old (which is the case here), but i just wanted a second opinion. Thanks!

216.173.144.164 (talk) 20:29, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am not an electrical / electronic engineer, but I concur with your dad. Same voltage. Capable of supplying the required current. You might also want to check the polarity of the connector matches - almost certainly the inner section will be +ve and the outer section -ve on both. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm an amateur electronics enthusiast and agree with the above. The charging circuitry for the battery is in the laptop, so as long as the voltage is right (within a few percent is fine) and the current is same or higher it should be fine. Vespine (talk) 01:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

how can pypy work?

it's written in python, but python can't be compiled...so, what you actually run (compiled .exe) is that still cpython underneath? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.126.128 (talk) 21:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your assumption is wrong. Python can be compiled. Some features of Python (e.g. eval()) probably require a partial interpreter as part of the executable, but that's not different than for nearly any functional language (e.g. LISP), and several of these languages have had compilers for decades. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Practically every language may be compiled. I've compiled QBasic, Java, and PHP to a native executable in the past (please don't ask why - when you are paid to do a job, you just do it). So, the believe that there are "scripting only" languages is wrong. -- kainaw ™ 13:40, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, theoretically every existing programming language can be compiled as well. See Turing-completeness. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but for some of them the "compiled" version will basically be an interpreter bundled with the source code, because you won't be able to prove the correctness of any interesting transformations. Consider the language of Win32 x86 executables, for example. When any byte of program code is potentially modifiable at runtime by almost any store to memory, there's not much a compiler can do. In Python you can get some speedup by replacing each bytecode instruction by the code the interpreter would execute on encountering that instruction, but that still leaves a lot of boilerplate code—for attribute lookups, for example. Every time the program calls math.sqrt you have to get the value of the global math and then do a lookup of the attribute sqrt, just in case the program has perversely changed one of them. In C++ when a program calls std::sqrt you can just generate a machine-code instruction to do the square root. In a whole-program Python compiler you can potentially prove with global analysis that certain variables are constant, but a single call of globals() anywhere in the program could potentially invalidate the whole analysis. -- BenRG (talk) 00:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It might make more sense when you realize that the Python-interpreter-written-in-Python that they're compiling is not written in completely unrestricted Python, but rather only a limited subset of it (called RPython - loosely defined as "the subset of Python which can be reliably compiled"). The features of Python which make it difficult to compile (self-modification, eval(), etc.) aren't used/supported in RPython. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 19

Google Street View privacy concerns

Main article: Google Street View privacy concerns

As mentioned not long ago on this page, Google will pixelate out a picture of your house on Street View if you so request. I wonder whether for celebrities they might do more than that. In some internet forum a somewhat naive and silly girl asserted that a certain celebrity lives at a certain address. Despite her seeming airheadedness about some things, she was so specific about some other things that I looked at Google Maps and found out that (1) the address exists; (2) it is pixelated out; (3) if you enter existing addresses of other houses on that street into google (not google maps), information appears; (4) if you enter addresses on that street that don't exist, no information appears; (5) for that address, no information appears, although it does exist. Could item (5) on this list have resulted from Google making the information unavailable as part of their privacy practices? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, apparently nobody here knows any more than I do about this. (In the mean time the aforementioned girl is getting sillier, and ruder, but seems to have demonstrated that she's privy to some information.) Michael Hardy (talk) 13:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Download special video from youtube?

Hi, my friend was in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TABqnaQPhns&has_verified=1) , and I wanted to download it for them and give it to them as an embarassing birthday present, as this was filmed a couple of years ago. Is there anyway I can download it? I can't find it as a torrent, and I can't download the video normally of youtube as the video doesn't load like normal videos, but it just streams that particular moment. I can't really describe it as I don't know much about computers. I've tried recording as screen capture, but the quality's not the same. Any help is appreciated. Thanks for reading. 86.161.91.54 (talk) 00:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a VERY common question here on the ref desk.Vespine (talk) 01:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

the quick solution - Go to www.keepvid.com, type the video's URL into the indicated field, then click Download. Rocketshiporion ♫ 13:17, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. This isn't like a normal YouTube video, so KeepVid, and other solutions, don't work. 86.161.91.54 (talk) 23:12, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

None of the usual tools I'd use to download from youtube seem to work on it. I've had problems like this myself on some videos. Youtube does something to the rtmp:// stream to disrupt downloading of videos which are licensed for viewing with adverts from tv show networks. I know of no simple solution, but I've had some success with this program in the past. It's complicated, a bit unstable and might crash your computer, so make sure to save any of your work before trying it. 82.43.90.27 (talk) 23:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

accurate shut down

I have used free trial version of a software "accurate shut down" .I have uninstalled it but a message box appear whenever i restart my computer ,which is about trial version is over.I have to close it by clicking cross sign on thye box,some time it held my computer.how can i fix it so that it does not appear after every restart. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.152.68.6 (talk) 04:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Win+r, msconfig, Startup ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:48, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excel number display format

Excel accommodates rounding and truncation with its number formats. E.g., the format code #,##0, causes 12345999 to be displayed as 12,346

Is there a format code that will cause 12345999 to display as 12,346,000 ? (As 12,345,000 would also do.)

Thank you, Wanderer57 (talk) 04:47, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

=round(a1,-3) where a1 is the cell with the number. You'll then have to change the formatting to add the commas. This will of course mean you will have one cell with the full amount, and a second with the rounded. - Akamad (talk) 06:14, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. After losing some sleep, I found there is also a format code that does the trick. It is

#,###,",000"

Wanderer57 (talk) 18:16, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firesheep for Linux

I would like to install Firesheep on my computer. Now before you run and call your nearest FBI agent: I am doing this for educational purposes and to test out how safe it is to run my Android (2.3.3) phone on a public wireless connection. My guess is "pretty damned unsafe."

Anyway, I have three questions:

Because I'm running Ubuntu (11.04) with FF 6, I can't just run the Windows executable. I have to compile from source. Is running this code safe? I'm totally unfamiliar with github.com, and the entire git infrastructure for that matter. (I notice nothing important requires root access, but having access to my browser information is pretty unsafe IMHO) PS. I have tried it in VirtualBox WinXP, which doesn't work, presumably because it doesn't have low-level access to my wireless card. PPS. If it isn't safe, would it be safe to downgrade to FF 3 and run the original on my Windows partition?
Is it safe to run my phone through my cell carrier's connection? I'm not thrilled about my phone screaming out my FB/Google/etc. log-in data loud enough for the phone 5 miles away tower to hear it. Unless it's encrypted.
If I find out all of this is unsafe, how can I run my computer and phone such that it is safe? Unfortunately, I have 4 other individuals in my household who could snoop my data at any point.

Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:40, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, you are about to perform one of the most unsafe operations: installing a kernel extending driver. Specifically, you are installing libpcap/. It will, when properly installed, effectively be "root" - it will have direct unprotected access to your hardware and to your computer's entire physical memory in unprotected mode. Why is this unsafe? 1) An error in pcap can corrupt your system. 2) Malicious code in pcap, or the variant you just downloaded as part of the Firesheep distribution, could trivially siphon data and send it to the network.

Both 1 and 2 are "improbable," because pcap is a widely used and well known tool, but you may not have the technical expertise to verify whether your specific version is unmodified for malicious purposes (or, just in an incompetent way that may crash your machine). Regarding long range mobile traffic: your GSM traffic is "usually" encrypted. Snooping mobile telephony data requires some specialized equipment, as well. It is hard to get mobile telephone radio gear on the open market, so there are fewer enthusiast hackers toying around on the GSM protocol stack trying to crack it. However, there are security flaws in the mobile telephoney system, and there isn't a whole lot you can do about them - "wait for your carrier's technician to update the operating system and firmware on all the mobile telephone base stations" is the only action you can really take. If you're interested in technical implementation details of wireless security as it pertains to mobile telephones, I have a few technical papers, let me know and I can dig them out. In the meantime, read our article on SIM and IMEI, the two seed values of a public-key exchange protocol used by your telephone. Your carrier also uses IMEI filtering (sort of a "hardware whitelist" approach), and also validates SIM/IMEI matches, so a hacker will have a hard time attacking a mobile telephone network without broadcasting his own personally-identifiable data. Passive snooping of GSM wireless traffic is "usually" a waste of time, due to the encoding and encryption. Regarding security of the data you pass to Google and Facebook: the protocol stack only protects your data until it gets to its "endpoint," and once your data is owned by Google or Facebook, they may do what they like with it, including leaking it (intentionally or otherwise). In perspective, this is probably a more serious security risk than any protocol sniffing on a wireless network. You've transferred secure data to an unknown third-party, just because they are "famous." You have done so voluntarily, too - so, you now have zero technical protection, and almost no legal protection, should they misuse your data. Nimur (talk) 13:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Additional information needed That is a very good macro-analysis of the situation, but I'd like to hear from a few other people. Doesn't anyone else have something to offer? Magog the Ogre (talk) 04:56, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]I'm not familiar with that depot or anything, but if you are concerned about whether the code is going to own your Windows partition, why don't you get an external hard disk, install Windows on it, disconnect your main hard disk, and then snoop to your heart's content using the external hard disk? Format it after you're done with your Firesheep work. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:49, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Powerpoint Open Side-by-Side?

ResolvedJust as it's possible to have two documents open on the desktop in Word, is it possible to have 2 Powerpoints open? I don't mean actually have two slideshows running, I mean two windows with the editing stages? I have one here in Japanese, and an English translation of the Japanese one. The English translation is only 1/3 done, because I did the first 30 slides by just overwriting the Japanese (and saving as a new .ppt), and since then, 60 extra slides have been added to the original. This means I have to copypaste my work from the 30-slide version of the translation into a new copy of the 90 page version, and continue on from there. Before I do that, though, I have to make sure the original 30 pages have not changed (they have, in some places), meaning I have to compare. However, when I open one, the other closes. Is there any way to have two of them open at once so I can compare the two (or even three) versions? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]If I open 2 powerpoint presentations, and do Window... Arrange All I get them both displayed. This is PP 2003. --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:56, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] Cheers! You're a lifesaver timesaver! I have 2007, and just for reference, it's 'View>Arrange All'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Fibre Channel over Ethernet: Bridging DeviceGood Day, fellow RefDeskers! I have a 16Gb Fibre Channel Disk Array connected to a 16Gb Fibre Channel SAN Switch, and several blade servers connected to a 10Gb Ethernet LAN Switch. I'm seeking to connect an 16Gb Fibre Channel SAN Switch to the 10Gb Ethernet LAN Switch, in order to have the blade servers access LUNs on the FC disk-array over FCoE. I'm aware that I'll need some kind of 16GFC-to-10GbE bridging device to sit between the LAN and SAN switches, but I'm not exactly sure what it is that's needed - so any pointers would be very helpful. The two switches are the Brocade 6510 16GFC Switch and the Supermicro SBM-XEM-X10SM 10GbE Switch. Thanks as always. Rocketshiporion♫ 13:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]PS2 .STR Audio FilesI've got some audio tracks from a PS2 game copied to my hard drive, and I was wondering if there was a program out there that can play these tracks... and if possible convert them to .wav or .mp3 157.157.39.8 (talk) 23:29, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]FFmpeg should manage it, including its win32 frontends, such as SUPER & WinFF. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:37, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]August 20Permutation identificationGiven two arrays containing the same elements (all distinct) in different orders, how does one most efficiently identify the permutation applied to the first to yield the second? I know one can create a map from elements to their indices in the second array, and then loop over the first accumulating the map's value for each element. But I feel there ought to be a lighterweight solution that doesn't involve constructing a temporary hashtable or BST. (I guess there can't be an asymptotically faster algorithm: it must be able to generate all $n!$ possible permutations, so it must do $O(n\log n)$ work just like a sort.) --Tardis (talk) 01:46, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]You could tag both arrays with indices, sort both, then just run down the sorted arrays in parallel gathering the indices. If you went with your approach, instead of constructing a hash table or binary search tree you could sort the index-tagged array and do a binary search on that. I think either approach would be pretty fast and I doubt there's any way to do it much faster, unless the elements are expensive to compare in which case you might be better off with the hash table. -- BenRG (talk) 03:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Javascript program writingI want to write a java script program. Is there any compiler for that or should I use notepad? Thanks--180.234.94.35 (talk) 10:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Notepad isn't anything like a compiler, so your question doesn't quite make sense. Perhaps you're referring to an IDE for Javascript? Many of those do exist. And if you want a straight editor, there are many that are usually recommended over Notepad: Notepad++, Emacs, TextMate, BBEdit, etc. --Tardis (talk) 18:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] Also, JavaScript code is rarely compiled; it is usually hosted or interpreted. What platform are you targeting with your script? Many JavaScript programs are intended to be hosted inside of a web browser. If you want to create a standalone JavaScript program, I recommend Mozilla Rhino and the OpenJDK VM. You can also run a variant of ECMAScript in Windows Script Host, but I find that dialect to be very different from web-development style JavaScript. Nimur (talk) 22:55, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Visual Studio works. As noted above, it's not a compiled language. You'll also want to know to use Firebug (under Firefox) or the Google Chrome browser for debugging. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:43, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Firefox source codeHow do I get the source code for Firefox? Asked by 123.24.96.94 (talk) at 12:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]See this, which advises you to clone the Mozilla Mercurial repository to get a source tree. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 12:21, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Or for a more casual approach, perhaps ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/6.0/source/firefox-6.0.source.tar.bz2 ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:31, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Where does Chrome keep its bookmarks?One of my hard disks has fallen on the floor and cannot be accessed by a Windows system booted from another disk. It lists the contents as RAW. However, I can still copy most of the files accessing it from Linux. What I need is to get to my Chrome bookmarks. But where are they kept? Hoppafrogg (talk) 14:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]On Windows (Vista onward) these are in Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default (for reference, on Linux they're in ~/.config/google-chrome/Default). If you're interested in the format, some files are Sqlite3, but looking at the Bookmarks file specifically it looks like JSON data instead. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Alternatively, you may find them on a Windows XP/2000 system in [main drive]:\Documents and Settings\[main user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data. Nevard (talk) 02:05, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Windows 7 file explorer and all internet browsers jump back a pageI am running an instance of Windows 7 in a virtual machine on a Mac. This problem is new in that I haven't done much with the VM after this started happening. All internet browsers, whether they be Firefox, IE, or Google Chrome, revert back to the previous page. I even hear the "click" associated with clicking the back button. This even happens with Windows Explorer and the Control Panel. I tested to see if it was a stuck backspace key on my Mac's keyboard by disabling it with the Bluetooth button up in OS X's start bar. That didn't help. I then tried some more troubleshooting a month or two later by logging in, opening Command Prompt, and enterednet user administrator /active:yesand I turned off the keyboard this time. I logged into the hidden administrator account that I enabled and opened up the on screen keyboard. The problem was gone and I thought it was one of those weird glitches that is solved by doing something different. So, I rebooted my VM and logged back into to my normal account with my Mac keyboard powered on. Loath (yes, loath) and behold, it was happening again. What possibly could be causing this and what can I do? (This has not been happening in my other Windows 7 VM.) --Melab±1 ☎ 14:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]How to send an old computer system to schools in Africa?Hello, I am interested in sending my old computer system to any African school who would really need another computer. What programs/organizations/etc. would help me with this? Thanks. --70.179.163.168 (talk) 15:00, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]You don't say where you are located, but your IP address seems to geolocate near Atlanta, Georgia. I googled donate computer atlanta georgia and several services popped up. As far as donating to Africa, there are a couple of problems with this — in addition to the shipping cost possibly approaching the cost of a new OLPC laptop, with any computer donation, somebody has to support it, unless you want the computer to end up as an African doorstop in a couple of years; and so in turn the person supporting the system will want to know everything about it, what parts are likely to wear out, and generally invest more time in the system than this is worth. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:12, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Although after having written that unreferenced complaint, I notice that Computer Aid International doesn't seem to have trouble doing this from the UK. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:16, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Sorry that my IP didn't geolocate properly, as I am from Kansas. Thanks for linking Computer Aid International. In that case, is there any organization similar to CAI in Kansas or at least the Midwest? --70.179.163.168 (talk) 20:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]CSS normal text styleI am desirous of adding a short phrase at the end of a heading in the style of normal body text. So, pretending that bold italic is the style for a level 3 heading (h3), a normal heading might look like: This is the heading I want to add a bit to the heading in normal body text, in a 'span', so the result looks like This is the heading body text. What is the name of the default style for body text? -- SGBailey (talk) 15:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]If you just want to turn italics off, it's font-style:normal (rather than font-style:italic). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:39, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]But if you wanted all of the style (colours, borders, font, background, text-decoration, etc.) then you need to set those individually (or use a class which did the same). CSS exhibits optional inheritance, but as seems you'll have your span as a child of the h3, that's the element from which it would inherit its properties. CSS isn't very expressive, and one can't say "make the style of a be a copy of the style of b". The CSS2 DOM allows access to a given elements actual style using the getComputedStyle method, so Javascript can cut'n'paste a style from one element to another. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Yes I do want all of the style. Can you point me at any sample javascript to copy? -- SGBailey (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the Javascript (sometimes I feel like the H.P.Lovecraft of software...). If we're talking about Wikipedia, this isn't going to work, and you'd typically use a template that did a span with the CSS you require. If this is your own site, you'd be overwhelmingly better off just setting the correct styles in the stylesheet, and probably using a class for your thing at the end of a header object. I can't think of a good reason a sane person would actually do the Javascript thing I suggested (for a site which she fully controlled, with content only she supplied) but this StackOverflow discussion has such a code. But I warn you as I warned Al Azif, do it with (unsatisfactory, but workable) CSS, for the way of Javascript is the way of madness. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Thanks. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:21, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Can most computers type diacritics?There've been a good deal of discussions about the use of diacritics where people opposed to the use of diacritics have asserted that not only do many people not know how to type them, but most computers/keyboards (or U.S.-sold computers) cannot type them. I would think that at least through non-default language options, or keystrokes like Alt + ASCII number codes, or if not these special software, this wouldn't be a problem. So, can most computers type diacritics? can that many not at all? —innotata 16:38, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Yes, all computers running Windows or Mac OS (at least) have built-in ways to insert any Unicode character (Windows has Character Map, and Mac OS has a similar utility called Character Viewer), although it can be quite cumbersome to use these to actually type text. I assume that nearly all flavors of Linux have similar facilities. If you are referring specifically to the editing of Wikipedia articles, there are tools to insert special characters right on the edit page; see Help:Entering special characters for more information. —Bkell (talk) 17:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] Our article, Internationalization and localization, may help. Computers have supported internationalized character encoding since at least the 1960s. Almost every desktop, server, and mainframe operating system I know has supported such characters. The unicode character encoding standard has been de-facto the best way to be consistent across different platforms, and has been around for a few decades (see origin and development - 1987 is cited, though mainstream support on most operating systems is more realistically "late 1990s"). Many users who do not regularly deal with international characters do not know how to enter or edit these types of characters, but the computer hardware and most modern software can usually display and handle UTF characters just fine. Nimur (talk) 22:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] Windows XP, the first Microsoft consumer-line operating system to give really solid native support for Unicode came out almost ten years ago today. My guess would be that most people who edit Wikipedia extensively are running really quite recent computers- two or three years old. Most people who edit Wikipedia with an account, making perhaps one substantive edit every week, on average, would have a computer running either XP or something like an older version of Mac OS, where they were ahead of the game. Personally, when I need to put in a diacritic I tend to copy and paste it from earlier in the article, or from another article. Nevard (talk) 00:23, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Many Unix systems have long had a Compose key that allows diacritics to be typed in the windowing system. On Linux systems, the user may have to configure this in the keyboard preferences, since the PC keyboard does not include a Compose key by default, but does have an abundance of recently-added keys (Windows and Menu keys) that are useless in Linux unless put to some particular purpose. —FOo (talk) 08:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]It's very easy to type in the most familiar diacritics in OS X, much easier than on regular American Windows keyboard setups. In OS X, each of the regular diacritics has an associated key (acute is e, grave is i, for example), and you type option+the key, and then type whatever character you want the diacritic to appear over. So e-acute would be option+e and then e (é). It's surprisingly easier than the Alt-codes mechanism (which is really only plausible if you use the same diacritics over and over again -- it's totally unintuitive). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:17, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Windows supports switching the keyboard layout entirely with simple keyboard shortcuts, which makes it much easier, especially for languages like Russian. The technique you describe above only works for Latin characters. In Windows, if you go to Start → Control Panel → Regional and Language Settings → Languages → Details, you can add keyboard layouts. For example, I can switch to Spanish by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + 2 and then press the bracket key and e to get é. Likewise, I can press CTRL + SHIFT + 6 to switch to Russian and then press x to get ч. This functionality was also present in Windows 9x and you could switch keyboard layouts in Windows 3 by going to Main → Control Panel → International, although without keyboard shortcuts. In MS-DOS, you could switch keyboard layouts with the chcp command, although you first had to load contry.sys and nslfunc.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:43, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]MS Excel - Elapsed time calculationsI'm having difficulty getting Excel to differentiate between a period of time versus the time. In short I need to sum a column of time periods such as 12:45:30 (12 hours, 45 minutes, 30 seconds) but Excel insists on handling it as fourteen and a half minutes before 1pm. I need everything to be formatted as hhh:mm:ss. The total of the column would be hundreds of hours and an some individual entries would exceed 24 hours. The answer to a sum of time periods is not "Next Wednesday at 09:45:25" Roger (talk) 16:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]You should be able to do this using the HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions, I think. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]I don't think there is an inbuilt function / format to do this. If A6 contains your time, try =TEXT(INT(A6)*24+HOUR(A6),"0")&":"&TEXT(A6,"mm:ss") -- SGBailey (talk) 21:28, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Format the cells using [hh]:mm. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:18, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Router settingsI am trying to download files. Anything larger than 1.2mb seems to get stuck. The problem seems to be caused by a setting which is wrong on my router. What setting might this be? Kittybrewster ☎ 20:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]There's no home router setting, nor no rational browser setting, that says "break downloads at 1.2mb" or anything like that. I'd be like building a car with "wheels fall off at 150 miles from home" mode. For a download to fail, consistently, at such a low number would suggest either you have some fundamental connectivity issue or some defective hardware or software, neither of which is particularly diagnosable remotely. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]What's the MTU value set to in the router? Without knowing anything about your Internet connection this could have absolutely nothing to do with it, but I once had a similar issue with an ADSL line when I set the MTU value too high. It'd work okay, but when trying to sustain a connection it would drop off after a short while (much like your 1.2Mb). If your MTU is higher than 1478 try lowering it to 1452 or even 1412 as a test and see if it makes any difference (you'll need to reconnect to the Internet and likely need to reboot the entire router for it to take effect). Like I said though it might make no difference at all, but worth a look. ZX81 ^talk 22:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]The only thing I've ever seen that fixes these kinds of problems on consumer grade routers is to update the firmware. There should be a page on the routers embedded web page that shows you how to do it. RxS (talk) 22:54, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]It could well be some kind of temporary problem with your ISP. If you know someone who knows enough about computers to be totally incomprehensible when they talk about how they work, get them onto it. In the meantime I would try to use a download manager if you need to get hold of any larger files. This came up in a search for 'smallest download manager'. This has worked well in the past for me, though there might be some fiddling involved. Nevard (talk) 00:05, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]August 21Burning time differencesI was just curious if anyone could tell me why MKV files of the same size as AVI files take about 5 times as long to burn to disk on my mac superdrive. Thanks.--108.46.107.181 (talk) 01:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]best proxy to avoid detectioncan someone suggest me a proxy i can run on my home pc to be anonymous and avoid detecting my IP as my bro in law has been bothering with his IT skills and invading my family's privacy, its getting serious now.. please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.76.30 (talk) 08:02, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Can you be a little more specific about what you want, with perhaps an example of your brother in law's activity? Has your brother-in-law had access to your computer? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Adobe InDesign favour

ResolvedI have an important (and quite large - 91Mb) file saved as an InDesign (.indd) file. InDesign has full support for turning this into a PDF; however, it's suddenly stopped working and time is not on my side. Could anyone with InDesign convert it for me? I'll email it if anyone could. There shouldn't need to be anything complicated. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:00, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]If you can upload it somewhere and give me an e-mail address to send the PDF to, I could definitely do in by the end of today. Message me via my talk page. It's worth noting that InDesign files have terribly backwards and forwards compatibility. I have InDesign CS5 at home and CS6 at work; if you're more than 1 versions different from either of these, I'm not going to be able to open them, I don't think. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:56, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]If it doesn't have any embarrassing personal information in it, just upload it somewhere public and link to it here, then whoever is available at that moment can help you out. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:40, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]It's here (I think you'll need to "save target as" or similar); I think you an email me though here, if not it's usergrandiose [.at.] gmail.com. (As you can see, it's designed for this sort of thing.) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] OK, it's been done. Thanks whoever that is! Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:02, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] No problem. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]August 22How can I batch process convert MP3s into mono?I have a bunch of stereo MP3s that I would like to convert to mono. What is the best way to do this without losing too much quality or reencoding in a higher bitrate (since the MP3s range from 128 to 320 kbps). I am looking for something that can batch process entire folders automatically. Thanks! 169.234.102.200 (talk) 00:02, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]Why? ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply] I'm slightly hard of hearing in one ear so I change the balance on my computer, but then some songs sound weird like that, so I would prefer them in mono. 169.234.102.200 (talk) 00:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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	:Why? ¦ [[User:Reisio\|Reisio]] ([[User talk:Reisio\|talk]]) 00:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)		:Why? ¦ [[User:Reisio\|Reisio]] ([[User talk:Reisio\|talk]]) 00:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
	::I am slightly hard of hearing in one ear so I change the balance on my computer, but then some songs sound weird like that. I would prefer them in mono. [[Special:Contributions/169.234.102.200\|169.234.102.200]] ([[User talk:169.234.102.200\|talk]]) 00:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)		::I'm slightly hard of hearing in one ear so I change the balance on my computer, but then some songs sound weird like that, so I would prefer them in mono. [[Special:Contributions/169.234.102.200\|169.234.102.200]] ([[User talk:169.234.102.200\|talk]]) 00:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)