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October 7

If I have an infected XP Pro x32 with the heur zero day threat and want to dual boot it with either an XP Pro x64 or a windows 7 x64, will the virus pass over.

Hi to all,

I have an XP Pro x32 bit operating system & it is infected with the Heur zero day threat virus. I am in the process of geting it fixed up through PC Tools. The Anti-spyware program people who brought out the Spyware Doctor. It is not fixed yet, but I wanted to dual boot this operating system with a Windows XP Pro x64 bit or maybe with a Windows 7 x64 bit operating system instead. My question is, is it safe to dual boot with either of these operating systems or will the Heur Zero Day threat virus migrate to the newer windows x64 bit partition containing the operating system within the same hard drive disc & infect that also. Also which operating system out of the two would be the least likely one for the Heur Day Zero Threat to migrate to if it can. I should add though, that I would rather use up my windows XP Pro x64 bit operating system first. I would like to do this before I return to work next week if I can as I have nothing else to do while I am off work. It has already been a week that PC Tools has had my problem in their hands. I would like to hear from people that have knowledge please & not just hear say thank you.

   124.189.33.41 (talk) 01:08, 7 October 2011 (UTC)GAZ.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.189.33.41 (talk) 01:06, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hope to hear from someone soon 124.189.33.41 (talk) 00:18, 7 October 2011 (UTC) GAZ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.189.33.41 (talk) 23:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with the "heur zero day threat virus", but the only way it could cross over is if you accessed the infected system's files from the uninfected system, or vice versa. Windows might attempt to give you access to filesystems connected to the same hardware by default — what you'd want to do is tell it not to. http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=heurZeroDay&channels=##windows ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:20, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What software told you that you have "Heur zero day threat virus"? That does not sound like a virus name that would be used by any reputable virus scanner. Most of the free "virus scanning" software that you will find online is actually a scam that will report fake problems in an attempt to get you to pay money for a useless removal tool. -- BenRG (talk) 02:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Firefox my Adobe Reader buttons (above the pdf-file in view) don't work!?

When I open a webpage with combined html and PDF content, then the Adobe Reader buttons (save, print etc.), in top of the PDF-frame of the webpage, don¨t work. While, strangely enough, the "goto page#" box and the "zoom level" box, just beside the frozen keys, they are accepting and handling input correctly.
I have Firefox v7.0.1,
Windows7(64)Home and
AdobeReader v10.1.1
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Acrobat Reader but the problem persists.
Could you please help me get things back to working order?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pages on a particular site, or any site? ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any PDF ;-( I just discovered that the same problem occurs with plain PDF files (not just the html+pdf web pages). For instance: http://www.viewsoniceurope.com/uk/product_pdfs/lcd/27/E-VX2753mh-LED.pdf
--Seren-dipper (talk) 00:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for being vague, but I remember having in-browser PDF-reading problems with Firefox a while ago — I think it was related to very large PDFs — and my workaround was that whenever there was a link to a PDF file on the Web, I would right-click that link and choose "Save As", then after downloading the whole PDF, I would launch plain old Acrobat and load the PDF, without involving a Web browser at all. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:24, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is a good workaround when dealing with plain PDF files, but not when a URL is to a "pdf+html" because then Acrobat Reader is unable to open the resulting saved file.
Regarding file size: My problem, with Adobe buttons not working inside Firefox, is just the same for a small, one page, PDF file.
I refraze my question in the subsection "Preferences limiting..." following below:
--Seren-dipper (talk) 02:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)A[reply]

Preferences limiting what a Firefox plug-in is allowed to do?

(This is a continuation of my above question ("Adobe Reader buttons don't work in Firefox")
Does Firefox have some preferences setting (or something in "URL://about:config") that may limit what a Plug-in is allowed to do, and which may be the reason why the Adobe plug-in buttons (save, print etc.) does not work?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 02:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)B[reply]

Help identifying TV.

Hello, I was wondering if anyone has the same TV as I do, also wondering what exact TV it is, so if anyone does know please tell me and please tell me as well what the best settings are for playing a Blu-ray movie on a PlayStation 3 with that TV. Specifications below:

1. It's a Sony

2. It's a 32" Inch

3. It has 1 HDMI input (my Video 6)

4. It has 2 Composite video inputs (those are my Video 4 & 5's)

5. It has a Coaxial input

6. It has some inputs on the right side, an RCA input (Yellow, White, and Red inputs) and an earphone input to move the audio to the input (this ismy Video 2)

7. It has 2 more RCA inputs (Video 1 & 3)

Thanks to anyone to helps me identify the exact TV model.

66.138.72.16 (talk) 01:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a Sony Bravia TV too, isn't there a menu option that gives you the model number? Number of inputs won't be enough information to guess the model number.. Vespine (talk) 05:51, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Every TV I've ever had, has had the model number on the back, usually on the same plate that specifies the serial number, input voltage, etc. Unless it is really old, the official Sony website for your country will let you download user manuals and specification sheets for your TV model. Astronaut (talk) 09:29, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alright thanks guys, I'll go look around for it. I'm just trying to figure out the best Blu-ray settings for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.138.72.16 (talk) 11:49, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This may answer the question you are really asking: You definitely want to use the HDMI input. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Comet Tuttle, I am indeed already using the HDMI. Thanks anyways — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.138.72.16 (talk) 04:01, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But at what resolution? My PS3 is broken at the moment, so I can't check, but doesn't it have an option for "Automatically determine settings"? Try that first.

If that doesn't work, personally I'd start at the top and work my way down. First set it to 1080p and see if that works. If not set it to 1080i, then 720p, then 720i. (Here "works" doesn't just mean you have an image. It could be doing some bad down-sampling. Make sure the image isn't distorted or blury, and make sure there isn't an unusual lag or stutter.)APL (talk) 22:49, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted account

Hi

I have not used my account in a long time and apparently it got deleted. I made my first contribution in 2006 with the username Nil0, I have tried to make a new account of the same name but it is not allowed since it resembles an account with the name Nilo too much. Since I were able to create my account in 2006 I am sure I came first ;-)

Could somebody recreate my account?

Regards Nil0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.75.167.178 (talk) 10:12, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An account on Wikipedia, or some other site? On Wikipedia accounts cannot be deleted, are you sure you have spelled the name correctly? User:Nil0 does not exist but User:Nilo does, have you tried logging into that one? If you want to make a new account with a name similar to an existing one but are prevented from doing so by the system, make an account with any name and then request a name change, or request an account with the name you want. AvrillirvA (talk) 10:54, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

work done in increasing the length of wire by a hanging mass (m)

pls if know about it answer to this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rohit240819942 (talk • contribs) 13:03, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our policy here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. - David Biddulph (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Consider reading conservation of energy; but you also should conceptually understand that ductile deformation of a wire is a very good example of nonconservative work. Nimur (talk) 16:28, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To explain that in layman's terms, you might think that the work done in stretching the wire would be equal to the work required to move the weight from the lower point to the higher point. However, this isn't quite true because work is also done generating heat during the stretching process.

But, in a classroom setting, they may want you to ignore the heat. You might do the calculation assuming it should be ignored, but then add a comment that explains why it can't be, to cover you in both cases. See gravitational potential energy.

Incidentally, this Q belongs on the Science Desk. StuRat (talk) 21:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Making a film

Let's try this again, since it didn't work before. About a week ago I posted a complaint about my video editing program: ' So, I wanted to fit a bunch of pictures together to create a short film, like a slide show, but a bit quicker than I expect they could manage, and whilst experimenting with my video editor (avidemux), I found that I could open pictures in that and stitch them together into just such a film. However, if I try to add a picture that is not the only one in the folder, it adds the whole contents of that folder, but with all but the first in the wrong colours, all bright and jumbled up instead. if I move things in and out of the folder one by one, it can only find the last one, so no easy way around that. And now it turns out, if I save it and load it again, it all comes up in the wrong colours anyway, and with all coloured dots over the pictures as well. Meanwhile, even the right colour images are of a rather lower quality than they were originally. '

What I wanted was either 1) someone to give me instructions on how to make this program work the way I wanted or 2) someone to tell me where to find another program that could do the job. What I got was a link to what seems to be a site where someone is explaining their attempt to create a program that can do this, something I doubt I could do myself. I cannot see how that can help, and so still need the answer, with my first attempt now archived, I thought the time has come to try again and see if I get any more helpful results this time.

148.197.81.179 (talk) 15:18, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If I recall correctly, you are referring to your question on October 1. Reisio linked (without much explanation) to some instructions to an FFMPEG tutorial. FFMPEG is probably the best tool to do what you're asking: it's a command line utility, and it is free software; you can download it from the official FFMPEG webpage - for almost every type of computer and operating system commonly available. The tutorial Reisio linked - Making movies from image files using ffmpeg/mencoder - looks pretty thorough to me; for example, the command ffmpeg -r 10 -b 1800 -i %03d.jpg test1800.mp4 will combine all your JPG images into one output movie file (explained in more detail in the tutorial). Are you having trouble following those directions? Do you need help getting the software running on your system? Are you looking for other software? For example, iMovie for the Mac is able to composite image files into a video file, and has a graphical user-interface.

AVIDemux can also specify input files using a Workbench File, sort of a "project" script; their syntax is specified in the avidemux documentation, Using Project Files. Nimur (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK then, I just couldn't see where in that link it said what it was or what I should be doing with it, perhaps I just did not read it carefully enough, I will have another look, see if I can work it out. 148.197.81.179 (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Playing a mini-CD on my MAC superdrive

I got a CD in the mail that I want to listen to. I've never seen a a CD this size. I don't have a ruler but laying coins end to end its three (American) quarters and half a penny in diameter. It says on it "CD2/2" and maybe that's the size. Can I put this in my MAC Superdrive? I'm scared to try. I don't have a CD player.--108.27.98.230 (talk) 16:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it a Mini CD? They are not compatible with most slot loading drives without an adapter and I wouldn't put it into a Mac. It will probably get stuck if you do. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Traffic and number of servers

If following data are right:

   * Google: 1,000,000 servers, 24,000 employees.
   * Facebook: 60,000 servers, 2,000 employees.
   * Microsoft: 220,000 servers, 90,000 employees.
   * Yahoo: 50,000 servers, 13,900 employees. 
   * WK: 370 servers and fewer than 100 employees.

Then how can you explain this huge difference? Wikiweek (talk) 18:36, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What huge difference are you referring to? Are you talking about servers per employee? If so, here are the numbers in a more straightforward format:

Google: 1,000,000 servers, 24,000 employees. - 41.6 servers per employee
Facebook: 60,000 servers, 2,000 employees. - 30
Microsoft: 220,000 servers, 90,000 employees. - 2.44
Yahoo: 50,000 servers, 13,900 employees. - 3.5
WK: 370 servers and fewer than 100 employees. - 3.7

Is this the difference you're wondering about? Dismas|^(talk) 18:41, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Volunteers. -- kainaw ™ 18:42, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) What exactly would you like explained? Unsourced estimates about the number of computers operated by various organizations differ in magnitude? Nimur (talk) 18:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is WK meant to be Wikipedia? The reasons for its low numbers overall are pretty obvious — it doesn't make very much money and it relies on volunteers. For the others, you have somewhat different business models at work. Google employs gobs of programmers all working on different things, but mostly within a web niche. Facebook is essentially just one web-based product. Microsoft has gobs of programmers working on gobs of products and uses its servers to do all sorts of business-y things other than websites. I have no idea why Yahoo has so many employees. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:51, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think another big diff is that many of those other servers perform CPU-intensive tasks like generating map directions, while Wikipedia mainly just serves up text and illustrations. StuRat (talk) 21:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These data are official and are from WK. They are about the top 5 more visited pages. You see the huge difference in the number of servers to manage the traffic load. The low number of employees of WK is easy to explain: lots of volunteers to do the hard work. Wikiweek (talk) 21:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What's WK? Do you mean WMF? Nil Einne (talk) 21:57, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Nil Einne, WK is WMF, you are right. Wikiweek (talk) 22:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The low number of servers is perhaps explainable by the fact that the vast majority of Wikipedia's visitors are (a) not logged in and (b) not editing, so the Squid caches can just spit out a pre-rendered page. Google result pages are dynamic, so they can't do that kind of caching. Paul (Stansifer) 22:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source is here. Sounds like an explanation. Source here, BTW: [1]... Wikiweek (talk) 22:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whatt wikipedia.org does't provide (and the other 4 yes): -no dynamic content, adapted to each users -no several GB email accounts -no usual software download, of sometime >100 MB Quest09 (talk) 00:48, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hash gathering website - Why

This website : http://www.xdecrypt.com/google-sha1-cd7c-3

Presents hash values of things like logins.... How is that useful ?

I guess there is already some botnet harvesting these things and using them... but in which ways...

85.81.121.107 (talk) 20:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's a rainbow table (and a good illustration of why unwhitened hashes are suboptimal for password storage). For example, the md5sum of "spaceman" is 91e363cf471a1bce35b3458967a754d7; look that up on the website and it successfully finds "spaceman" for it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Most websites or systems run by slightly competent people don't store passwords in their databases as plaintext, because if someone grabs the database, they have all of the users' passwords. So they store hashes, and compare the hashes of the entered passwords with the hashes in the database. Well and good, except that with lookup tables (like your site is), you can store up huge lists of hashed phrases and words and then quickly compare that database with your password database, rendering those passwords into their plaintext. The way around this, as Findlay alludes to, is to find ways to increase the difficulty of this sort of thing, like adding a salt to all hashed passwords. If the salt is unknown, then you've effectively gotten around lookup tables altogether; if it is known, then you've just required a re-computing of the whole table. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:40, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 8

Perl gurus read on ...

Having just written my first Perl script the other day, I was browsing a few Perl pages and came across the Obfuscated code page on Perlmonks. One of the scripts caught my eye, with the line

print "\u\c*\c5\c3\c4\c`\c!\c.\c/\c4\c(\c%\c2 \u\c0\c%\c2\c,\c`\c(\c!c\c+\c%\c2\cJ"

Now I soon figured out what \u meant, and after a little bit of thought, what \c* and so on meant. But what type of character *is* \c* ? The only references I could find was that \cX was a control character - in this case it would be CTRL+*. But \c* is of course, the letter "j". Where can I find a good explanation of why the above script works? 121.44.154.221 (talk) 00:17, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This weird behavior is documented in this perlop footnote, which also mentions that it's deprecated and slated to be removed. -- BenRG (talk) 04:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you're looking for an explanation of the behavior, you can see from BenRG's link that "... the value is derived by inverting the 7th bit (0x40)." This makes some sense if you take a look at the ASCII code table (take a look at the first or second table in the article, and compare them with the third). As the first 32 control codes mostly don't have keys on a typical keyboard, there needed to be a way of entering them on early computers, and one simple way was to have a special "control" key which simply inverted the most significant (7th) ASCII bit of the character which otherwise would be produced. That's why ^H is backspace and ^J is line feed. (Note that most modern computers use the control keys for purposes other than entering control codes.) I believe it started with strictly the uppercase letters, but when computers started to be used with default-lowercase typing, the lower case equivalents were typically special-cased to make things simpler. From there it's a simple implementation quirk to have some of the punctuation characters map to lower case letters by inverting their 7th ASCII bit. -- 174.24.217.108 (talk) 18:47, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Web site listing US cities for travelers to avoid

I believe the US federal gov has a web site with nations for US travelers to avoid, due to violence against foreigners, arbitrary arrests, etc. So, is there such a site with the same info for US cities, counties, and states to avoid, such as Tenaha, Texas ? StuRat (talk) 00:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article doesn't really say you have to avoid it, unless you are Afro-American or Latino. (why would someone want to go there anyway?) Regarding your question, I know there are google maps mash-ups of criminality hot spots for cities that you might want to visit. Quest09 (talk) 00:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but locals killing locals isn't relevant, I want to know about those who target visitors. StuRat (talk) 00:55, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not aware many criminals only target locals. The risk of being the victim of a crime, even if you aren't targetted as a visitor, is of course something many travel advisories do consider. Nil Einne (talk) 03:56, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A gang war and/or war for dominance by drug dealers will tend to only target the other gangs or dealers. Yes, outsiders could be hit in the cross-fire, but are generally safer than if they are specifically being targeted. StuRat (talk) 21:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But that's a rather different thing from locals killing locals. That's certain locals killing certain other locals. If you're local who isn't part of the war, your risk is going to be about the same as a visitor per unit time (the local obviously is going to be in the area for far longer then the visitor). In fact in some cases it may be higher for the visitor since they have less experience or knowledge in what to avoid etc. (In some cases it may be less because if the visitor is obviously a visitor to the people involved they may take greater care to avoid that person out of fears it will lead to a harsher crack down whereas they may believe an innocent local victim is not going to lead to the same thing.) In any case, unless you have some evidence to the contrary, I'm sticking with Quest09's assumption that most crime hotspots aren't just indicative of a gang war or war for dominance but wider problems of a lack of order and a higher risk of crime for all people who may be in that area, visitors or locals. And even in the case of gang wars etc, in some cases (whether in the US or not), the problems are severe enough that they do pose a clear risk to visitors.

And as I said, these are therefore things most travel advisories consider because the risk of people being the victim of a crime is relevant even if you weren't specifically targeted. For most visitor's POVs it's not going to matter if you weren't specifically targeted as a visitor.

Note that if you are going to ignore anything that isn't targeted at visitors you logically should ignore things like harsh drug laws, harsh laws on consensual sexual behaviour between adults, harsh laws on alcohol and even most likely a large amount of the terrorism in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the case of the laws, most of these aren't targeted at locals, indeed in many cases the authorities are willing to turn something of a blind eye for visitors breaking the laws in some circumstances. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan while there is some targeting of visitors, a large percentage of the attacks are not targeted at visitors and are a big part of what make them dangerous places.

Nil Einne (talk) 01:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)Nil Einne (talk) 13:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The State Department has a list of travel warnings for specific places. There have been cases of other nations issuing similar warnings for the United States — Mexico famously issued warnings against traveling to Arizona after they passed their extremely harsh immigration laws that essentially gave police a carte blanch in harassing anyone who looked Latino. If you Google "travel warnings to the United States" you can find comparable warnings from other countries. Australia's list is pretty interesting: warning about terrorism, crime, harsh drug laws, immigration checks (including Arizona in particular), and weather. The UK also warns about Arizona. Presumably if you Google the right terms in other languages you'll get their pages too... --Mr.98 (talk) 01:27, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe you'll get more specific advise than that. Equally, I don't believe any city in the US has to be avoided independently of what you are, for all strangers, including all Americans from out of town, unless maybe some lost village run by a sect. Wikiweek (talk) 01:34, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...or unless you have faith in statistics and a concern for your well being. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:34, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my country (Poland), such warnings (and in general interesting stuff about other countries) are found on the website of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Trivia: A couple of decades ago, Mediagenic published worldwide travel guide software for the Macintosh that warned non-Americans that when traveling to America they might get fined for "jaywalking". (Quotes in the original.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:55, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um, it's true, though, depending on where you are. And how well known is the term outside of North America? --Mr.98 (talk) 20:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You would make it a lot easier on us, StuRat, if you'd give us an accurate image of yourself. μηδείς (talk) 19:18, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

yes, but this picture would need several details. Being homosexual could be OK in SFB, but a nightmare in Topeka,_KS... Quest09 (talk) 19:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't for me, per se. I'm more interested in knowing if there is a need for such a web site, which I could possibly host, where people could rate various areas for hostility towards visitors. Incidentally, could such a site be sued, provided they only serve as a forum and don't post opinions of their own ? The objectives would be to help travelers, hopefully encourage hostile areas to reform themselves, and perhaps make some ad revenue in the process. StuRat (talk) 21:53, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, so long as your project requires no basis in reality, why not just get started? As a native New Yorker, I have never witnessed hostility (impatience at traffic-blocking gawkers maybe) to tourists as such, neither in my home town nor anywhere from Galveston, Texas to Manchester, New Hampshire (nor Munich to Ponce, PR, for that matter). Only in Canada was I ever asked whether I was a Protestant or Catholic before I entered an occupied swimming pool. And even then I have the sense to dive in laughing, without giving the bigotte an answer. Let her exit whatever her prejudice. This thread is yet another anti-American fantasy circle jerk with no basis in a desire for aid from the reference desk. Thats fine. We're used to it.μηδείς (talk) 02:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would think it would be best to do this on a case by case basis, StuRat. Just look at the city being travelled to. Ask locals (should be some on the intertubes somewhere) about the attitudes people have there; look up things like crime rates and also read local papers to get an idea of how they think there. I don't think there are sites telling people to avoid places like SE Washington D.C. for instance (though you really should; seriously). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Tishrei 5772 06:52, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

objective of using spam mail detection technology

spam mails are junk emails. send from a single source to different receiver randomly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MeWIKIfreak (talk • contribs) 17:08, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a question for the Reference Desk about E-mail spam? This is a place where people can ask questions, and volunteers find answers with references. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by his heading I think he didn't finish writing what he wanted to ask. Though he didn't come back to correct this mistake. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Tishrei 5772 06:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It may simply be the question was in the header (an annoying but but occasional problem) and the paragraph was some explaination of the question in case we didn't know what spam was (although I'm not sure how we could hope to answer the question if we didn't know what spam was). If the question is "objective of using spam mail detection technology" then the answer is to stop people from receiving or having to deal with spam personally since spam is nearly always unwelcome and without any automated detection may lead to a substanially amount of time being needed to deal with it. Nil Einne (talk) 13:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 9

USC-2 and 7-Bit length differences in SMSs

So I notice that when I am typing an SMS to my gf and I use a Hebrew character or even an unusual character like that joined a and e, my phone goes from saying #/160 to #/70, So I know it is changing over from USC-2 to 7-BIt (or is it the other way?). However even in Latin characters it still reads out of 70 on 7-bit. So why is it that 7-Bit can only transmit 70 characters and why is it that USC-2 cannot encode special characters and non-Latin characters? Apologies if the answer is obvious, but I don't know it. :( Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Tishrei 5772 06:24, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See GSM 03.38. Anyway for starters, you have UCS-2 and 7 bit reversed. 7 bit is only enough for 128 (2^7) different characters (generally less since there are usually some special or reserved characters). This means with a 27 letter latin alphabet (upper and lower case) and 10 numeral characters you have 128 - 27*2 - 10 or 64 characters. You then need to add punctuation. And the normal GSM encoding system adds some diacritical and greek letters anyway. UCS-2 which is similar to UTF-16 uses 2 octets or 16 bits for every character no matter latin or whatever. (UTF-8 is one encoding system which uses one octet for latin but is some ways more complex and will use take more space for text using Asian characters.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O'Reilly books

What's special about the O'Reilly "cookbook"s? I think that they're meant more for people who already know a language but I don't understand the "cookbook" reference. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 10:57, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any of those books, but the impression I get from the word "cookbook" is that it is a collection of recipes (short instructional passages) that stand on their own, so there is no advancement in difficulty or buildup of knowledge from the beginning of the book to the end. The order is arbitrary and you won't read the book from cover to cover but you'll just find the thing you want in the index and jump to it. The recipes would be presented without long explanations of the reasoning behind them. Now buy the book and tell me if I guessed right 67.162.90.113 (talk) 11:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that's pretty much right. They're largely code snippets with explanations, although they are in some order. Why are you answering btw if you don't have nay books and you're just hazarding some guess? the RD needs to get away from hazard guesses. Shadowjams (talk) 12:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seemed like it was at least half a linguistics question about the connotations of the word "cookbook" 67.162.90.113 (talk) 21:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm familiar with what a cookbook is but didn't know how it related to programming. So these snippets would be common programming problems and how to work around them or maybe more obscure tasks and some info on how to deal with them in the given language. I think I got it now. Thanks again, Dismas|^(talk) 23:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is an established usage of the word in certain programmer circles. It appears in ESR's Jargon File here.

APL (talk) 00:07, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cookbook#Usage outside the world of food also covers it, referring explicitly to the O'Reilly books. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Detecting Printers

Hello. How do I make my laptop detect and default on a wireless printer in close proximity? My home and office printers are connected through different networks via modems. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 16:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What operating system are you using? If Windows, what version? Looie496 (talk) 16:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7 --Mayfare (talk) 18:01, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let me rephrase. Sorry for the confusion. How do I make my laptop automatically default on a local printer like how my PC automatically connects to my home modem when I am home? --Mayfare (talk) 01:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

about html

Can u tell me what is HTML??--60.49.247.162 (talk) 16:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See our HTML article. Looie496 (talk) 16:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HTML

HI,CAN U EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT IS HTML LINK??I TRY TO SEARCH IT BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEAN..--60.49.247.162 (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is commonly called a "link", but it is actually an "a". Look up information on the "a tag". The syntax is <a href='some_url'>the link text</a>. -- kainaw ™ 17:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HTML_anchor#Anchor — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.90.142 (talk) 17:54, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=whatIsHTML&channels=#websites ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Make a text box in OpenOffice.org Impress that maintains its vertical size

How can I make a text box in Impress that will act like one of the text boxes included in the standard layouts—in other words one that does not automatically expand its vertical size and takes the dimensions made with the mouse? --Melab±1 ☎ 20:46, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Default Search Engine in Chrome

My Google Chrome default search engine switches from Google to Yahoo every time I turn off my computer. How can I prevent this? Inter change able|talk to me 22:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 10

NFT device and online electronic receipts with item list

Some stores that offer credit cards reproduce the paper receipt's listing of items online in the customer's credit card account. If you use a bank debit or credit card to make a purchase this feature is unavailable. Will any of the Near Field Technologies offer an electronic receipt on the NFT device and online with a item list? --DeeperQA (talk) 02:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Files won't attach to email

I have a an imac. From system profiler:

 Model Name:	iMac
 Model Identifier:	iMac11,3
 Processor Name:	Intel Core i5
 Processor Speed:	2.8 GHz
 Number Of Processors:	1
 Total Number Of Cores:	4
 L2 Cache (per core):	256 KB
 L3 Cache:	8 MB
 Memory:	8 GB
 Processor Interconnect Speed:	4.8 GT/s
 Boot ROM Version:	IM112.0057.B00

I'm trying to attach a Word document to an email (yahoo mail). I have done this thousands of times from my near identical computer at work. This is not a problem with Yahoo mail; I have attached files multiple times in the past week using the same email account. But when I try from my home computer all this week (all files, I've tried pdfs and others) the attachment bar just spins, never uploading to the email. Anyone have any ideas?--108.54.26.7 (talk) 05:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried a different browser? Dismas|^(talk) 05:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have experienced this recently when Adobe Flash is used as the file uploading tool. I upgraded my Flash client and the problem went away. TheGrimme (talk) 16:21, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I don't know what was causing it, but taking a cue from that, I just did an upgrade of everything I could think of (including flash) and then restarted (though I had restarted before) and it's working now!--108.54.26.7 (talk) 22:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have a secondary question:

Spam then delete, or just delete

Spam, spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam (sorry Monty Python on the brain). Does Yahoo Mail learn spam if I send things to the spam folder rather than deleting them outright? I mean, when I get some Viagra ad (I get about 12 of those a day, even though I hopefully won't need it for a few decades) it is helpful to first click on the spam folder, and then empty the spam folderm, rather than just deleting, or am I according the software more intelligence than it has? And oh, yes, does anyone know what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is?--108.54.26.7 (talk) 22:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Services with a dedicated Spam folder almost certainly have one because they do Bayesian spam filtering, so yes. Also, it's probable that spam messages are deleted after a certain period of time, and they might not count against your space limit in the first place, so you can probably remove the "empty spam folder" step from your process. Paul (Stansifer) 01:42, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Obligatory Monty Python reply to the last question: An African or European one? -- 188.105.123.207 (talk) 20:07, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ask.com

Hello I need a way to remove the ask.com toolbar completely from my computer whenever I try to uninstall it a window pops up and says close all Windows that there are no windows open all this program is malware and says this to prevent you from installing it. There is a removal to the tool somewhere on the web but I don't think it works with the current version. Please help me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.209.177.15 (talk) 10:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Either go to "Add and Remove programs" in the control panel, or use a third party tool like CCleaner. KyuubiSeal (talk) 02:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Windows Movie Maker

Is there any way to get the old timeline format in the version of Windows Movie Maker that comes with Windows 7? The series of thumbnails stacked in rows and columns on the right pane is an inferior user interface in my opinion. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 16:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The articles on Windows Movie Maker (the version with XP and Vista) and Windows Live Movie Maker (the version with Windows 7) say that the new version doesn't have the timeline, is missing many other features, and many people regard it as significantly inferior. As to why Microsoft did this, I don't know. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft have achieved the feat of making a dumbed-down video editor even dumber which may give a clue to which way the inevitable next improved version of Windows will lean. In Vista I find no problem with having both WMM and WLMM installed and leave it to the reader to guess which I actually use. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 16:27, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

nVidia Graphics Card on Amazon.com - 2¼ Times as many CUDA cores at a Third of the Price?

Hi.

I've been shopping for a new graphics card, and came across this on Amazon.com - I need advice on whether this is too good to be true.

The nVidia Tesla C2050 Graphics Card has 448 CUDA cores and is being sold at $2,200 while the nVidia GeForce GTX 590 Graphics Card which has 1024 CUDA cores is being sold at just $749! How can a graphics-card with over 2¼ times as many CUDA cores be priced at about one-third the price of its less-powerful counterpart? Is this a pricing mistake on Amazon's part?

Many thanks, Vickreman.Chettiar 17:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Number of cores is only one benchmark to compare these two hardware units . Have a look at C2050 and GTX 590 technical briefs from Nvidia. Two things pop out at me: the GTX series does not support double precision (64-bit) math, and it is not Fermi-architecture (among other things, this means multitasking support is limited). Depending on your CUDA program/algorithm needs, this might mean that the cheaper GTX-series GPUs outperform the more expensive C20xx series Fermi chips - but you really need a design review to determine how the specific technical specs map on to your particular program. Nimur (talk) 17:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Minor correction - GTX supports 64-bit math, but at a performance-cost overhead, compared to the Fermi C20xx chips. I also noticed that the chips have different clockrates and memory speeds, different on-chip cache sizes, and other technical specs that will affect performance. Nimur (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In addition the Tesla has features which support its use in a massively parallel supercomputing architecture - twin independent DMA controllers, Infiniband, and ECC. On raw single-precision FPU performance the GTX is indeed about double the performance of the Tesla, but as Nimur notes memory and cache throughput and coherence is a major factor when considering the performance of an actual algorithm on a given piece of hardware. One-for-one a single GTX will probably outperform a single Tesla in many circumstances, but they're selling the GTX for use as a graphics device, to be used in combination with 0 to 3 of its kind. They're selling the Tesla as a compute platform, to be used in combination with dozens of its kind. If you were building a large compute resource, you might find it more cost effective to have regular PCs with two or four GTXes and handle the interchange of data between them with a PC interconnect like 10Gb ethernet (particularly if there's lots of computation and lots of data coherence with relatively little inter-node data exchange) but for many compute jobs the Tesla can build systems which will scale to do the job and the GTX won't. TD;DR: what Nimur said. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I read the two technical briefs, and the GTX590 still looks more powerful to me than the C2050; as the GTX590's memory is 1.48x faster with 2.27x greater bandwidth. Here's comparing their major parameters.

Parameter			GTX590		C2050
CUDA Cores		1024		448
Memory Speed		1707MHz		1150MHz
Memory			3072MB		3072MB
Memory Interface	GDDR5		GDDR5
Memory Interface Width	384-bit		384-bit
Memory Bandwidth	327GB/s		144GB/s
Maximum Power Draw	365W		238W

In simple terms, what does the C2050 have that the GTX590 does not? Regards, Vickreman.Chettiar 21:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some line-items only present on the C20xx series:

ECC memory support
Fermi architecture
Support for 6 GB of attached RAM

You can probably pull a few more if you stare hard at the specs comparatively. Are these line-items worth the incredible extra cost? Well, that depends; and it's sort of subject to your own needs, budget, and opinions. (The reference desk is not really the place for opinions, nor for original research, but I feel like I am qualified to comment; hopefully this self-disclaimer will preempt any WP:OR chastisement). Some time ago, I gave an invited presentation at University of Nevada on exactly this topic: building a low-cost CUDA computer using "gamer" graphics cards, instead of the expensive Tesla series. Depending on your specific needs, you may actually outperform the Tesla-branded GPU by using a GTX-branded GPU. As a general trend, GTX (they used to call them GT or G9x) chips are faster, in clock rate; they sometimes do contain more cores than the Tesla models; and while they lack some extensibility and some advanced capabilities, these G9x and newer GPUs do support Cuda 2.0+ (your GTX590 has a GF110 which supports CUDA 2 / Compute Capability 2.0 - with the newer PTX extensions, I believe). There are definitely some advanced features of the Teslas, as described in Nvidia's product marketing literature, that are not present on the lower-end chips; and in edge-cases, the Teslas will outperform the G9x/G10x/G11x cores. Nvidia also packages Tesla branded GPUs on better boards - meaning better thermal/cooling, better memory, more memory, ECC memory, and so forth. If you are investing in thousands of rack-units, you probably want the Tesla chip. If you're a small-scale researcher or an enthusiast programmer, you can often do better with the "commercial off-the-shelf" GTX line, aimed at gamers, at greatly-reduced cost compared to the Quadro and Tesla line. Nimur (talk) 16:01, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Nimur, now I have a much clearer idea of which card to get. My application is AutoCAD, which primarily needs good graphics rendering, so I'll go with the GTX590. Vickreman.Chettiar 19:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Combine many html files into one complete version

I have about 200 copies of the same html file, but each copy is missing different lines that others have. There is no complete version of the file. I want to somehow combine all the 200 different copies into one complete file. Doing it manually is possible but obviously very time consuming so an automatic way to do it would be great. I'm thinking some kind of diff program that can analyze the files like Wikipedias edit history thing and output a complete version. In case I haven't been clear in explaining the problem, the files are something like this (but obviously more complicated);

Lines in file 1
1 The
2 And
7 Whatever
9 Computer 

Lines in file 2
1 The
6 Internet
7 Whatever
8 Hello
9 Computer 

Lines in file 3
2 And
3 Save
4 Example
5 Time
9 Computer 

etc

and I want to combine them into one file which looks like

1 The
2 And
3 Save
4 Example
5 Time
6 Internet
7 Whatever
8 Hello
9 Computer

How can I achieve this? What programs could combine the files? I'm on Windows 7 and have limited knowledge of linux programs, but can use them if there's a Win32 port available. 82.43.90.142 (talk) 23:56, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you want to do a merge. Unfortunately, the only standalone merge programs that I know of don't run on Windows (except if you're going to do a lot of work to get them working). You might want to consider using revision control software if you have files that regularly drift out of sync, which will automate the process of synchronizing and merging. Unfortunately, the learning curve on those tools is steep. Paul (Stansifer) 01:37, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On Linux it would be easy. You could combine all the files into one, sort the lines alphabetically, then cull any repeated lines. Dismas|^(talk) 02:19, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the line numbers are just there for illustration, and not part of the files themselves. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes 82.43.90.142 (talk) 12:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just GnuWin32's coreutils package should cover it. Doesn't look like it adds itself to the user's path, though, so you'll probably want to do that. Then hit Windows_key+r, and type cmd to get a prompt. You'll probably start at a path like C:\Users\youruser\, from which you could, for example, run cd Desktop to get to your desktop directory. Then assuming the files were there, you could run something like cat *.html | sort | uniq > newFileWithNoDupes. Of course that assumes your HTML doesn't have any sort of header or footer code. The easiest way for a Windows user to remove headers and footers would probably be to install a proper text editor, like Geany, open all the files in it (select them, right click, Open in Geany), then select the header (and later the footer) and do a find & replace for all documents (CTRL+h). It might seem like a lot but it isn't really. Visit http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=catHTML&channels=##windows for real time help if you can't get it figured out. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:33, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend Cygwin over GnuWin32. However, this may not satisfy the question-asker's problem, because the command line you just gave would sort the list, before it removed the duplicates. He might need to preserve the order. That said, I'm not sure of an easy way to reliably merge that many files without sorting them. APL (talk) 12:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merging can't always be done automatically. Consider the files "A X B" and "A Y B": human intervention is needed to decide whether "A X Y B" or "A Y X B" is right. Paul (Stansifer) 14:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nah. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think there's a shortage of information here: does the content of these files follow some sort of explicit precedence-rules, such that it can be easily determined whether line 1 from file 1 belongs before line 1 from file 2? If there's some explicit rule, you can design a regular expression, or a script, or a full-fledged text-parsing program, to implement the merge. If no such rule exists, you can simply concatenate the files together. If a rule exists to order the lines, but you are only able to state it in a vague way, you must first address that problem - formalize how you want to merge lines, and we can help direct you toward a best-practice solution that implements your needs. Nimur (talk) 15:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 11

ipod touch to iphone adapter

Is there a case/cover that an ipod touch 4 can be placed into to make it the size dimensions of an iphone 4? I ask because there are several cases/covers that are only available in size for the iphone. I would use such a case like an adapter to put my ipod touch into, and then that combination into an iphone case/cover — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.175.132.243 (talk) 05:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't be that time consuming or expensive to make your own: http://www.david-laserscanner.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/. Could probably manage around $30 for video camera (~~$10 ~~actually you can use your iPod Touch's camera), laser pointer ($5-10), and shapeways materials (silly cheap). ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2011 (UTC)~~~~[reply]

Is it a violation when using marks over vowels in the English alphabet?

These days I read the pages "My Thuan Bridge" and "Can Tho Bridge" (which are two bridges recently built in Viet Nam). I read the articles/pages under the option "English" (not "Vietnamese" language) but in the English language, the articles/pages contain marks over vowels of the Vietnamese language (which the English alphabet does not have). For instance, in the English language, I can only write "Can Tho bridge" or "cau Can Tho" (the English word "bridge" means "cau" in the Vietnamese language) because ASCII does not let me type mark over the vowel "a" in the Vietnamese word "cau". However, in the pages "My Thuan Bridge" and "Can Tho Bridge", I think the writer(s) used VIETSCII to put marks over vowels although these marks over vowels are not used in the English language. Therefore, is it a violation when adding marks over vowels in the English alphabet?64.68.169.46 (talk) 19:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No it would not be considered improper - there are quite a few English words with diacritics. Mostly they are loanwords and will have variant spellings without diacritics, but there are exceptions. In any case, foreign proper nouns such as those you mention would be expected to retain whatever diacritics they have according to the source language or transliteration system. Finally, I've not heard of VIETSCII - on Wikipedia (actually in most places these days) such symbols are produced using Unicode, which is far more comprehensive than ASCII. AJ Cham 19:47, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Addition: I've been jumping between the ref desk categories, and was under the mistaken impression I was on the language desk. In answering the question I intepreted "violation" to mean improper use of English - I'm not sure what you mean by violation in a computing context. Sorry! AJ Cham 19:53, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To take Mỹ Thuận Bridge as an example, presumably the only word that translates directly to English, "bridge", has been translated, and the order has been changed to reflect English grammar. "Mỹ Thuận" as presumably a name is fine rendered that way here, as long as it isn't known more popularly by another name to English speakers. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:DIACRITICS for the Wikipedia Manual of Style entry on this. The general policy is "do what other sources in English do, and use your judgment." --Mr.98 (talk) 21:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(And to redirect from the diacritic-less version, so that people can find it easily. Redirects are so freaking cool. Paul (Stansifer) 01:45, 12 October 2011 (UTC))[reply]

is there a limit on useful drives in raids?

I know that if you set up a raid with two hard drives and use that as your system drive your computer performance will increase a measurable amount. I am wondering if theres is an upper cap for number of hard drives in a raid before you stop improving performance. What im trying to ask is; will i get the same amount of performance in a 100 drive raid as in a 200 drive raid? Does hard drive speed affect this cap? The reason im asking is because i would like to build a gaming computer with 12 10,000RPM drives in a raid 0 (dont talk to me about fault tolerance, its a gaming machine and nothing important would be lost should a drive fail) and im wondering if 12 drives would be too much. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there will be limits to the practical utility of a large RAID, but first it might be helpful to tell us what kind of hardware you intend to use to create the RAID. Many boards won't support 12 drives, and even if you can support that number the nature of the RAID controller can make a significant difference in the performance of a large RAID. Also, the nature of your workload (e.g. games) will make a difference. Large RAIDs are most useful when the amount of data being read to and from disk is very large. Dragons flight (talk) 23:47, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A large factor in perceived performance of fixed drives is seek latency. RAID 0 either cannot improve (except under rare and unusual circumstances, possibly), and can slightly decrease it. You might be using a single SSD. Paul (Stansifer) 02:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@Dragons flight I was originally planning on using 12 drives in a raid but i have been unsuccessful in my efforts to find an affordable raid controller for that many so i might just be using half that, 6 drives. As for the nature of my work load, it would be mostly gaming, but my system as it is (2 drives in raid 0 on a MSI k9n sli) works just fine for that, no its not the work load that makes me want to build a massively powerful gaming computer, its that i want to know that i am using something at its maximum potential. Which is why i originally asked: Is there a set number of drives that raid 0 can handle before performance stops increasing? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 05:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The typical interface chips for a good consumer system can in principle write / read up to 1.25 GB/s to the disk buffer. However the motherboard to disk connection is typically either 400 MB/s or 750 MB/s per drive (and some drives really only support part of that). So somewhere between 2 and 6 drives in RAID0 is enough to saturate the buffering bandwidth. The buffer capacity is generally something like 32 or 64 MB per drive. For sustained writes exceeding that volume, you are limited by the buffer to disk bandwidth, which is typically about 100-150 MB/s on a 10k RPM drive. So if your writes/reads are very large, you could take ~10 drives to max out the theoretical capacity. For random reads, most of the data will come from disk (i.e. no buffering) so again somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 drives is a theoretical limit on what is useful. Also keep in mind that the "fake raid" controllers on many consumer motherboards offload some of the raid computations to the system CPU. For RAID 0 this can mean a few percent of a CPU core per drive (RAID 5 is much worse). At a practical level, you probably wouldn't see much if any benefit from 10 disks beyond what you get from 3 or 4 unless disk access is a really large part of what the computer does. Keep in mind that most games are limited by some combination of CPU, graphics card(s), and RAM. Once you've loaded all of the graphics (or whatever) for a level into RAM, there isn't much work that the hard drive needs to do while playing. As mentioned above, when a disk needs to read lots of random files, latency is more important than bandwidth. RAID 0 does very little for latency, so several 10k drives will be about the same latency as one. On the other hand you can get excellent latency improvements by using a single SSD instead. So a lot still depends on the workflow. Personally, rather than buying six or ten 10k drives, I would probably look at PCI-e SSDs, like this [2], which essentially offer performance like a RAID 0 of SSDs (very high read / write speeds and low latency) albeit at high cost and with much lower capacity than traditional hard drives. Dragons flight (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an API to LockUpCPU?

Once, sometimes twice a day, my Anti-Spyware software decides it needs to run RIGHT NOW, regardless of what else I'm doing, and it proceeds to "lock up" (or "freeze") my system (WinXP) for 14-18 minutes.

This is apparently a well-known phenomenon, but I'm curious to know how they do it: while their whatever-it-is is running,

The start menu pops, but you can't click on anything;
Ctrl-Alt-Del won't display

(meaning, you can't start task manager);

You can't raise a window from the taskbar;
The system clock can't even get enough cpu cycles to advance --

and this lasts for 15 minutes or so. Yes, I said MINUTES. On a 2.992 GHz processor.

Is it likely that they're really so bloody efficient that they never need to relinquish the cpu, or wait for I/O, or have a timeslice expire? Or is there a Windows API that actually allows them to say "GO AWAY, THE CPU IS MINE AND I'M NOT SHARING WITH ANYBODY!!" ?

Got a clue for me? Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:38, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The antivirus is not explicitly hogging the CPU with a "Lock Up Computer" API (that would be called a deadlock, and is never an intentional part of any program or hardware design - there is no "deadlock()" API in Windows). However, antivirus programs typically run with administrator privileges, and the programmers may have designed the software to run with high priority. Consequently, the antivirus program is prioritized over other tasks - including the processes that manage your user-interface and mouse-click handling. If you are asking "how," this is by setting the process priority. Here is one possible method, from Microsoft Developer Network: C/C++ Code Example: Setting Task Priority. If you are asking "why" the antivirus does this, it's probably fair to say "because it is poorly designed." The developers may justify this design-choice in a variety of ways, but it is my opinion that antivirus programs disrupt a system more than they protect it. Nimur (talk) 22:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent and perfectly clear -- Thanks, Nimur!

I am aware of nice(-1) in unix, which can only change its own priority within its own process group; this seems to go WAY beyond that restriction!

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This won't help if you can't get to Task Manager, but if you can, and if you have a multicore CPU, you can right-click on any process in Task Manager and choose "Set Affinity" to restrict the process to hogging only a single core of the CPU. I use this often to reduce Microsoft Outlook's hogging predisposition. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can I go off at a tangent old bean? Are you absolutely 100% sure your anti-spyware is a proper & legitimate piece of software? There's an awful lot of spyware/malware/badware etc disguised as legitimate anti-virus/anti-malware/anti-spyware software. If your software isn't actually what you think it is that could explain the problem old chap. Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum annealing

Why do so many people object to D-Wave one being a viable quantum computer if the entry on quantum annealing here on Wikipedia seems to imply that it has been proven, practically speaking. Is it because it hasn't been proven to be mastered (quantum annealing that is)? Layman's terms, please. Lighthead ^þ 22:40, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also want to ask if decoherence has anything to do with quantum annealing. That in and of itself might answer my question. Lighthead ^þ 22:45, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just because a company has announced something doesn't mean that their product is going to pan out. They could be scamming investors, in the extreme case. Scott Aaronson, a complexity researcher at MIT, has been discussing his reasons for skepticism about their claims. Paul (Stansifer) 12:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Thanks for the info. Lighthead ^þ 19:10, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 12

A printer server with 2 network interfaces

My VOIP telephone has 2 network interfaces and acts like a mini-switch. There is only one network cable connected to the wall that goes to the phone, and from the phone there is another one to the computer. I can't find a printer server that does exactly the same. 1 network in, 1 network out, and 1 or (even better) 2 USB ports. Are there any? Joepnl (talk) 01:02, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Im not entierly clear on your question, but does this help? It basically is 3 devices in one; 4 port Network switch, a USB print server, and a wifi to Ethernet adapter (its different than a wifi router). – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 05:22, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It would help if you gave use the brand and model. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When you say your VOIP phone acts as a 'mini-switch', you've essentially hit the mark - your phone is designed to easily fit into networks without a switch or router (generally where a single computer connects directly to a modem). It may also help the phone in prioritizing its own traffic when it's positioned between a modem and a router/switch. You may find a printer server with a similar 'network out' port, but your options will be limited. You may instead want to get hold of a cheap router with USB ports, where you will also have more options for 2 USB ports. Hard Boiled Eggs [talk] 14:55, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understand why my phone is so cool :) Now I want either my printer or printer server to allow me to do the same trick because I hardly ever encounter a workplace with plenty of network connections. Still looking.. Joepnl (talk) 21:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Im still recommending this as it can do what you want, its a print server with multiple network connections. 98.238.132.145 (talk) 00:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kindle

Does the Kindle work anywhere in the world or in US only ? Can it download files from a normal PC via USB. Are all formats i.e. .lit, .pdf run on it ? Does it always have to be in touch with any radio/satellite contact when running ? Do they supply adapter for countries that run 220 volt AC as mains ? Jon Ascton (talk) 02:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

comparison of e-book readers ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't need a constant radio connection just to read a book, only to download books. Some models don't come with a power adapter, and you have to charge by USB cable or buy a separate adapter[3]. The 3G versions offer worldwide 3G for book downloads[4] (although it won't work in particularly remote regions without 3G coverage) and the wifi versions don't care where you are as long as you have a wifi connection you can use. If you go to Amazon's website for the country you're interested in, it isn't hard to find info on the Kindle. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:22, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

amazon.co.uk certainly sell it. The details on that page say:

"Charge time: Fully charges in approximately 3 hours via the included USB 2.0 cable. UK power adapter sold separately"

"Content formats supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion"

Astronaut (talk) 10:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would just note that its PDF support is slow and a pain in the neck. I find reading PDFs on it basically untenable, because of the way it handles zooming in on the page. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bit of software you can download called Calibre, which converts basically every format of books into something a kindle will understand. I find it works really well on most things though it's not amazing at PDFs. Find it here - http://calibre-ebook.com/ 192.84.79.2 (talk) 14:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a Kindle1 with a broken radio (I got it cheap), and I simply put books on via USB. So even if you're in a region where their "whisper net" doesn't work, you can still read books. But of course, if you live in an area like that, you might as well get the Wifi version, so at least it can connect where there's wifi. APL (talk) 22:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the OP's last query re. powering the Kindle, this previous ref desk question here("Charging US 110V electronics in the UK") may be of general help regarding international use of plug pack or wall wart supplies. See also AC adapter. If they supply a "universal input" supply, you may only need a plug adapter to adapt the physical aspects of the plug so it can be safely inserted into the particular mains socket used where you want to use the Kindle. 220.101.24.249 (talk) 22:35, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two ASP.NET web applications differing only by certificates

I just came to think of this situation we have at work now. We have an ASP.NET web application that communicates with a normal Windows application on another server via WCF, using X.509 certificate authentication. The system is set up so cleverly that the web application is capable of working in different modes based solely on what certificate it presents to the WCF server application. The current situation is that we have set up two separate copies of the web application, as separate web sites under IIS, with only the web.config file differing, and even that only by the client certificate in the WCF authentication. This struck me as seemingly needless. Is it somehow possible to have the same physical copy of an ASP.NET web application present a different certificate via WCF depending on which TCP/IP port, or which virtual directory, it was accessed through? JIP | Talk 20:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What is this ad on Annie's Mailbox?

I noticed this type of ad with other features on this same site, but I go here daily now that the newspaper I subscribe to no longer carries the column that succeeded Ask Ann Landers.

It comes up on the lower right corner of the screen, at least for me. There is an X but the ad behaves in such a way that the X might move before I click on it, causing me to go where they want me to go. I just wanted to find out what type of ad this is, because it's not a pop-up in the normal sense. And it never gets blocked by the popup blockers at libraries (I don't go to this site at home) which don't seem to work half the time anyway.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:38, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That appears to be an Adobe Flash .swf that's just part of the page. (It's one of those graphical thingies that appears to rise up from the bottom of the window.) Note that the "X" is also just part of their .swf file and not a regular "close box" like you see in a Windows window. The advertiser can do whatever they want when you click the "X" — in this case, they display a traditional popup window behind the current window. I don't have a great recommendation for this other than find a different website that shows less disrespect for their readers (and which syndicates the same column). Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:10, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

October 13

@@ Line 222: / Line 222: @@
 :::When you say your VOIP phone acts as a 'mini-switch', you've essentially hit the mark - your phone is designed to easily fit into networks without a switch or router (generally where a single computer connects directly to a modem). It may also help the phone in prioritizing its own traffic when it's positioned between a modem and a router/switch. You may find a printer server with a similar 'network out' port, but your options will be limited. You may instead want to get hold of a cheap router with USB ports, where you will also have more options for 2 USB ports. [[User:HardBoiledEggs|Hard Boiled Eggs]] [[User_talk:HardBoiledEggs|[talk]]] 14:55, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 ::::I understand why my phone is so cool :) Now I want either my printer or printer server to allow me to do the same trick because I hardly ever encounter a workplace with plenty of network connections. Still looking.. [[User:Joepnl|Joepnl]] ([[User talk:Joepnl|talk]]) 21:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
+:::::Im still recommending [http://support.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2581 this] as it can do what you want, its a print server with multiple network connections. [[Special:Contributions/98.238.132.145|98.238.132.145]] ([[User talk:98.238.132.145|talk]]) 00:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 == Kindle ==