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April 9

Android Tablet

an Android Tablet is a new kind of tech, like an ipad but smaller ?

Android tablets come in many sizes, but the most common are 7-inch and 10-inch screens. iPads have a 9.7-inch screen. While iPad started the current tablet computer popularity, and Android responded to the demand, both are evolving. I have both a 7-inch Android tablet (which I upgraded to version 4.0.3 yesterday), and a 3rd generation iPad. They're both nice, but I use them for different purposes - the Android mostly as an ebook reader with the capability to browse the web, and the iPad mostly as a web browsing device plus a few more specialised applications.-gadfium 01:51, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not particularly new, no. It's relatively new for a Linux distro (of sorts) like Android to be backed so greatly by such a powerful organization as Google. Apple focuses on a few specific form factors and tightly controls their OS, not allowing it to be used on any devices but their own. Since Android is free and largely unregulated manufacturers and distributors are naturally using it on a number of different form factors. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Windows Explorer remembering CD/DVD info even after rejecting

I have a problem with Windows Explorer. After ejecting the DVD or CD in the DVD/CD drive, Windows Explorer still shows the volume info of the disc that has been ejected. It doesn't matter how long you wait, Windows Explorer never seems to show updated information. When I try to do an "eject" on the drive, it will take an unusually long time before the disc tray ejects. I seems that Windows is checking the drive for the disc that was there before (and will actually eject the disc tray only after it has failed to find the disc).

I don't know what might have caused it, but I remember having made some registry changes a few months ago while fixing/troubleshooting some issues. Is there a registry setting that, when set a certain way, would explain the symptoms that I'm seeing? If so, how do I reset it back to the normal setting?

If it doesn't look like a registry problem, what should I check to troubleshoot? --108.52.38.199 (talk) 01:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

This sounds like a very old behavior when you ejected a floppy disk. At least you don't get the infamous Retry/Ignore/Abort prompt (all of which repeat the same prompt). StuRat (talk) 02:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Did you mean Abort, Retry, Fail?. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. StuRat (talk) 05:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Running a windows program on my mac

I have access to a free (legal) version of Turbotax--my father's purchase covers everyone in the family, up to five downloads, but I have a mac and the purchase is Turbotax for Windows and the download, no surprise, is an .exe file. How can I use this on my mac? I know there are programs that allow you to spoof/run the Windows interface but I have no idea what they're called (and I want this to be free). Any help?--108.54.27.24 (talk) 03:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Look at Parallels Desktop for Mac. You might be able to get a demo version or free trial that will let you run Turbo Tax. Or you can ask Intuit if your father's licence includes the Mac version. (The version sold in stores has both). RudolfRed (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the demo version will be pretty much useless on its own since AFAIK and as per the article, Parallels is simply a virtualisation program. You need a copy of the OS you want which is obviously Windows here and it sounds unlikely the OP has a spare licence for Windows to be used on a VM. You can sometimes get Windows trials but I'm not sure if the trial licence extends to running it on a VM. And in any case, it seems fairly pointless if the OP needs a long term solution (and it sounds like they do) and wants something free as they mentioned. If the OP does want to run Windows in a virtual machine, particularly since there only seems to be a single non demanding program they want to run (so any possible issues like limited GPU virtualisation shouldn't matter), it would seemingly make more sense for them to choose something that's free like VirtualBox or QEMU (possibly in the form of Q (emulator) although from what I can tell that hasn't been updated since 2008) both of which, from what I can tell, support Mac OS X in some fashion. Then at least they only have to worry about finding a Windows licence. Nil Einne (talk) 03:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Wine and Mono are the first ones I can think of. →Στc. 03:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm I'm lost. I downloaded Wine and Wine bottler and then tried to Open the Turbotax and after about 100 errors it closed down. According to the wine database and some things I googled it's not going to work. Maybe I just have to try to get the Mac version.--108.54.27.24 (talk) 04:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Any chance that you're a student? If so, you can get free versions of Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 (which are the server equivalents of XP and Vista) from dreamspark.com. Then use VirtualBox (also free) to boot into your legally licensed new copy of Windows. I use this setup on my Mac and it works very well. There is near-seamless integration so I can continue to work on my Mac as normal while running Windows as just another app/window. Julia\^talk 10:22, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Typically licensing is separate from downloads — you might at least attempt to apply whatever licensing information you have to a Mac OS trial download (try to match the version as best you can). You could also call them up and see what your options are. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Solid state holographic data storage

I saw this, Holographic data storage and this, Holographic Versatile Disc, and it intrigued me. But I'm wondering if there's a holographic data storage medium that is solid state with no moving parts. ScienceApe (talk) 05:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That'd severly limit the space (or require an incredible amount of redundant parts). Holographic storage systems already have many fewer moving parts than a traditional hard disk, and the medium itself does not have to come into as close contact with anything that could easily physically damage it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Very interesting. Silentmidnight7q (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Mains Adapter for iPod Touch

Is there such a thing as an adapter that I can plug into the wall socket and recharge (or keep charged) my iPod Touch? The battery doesn't seem to last very long - 5 hours or so of continual use - and I tend to use it a lot when I am outside. It would be nice to be able to plug it in when at a restaurant, for example. Googling has only got me hits for 'USB mains adapter', which makes no sense. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, my iPod Touch came with such a thing - which is indeed a USB mains adapter. It's just a wall-wart with a usb socket, which plugs into the usb-ipod cable you surely already have, which plugs into the iPod to charge it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 09:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Mine came with the same thing. You can get them here if you've lost yours. Dismas|^(talk) 09:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

OP here. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I do indeed have a USB charger. I am looking to recharge from the mains - the household electricity supply, for example, not via USB. 145.236.189.201 (talk) 10:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we know what you mean. This thing plugs into the mains outlet on the wall. It has a transformer, which produces the normal USB power level. It then emits this on a usb connection (which carries no data) into which you can plug an iPod. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:20, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't clicked on the link Dismas provided. I did not get one with mine, and that is indeed what I need. Now I just need a European and UK version. Thanks, I will look around. 145.236.189.143 (talk) 10:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Here you go. Straight from Apple. Dismas|^(talk) 10:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The standard adapter comes with interchangeable power pins for different standards. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

How do I live-download to YouTube?

I would like to put up a live broadcast from a digital camera (or a cameraphone) to my YouTube channel. I don't like to wait until I go to a computer, or even wait until the recording is done. I want the footage to be placed on the site as it's being filmed. Then the live broadcast has a set length once I stop recording.

How do I get this to happen? Thanks. --Tergigress (talk) 09:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Youtube can't do this, you may want a live stream. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

A better tool for doing this would be Bambuser, which does pretty much exactly what you describe. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:59, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It can be done on YouTube, but I think you need a sponsered or paid account to be able to do this. Mrlittleirish 10:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I mostly hear of people using ustream.com for this rather than youtube. 67.117.147.20 (talk) 06:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Processor iddle

I would like to know if there are side effects when the processor is not iddle? (I mean when it's always being used). Current;y I'm bruteforcing a tripcode but I don't know if this is bad to the processor, thanks. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:05, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Processing is what processors are designed to do. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

So It doesn't matter if the processor is 100% being used than or if it is iddle most of the time? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:25, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It depends on your system. In general, a processor that runs hotter will age quicker and may develop faults earlier. However, in a well-designed system, the temperature should remain well below the point where this effect is noticeable. So unless you have a very crappy thermal design, you should be fine. BTW, the processor state is called "idle" (one "d"), as in "idling away your live" ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It looks that I'm going to have to pause it.. cause I can feel warm.. of it.. Thanks.. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 14:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You shouldn't have to worry about it, the processor will take care of itself, in the worst case it'll shut itself down before any damage is done. I'm really confused how someone could know enough to have a legitimate reason and the capability to bruteforce as you're suggesting but doesn't have the knowledge about how a processor works. Chris M. (talk) 14:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I didn't wrote the brute forcing program. But I'm constantly learning about programming... And I don't really know much about hardware.... 190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you consider a side effect but busy processors usually use more electric power. Some people only crunch numbers when they would otherwise turn up the heat. Electric power is an expensive heat source. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If just the processor is being used, then heat would be the main concern, yes. However, if it's also using the hard drive, then those moving parts might wear out much quicker than you would expect. Similarly, since flash drives have a limited number of read/write cycles, they might wear out quickly, too. StuRat (talk) 05:27, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd expect several years of use even if it's running constantly. By then you will want a new computer anyway. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 18:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

IE8 converting numbers into telephone numbers

When the death of my Windows Vista computer in November forced me to buy a computer equipped with Windows 7, I made sure to go back to the same IE8 that I'd been using on the old computer, as I have to use IE9 at work and I hate it. However, there's one "feature" that changed that I don't know how to undo: whenever it sees a string of numbers in certain formats, the browser renders them as a telephone number, complete with a link that will call the number if I click it. How can I turn this off? It's mildly annoying when the browser does this to things that really are telephone numbers, but it's downright confusing when it gets confused, such as when it converts the DOI in citation #7 of Micro black hole into a link allowing me to call a telephone number in Spain. Nyttend (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It's an add-on, maybe Skype Click to Call. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For an example of this, see "Unix Time" section (2 questions below). Number right after "Then subtract the seconds of..." as my Internet Explorer 8 under Windows 7 is also showing this odd effect. Any 8 digit number is affected? - 220 of ^Borg 12:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

Hi, I've had this error for about a week, have tried everything, and am now at a loss for what to do. I uninstalled Firefox, and reinstalled it, but it didn't work. I uninstalled it, deleting all preferences, then deleting the Program Files folder for Firefox, then reinstalled, but it didn't work. Uninstalled Thunderbird too, as it's also made by Mozilla, but it's still not working. The file profiles.ini looks right. I made a new account on my laptop (which is running XP) and installed Firefox on that, and it works fine. I copied the new accounts Firefox folders (including the profile) into my normal account and it's still not working. I am using Firefox 11. I even tried to install Firefox 3.6, but that didn't do anything, so I just uninstalled it, and reinstalled Firefox 11. I broke my normal laptop, and so I'm using this, my old laptop, now, and so I've edited a lot of things to get it working as I want. I have edited the registry, so thought it might be that. I have tried to restore to previous positions in the registry, but every restore point cannot be restored to. I have run CCleaner to the registry, but it's still not working. It isn't a virus causing this because I've run Malware Bytes, and AVG to check there are no viruses. I've done everything I can think of, and now I'm stuck. I know that I cold just switch to using the new account, but the reason I've spent a week trying to fix this is because it's a lot of effort to install everything for the new account (a lot of things are installed for this account only), and to set up preferences, etc. I have googled the issue, and I'm unable to fix it from the help I have found via Google's results. I am also unable to run the Firefox Profile Manager as I am unable to run Firefox. Thank you for any help that you can provide. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 18:05, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Can you start the profile manager by running firefox from the command line (with no firefox windows hanging around) as described here? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:53, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. No, unfortunately the same error appears. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Assuming you don't want anything in the profile you've already created: Read this page to find your profiles folder (you might be looking in the wrong spot), and then rename the affected profile to something ridiculous, like "324tvgdsvcw". Then try restarting. If that doesn't work, move said affected profile folder out of the main profiles folder (onto your desktop, for example), then restart again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:11, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I had already done that, to no avail. I have a copy of my profile, which I am using for my temporary account, and it works fine. I have changed the profile, deleted the profile, edited the profile name and correspondingly edited profiles.ini, and even deleted profiles.ini expecting Firefox to create a new one, but unfortunately none of that has worked. Now it is just installed with the standard profile that is created on installation. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried going into the affected profile (make sure Firefox is not running), copying the folders/files inside one-by-one ("extensions", "bookmarkbackups"; I use 1.5 and 3.0 but you should know what I mean), and pasting them into the standard profile folder, then restarting after each one? It's time consuming, but you'll likely find out what file is causing the problem with that method. -- MegaGuy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thank you again. No I haven't because the the standard profile and my customised profile both work on the temporary account I've made on my computer, but both the standard profile and my customised profile don't work on my usual account, so the issue doesn't appear to be within the profile itself, but with Firefox recognising that the profile is there. The profile is in the default location, and profiles.ini correctly describes that location, so I don't understand why it isn't being recognised. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misunderstood your original post. So, a complete delete of the Firefox profiles folder, and a complete uninstallation of Firefox, then a reinstall of Firefox and the standard profile it creates will not work on your usual account? -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a full deletion of the profiles folder, a full uninstallation of Firefox, and deletion of any remnants of the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox folder, then a reinstallation of Firefox, with its standard profile, still results in the same error. Thanks for your help. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried going back any further with the Firefox installations (namely, before they began using SQLite for a lot of the files)? I'd do a complete delete of the profiles/Firefox again, install 1.5 and see what it does with its standard profile, then try 2.0. Perhaps your usual account has some issue with newer versions. Another possibility is that your usual account is somehow installing incorrectly. Copy the profiles and installation that was created (and accessed) successfully on your temporary account to your usual account. -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 21:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Unix time

Hello, I was interested in making a Unix time calculator with Excel. However, it seems to be slightly off (it returns a timestamp for April 30 when I enter today's date). Could you take a look at these formulas and tell me where I'm going wrong? (I'm using a time of 20120409, 12:51:00.)

2012 in seconds = 31536000*2012
04 in seconds = (31536000/12)*4
09 in seconds = 9*(24*60*60)
12 in seconds = 12*60*60
51 in seconds = 51*60

Then subtract the seconds of 19700101 00:00:00 (62125920000) from the total seconds of the above equations. Am I supposed to be doing something else with 1970 other than getting the seconds of the year alone? Thanks for your help! -- MegaGuy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 19:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You can't calculate the number of seconds for April 9 the way you are trying. First, there are only three months passed so far (Jan, Feb, March), not four, and second there is not an equal number of seconds per month (March has more seconds than February, for example). After you fix that, you then need to account for all the leap days between 1970 and now. RudolfRed (talk) 21:24, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You forgot that days in seconds has the same issue as the months -- 9 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute is 9 whole days. You can use the years to seconds calculations, but that figure doesn't include leap days (like RudolfRed mentioned). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:33, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

And leap seconds. Also things like time-zone. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Unix timestamps do not account for leap seconds, so you don't have to worry about those.

But Unix timestamps are most definitely in UTC, so yes, you certainly do need to worry about the offset for your local time zone. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:56, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Easily confused letters/numbers/glyphs

I need a list of easily confused glyphs, either numbers or letters. I mostly care about Latin character-sets, but the others would be helpful too. I've found a list for certain ones used in domain fishing, but I'm interested in ones within-language that would be confused. Thank you. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 21:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you read IDN homograph attack? Nimur (talk) 22:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. That's the list I was referring to above. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Homoglyph is much closer to what I'm looking for, but something more comprehensive. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 22:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, unicode.org maintains tables of easily confused chars; I'm afraid I don't have a direct link handy, though. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:27, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The technical name is Unicode equivalence - characters that are semantically equivalent, or interpreted equivalently (or rendered as equivalent glyphs). This is heuristic; it is domain-specific, and corpus-specific. As it would happen, companies like Google (who process large volumes of text in many languages and encodings) maintain proprietary lists of equivalency characters. In C#, you can use Character Classes; in Java, you can design a custom class implementing Character Comparable<T> interface for use in string recognition. You can also read about unicode normalization straight from the source: "Unicode Technical Report #15" - Normalization. This is an "unsolved problem" because ultimately it depends on how people are using the encoding and standards out in the wild. All the APIs, libraries, and specifications only go so far; people play silly games with domain hacks, incorrect encodings that mismatch their languages, and other non-ideal usage of binary-representations-of-characters; so any functional implementation of text normalization is going to use a lot more improvisation and hacking than most Unicode-junkies would like to admit. Let's not even bring in the nightmare of glyph representations in various fonts: the simplest example is the confusion of "i" and "L" in some case-forms in some fonts. In some fonts, these are the same glyph, and in others, they are totally distinct and dissimilar glyphs. Needless to say, "i" and "L" are semantically distinct; so should their "equivalence" depend on font and page-layout? And of course, what to do about ligatures and combined forms... control characters, accent-marks (single byte precomposed é or control-character accent + 'e' (combined by the layout engine?), ... it gets quite horrible quite fast. There are literally hundreds of thousands of potentially equivalent ("canonically equivalent," "compatible," or just plain "confusing.") Nimur (talk) 02:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Transferring 50 MB to a friend

I have a stack of 20 or so high-resolution JPEG images (about 50 MB altogether, they don't .zip any smaller) that I'd like to send to a friend several thousand kilometers away. Without reducing the resolution or quality of the images, what are the tools that my fellow would Wikipedians use to move moderately large image files from one person to another? (That is, files too large to comfortably attach to an email, but too small to justify mailing a DVD, USB stick, or SD card.) Something free (gratis) and online, that doesn't require too much in the way of relinquishing privacy, personal information, or my first born (always check the fine print of the EULA) would be ideal. Thanks! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Most instant messenging protocols/clients of note (including IRC, often) can transfer files. There are also one-off services like http://justbeamit.com/ and other slightly more involved things like Dropbox. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:30, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For the purposes of this question, let's say I'm not using an instant messaging tool to communicate with this friend. You can assume that we both have a live broadband internet connection and email access, but no other applications installed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Why not create a free account at a photo-hosting site? Personally I use Flickr but others are available. There is often the option to make your uploaded photos private or viewable to family / friends only. Once your friend has downloaded and saved the images, you could then, if necessary, delete them. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 22:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Flickr's okay, but it doesn't support sharing the full-resolution original files unless one upgrades to a 'Pro' account. (I'm also hoping to be able to transfer a .zip file or similar so that my friend doesn't have to click through and download each image individually.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If e-mail is the only application you have access to, then you'll need to send it by e-mail. How are you posting this question? RudolfRed (talk) 23:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Don't be a smartass, RudolfRed. (Or, if you must, use small type or a smiley so that you're less likely to distract from the helpful responses.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For you: split (Unix) (which, despite its name, is available for Windows) or HJsplit: split the files into handily email-friendly sizes, mail 'em, counterparty reassembles. Email is rather inefficient use of bandwidth because of the way binary files are attached, but it'll work. If it was me: rsync over ssh. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

MediaFire 82.45.62.107 (talk) 22:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to Reisio, justbeamit met my needs this time around. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I notice you've found a solution you're happy with, but I'll just let you know my way of doing it, which is to upload the file in question to Dropbox, place it in my 'Public' folder, then send the download link in an email/IM. If you feel you will send files to this friend on a regular basis, you can share Dropbox folders with them, and anything placed in the folder will be visible to both of you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

April 10

LaTeX chapters and sections

Hello! I have a \documentclass{report} with several chapters and several sections within each chapter. If I use \ref{sec:mySection}, I get chapterNumber.sectionNumber, but in some cases I just want the section number that the label corresponds to, not the chapter number with the section number. How can I get some command to return just the section number of the label? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 05:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Partial answer: \renewcommand{\thesection}{\arabic{section}} -- This will change the section numbering from e.g. '3.1' to 1, and return a simple number with \ref. However, there's a problem of ambiguity here. Of course, there's an inherent problem of ambiguity with what you're asking for: If you refer to "section 3" and there are three section 3s (e.g. 1.3, 2.3, 3.3), how is the reader supposed to know to what you are referring?! So, some general advice someone once gave me: "Think twice before you go mucking about changing the behavior of well-used LaTeX classes, because there is usually a good reason why they work the way they do." :) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:00, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

To do what you want (label sections as 'chapter.section', but have the ability to have \ref{section:key} return \thesection without \thechapter), I think you'll have to \renewcommand{\ref} with some self-made options that let you control the behavior. If you don't get an exact answer here within a few days, these people [1] can probably tell you how to do it. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I can't get WP using Perl's get command...

It works with other web pages, but not Wikipedia. I've posted the problem and an example script on WikiProject Perl's talk page. Please reply there. The Transhumanist 06:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Places in Battle Ready (Tom Clancy Novel)

I just want to ask where in Mindanao is the place called Carabao,Mindanao in Tom Clancy's Novel Battle Ready. It is mentioned in Chapter 7 and is described as a small port city that served as the capital of the autonomous region I tried looking for it in the map but I haven't come across a place named Carabao in Mindanao. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.97.192.138 (talk) 10:14, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

The carabao is a water buffalo native to that area. I believe the port city with that name to be entirely fictional. The closest I find to a location named that is the Philippine Carabao Center [2], which sells carabao milk, as part of Central Mindanao University. StuRat (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I was wrong to refer to the book as a novel since it is actually a non-fiction work of Tom Clancy & Gen Tony Zinni. In relation to this, I suppose the name of the place is not fictional as the names of other places in the book such as Mogadishu,Somalia and Aceh,Indonesia can be located on the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.97.192.138 (talk) 23:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Could it be one of those "names were changed to protect the innocent" things ? Perhaps giving the real name of the city would have put some of it's residents in danger ? StuRat (talk) 00:19, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

wordperfect mail merge

Resolved

i have been sent a document created in wp.mm - how do i open and read it please? Kittybrewster ☎ 16:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice might be able to open it. Otherwise, you'll need WordPerfect. I see that Corel offers a trial version [3], which might be enough to get the file opened so you can copy it into your favorite editor. RudolfRed (talk) 18:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. success with OO. Kittybrewster ☎ 18:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Price of Windows 7

The difference in price between laptop A with or without Windows 7 is about $50. However, if I buy a boxed version of Windows 7, I'll end paying about 10x that. Why is the price difference so big? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MangoNr1 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I certainly see why there would be some difference, due to bulk discounts, large companies being able to negotiate better prices, etc., but 10X does seem a bit much. I wonder, if you buy a laptop without an O/S, do they first put an O/S on it to test it out, then remove it ? If so, this would certainly eat up much of the savings. StuRat (talk) 20:57, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I think companies also get paid for installing the trial versions of antivirus and other programs that many new computers come with. If you don't have Windows preinstalled, then the company can't collect that other money either. RudolfRed (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

(ec)It's a good question - one that comes up a lot, and that we can't definitively answer, because Microsoft keeps its OEM pricing very very close to its chest. Some of the contributory factors are:

• When you're buying that Windows 7 install set in the shop, you're buying the retail version. Microsoft also sells an OEM version (which comes in plain packaging with no manuals) which is intended for small system builders - the idea is that the small system builder provides the support, rather than Microsoft (but who calls microsoft support?) It's about half the price of retail.
• For larger builders they offer steep discounting, and for very large builders like Dell they reportedly over even steeper discounting.
• When a system builder ships a Windows system, these days they bundle a bunch of other preinstalled software, some of it trialware - security, dvd authoring, skype, sometimes games or accounting software. The system builder gets a payment for these, either a flat fee for installing, or a revenue share if the customer buys the full version.
• Many systems ship with Windows 7 Home Basic; if the customer upgrades that to Home Premium then the system builder gets a share of the revenue. I think the same is true if the customer pays to activate the Microsoft Office Ready thing (which can be a significant spend).
• There's a support cost associated with a system building selling a no-windows machine (no-os, Freedos, or Linux). Despite them being really clear that it doesn't come with windows, a nontrivial proportion of people still complain to them that it doesn't come with windows, and yell, and raise chargebacks, and demand restocking.
• When a system builder advertises a machine with Windows, they can participate in one of Microsoft's Windows ad-sharing schemes - so when an ad says "Dell Recommends Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition", Microsoft have paid for a proportion of that ad buy.
• Lastly, the weirdest one. A few years ago, I think as a result of a court case, it was disclosed that one large builder paid Microsoft a flat fee for Windows for each machine they shipped (presumably they'd negotiated a small flat fee) - they paid that even if Windows didn't ship on that machine. If that's true now, and generally, that means the builder makes no saving at all from shipping a "clean" machine, and because they lose all that bundling stuff above, it actually costs them more to sell you a clean machine that one with Windows.

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:36, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

That last point is crazy. I believe you (given similar practices by microsoft.), but does anyone have a ref? SemanticMantis (talk) 01:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a ref at hand either, but of the legends I've heard, (1) it's almost true, and (2) it's at least 20 years old. The "almost" part was that it was Microsoft that demanded the license fee for EVERY machine shipped, whether or not it had MS-DOS (?) on it or not -- purely the "I-can-get-away-with-this-until-they-force-me-to-quit" model to make it VERY cost-ineffective for the custom assemblers of the day to offer a machine with the user's choice of OS pre-installed.

'twill take some legwork to chase down a real ref, though. Memory fades with time . . .

--71.220.29.34 (talk) 02:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

As I remember it, they were trying to claim that purchasers of machines with no operating system must be planning to install a pirated version of Windows. Which, to be fair, may have been the case some significant fraction of the time, but hardly seems like justification to make Linux users pay tribute to Redmond. I welcome factual corrections as my memory may not be perfect and I can't be sure I got the straight story even initially. --Trovatore (talk) 03:16, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I would expect such a practice, if allowed to continue, would have resulted in different manufactures of Windows computers and non-Windows computers. This is similar to how, in the US, credit card companies managed to force gas stations to charge the same price, cash or credit, despite the increased costs to the station for using credit cards. This resulted in some cash-only gas stations, until all stations were eventually allowed to charge cash customers less. StuRat (talk) 04:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It was the 'CPU License', more - [4], [5], [6] and [7]. Nanonic (talk) 07:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

April 11

Constructing a small embedded PC

Once I learned how the bootloaders in smartphones and other devices work (no BIOS, larger than 512-bit limit on traditional PCs, signature checks) I wanted to play around with this on an x86 platform. I determined that I would need a system that does not use a BIOS and looked around online x86 tablets running Android or MeeGo (if it was capable of running Windows then that meant it used a BIOS). I could only find tablets that used Intel processors normally used in PCs telling me they probably used a BIOS. Apple TV and Google TV came to mind, but I found that most x86 TV boxes were locked down. Now, I looked at embedded boards and devices. Toradex's Xiilun PC appeared to be what I was looking for: the Intel Atom E6xx processor comes with non-BIOS options, the casing looked nice, and it didn't have ugly looking VGA outputs. They never mass produced it because of thermal issues. So, how would I go about making a small embedded PC? I do not mean designing it from scratch like OEMs do; just the assembly of a few OTS components. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

In January of last year, I replied to a similar question; pick your computer carefully. You may find the links in my earlier post helpful. I highly recommend the DE-2 FPGA dev-board, which I've mentioned in the past; it will allow you to configure your hardware and simulate a CPU and its peripherals, though it requires a little more technical expertise than some microcontroller boards. You may find the Raspberry Pi a fun board and a cheaper alternative; I have no experience with it, but it's been very popular with hobbyists and students. Microchip.com sells cheap and simple PIC controllers; I have some Zigbee Raven boards you can buy from atmel.com that were a lot of fun until they broke; and I have a few Renesas M16C cards that were solid workhorses and great utility controllers. I would trust my life to my M16C controller - which is more than I would commit to for almost any other computer system I've ever worked with. You need to decide what you want your computer to do, and then spec it out accordingly. A good real-time system controller will make for a terrible web-browsing experience. Nimur (talk) 02:23, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

If you specifically want x86 (why???) soekris.com has some nice boards. They probably use bios's that you can bypass or replace with your own. If you just want an ultra cheap 16 bit embedded board, google "ti launchpad". These wouldn't qualify as PC's in any sense (they're just tiny microcontrollers), so it would help if you said what you were trying to do. The Soekris boards are more like PC's. For ARM there is also the beagleboard (beagleboard.org), which is more powerful than the raspberry pi and you can actually buy them today, but they do cost more. 67.117.147.20 (talk) 06:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I may be mistaken but doesn't EFI (and lack of BIOS) depend much more on the motherboard then the CPU? Nil Einne (talk) 11:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

C# performance lint

Are there any good programs for C# that can detect fairly basic performance mistakes, such as using long.Parse() in a try-catch construct when long.TryParse() would work better? NeonMerlin 20:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

The key terms you're looking for are 'static analysis' (take the source code, identify performance or style problems) and 'profiling' (actually run code, measuring where time is spent). See this StackOverflow thread. Profiling is supported by Visual Studio itself, although there are third-party tools available. 77.97.198.48 (talk) 23:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, but the example I gave is (at least in its statically detectable form) specific to the .NET Framework, and I don't think any of the static tools on the list are aware of .NET usage issues. Detecting it in profiling would require that the profiler be able to track exceptions specifically. NeonMerlin 01:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Did you actually look at the list? cf FxCop overview 77.97.198.48 (talk) 13:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

These programs usually get named some version of "lint" after the original lint (software) for C. If you google "c# lint" it finds some likely candidates for what you are looking for. If you're trying to performance tune a program though, dynamic profiling will probably more useful than linting. 67.117.147.20 (talk) 06:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Why did a new window not open?

I can't remember whether I have asked this, and using Google seems to be of no help.

When I first turn on my computer, and click on the Internet Explorer logo, I am sent to what used to be the sign-in page for the email address given to me by my Internet service provider. I have to click there, and I am sent to the telephone company's home page. If I am already signed in there is a list of emails in my inbox, and clicking on any of those is supposed top open a new window in which the inbox appears.

If that window is already open and I have gone to another site (where I might be editing a Wikipedia page or composing an email), clicking on an email on that telephone company home page causes the inbox to appear in that other window, which wrecks what I was doing. Although once, a new window did open.

I don't know the terminology for what I'm asking. Why does the inbox come up in the window that is already there, though not the window where I clicked to produce it, rather than creating a new window?— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I apologise, but this bear of very little brain is struggling to understand your description. Maybe you could clarify, in order that I or someone else could help? Here's what I think is going on: You fire up your computer and open Internet Explorer in a single window (window A). You click on a link, and it takes you to a page where you can sign into your emails, or bypasses that straight to your inbox if you're already logged in. When you are logged in and click to open an email, it opens a new window (window B) to show that email. The problem comes if you already have something else going on in window B, because then when you click the email link in window A you are forcefully navigated away from whatever you were doing in window B.

Am I describing that right? If so, the numbered steps at this page may be worth a try. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't know how to describe it in a way that you would understand, but you finally figured it out. The weird thing is sometimes clicking the mail link gives me a window C. The problem is that in window B, the email or whatever gets lost and I have to start over. I have to remember never to click on that link in window A. I have enountered this in other situations too. Tabs make it more complicated; at a library with Firefox sometimes clicking in window A will open a tab B-2 in window B, not a tab A-2 in window A. Tabs complicate things too much for me which is why I try to avoid them.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

April 12

Windows Vista Defragment

I HATE Windows Vista. (Have I made that clear?)

Been dabbling with PCs since 1989, so I know a bit about performance enhancement. A friend asked me to look at her Vista machine, which was running very slowly.

I've already made her smile some more by turning off a mass of unnecessary startup processes. It's made a big difference.

I cleaned up the hard disk drive too, and thought I'd defragment the disk. (It wasn't set up to run automatically.) And I have never encountered a less informative dialog from Windows! (Well, maybe I have, but this is top of my mind right now.)

All I've had now, for over 24 hours, is the little spinny thing on the screen, and a helpful(?) message telling me "This may take from a few minutes to a few hours". No idea how far it's progressed. No graphical indication. No nothing. I have a "Cancel" button, which will be the next thing I'll press.

Is there a better way? HiLo48 (talk) 07:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. Has the computer frozen, or the application? Mrlittleirish 08:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

If you stop it and start it again. You might lose minutes at most. Kittybrewster ☎ 09:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Not tried this on Vista but on old Windows 95-era systems if there was something running while you did the defrag it would keep restarting and never get to the end. Have you tried looking for any logs, maybe in the system event logs? --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

comparison of defragmentation software ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

No, the computer hadn't frozen. It happily stopped defragmenting (if that's what it was really doing) when I clicked the Cancel button. And no, nothing else running. I'll have a look at the logs next time I'm at that computer. My big complaint here is really about the totally uninformative interface. I simply cannot tell what it's really doing. At least in Win 95 (and all other Windows versions I'm aware of) you got a picture of what it was doing. HiLo48 (talk) 21:11, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

windows explorer

i am looking for a file on my computer. Type whatsit.htm in search box. It finds it but also finds a lot of other files . Why? Kittybrewster ☎ 09:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, it will look for similar files with the simlar name, type or location to extend your search results. Mrlittleirish 09:17, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

"whatsit.htm" (in quotes) might make a difference, I forget. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Alas, I long for the old XP search function. It seems Microsoft would have us learn "Advanced Query Syntax" [8], but the part that you need is the "filename:" or "file:" attribute qualifier. In your case, try searching for "file:whatsit.htm" (without quotes). -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 03:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

8b/10b encoding

I am trying to understand 8b/10b encoding.The very first line D.00 is encoded as 100111 or 011000. D.00 00000 100111 011000 How is this achieved.Something is missing in my thoughts.I would like to know how 00000 is encoded to 100111 and 011000. Many Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hansmah (talk • contribs) 14:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

In 8b/10b encoding you pick one or the other encoding depending if there is an excess or a deficiency of 1 bits previously. If there is too few, then the code with more 1 bits is picked to restore the average number of 1's and 0's. For 00000 the disparity will change sign +/- 1. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

2bone link checker

Resolved

when i check kittybrewster.com/table_03.htm using http://www.2bone.com/links/linkchecker.shtml part 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d get overlooked. Why please? Kittybrewster ☎ 14:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The ones you listed all have target="_blank" before the href attribute. Perhaps the link-checker only sees the links when href is the first attribute? 98.103.60.35 (talk) 16:40, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

thank you. Kittybrewster ☎ 20:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Risks of using Stiki

Does Stiki crash your computer. I am too nervous to run it in case it crashes my computer.--Deathlaser (talk) 14:55, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

It has never crashed my computer. It runs through a Java virtual machine so I would have thought that crashing would be pretty unlikely.

That said, how much experience do you have of Wikipedia? I wouldn't recommend using STiki if you haven't already been around the block a few times.

Yaris678 (talk) 15:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ancient 3d engine

i'm not a programmer but would like to run an ancient tiny "game" engine on this crappy netbook, the requiremen is that I can create my own level map and put bitmaps on the wall. it should be wolfstein 3d era (I.e. Like a few Megan, dos mode, no installation, and a few kb "level editor". This is for a proof of concept and I wan to spend no more time on this than finding and running the binary and level editor. Any old-timers know of abandonware that fits the bill? (sorry, I don't program and can't compile. It has to be tiny, all CPU and 640x480 or 320x240 is fine). Thanks. 84.1.177.43 (talk) 18:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox: quit with warning

about:config shows browser.showQuitWarning and browser.warnOnQuit both True; yet, every time my finger slips and I hit Q rather than W, Firefox quits immediately. How can I bring back the confirmation dialog? (It's FF 11.0 on MacOS 10.6, but this quirk has bugged me for a year or two.) —Tamfang (talk) 18:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Some info: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/869468#answer-240137 --Sean 15:48, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Hide a font

On Windows 7, how can I make a font that is installed on my computer not show up in Microsoft Word? That is, without uninstalling the font. Interchangeable 19:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

http://www.zhacks.com/disable-fonts-without-deleting-it-from-windows-7/ - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The fonts in question are required in another program, so that would not work. I just want them to be invisible to Microsoft Word. Interchangeable 22:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Squint. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't get it and I want a serious answer. Interchangeable 03:10, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if you want the fonts available to all programs except Word, you're out of luck. The fonts are either available to everything, or unavailable to everything. However, if your reason for disabling some fonts is so that you don't need to scroll through endless Comic Sans variants to get to the two or three fonts you actually use, I suggest using 'styles'. You can define any number of your own styles, including the font to use, paragraph formatting and much besides. Here's a guide to the basics, there are many more advanced guides out there once you have the basics. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:42, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Pastebin

I want to make my own version of pastebin.com. An exact copy of what it does (but without all the mobile applications and the like). I don't know how to code, and I don't have enough money for a website developer. They make their API publicle available, if that helps. How do I do it? Is there code already available? Thanks. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

You're going to have a very hard time trying to create a website if you do not know how to program. I suggest you try learning PHP, which is often used for website-related work. →Στc. 21:04, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Need to convert raw avi to MJPEG or with similar intraframe compression only codec

It absolutely cannot have any interframe compression-- I'm tracking fruitflies using Ctrax. ImageJ has issues dealing with files that are over 2 GB and will only load the first few thousand frames. Is there another free utility that compresses avi to Motion JPEG? 137.54.33.69 (talk) 22:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

AVI is just a container format, is it a series of BMPs? In any case [[ffmpeg] can do the later, and should be able to do the former - set the GOP (group of pictures) to 1 to force I-frame only. However, it is a command-line tool, and can be a bit awkward to get used to. CS Miller (talk) 23:02, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Why bother when you can just use an image viewer that displays it just as it would if it were video? ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

April 13

Extraction of Files from .zip Archive on CLI in SLED11SP2

Hello!

  I need to extract files from a .zip archive on a computer running SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 2. I would like to do this from the CLI (so that I can do this in shell scripts in future), and need to know what is the command and syntax to use.

  Thank you to all RefDeskers! Vickreman.Chettiar 09:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

unzip path/to/archive.zip or unzip path/to/archive.zip -d path/to/dir/to/unzip/to (dir can be non-existant). If you don't have the unzip package (fairly unlikely), you'll need to install it first. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

site icons in browser tabs

What I mean is the small square icons that appear at the left side of tabs in a browser. For example, Wikipedia has its stylized "W." If a site offers no icon, a dotted square is displayed. How could I use this feature on my web site? --Halcatalyst (talk) 00:45, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

It looks like you need a file named "favicon.ico" on your web server root. See Favicon RudolfRed (talk) 01:11, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, see Favicon, anyways. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Simple Java animation

In Java, I have a button. After I press the button, I want the button to turn red for 1 second, then turn green. I tried changing the color's button to red, waiting for 1 second (Thread.sleep), calling repaint(), changing it back to green, and calling repeat() again inside the button's mouse event listener. However, what happens is that the button does nothing for 1 second, and then turns green; for some reason, the button is never red.

How do I fix this? This should be the most basic aspect of doing an animation in Java, yet I can't find the information anywhere. --140.180.3.182 (talk) 06:52, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Don't call thread.sleep() in an event handler, because you're blocking the event loop. If you're using Swing, use a Swing Timer to schedule a repaint. If you're just using AWT, create your own thread that sleeps, calls repaint, sleeps, etc. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 08:15, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Windows 7

Will an emachines 3038 run windows 7?--92.29.200.88 (talk) 09:32, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Just googled it, unable to find anything. you can check the minimum requirements of Windows 7 on the article here. Mrlittleirish 09:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Probably, but if you'd like to know what Microsoft has to say about it, use their Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

map tag

I'm wondering how can you use map tag with the usemap attribute. You need to know the coordinates of the image. so my problem is exactly that how do people can do the shapes already knowing all the coordinates? is there a program for that??? thanks. 12:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk)

Most graphics editors (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.) will give you x and y coordinates you can use for simple rectangular areas, though just using CSS is by far superior for simple rectangular areas. For complex shapes there are lots of applications for helping you get the coords. The best application by far was Adobe ImageReady, which was removed from the Adobe Creative Suite after CS2 (and isn't free). There are plenty of free ones, though: http://www.google.com/search?q=image%20map%20editor ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:00, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Awesome! though I was wondering if there is one that supports png, and if also allowed circular and pol coordinates.. but I think I can handle it... Thanks. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 15:05, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

They should all support PNG at this point, and ImageReady should as well, but all you really need from them is the HTML with the coords (and the HTML they spit out is usually awful, so really just the part with the coordinates), you don't actually have to use any image they spit out, you can just use your original image (or a variety of it in any format you like) as long as it's the same dimensions and alignment. All you should need them for is complex polygons — rectangles and circles should be a simple matter of knowing what x/y coordinates you want them at (and then preferably using CSS instead of an image map). ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:19, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

RSS reader that syncs between computer and iOS without Google Reader

Is there such thing? As in a cross-platform RSS reader that deletes stories that I deleted from my feed on my iPad as well when I do so on my computer? I know it's possible from Google Reader, but I don't use this interface for reading on my desktop, as I prefer specialised programs. Even so, I don't think Google Reader syncs the actual messages in feed inboxes. However, it's already possible for e-mail. 96.21.250.92 (talk) 15:40, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, that feature is built in to Safari. Use the Reading List. "Whenever you come across something interesting on the web, save it to Reading List. iCloud keeps your Reading List up to date on all your devices, including your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch." On your Mac, use the RSS Unread Indicator - "Choose “Highlight unread articles” in Safari RSS preferences, and Safari will distinguish between read and unread articles, highlighting items you haven’t read." Does that help? Nimur (talk) 18:29, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

unicode and alt code

How can I type in unicode directly from a keyboard? And, is there any list of alt code that I can check easily? Thanks for answering!Naiveandsilly (talk) 15:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Unicode input -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

How about the second question about list of alt code? Thanks! ––Naiveandsilly (talk) 06:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

iPad/iPhone

Can I use either charger for either of the above please?--85.211.216.235 (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Almost, but not quite. If you have an iPad charger, you're fine with both. However, an iPhone charger will only charge the iPad slowly if at all (Trickle charging may be a relevant article). Sources: http://terrywhite.com/techblog/charging-your-ipad-what-you-should-know/ https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2580579?start=0&tstart=0 - Cucumber Mike (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC).

Thanks for this and the link.--85.211.216.235 (talk) 06:18, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

greasemonkey javascript

In greasemonkey javascript, I want to automatically open all links on a page which contain &number= into new tabs. I know almost nothing about javascript. So far I have found the following code with google;

GM_openInTab("http://www.google.com/");

This opens http://www.google.com/ in a new tab. Now I just need to find a way to parse a page for links and feed them into GM_openInTab. I have no idea how to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! 82.45.62.107 (talk) 20:55, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems like doing this might open so many tabs it takes down your browser and maybe computer, so I'd add a limit to the number it opens. StuRat (talk) 05:16, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

April 14

Calendar for a Facebook Group?

Is there a calendar app in Facebook for members of a group to share, so they can all see upcoming events relevant to the group all in one place? HiLo48 (talk) 05:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Group members can create events... Would that suit your purposes? Dismas|^(talk) 05:48, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking more of something that actually looks like a calendar or diary, where a group member could look to see what's scheduled on a particular date. HiLo48 (talk) 06:06, 14 April 2012 (UTC)