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August 18

Cantenna

Does it matter what type of can you are using for it? I used a Quaker oats can, which seems to be from a different, lighter material than say baked beans. Comploose (talk) 17:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From our article "...antennas made with an empty metal can." I have never seen a metal Quaker oats can; aren't they just plain cardboard? Pringles cans are a common choice, which are mostly cardboard, but they have a metallic lining that apparently works well. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, Quaker oats cans are not plain cardboard, they seem to have a kind of aluminum foil lining. Is, for example, a cardboard cylinder covered by aluminum foil useless for a cantenna? Comploose (talk) 18:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked at a Quaker Oats can in my kitchen and it is definitely plain cardboard, no metallic lining. Maybe there are different kinds. I have seen some other brands of oatmeal that come in metal cans, but they were a lot more expensive and I didn't understand what the benefit was supposed to be. I had heard a while back that Pringles cans were coincidentally just the right dimensions for 802.11b (2.4 ghz) but maybe for 5 ghz the required dimensions are different. 69.228.170.132 (talk) 23:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Network components

What is difference between a a- router b- wireless USB adapter c- access point 123.201.86.235 (talk) 20:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look at:

a- router b- Wireless network interface controller c- access point OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Django + jQuery

If you have a Django back-end and a jQuery front-end, how do both systems communicate with each other? I've heard of XML and JSON but how does it happens? Does one system save information in a JSON or XML file and the other reads it? And where are these files located? Comploose (talk) 21:43, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Any number of ways

2-3. Something writes to a file (in XML or JSON if you like), and then something else reads it (or the reverse, or both, or any combination)

4. While some preassembled solutions may dictate a location, there are basically no special requirements as to location

¦ Reisio (talk) 22:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Basic concept: Django is server-side (Python) — it is run by the server computer. jQuery is client-side (Javascript) — it's run by the user's browser. The standard AJAXy operation goes like this: 1. the user loads the page; 2. after the page loads, a client-side script launches which queries the server-side code; 3. the server-side code takes the query, and spits an answer back in a given format (e.g. XML or JSON) that the client-side script can understand; 4. the client-side script takes the info it has received, and does something with it (e.g. display it on the screen).

Information is generally not written to a file in the way you seem to be indicating — only server-side scripting can edit or read files. So when you do have something that needs to be saved as a file (or written to a database), the client-side scripting needs to send it to the server-side scripting, and the server-side scripting then does something with it. (As with all things, there are exceptions — e.g. Java applets can read/write files locally — but let's ignore that for now.)

Let's consider a very simple example. I want my users to be able to search a very large database in real-time without the page refreshing. I set up a server-side script that takes in search parameters and spits out results. I then make a form that, upon the user typing in a search query, has a little bit of Javascript that sends a query to the server. It waits for a response. When the server returns results, the Javascript formats it into HTML and dynamically inserts the content into the page. That's basically how Gmail and any other page that updates "instantly (without reloading) works. JSON and XML are just different ways the server and/or client scripts can format the data they are exchanging.

As for Django and jQuery, it really depends on the application. I don't use Django, but you really will want to know specifically what you're trying to exchange, data-wise, to set up code that would do it. (jQuery is just a nice front-end for Javascript, it does nothing special in this respects except it makes sending AJAX queries and parsing JSON very easy.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

fights on a sim

Where could i get a computer fight simulator that takes in varibles and uses math to solve the fight and fights between comic characters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.142.178.36 (talk) 22:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some fighting computer games do this. You pick your player based on their characteristics (the variables). Maybe you can pick your opponent as well. Play the game and see who wins the fight. The game uses the player characteristics, inbuilt game physics (things like gravity, for example), and controller inputs to determine the outcome. Turn-based games such as the Pokemon and Final fantasy series provide a different means of control, but still use input variables and maths to determine the fight outcome. Unfortunately, these don't let you select any two random comic characters for the fight. Astronaut (talk) 16:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 19

where am I getting the glyphs?

The appearance of one word in Gothic alphabet (𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺) on another RD made me wonder: How can I know what font my computer (or browser) chooses for a given obscure segment of Unicode? —Tamfang (talk) 00:01, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which browser? Which OS? (Which RD?) ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:30, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox, Snow Leopard, (Language). —Tamfang (talk) 00:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox%20extension%20show%20fonts ? ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Illegal copies online

How difficult is it to remove illegal copies of your books/games/software online? Why is it so easy to find something, not only through emule and torrent, which are decentralized, but also for direct download? The copyright owners shouldn't have any problem finding those either. Comploose (talk) 00:06, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are many issues. One is that there are a lot of sources — it's a game of whack a mole. Another is that it takes time to send out take-down notices, and if they are ignored, you have to file lawsuits — which costs money and time. Another is that there are hundreds of different jurisdictions — getting a copyright violation dealt with in the USA is different than the UK which is different than Sweden which is different than Germany and so on. There are different laws, different languages, and so on. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:27, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's virtually impossible. Making illegal copies of things mostly useless is not so hard though: make them call you up and prove you are the purchaser before the software will run (or the like). The only problems with this approach is that 1) it's really annoying to those who weren't trying to use an illegal copy in the first place, and 2) while people using unpaid for copies of your software aren't generating you revenue at the moment, you are still generating demand for your software, which can often lead to revenue should the persons using it ever want to appear more squeaky clean themselves. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:35, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That approach in 1) rarely works, you just need someone who can work out how to bypass whatever check is done to make sure you call them first (or whatever) and then people download the cracked software or a crack for the software. Ultimately you can't assume that those designing the protection are smarter then those wishing to break it, if your software is interesting enough. The only two approaches which are likely to work are cloud computing/software as a service models where a significant chunk of your software is stored on your computers and never distributed to the end user. Or perhaps giving each user a steganography copy with the stenography designed in such a way that even with several copies of the software, they won't be able to safely remove it without the owners of the software being identified. Even that I'm not sure if it will definitely work, some people may be in jurisdictions where it's difficult to prosecute, or perhaps people will steal the software from zombie computers to break. If your software requires regular important updates, you can make things difficult if you keep modifying your protection enough that someone needs to spend a fair amount of time breaking it (something like what the BluRay people try to do) and also ensuring that they can't receive the updates from you (meaning they need to wait for someone to release them) but ultimately it still sounds like a losing proposition. (This is somewhat how BluRay is handling stuff although in that case the 'important updates' are new releases.) Even most ardent software DRM supporters usually acknowledge you can't stop hardcore violators, they just aim to make things difficult enough to scare away enough casual copiers. Of course an effective Trusted Computing system where the user loses full control over their system may be able to stop this, but we all know how successfull that has been. Nil Einne (talk) 18:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of precedes 1, but it can be SaaS ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SaaS isn't necessarily that secure either. You can read how Chinese Studio Blatantly Copies Foreign Indie Game, Developers Pissed (and at reddit Some company in China stole my game.) Also, a lot of the times, the main customers of the software are large corporations/government so the illegal copies online hardly account for any business.Smallman12q (talk) 23:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly what is it you imagine is "necessarily that secure"? :p If they had wanted to protect themselves from simple reverse engineering (a waste of time, but still) they could have, it just would've also been a huge hassle to paying customers. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:22, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Drawpad

What is the cheapest, the best, and the most accurate drawing pad for PC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.47.115 (talk) 03:45, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean a digitizing tablet ? StuRat (talk) 03:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sure if that helps you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.47.115 (talk) 13:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, I assume you mean, "what's the best tablet I can get for the least amount of money?" Because the "best and most accurate" is unlikely to be the "cheapest." I recommend just going on to Amazon and looking through their category on Graphic Tablets, sorting by rating, price, etc., reading reviews. You should be able to ferret out what the ups and downs of any option are, within the budget of whatever you consider cheap enough. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:53, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

UK shops- camera charger

So, I lost the charger for my camera, it's one of those ones with its own battery that needs taking out and recharging rather than just buying more from the shop, but I need it for tomorrow, so I need to find a shop that sells a new one very soon. I thought, try PC world, seeing as that's where I got the camera originally, but no, thousands of accessories, no chargers. any other thoughts?

Kitutal (talk) 12:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Better post the mark and model of the camera and maybe a (more limited) geographic area, people are more likely to answer if they know for certain that their answer will be helpful. Ssscienccce (talk) 13:56, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the chances of someone coming from this exact area were rather low. but if you're sure, it's a panasonic lumix dmc-fs16 in east kent Kitutal (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/Where+to+buy/All+Dealers/220395/index.html ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:45, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't specify whether you wanted an original charger. A simple search finds these results [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] all I presume OEM chargers. If you search more, you could probably find 100+ more online sellers (even more if you expand to eBay and other places and even more if you expand to sellers outside the UK). It sounds like this is a common enough type of charger that many retail stores which stock the sort of think will have them as well. Nil Einne (talk) 17:56, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ah, but could any online seller deliver by tomorrow morning? meanwhile the link brings up argos, currys and comet, argos has sold out anywhere near here, and the others have nothing even similar on sale... Kitutal (talk) 18:06, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I missed the part about tomorrow morning. I suggest you either 1) Look thru some of the more trustworthy online retailers and give them a call if they have a number and ask them if they can do a next day delivery to where you live or 2) Look for an online retailer with a Kent or nearby address and call them and ask if it will be possible to pick the item up from somewhere. Either way you'd likely pay thru the roof for the service, but I guess you expect that. As I mentioned, you may also want to look at local electronics retailers, probably the less fancy ones. In particular, make sure you find out all you can about what you want (what the battery type is, what cameras have the same battery etc). There's a fair chance some of the stuff won't have your camera model on the packaging but will be compatible. Also I would ask the shop staff but not trust them, particularly if they're sales people rather then the owner. P.S. Looking at the time, you're probably SOL either way. Nil Einne (talk) 18:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to chargerbatteryshop, there are a few compatible batteries: DMW-BCK7; DMW-BCK7E; NCA-YN101F; NCA-YN101H, also used in other Panasonic camera's, see list: [7] and several chargers are compatible with your camera: the Lumix DMC-FS15 Battery Charger [8]; Lumix DMC-FS12 Battery Charger [9] ; the Lumix DMC-FS7 Battery Charger [10]; the Lumix DMC-FS4 Battery Charger [11]; and the Lumix DMC-FS25 Battery Charger [12]. Maybe one of those can be found in a local shop... Ssscienccce (talk) 21:35, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Go to a mobile phone shop and see if they have a universal charger that fits your battery. Bring your battery to the store to try different models. 69.228.170.132 (talk) 06:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Very often, though not always, a device connected to your computer via a USB cable will also get recharged. If the camera supports this charging method, it probably came with a suitable cable. If not, it might be easy to get a USB cable with the correct connector (bigger supermarkets might sell this kind of thing); though beware there are several different connectors so make sure you get the right one. Astronaut (talk) 16:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

surely there is a more pythonic way to do this generation of pandigital numbers?

PD2 = []
for D1 in range(10):
 PD2 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1]]
 for D2 in PD2:
  PD3 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2]]
  for D3 in PD3:
   PD4 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3]]
   for D4 in PD4:
    PD5 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4]]
    for D5 in PD5:
     PD6 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4, D5]]
     for D6 in PD6:
      PD7 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6]]
      for D7 in PD7:
       PD8 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7]]
       for D8 in PD8:
        PD9 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8]]
        for D9 in PD9:
         PD0 = [x for x in range(10) if not x in [D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8, D9]]
         for D0 in PD0:
          PandigitalNumber = int(str(D1) + str(D2) + str(D3) + str(D4) + str(D5) + str(D6) + str(D7) + str(D8) + str(D9) + str(D0))

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.255.2.58 (talk) 18:28, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

from itertools import permutations

def generate_pandigital(length):
    """Generates zerofull pandigital numbers."""
    for n in permutations("0123456789"[:length]):
        yield "".join(n)

→Σ σ ς. 18:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or if you'd rather roll your own, you might consult The Art of Computer Programming chapter 7. —Tamfang (talk) 00:50, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good exercise in using recursion. Note Σ's solution has some problems, like not eliminating results that begin with 0. Is this a homework exercise? If yes, we should supposedly only give hints and advice, rather than working solutions. 69.228.170.132 (talk) 05:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blogging and social networking

I'm starting to think seriously about going in blogging once again, but kinda think social networking is like blogging. I have had a few of them in the past, but have given them up for social networking and etc. I'm still undecided on where should I blog from. My preference is a free vs paid or combo of worlds. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mybodymyself (talk • contribs) 21:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blogger and Wordpress are two of the biggest free blogging sites. I personally have a blogger account because it is owned by google and it is very easy to set up if you already have a gmail account. Vespine (talk) 00:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you can find some service for syndicating between facebook and your random blog, if that's what you're after. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for both of your answers to my question here.--Jessica A Bruno (talk) 01:27, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm back to tell you that I have decided to go back into blogging again.--Jessica A Bruno (talk) 01:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This was kind of interesting. It says it's better to pay for and host your own blog, instead of using something like blogspot/wordpress. (This can be done at very low cost). 69.228.170.132 (talk) 06:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm interesting and I'm still a little unsure how I think about this.--Jessica A Bruno (talk) 18:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 20

The Ubuntu interface along with Kubuntu and toggle back and forth without rebooting?

I am a Windows7 user who know ~~next to~~ nothing about Linux.
Every "once in a while" I try out some Linux Live-CDs to get a glimpse of the kind of onscreen environment other people are using every day.
And I have kept wondering:
If Kubuntu is based on Ubuntu, then why can't I have both? (and toggle between the two?)
Is it technically totally impossible? Or is it more of a: "The Kubuntu people dislikes the Ubuntu interface and therefore block it"? --89.9.197.179 (talk) 03:45, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kubuntu is merely Ubuntu running a KDE desktop environment, and Ubuntu (the one downloadable from here) is Ubuntu running a GNOME desktop environment. The installation of desktop environments is trivial, and you can switch between KDE and GNOME at the login screen. →Σ σ ς. 03:56, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! But then my question becomes: Is it absolutely necessary to log out to change the active desktop environment?
(I would like to keep all active applications running uninterrupted so I can avoid having to go offline from any ongoing live conversation I have with other people on the net, who probably were the ones prompting me to try out "this or that" in the other desktop environment).
-- (OP) 89.9.214.107 (talk) 07:22, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not necessary. You can probably still do most of this through lightdm or GDM with fast user switching, but I haven't ever used it. You can always modify ~/.xinitrc and run startx -- :1 and a number of other approaches. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:37, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Uh-oh! I did get the: "No, it's not necessary."-part of the answer, Thank You! :-), but I guess I should strike out the "next to" (in my question) and plainly admit that: "I know nothing about Linux (nor Windows)" ;-(
Could you please "translate" the rest of the answer? ;-) (And maybe expand a little on the "..do most of this...". So that I may get a tiny grasp on what it is that will stop me from keeping all active applications running uninterrupted in order not to loose any logged in connections or miss out on any part of a streaming data flow that I may be saving to disk at the time).
-- (OP) 89.9.209.62 (talk) 16:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I don't use Ubuntu much. You'd probably get the fastest help by going here: http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=gnomKdeFasSwitch&channels=#ubuntu (type in the CAPTCHA, when you see '#ubuntu' in a tab at the top, you're in the right place. I'm guessing you can either click on your user name somewhere in the panel (top right?) to switch users, or you might have to run gconftool-2 -type bool -set /apps/gnome-screensave/user_switch_enabled true from a terminal (CTRL+ALT+t) and then switch from the screensaver after locking (sorry GNOME changed this recently and I haven't kept track, you can probably lock from one of those menus somewhere). The KDE package is called kubuntu-desktop, you can install it from your package manager as usual. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -- (OP) 89.9.214.129 (talk) 18:15, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for an architectural model for a typical home Wi-Fi router

I'm looking for a reference architectural model for a typical home Wi-Fi router. It may be in the form of a functional block diagram with sufficient granularity/details. I need something that will help me reason about the workings (and limitations) of home routers. In my mental model, a home router implements a wired LAN and a wireless LAN, and the two are connected by a bridge; I'm not sure if a real device actually behaves like that. There are a few other things I want to figure out. Having a good and correct model goes a long way. Thanks in advance for your help. --98.114.98.196 (talk) 04:14, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Typically they are small Linux computers with two network interfaces and appropriate routing and firewall rules. You have to understand a bit about network administration to get deeper than that. OpenWRT and several related firmware replacements run inside those things, so those articles might help you. 69.228.170.132 (talk) 06:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Convert OST to PST File

Hi, My OST File damage due to virus attack, so i am not open this OST file in proper way. So i want convert OST file to PST file, please help me...... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krisdonaldo (talk • contribs) 10:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How does this damage manifest? ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft vs. Netscape

Did microsoft pay people working at netscape to sabotage their own product? Thanks.Rich (talk) 15:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The main accusations were not related to sabotage, though there were some imputations of sabotage, though they were more related to Microsoft changing Windows to be incompatible, not with paying off rival employees. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:50, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft changed some of the underlying APIs and some of the undocumented features on which Netscape relied. Microsoft did however pay to have roughly 10x the number of programmers working on the browser as Netscape had.Smallman12q (talk) 00:24, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And 10x the lawyers, I'm guessing. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Probably 100x. And half the "programmers" are lawyers-in-disguise, too... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 08:16, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

canon 650d, Magic Lantern

I need to know which is the actual video recording bitrate of the 650d Someone know if there is magic lantern support for it in this moment? Thank you Iskánder Vigoa Pérez 15:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iskander HFC (talk • contribs)

The wiki for Magic Lantern does not list that model. Searching the Magic Lantern development mailing list suggests that it isn't supported. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

and what about the video bitrate recording?? thank you for answer — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iskander HFC (talk • contribs) 16:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a video generated by the device that you can share, this can easily be determined. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What, specifically, is wrong with this PDF file?

The National Nuclear Security Administration posts PDF files online as a response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Almost all of them have at least one page that triggers an error in any program I use to view them. Acrobat specifically says "Insufficient data for an image."

Here is an example of a file which triggers this: http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/foiareadingroom/RR00507.pdf

Page 1 of that file always gives me the above error. I've tried using pdftk to extract the page and uncompress it — it seems to have lots of binary data in it. But nothing can process it — not Acrobat, not Preview, not ImageMagick. The best any of them do is silently throw an error and load a blank page. It shouldn't be blank; it probably ought to look like this, more or less. (Note that page 2 of that second file throws the error, as does page 4, 6, 15, 17, 19, 22, 23, and 26. These are rampant errors — nearly a third of the pages in that PDF are unreadable.)

Can anyone take a look at the page and/or file to figure out what's likely wrong with it? It's something systemic to the NNSA's PDFs, and I'd be curious (heck, maybe even they'd be curious) as to what it's origin is. There would be something deliciously disturbing about the idea of them (the guardians of the nuclear secrets) having some kind of virus or corrupt hard drive or something. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at EE00507, Okular, Evince, Inkscape, and Gimp (which I think all share the same Poppler PDF library) complains about various invalid data, but will display (in what looks correct) all but pages 6,7,8 and 15. They report Error: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table (with subsequent errors probably a result of that attempt being unsuccessful). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And (again for EE00507) I get the same (blank) results as you (that is, worse than poppler) with Acrobat 8 Standard, Foxit 3.3, and Google Chrome (the last of which I think uses Google's PDF library not Adobe's) all on Windows. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:08, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And it actually makes ghostscript (pdf2ps) coredump, after it too complains of a corrupt XREF table. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:12, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And pdf-tools "repair" function says it's "not a correct PDF". -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:22, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested in what mad system created the corrupt PDF, its meta-info says it was scanned on a Canon DR-7580 in TWAIN mode, and rendered to pdf By Adobe Acrobat 6.0.2 Paper Capture - a toolchain one would have thought would produce good PDFs. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:25, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Might have thought, anyways. If you've ever done anything with gs on a PDF generated by Adobe software, you know just how well Adobe "supports" its own spec. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fails in Adobe Reader (not Acrobat/Pro) 6.0.2 as well. They're probably just doing something wrong in the scanning/assembly process and have no review process (which is deliciously disturbing given the source). ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think something converted DOS/Windows newlines (0D 0A) to Unix or Mac newlines (0A or 0D) in the compressed binary data. This would explain why the XREF table is corrupt (it contains byte offsets into the file, which would be wrong after the conversion) and it would explain why about 1/3 of the pages are corrupt (most pages have about 20K of compressed data, and the probability of 0D0A occurring is about 20K / 65536).

You'd expect a file the size of RR00507.pdf to contain about eight 0D 0A sequences. In fact it contains one, which straddles the end of a binary stream (PDF files are a mixture of binary and text; the 0D is the last byte of a binary stream, and the 0A is text). This seems to mean that whatever did the munging was somewhat aware of the PDF file structure. The textual parts of the file contain both 0A and 0D as newlines (e.g. the first line ends with 0D but the second line ends with 0A). This file must have been produced with a bunch of different tools, one of which is broken. Only the person responsible for the tools can figure out which one.

Since the number of munged byte sequences in each binary stream can be detected and is usually small, it would be possible to write a utility that repaired most of the pages by unmunging each stream in all possible ways and running it through a JBIG2 decoder to test for corruption. It would be a fair amount of work, though. -- BenRG (talk) 00:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This may be a stupid question, but would it be possible to extract the JBIG2 stream and simply re-encode it into a PDF? That is, it seems to me like you're saying the problem is with the PDF structure, not the image data. Is there a straightforward way to repair that? --Mr.98 (talk) 15:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that all the readers are trying to follow the offsets in the file described by the XREF table. When they're discovering that the data at the end of some doesn't look like a valid JBIG2 stream, Acrobat and chums are just giving up. It looks like Poppler is being more aggressive, and trying to linearly scan for what it thinks are JBIG streams - which is why Poppler is having more success than Acrobat. For those that even it isn't decoding properly, those would seem to be where there is a corruption in the JBIG2 streams themselves. BenRG's theory sounds promising; if it's not that I'd bet it's some equally dumb automatic munging, where some system is trying to escape stuff in a binary file or redacting what it foolishly imagines to be a naughty word. Figuring out that corruption, and reversing it, doesn't seem like a straightforward thing to do. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the JBIG2 streams themselves are corrupted. They contain no 0D 0A sequences, which is statistically very unlikely (there are none in RR00508.pdf either). If it was just the XREFs it would be no big deal since you can always read the whole file to find the objects, and I assume that's what some of the PDF readers do when they notice the XREFs are broken. The XREF values are way off, not just slightly off, so I think newline conversion happened in the textual parts of the file also, but that's okay since PDF allows any of the three newline types.

Anyway, the only thing to be done is to contact someone responsible and get them to fix it. I don't want to give legal advice but I'm pretty sure they're not fulfilling the requirements of the FOIA right now. -- BenRG (talk) 19:35, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Glitching/skipping CD

Could anyone suggest as to why an (apparently) brand new unscratched/unmarked factory-pressed audio CD might play through absolutely fine in my regular stereo, yet have one track on it that glitches and skips in the same place every time when played in my PC's (Windows XP) DVD-RAM drive? I've tried different audio player software but it does it on all of them. Also, if I try to rip the track to mp3 using iTunes (with error correction enabled) the resultant file has mess in exactly the same places. Is there anything you can think of that I could try, without installing another CD drive (because I don't have one handy at present) that might fix this issue? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but it sounds like the computer DVD drive is the problem. Does it have this problem with other music CDs ? If not, it might be an instance of the double tolerance problem (don't we have an article on this ?). This is where both the CD and the drive are within tolerances to work separately, but both so close to the limit that the combo doesn't work. StuRat (talk) 22:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't recall it ever doing this with other CDs in this way before. On a couple of occasions, I've ripped a CD, only to hear glitches on one of the produced mp3s - but then when I've ripped the disc again after giving it a wipe over, everything's been fine (so this might be unrelated). --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:19, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you do want to rip this particular disk using your current drive, you could try a ripping application that targets accuracy over speed - such as Exact Audio Copy, cdparanoia or cdda2wav. Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 22:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I tried EAC. After taking 30 minutes to rip the track in question, it still ended up sounding exactly the same as it did in iTunes... :( Below is the output upon completion. Any thoughts at all? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Track 25

    Filename F:\Downloads\25 Track25.wav

    Suspicious position 0:02:20
    Suspicious position 0:02:34
    Suspicious position 0:02:47
    Suspicious position 0:03:13
    Suspicious position 0:03:33
    Suspicious position 0:03:52
    Suspicious position 0:04:05
    Suspicious position 0:04:08 - 0:04:11
    Suspicious position 0:04:13 - 0:04:18
    Suspicious position 0:04:20
    Suspicious position 0:04:22

    Peak level 99.4 %
    Extraction speed 0.1 X
    Track quality 94.6 %
    Copy CRC 9B604574
    Copy finished

There were errors

End of status report

You could also run a CD cleaner in your DVD drive, just in case that's the problem. StuRat (talk) 22:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The top is unscratched as well as the bottom? ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:21, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Reply to OP not Reisio.) You could try fooling around with the EAC settings to make sure they're set right, for starters it's always helpful to read the track twice to see if you're at least capable of replicating it. But from my experience it's not uncommon some discs with defects simply don't work on some drives while working fine on others. As Reisio said, are you sure the CD is fine on both sides? Talking about the reading side, and damage can be defective, sometimes a seriously looking scratch or a highly scratched surface can cause no problems while a single minor looking scratch can cause major problems. (Whether it's along the data track or across obviously makes a difference but from my experience it's more complicated then that.) The problem would be much more acute with audio CDs since they have very little error correction information. For a CD, since the reflective layer is on the top, you're pretty much SOL if it's damaged.

I note you say 'apparently' which suggests to me you don't know enough about the CD's history to know if it could easily have suffered minor damage. It's also possible there was a mastering or pressing error, I had this once with a CD-ROM made by shall I say a 'questionable source'. I bought 2 or 3 different copies from different stores in different places, all had the same error. I noticed there was visible defect on the CD although I don't know if this was the cause of the problem or it was something else (e.g. a mistake could have been made with the error correcting information or with the data such that there was an uncorrectable error on the disc, as is sometimes done intentionally for copy protection purposes).

Also how bad is the skip or glitch? If it's just a single glitch, then I wouldn't even read much in to the 'play through absolutely fine' bit. Audio CD players, since they are intended to read audio CDs and often don't do much buffering, they generally just interpolate (if they're decent players), if they encounter an error [13] [14]. This doesn't generally happen with digital audio extraction, and often doesn't even happen with playback on computers. This fact is relied upon by many audio CD copy protection systems [15], although I don't believe that's the problem here since you only have one or so error one a single track, but it does tell you why your audio CD may sounds fine on your player but not on your computer or when extracted. If you don't care about bit-perfect audio, for this single track you may want to look in to masking the error via interpolation the same way your audio player may be doing rather then trying to read the actual data.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 21

Tandy Color Computer Emulators & .ccc files

I have so far searched in vain for a Tandy Color Computer Emulator that will run on my Windows 7 System and recognize ROM files with a .ccc file extension. Can someone help me here? 69.120.136.162 (talk) 06:29, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

commandline arguements in c

Hi sir!My dout is about command line arguments in c language. 1)we can execute a c program after getting .exe file of that program.then what is the speciality of command line arguments. 2)by using command line arguments we are giving input from command prompt to main. We can use the arguments passed to main in our programme.we can pass data required by programme with out using command line arguments.then why should we send data to main()?what is use,speciality and need of command line arguements? Sir!please explain with an example. I hope you help me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phanihup (talk • contribs) 11:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=Phanihup&channels=#friendly-coders ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:48, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No idea what Reisio is getting at with the above IRC link.

To answer the question: Command line arguments can be passed to main like this: main(int argc, char *argv[]) where argc is a count of tyhe number of arguments and argv is a list of the argument values. By convention argv[0] is the command used to start the program. They are used to pass all kinds of data to the program when it is run from a terminal, things like configuration values, filenames, paths, and so on. This saves having to have an interactive prompt for each piece of data and simplifies running the program from a script that might do all kinds of pre and post-processing around the program itself. It can also be important to be able to separate the running of the program from a GUI driven program launching mechanism, particularly when testing or debugging.

So, for example, only today I needed to run a program I had modified in debug mode. I could have done this from the GUI launcher, but I would have had to install the GUI and then think of a way to attach to the running program in gdb before it got too far. Instead, using the command line, I could simply run the program from gdb supplying the necessary startup data on the command line.

Another example: Elsewhere in my work, we have many complex scripts that start a sequence of processing that uses many programs. Each program passes data to the next using temporary files whose names are passed in the command line arguments - a typical example here is customer invoicing pulling data from many data sources. The scripts are scheduled to run at specific time in crontab. The advantage of this is that this time consuming process all happens out of hours with no human intervention, and the resulting data is ready for the rest of the business to get working on in the morning.

You see, not every program that is important to a business requires a flashy GUI interface or even human interaction to do its thing. Astronaut (talk) 16:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Where do Web Fonts live in the latest Firefox

When you go to a page that uses Web Fonts while using the latest Firefox browser, where does that font get put in Firefox? I've gone to a page that uses web fonts and then looked in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox and everything below, and found nothing. (using Windows 7 OS) 20.137.18.53 (talk) 12:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming it's the same from November 2011:

"On my system (Unix) they're stored at ~/.mozilla/default/Cache/A/AA/BBBBBBBB, where A is a (presumably random) alphanumeric directory, and B is a (presumably random) alphanumeric font file."…"On Windows they appear to be stored at C:\Users\yourUser\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yourFirefoxProfileName\Cache\A\AA\BBBBBBBB." — Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011_November_2#Web_Fonts_in_Firefox
If you just want to download them casually, there are a few extensions for making that easier. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:46, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google Spreadsheet question

I'm trying to have a cell display "Today's starting count" where it takes the closing values from yesterday. If we were closed on the day before though it will display "NOVALUE" so what I want it to do is check the column that displays the previous day's closing count and IF there's no number there (because we were closed) then it scrolls up the column until it finds the most recent closing value and will return that value instead.

So far I've got IF(ISNUMBER(T1), T1, ) It's the last bit I don't know how to do. Any thoughts? Also if I set those T values to be preceded by a dollar sign, because they do represent money, will ISNUMBER still acknowledge it as a number?199.94.68.91 (talk) 19:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All my locally stored e-mail is gone in Evolution after upgrading to Fedora 17

I decided to finally upgrade to Fedora 17 from Fedora 14. The old system was too old to update, so I had to do a full reinstall. Luckily I had kept my old home directory on a separate partition, and it seems to be intact. The first problem that struck me is at although Evolution seems to have retained my old e-mail account information, all the e-mail I had downloaded to my local hard drive is no longer accessible. Evolution just says it can't find the messages. I have the old versions of Evolution's mailbox files on my backup drive, but how can I use them in the new version of Evolution? Do I have to convert them somehow? JIP | Talk 20:12, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably a simple matter of copying the email data from your old drive to the specific correct place on the new drive (likely the same place), but I don't follow Evolution (and therefore don't know whether they've made drastic changes in that time span). You'd get this sorted much more rapidly on an IRC channel for Fedora or Linux in general (http://freenode.net/). ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:15, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Further problems with Fedora 17

I've now sort of managed to get my old locally stored e-mail back in Evolution. I could get this year's received mail back, but not yet any of the previous years' (they were in subfolders of the old "Received mail" folder). But there's still some things I want to get sorted out.

My first sight at the new Gnome 3.0 desktop made me instantly agree with Linus Torvalds: "Gosh, this is horrible". I made Gnome force fallback mode, even though my system seems to be able to use the new desktop. But now I can't move the taskbars around any more, and most importantly, I can't add any quick launchers to the taskbars themselves, so I wouldn't have to use the menus. Is this at all possible?

I really can't understand the Gnome project's mentality. They seem to be thinking that the less the user can do with their computer, the better. I used to be able to move the taskbars around, add new launchers to them, move existing items on the taskbar around, and change the taskbars' colours. Now I can't do any of that any more. If it wasn't for fallback mode I wouldn't even have the taskbars any more. With the way this project is going, I wouldn't be surprised if the version of Gnome in Fedora 20 just offered two big buttons: "E-mail" and "World Wide Web". JIP | Talk 21:47, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try Xfce. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed Cinnamon and installed it. Then when I logged out and logged back in, selecting "Cinnamon" as the session instead of "Gnome", I was very satisfied. Cinnamon is pretty much like Gnome, but with everything that Gnome 3 took away put back in. Can I now use it as my default session? JIP | Talk 18:54, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No particular reason you couldn't. Linux Mint does, IIRC. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As well as that, the old Gnome Photo Viewer seems to be gone. In its place is "Shotwell Photo Manager", which seems to comply with the Gnome project's goal to destroy direct access to the computer's actual filesystem. I can't find any way to view thumbnails of all photos in a specific directory. Instead there's artificial constructs such as "Libraries" and "Tags". The old Photo Viewer offered a directory tree on the left-hand side and thumbnails of all images in the currently selected directory on the right-hand side. Is this possible in this new-fangled "Shotwell" thingy, or can I somehow get the old Photo Viewer back? JIP | Talk 20:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The old Gnome photo viewer was called Eye of GNOME and should be in the package eog -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I still have Eye of Gnome, and it works, but it doesn't offer me a directory tree or a grid of thumbnail images. I think the program I used to use for this was called "gphoto". Is this available for Fedora 17? Shotwell Photo Manager seems to do pretty much the same thing, except instead of a directory tree, it offers me useless artificial constructs such as "libraries" or "tags". I can't find any way to make it show the physical directory tree on my hard drive. JIP | Talk 21:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, never mind. The old program I was thinking of is "gthumb", not "gphoto". Although it doesn't show up in Fedora 17's "Add/Remove Software" menu, yum finds it, and after I installed it, it seems to work pretty much like before. I still have to configure it correctly. The mere fact that it offers me direct access to the directory structure instead of having to import pictures into an artificial "library" makes it my preferred viewer over Shotwell, hands-down. Now I still have to find out how to add quick launchers directly into the taskbar and if E-UAE and VICE exist as packages for Fedora 17 or do I have to compile them from the sources. JIP | Talk 21:36, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to be honest, Fedora 17 did do something right. Because Fedora 14 was too old to update, I had to do a full reinstall. This meant my old personal user account was gone. I had to create a new personal user account with the same username. I was expecting Fedora 17 to replace the old home directory with a new blank directory, and me having to restore my latest backup (luckily made minutes before the upgrade), and fiddle around with user ID and user name settings. But no, Fedora 17 happily informed me "A home directory with this user name already exists. Would you like Fedora to reuse this old home directory, updating all the user IDs and permissions so that all the files would belong to the new user?". I gladly selected "Yes, please!". And when I logged in to Fedora 17, my old home directory was there, with all the files, fully accessible. Now if I could only get the programs I've become accustomed to back... JIP | Talk 22:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Too old to update doesn't really exist with free Unix systems (though so old it'd take less time to reinstall than to update does), as most of the software remains available for ages after it is obsolete. It's true it probably would've been smoother had you updated back when they'd have liked you to, but you could have done it still. It's also usually a trivial matter to list what packages you have currently installed, should you (for some truly valid reason) wish to reinstall. You can also essentially drop in a backed up /home/user/ directory's contents into a new install and have all your prefs just work, typically. Just FFR. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:12, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Install VICE and E-UAE on Fedora 17?

And still more problems with Fedora 17. The legacy computer emulators VICE and E-UAE are gone. Neither "Add/Remove Software" or yum can find them. Are these at all available for Fedora 17? Should I try compiling them from the sources? JIP | Talk 21:03, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They're available via my distro's package manager, which means (given the popularity of the RPM format) that there are probably RPMs of them that you can install, whether Fedora provides them or not. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found out that all I had to do was to install the free and non-free repository RPMs from RpmFusion. Now I could install both VICE and E-UAE with yum. And they work the same way as in Fedora 14, too. E-UAE still doesn't get the sound quite right. Do I need a faster computer or something? JIP | Talk 18:54, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IME getting sound working well for emulating ancient systems is a matter of tweaking the configuration more than anything. Won't necessarily work just right out of the box. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:11, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Printing ink usage

If I use a cheap, absorbent paper, will that use more printer ink than, say, a glossy photo paper?--85.211.154.5 (talk) 21:38, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. The way inkjet printers work, the print head "spits" tiny drops of inks onto the paper--the paper doesn't suck the ink out of the print head. However, with uncoated, absorbent paper, much of the ink will be absorbed into the interior of the paper beneath the surface, resulting in less brilliant color. --173.49.10.157 (talk) 03:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that many printers have settings for paper or media type, as well as printer quality in their drivers. Generally speaking, printing at higher quality uses more ink. As far as I know, so does printing on the glossy paper setting compared to plain paper. At least it seemed to on the Canon printers I've used based on what it looks like if you try printing with the glossy paper setting on plain paper. I believe this is to produce a higher quality print since the glossy paper can take more ink without smearing. I'm not sure how high quality matte paper compares to glossy. On Canon printers and I expect all printers with both pigment black ink and dye black ink, I believe dye ink is preferred when printing on glossy paper to pigment ink, possibly even when printing text. See also [16] (this appears to be from usenet, unfortunately I can't find a copy on Google Groups or somewhere else which doesn't mangle it as a forum post, perhaps because it wasn't supposed to be archived?), [17]. Nil Einne (talk) 12:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dots and slashes in internet addresses

Why do internet addresses have dots and slashes? Couldn't they ahve unified it? Instead of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/whatever we could have https..en.wikipedia.org.wiki.whatever or https://en/wikipedia/org/wiki/whatever. Comploose (talk) 23:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One of the things Berners-Lee has stated he regrets not making happen. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that his regret was using http:// instead of http:/, not making a distinction between paths and domains. See [18]. Paul (Stansifer) 00:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Why do internet addresses have dots and slashes?" he asked. :p You are correct (virtually) about the specifics of what he said. The slashes are unnecessary and so is having two standard delimiters (slashes and dots), and so is having two separate directions ([less.]more.MORE/less/less/less). ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well the colon seems to have originated with RFC 1738 (see URL), but the slash-dot notation for networking predates it. I believe the slash notation originated with early file systems. I'm unsure where the dot notation came from to refer to sub-domains, though. BigNate37_(T) 23:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The notation allows us to uniquely specify communication. It distinguishes between several steps of the process of "asking" for a digital resource:

URI scheme, or generic communications protocol; or, what language we will be speaking;
user, or authentication; or, how we identify ourselves;
host, or "server;" who is providing the service we will ask for, optionally using a globally-unique name;
A uniquely qualified path to a resource
Query string, an arbitrarily-complex refinement to what we are asking about.

These sub-parts are explained more formally and rigorously in our uniform resource identifier article. There are plenty of other ways to come up with an abstract, functionally-identical nomenclature and syntax for such requests. The URI had the advantage of being mostly human-readable, easy to parse by inspection, and still sophisticated enough to densely accomodate a lot of information. If the objective were strictly efficiency, we could use a 128-bit universally-unique IP address, and a universally-unique 256-bit resource-identifier, which would be completely unintelligible to any human; but could be trivially aliased by any convenient keyword or icon in a user's interface. It seems that users of the internet may be trending toward that direction, evidenced by the rise of indexed content. There is still merit to the idea that a human can deduce what a URL should be, from common sense, and locate a resource without searching or indexing; and the URI notation provides a syntax that makes such a use-case possible. Nimur (talk) 00:28, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they serve different purposes. The en.wikipedia.org identifies a domain; essentially "whom should I talk to?". The /wiki/Whatever is a path; it answers the question "what am I looking for?". The https:// is a protocol (in this case HTTPS, which transfers web pages securely); in other words, "how should I get it?". For more information, see URL#syntax. Paul (Stansifer) 00:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The whole URL scheme is an arbitrary one (in the sense that you could easily replace it with something else of equivalent semantic content) dreamed up by geeks who never imagined that the whole world would be typing this stuff in on a regular basis. The fact that the average user still sees "http://" in front of every URL — despite having no clue what that means — is something of a colossal design failure. (Some browsers strip that stuff out and just handle it internally, which makes sense, given that your average person does not ever need to type in http:// or https:// manually.) --Mr.98 (talk) 00:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tibetan characters in Firefox under linux

In wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias, the only characters that do not show properly are the Tibetan. How can I correct that? Not that I care much, but I would want to know how it works. Comploose (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Tibetan languages article has a link to free fonts which support the letters used in Tibetan writing systems. Installing those should solve the problem. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 22

IPsec server question

I'm trying to setup an ipsec system as follows but the documentation is maddening and most walk-through guides I've found differ from exactly what I'm trying to do (and are low on explanation). So, my first, simplest question is, can I setup a tunnel mode, pre-shared key, where a remote client behind a NAT can connect to the server using l2tp/ipsec? The server is also behind a NAT (I cannot change this; although port-fowarding is available). When the tunnel is established all client traffic should go through the server machine, including traffic to/from outside the server's subnet. Is this configuration possible with ipsec/l2tp?

Most of the guides I'm looking at envision either one or two of the endpoints as having a public IP, and then allowing secure access to the subnet behind it which is a slightly different configuration. I'm using openswan under linux right now, although that detail shouldn't affect this question. Shadowjams (talk) 01:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All Audio out of sync

Hey last night suddenly all movie files (.mkv, .avi etc.) that previously worked fine suddenly had their audio out of sync to varying degrees, sometimes by as much as a minute or more.

I assumed that perhaps the CPU was doing a heap of work or perhaps the HDD was being written/read to by something else slowing it down but both of these theories were proved wrong when I copied the files across the network and two other computers had the same problem.

Nobody else on the internet seems to have ever had this problem and i'm straight up confused.

they're all running win7 with avast antavirus, using windows media player or VLC for playback, and connected by shared drives on the homegroup. --Benjamint 04:20, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very odd issue. I doubt that all of those files were changed. As a preliminary question, can you go and look at the modified dates on the files and see if they were modified around the time you started noticing the problem? I strongly doubt it's an issue with the individual files. The next step would be to copy an example over so there's no network issues, and see if you have the same problem. Also, check the version of VLC you are currently running, and if you can, when it last updated. Shadowjams (talk) 07:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The VLC version was 1.1.11 untill i manually updated to 2.0.2 while trying to fix it. It's not only a few files, it's all files stored locally on all three machines now regardless of age or how long they've been there. virus? I'm totally flummoxed. -Benjamint 08:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well it's not magic — something relevant is common to each machine, be it a shared software update, badware (not heard of anything of this nature), or something else you've left out. I assume you've watched a video on some other unaffected computer to at least prove to yourself that you aren't going mad or have some medical condition? A decent second opinion on badware can be had by using ClamAV from a booted [http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_How_to_install_SystemRescueCd_on_an_USB-stick#B.29_Recommended_USB_installation_method_from_Windows SystemRescueCD image. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:46, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) You didn't mention whether you're using the same speaker setup (including amplifier etc) for all 3 computers. I would be surprised that it would cause such a long delay, particularly an apparently inconsistent run but definitely if you using the same setup and it's digital at any stage, I could try something else. Also when you say the files are stored locally, do you mean they've always been on the other machines (i.e. it's a problem that has occured in files that were in 3 different machines, not in files that were in 1 machine but you copied elsewhere to test)? And were they all shared over the network? Does the sync problem being as soon as you start the video or later? If it beings as soon as you start the video (I'm presuming you mean the audio takes a while to start), have you tried making sound via non video files, e.g. music files, games, OS built in sound test and seeing if that's delayed as well? Nil Einne (talk) 17:12, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pressing "J" or "K" while a file is playing will change the audio sync. Perhaps you pressed them accidentally on all three machines while using another program which required the use of those keys? You can check the audio desynchronization settings at Tools -> Preferences -> Show settings -> all -> Audio -> Audio desynchronization compensation. 92.233.64.26 (talk) 17:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FTP Desktop Shortcut

Resolved

One of my translation agents wants me to use ftp for file transfer, rather than giving me a server to log in to, or sending files by email. However, the ftp address is in an email which will end up being buried sooner or later. I tried to add a desktop shortcut (as this is a regular agent), but I just ended up with a Firefox shortcut, rather than the usual Win7 ftp window, which is what I wanted (the Win7 ftp window doesn't update loads of addons everytime you load it, causing you to close lots of tabs). Is there a way to do this? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't matter. I've done it. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:50, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Java Question

Given the following statement, using the condition operator in Java, how is the initial boolean statement interpreted? Is it 'if c is equal to a and a is less than b'?

$c=a<b?a+b:a-b$

Thanks. meromorphic [talk to me] 11:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A single = symbol in java is "becomes equal", an assignment. Double equals (==) is the test for equality. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Knowing this, and what the ?: operator is, yields the answer to the question quite easily. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Knowing the relative operator precedence will also clarify things. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I get it now. If a is less than b then c is set equal to a+b. If not, c is set equal to a-b. Thanks. meromorphic [talk to me] 14:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

UTF confusion

Copy the following text:

Mängel

Now place it into the utf-8 decoder. It states that the second character (ä) is an incomplete character in a multibyte sequence, and so it is dropped. This is causing confusion for my bot, because the PHP regular expression doesn't know what to do with the mangled character (yes, this is ironic; no, it is not intentional).

What in the world is going on with that character, and how can I get my regular expression to recognize it short of brute force altering the text? Magog the Ogre (talk•edits) 17:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, the answer is far stupider than it appears on the surface: I had part of the regular expression typed in the wrong location. I would still be interested in knowing why this site and the terminal window in Ubuntu consider this character to be incomplete and disregard it. Magog the Ogre (talk•edits) 17:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because, technically that's not a valid UTF-8 sequence! ä is a perfectly legal character; its unicode code-point isU+x00E4. But it isn't a single byte 0xE4. In many schemes, the byte value 0xE4 will be interpreted as an a-umlaut. In ISO-8859-1, or Windows-1252, 0xE4 is a-umlaut. In Unicode UTF-16, the two-byte 0x00 0xE4 is also a-umlaut. But not in Unicode UTF-8! UTF-8 uses the top bits to indicate start-of-a-multi-byte-sequence, so an 0xE4 as a standalone byte is not a legal UTF-8 character. Any program that's interpreting this text and rendering it properly is not treating it as UTF-8: those programs are heuristically determining that the codestream looks more like a single-byte-encoding (8859, or something like that). The correct UTF-8 mechanism to represent a lower-case a-umlaut ä would be 0xC3 0xA4. Some programs may choose to take a malformed single-byte UTF-8 byte and treat it as the least-significant bits of a UTF-16 two-byte stream; or interpret it as a single byte of ISO-8859-1, or use this as a contextual cue that the entire stream should be reinterpreted as "some other encoding."

For the sake of preserving sanity: don't try to understand copy-paste semantics. There's absolutely no guarantee that copy/paste works in any specific way, unless you've written both the source- and destination- program. Your operating system's clipboard can literally do anything it wants to text that has been copied and pasted. It can be marked up, it can be re-encoded, transcoded; the "text" that you selected might have been an arbitrarily-complex-rich-data-format-with-custom-system-clipboard-routine. The system may "paste" different data depending on the which program is receiving the "paste" call. When you copy, then paste, text, you can not assume that the data is preserved in any way. Nimur (talk) 18:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They don't; you've confused encoding with decoding. 91.125.242.241 (talk) 18:35, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

HTML page break control

I have a webpage with many bridge hands on it. Each hand is separated by a horizontal rule. If someone prints the page out I would like to have the page breaks in the vicinity of the HR, ideally after, rather than split a table up across a page boundary.

I've tried

<hr align=center width="80%" size=3>

<div style="page-break-inside:avoid">

<h3> Board 21 </h3>

<p> Dealer: N <br> Vulnerability: N/S </p>

<table cellpadding=1 border=0>
  <tr>
    <td width=80>   </td>
    <td width=80> ( 16 ) <br> ♠JT97
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♥</font>A3
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♦</font>AK94
        <br>♣A63 </td>
    <td width=80>   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> ( 6 ) <br> ♠AQ62
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♥</font>864
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♦</font>6532
        <br>♣87 </td>
    <td> <img src="brg_tbl.bmp" width=70 height=70> </td>
    <td> ( 9 ) <br> ♠854
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♥</font>KQJ52
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♦</font>T7
        <br>♣QJ9 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>   </td>
    <td> ( 9 ) <br> ♠K3
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♥</font>T97
        <br><font color=#ff0000>♦</font>QJ8
        <br>♣KT542 </td>
    <td>   </td>
  </tr>
</table>

<p>  </p>

</div>

<hr align=center width="80%" size=3>

But it doesn't appear to work in either IE or Firefox. Any ideas what I should do? --SGBailey (talk) 17:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Control over where browsers put page-breaks is done using the Paged media CSS options. In your case I think you want page-break-inside:avoid; - but as Comparison of layout engines (Cascading Style Sheets) shows, support for that still isn't very good. While they've been getting better, it's my impression that web browser developers don't prioritise good printing support. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

page-break-inside:avoid; is what I think I've done in the div. Have I done it wrongly or does it just not work? -- SGBailey (talk) 17:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(I evidently didn't read your example carefully enough). Try it on just the table. Failing that, break-before and -after are a bit better supported - you can do a bit more formatting for paged media (where you pick the sizes of stuff so they'll fit on a letter/A4 page) and then use break-before and -after to force in pagebreaks - that's really suboptimal, as you're back to doing things in a word-processor-like WYSIWYG model, rather than the smarter way markup should be able to do. But even with those two being somewhat better supported, expect frustration and variability in actual browsers. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so I read this as meaning that basically browsers don't support sensible page breaks. Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 17:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth trying, and I tend to leave it in even if it doesn't work well (in the hope that browsers catch up). Most web page developers don't give two hoots about printout (happily Wikipedia does print pretty well) and don't even do basic stuff like suppressing navigation controls in printout - so perhaps the browser makers are right to infer from this that no-one cares about printing. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I care :-) -- SGBailey (talk) 20:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know it is horrid, but if I really really care about the page breaks, is there a better solution than screen capture the relevant lumps and display the page as a series of images? -- SGBailey (talk) 20:24, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I should say that page-break-before:auto and page-break-after:auto are supposed to be hints, so do try to see how far they get you. I had one customer who rendered HTML+CSS to PDF with Prince XML, which reportedly has really good paged media support, but I wasn't involved in that myself. It's noteworthy that some sites that do care about print (websudoku, google-maps) still have a "print" button, which produces HTML+CSS optimised for page layouts. That's easier for them (as they're generating content with software) than you. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, if you put in the proper thead and tfoot tags into the table (which accessibility audit software will yell at you to do anyway, at least for thead), if the table is broken over a page boundary, Firefox at least will re-show the head and foot on the subsequent fragments too (which it should). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GIMP 2.8 questions

When I upgraded to Fedora 17, I got GIMP 2.8. It works otherwise very nice, but I have some questions:

How bloody hard is it to get a solid 1*1 brush? I want a brush that changes the colour of the single pixel I point my mouse at directly to the colour I'm painting with, and possibly does some minor anti-aliasing for the neighbouring pixels. But all GIMP offers me are huge brushes, the smallest of which is about 10*10 pixels. I have sort-of managed to do this by creating a new spherical brush with the radius set to minimum (0.1) and the hardness set to maximum (1.00) but even that doesn't work quite right.
I closed the toolbox, thinking this would quit GIMP like it used to on Fedora 14. But now it only closed the toolbox and left GIMP running as usual. I brought the toolbox back, but it was missing the brushes dialog. I brought it back too, but now it's in a separate window. The toolbox says "add dockable dialogs here", but how exactly do I do this? I've tried every single mouse gesture I can think of with the brushes window. Do I need to type some magic command or something?
"Save" in GIMP now only works in its own XCF format. To be able to save JPG or PNG images, I need to select "Export" instead, which saves the image, but still leaves GIMP thinking it's unsaved. Is this weird logic somehow by design? What possible use could it be of? Can I somehow make "Save" save in JPG or PNG format like it used to? JIP | Talk 19:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can get 1px brushes and pencils fine: I just typed 1 into the size box in the tool option. It's always worked that way, I believe.
You might try single window mode (windows->single_window_mode), which I've wanted forever.
That's deliberate, and not welcomed by everyone. It's discussed here (that reviewer suggests some keyboard shortcuts he thinks will help). This may well be one of those changes that grates for a while, but so does accidentally losing all your layers and stuff, so I expect I'll get used to it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Old PC game from the '90s

What is it called? Old PC game from the 90's maybe earlier, you play a penguin (?) I think, definately set in a freezer and there are ice cubes and you can push the ice cubes to crush these purple things, and some of the ice cubes have got purple things in them and if you push them the purple things wake up, and you can also electrify the walls of the freezer and stun them, and it's a 2d game, and what was it called and how can I play it again? Thanks Horace Grundle (talk) 19:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Iceblox? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The original was called Pengo (video game), for Sega arcade machines. There's a freeware remake [19]. I remember playing a DOS version. Card Zero (talk) 21:34, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Xine question

Now that I've upgraded to Fedora 17, I've also installed Xine. But when it starts up, it immediately pops up a message box about an unknown codec. I tried to play a .wav file I had recorded from VICE, but it also gave a message about an unknown codec. Presumably I've only installed the player itself, not any codecs. I just typed yum install xine. How can I install the codecs? I would also like to be able to play the numerous DVDs I've bought fully legally, but can't play with 100% free software thanks to copyright restrictions. I think I have to install xine-lib-extras-nonfree or something, but where can I get it from?

Also, is there any way to convert .wav files to .mp3 files so I could upload them to my Creative Zen Vision W and use it to play Commodore 64 game music when I'm carrying it around? JIP | Talk 19:39, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fedora is different from Ubuntu, which I'm used to, but this talks about additional repositories to yum to get non-free codecs for stuff like DVD. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can encode with sox, audacity, or vlc - they'll probably all need an additional package for the mp3enc -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LAME. If you'd prefer a GUI frontend, try WinFF, Arista, or HandBrake. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:01, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Varicode ambiguity

I assume varicode is used for data compression. How does ambiguity not arise when decoding a bit stream without fixed intervals? --Melab±1 ☎ 21:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might have missed the bit that says The space between characters is indicated by a 00 sequence. That sequence doesn't appear in any other varicode. Vespine (talk) 23:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --Melab±1 ☎ 23:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question about incorrect song size information

Some time ago, I asked a question about a song (a Latin remix of that song to be exact) that I download that was over 3 minutes long (3:48 to be exact) and over 8 MB (8.41 MB to be exact), but according to the “Properties” info, the bit rate was 192 kbps, which obviously didn’t sound right. I saw that there are many download links to this song with this incorrect info. But I found a link to that remix that was over 5 MB according to the song info and 192 kbps. Now, this sounded right and I also found many download links to the song with this info.

Now, not too long ago, I downloaded a music editing software called Sony Acid Pro 7. I decided to put each song, the one with that’s supposedly over 8 MB and the other one that is over 5 MB (5.68 MB to be exact), on each track to check and zoom into the wavelengths of both songs just to compare to see if there was any difference in their qualities by checking out their wavelengths’ size, if there were more or less or breaks in the lines and dots, and if there were more or less details. I found out that everything was exactly the same, which means that the bit rate for the song that said 8.41 MB was right, 192 kbps, but somehow, the size information was wrong.

By the way, I also have another music editing software called Audacity. In Audacity, you can decide at what bit-rate you want to export an audio track. I decided to export the song at 320 kbps to see what the size info would say after I exported it. The info said that at 320 kbps, the size would be around 8.72 MB. This further showed that the bit rate was right, 192 kbps, but that 8.41 MB as its size was incorrect.

So how can a song that is at 192 kbps and at 3:48 in length be 8.41 MB? Why and how is the song size information wrong? What could have gone wrong? Was it the way it was compressed or the way it was produced? Willminator (talk) 23:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're talking about closed source software (Windows Explorer?) then you can pretty much only guess. If you find open source software coming to this conclusion, it's easy to find out why. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:25, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MP3 files can contain embedded artwork. In this case, the 8 megabyte MP3 file has a 3 megabyte image embedded in it. (I used Mp3tag to see it.) --Bavi H (talk) 03:10, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 23

Getting/ripping songs from a java web game.

I really would like to know the possible ways to 'get' the audio from a game, first of all, it seems that my computer doesn't have "stereo mix" (Yes I've read the guides, that tells how to enable. but no luck), therefore I have no way of recording it from stereomix, I have also tried decompiling the game, so I did decompiled and searched the code for a url or something obvious as where the sounds are loaded, no luck either. Is there anyway for getting the song from a process? What the process is sending to the os and capture the song? or could you scann the process memory looking for an audio file? or maybe scan the packets from the server to see if anything matches to an audio file?

I've tried almost everything, I really really want to have that song. What should I do? (Aside from learn java) 190.158.212.204 (talk) 05:36, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would really help if you told us what kind of computer you're running and what operating system. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right, Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit. It's toshiba m645-s4047 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If all else fails, just re-record it from your headphone jack. There will be a some loss of quality, but I've found this to be barely detectable (to an untrained ear) in some cases, with a good digital recorder or another computer, and volume controls set carefully. Dbfirs 12:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give us a link to this game? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess so.. [20], I'll save you the work to locate the jar in the html as it's here, I figured that it request the sprites while loading using the java console. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 14:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One way would be to use a program that records whatever is going to the computer's sound card. Search the web for something like record sound card or capture streaming audio. The first program I noticed is the freeware Audacity (audio editor) which looks like it can be used to edit the recording down to the interesting parts. 88.112.47.131 (talk) 16:08, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Revision as of 14:50, 23 August 2012 edit 190.60.93.218 (talk) →Getting/ripping songs from a java web game. ← Previous edit		Revision as of 16:08, 23 August 2012 edit undo 88.112.47.131 (talk) →Getting/ripping songs from a java web game. Next edit →
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	::I guess so.. [http://dekobloko1.funorb.com/g=dekobloko/game.ws], I'll save you the work to locate the jar in the html as it's [http://dekobloko1.funorb.com/g=dekobloko/loader_-2092022129.jar here], I figured that it request the sprites while loading using the java console. [[Special:Contributions/190.60.93.218\|190.60.93.218]] ([[User talk:190.60.93.218\|talk]]) 14:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)		::I guess so.. [http://dekobloko1.funorb.com/g=dekobloko/game.ws], I'll save you the work to locate the jar in the html as it's [http://dekobloko1.funorb.com/g=dekobloko/loader_-2092022129.jar here], I figured that it request the sprites while loading using the java console. [[Special:Contributions/190.60.93.218\|190.60.93.218]] ([[User talk:190.60.93.218\|talk]]) 14:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

			:One way would be to use a program that records whatever is going to the computer's sound card. Search the web for something like ''record sound card'' or ''capture streaming audio''. The first program I noticed is the freeware [[Audacity (audio editor)]] which looks like it can be used to edit the recording down to the interesting parts. [[Special:Contributions/88.112.47.131\|88.112.47.131]] ([[User talk:88.112.47.131\|talk]]) 16:08, 23 August 2012 (UTC)