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October 7

Advertising on Wikipedia

I'm suddenly seeing ads on Wikipedia. One right under the article title, and another right above an article's table of contents. I am NOT happy. I thought Wikipedia would never run ads? Was referred here from the Help Desk. On the last page with ads, the first was for weight loss tips, and the second was for an online game. Right now, there's an anti-drunk driving ad below the title. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.193.228.251 (talk) 01:35, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Would you take a screenshot of the relevant portion of the page and upload it to an image-sharing site like Imgur? That would enable us to see exactly what's going on. Goodvac (talk) 01:38, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure. Here you go: http://i1271.photobucket.com/albums/jj637/backagain2012/Ads.png. It's zoomed out to 80%. Also, accessing Wikipedia through an https:// connection removes the ads, and a full scan of my computer came up clean. 98.193.228.251 (talk) 01:46, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that certainly is odd. What happens if you click "about this ad"? And can you right click on the image of one of the ads and paste the url of it here?
I also see some text-link advertising on that screenshot (the underlined orange links). Where do those go? Goodvac (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Clicking "about this ad" brought me to a page for some browser toolbar, which was not malicious(even told me how to uninstall it), but didn't benefit me at all, and was installed without my knowledge or consent. Uninstalled the toolbar, and the ads are gone. 98.193.228.251 (talk) 02:00, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. Glad it's gone. Goodvac (talk) 02:03, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we recently had a similar case here. I'll mark this resolved. StuRat (talk) 04:42, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

How can you know that the toolbar was not malicious? Maybe you have now a worm installed in the background.

Every now and then someone appears here with the problem of wikipedia showing ads. OsmanRF34 (talk) 10:24, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia sometimes does show "fundraising banners" at the top of pages that look like ads. –– Anonymouse321 (talk • contribs) 23:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Which was not malicious(even told me how to uninstall it), but didn't benefit me at all, and was installed without my knowledge or consent. Anything that installs itself without permission, serves no good purpose, and puts ads where they don't belong is malicious adware in my book. I saw a similar toolbar placing ads on Wikipedia on a friend's computer and they asked me to get rid of it, he didn't know where it came from but I determined it came bundled with uTorrent. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 01:05, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

http

i make an http get request for a jpg allowing gzip compression. the response is a code 200, and the "transfer-encoding" header says: "chunked". the same packet has gzip data (apparently random data), being the start of the image. how do i pick out witch future packets have the rest of the image? thank you, 70.114.254.43 (talk) 02:28, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

A level enquiry before we go any further: when you say "packets", do you mean TCP/IP packets, or do you mean HTTP chunks? Marnanel (talk) 02:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

tcp/ip, sorry. 70.114.254.43 (talk) 04:26, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

The combination of protocol(TCP), source address (the web server), source port (probably 80), destination address (your machine), and destination port will all be the same for each packet of the response. Docdave (talk) 04:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Note than, on any system derived from, or influenced by, Berkeley Sockets, then the Operating System takes care of directing the data to the network socket handle. Your program just need use one of (C-like code given)

 amountRead=read(socketId, buffer, bufferSize);
 amountWritten=write(socketId, buffer, amountToWrite);

with appropriate error checking and retrying for partial reads or writes.

However, if you mean how to find then next packet in a network packet sniffer, then check its documentation, or ask here, with the name of the tool. CS Miller (talk) 05:34, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

software problems

i have a software for my chemist shop named cross of swil ltd. it can not take its daily back up . when i want to take back up it shows pkzip <E15> can't open:d:/backup/c0212/bk071012.zip for write access! backup processing has completed now,testing the backup

pkunzip: <E09> can't find:d:/backup/c0212/bk07101.zip testing completed.Rikisupriyo (talk) 11:21, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

You should make sure there is enough space on whatever device is your d:. Beyond that, because Cross is a proprietary application aimed at a very narrow market segment, it's pretty unlikely that anyone here will have any experience with it. You'd be much better advised to contact the dealer who installed it for you. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:01, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Another possibility is that the software isn't authorized to open that file in that folder. If so, you would either need to change the folder to grant broader permissions, or have the backups run as "root" or "Administrator", depending on the O/S.

As far as root cause analysis, what happened between when the backups worked and when they stopped working ? StuRat (talk) 19:44, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if it's presumptious, but have you even tried navigating to d:/backup/c0212/ and seeing what's there? Maybe your d: drive somehow unmapped it self of failed, or filled up (as suggested above), that would be the 1st thing to check. Vespine (talk) 02:43, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

how can i fix PKZIP:<E15> Rikisupriyo (talk) 11:27, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

By following Finlays and Vespines advice. PKZIP's errorcode 15 means: "The named .ZIP file is read-only or locked by another application and can not be modified. This may also occur on a Network drive if you do not have adequate access to that file to allow you to modify it." http://www.ousob.com/ng/pkzip20/ng208b4.php Check how much diskspace is available (the most likely cause of your problem). Check if that folder on that drive is exists and is writable. Check if another program is using that same file (e.g. antivirus). You can even try creating that file manually (e.g. in Notepad). It can also be a permissionproblem. They (talk) 13:19, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

October 8

Ogv issues

Apparently there are some issues with these two videos. Please see: Talk:Phodopus#Please place, where it says "...What you've done is to upload a hi-res video (4x the recommended area) and told it to display as a thumb. That doesn't compress, so it still tries to come in at 7.12Mbps...". I really haven't a clue what to do. Please, please enlighten me. "Obi-reference-desk-onobi, you are my only hope." Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:51, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if the above question is about Wikipedia. Are questions here only to be about computers? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:46, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, questions on Wikipedia policies belong over at the Help Desk, yes, but if your question is how to create a lower resolution version of your movie, we could possibly help with that. What movie editing software do you have  ? Also, what's the diff between the two videos you posted on the right ? The most obvious way to reduce the size of that movie is to trim off the edges. There's nothing of interest going on outside the disc, is there ? StuRat (talk) 14:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

They both play instantly for me, and while I'm in a comparatively affluent western country, my broadband connection is nothing special. My guess is that Stfg was or is having software or local network issues himself. That said, you can of course get help reducing the size of the video. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I just drag-n-dropped the video into Miro Video Converter 2.5 and selected Theora format and let it do its thing. It doesn't seem to have options. Thanks for the replies. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:29, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

@Reisio, thanks for looking into this. I think my software issues are solved, as I can play the lower-res videos, and my broadband checked at 9.4Mbps at a time when I couldn't view Anna's which requires 7.12 Mbps. What I don't quite grok is how Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files#Limitations and Implementation Issues is counselling to stay below 1Mbps to keep within the "ability of Wikipedia or the Commons to deliver ...", when the obviously approved videos at Commons:Media of the day are going so much higher -- those fine magpies are asking for 33.05Mbps, no less. What throughput does the server end typically achieve? --Stfg (talk) 00:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions for those better informed than I, but I will say it's fairly apparent that in-browser video support is less than perfect at this point, particularly in regard to prebuffering. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:50, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I am mildy curious how http://dl.dropbox.com/u/98754825/dhrod_q06.ogv.tar would compare, however. It was generated with the following command:
ffmpeg -i Dwarf_hamsters_running_on_disc.ogv -vcodec libtheora -q:v 6 -an -vf crop=544:480:88:0 dhrod_q06.ogv
¦ Reisio (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Windows movie editing software to change aspect ratio ?

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#My_iphone_4.27s_camera_shot_the_video_in_disarray.2C_now_i_need_help_editing_the_vid. They've now clarified what they want, so does anyone have any recommendations ? StuRat (talk) 14:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Blu-Ray vs. Pirating

How large is a typical 1080p movie file on a purchased Blu-Ray Disc? Suppose if one illegally torrents a 1080p Blu-Ray rip of the same movie, is that the exact same quality as one would receive if one purchased it instead? I suppose the file format has something to do with it right? Frequently, one can find .avi's and .mp4's and .mkv's. Which one is best? Why is there such a size discrepancy between the file types (s22 gb vs 2gb)? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 20:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we give you advice on the merits of doing something illegally? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

He didn't say anything about advice. The question itself is descriptive and neutral. --Trovatore (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The 22 GB sounds like the full movie, at the compression level it has on a Blu-Ray disk. 2 GB would require heavy, lossy compression, and would look bad on a 1080p screen, as a result. They might also drop frames, making it look jumpy on any sized screen. StuRat (talk) 20:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, it would not look _as good_ on a 1080p screen as a result. The question as to whether it would look _20 gigs worse_ is one most pirates have already answered: no. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

It's perhaps worth remembering most legal HD downloads use no where near the bitrate of most BluRay releases so apparently even those responsible don't feel BluRay bitrate is always needed when other considerations come in to play. (And sometimes there isn't even a BluRay release but there is a HD download release, but by nature there are easier to restrict by location possibly requiring a working proxy for whatever geographical location and a foreign credit card to 'purchase' and download. And then there are the releases which were never released on BluRay or HD download but were broadcast in HD and released in DVD or SD download. Both meaning ironically in some locations HD is available to those who obtain stuff by copyright infrigement but not to those who do want to obtain stuff legally either at all or without jumping through many hoops.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:11, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Most 'rips' are recompressed. It's possible simply special feature or certain audio tracks were removed but this is rarer, generally speaking if it's description as a 'rip' (or particularly 'brrip') by someone who knows what they're talking about, that often means it's recompressed. If it's the original BluRay which hasn't been recompressed etc, it will often be called something like 'untouched' (or possibly BD25/BD50 although these terms may not guarantee it was untouched as they simply refer to what it's suitable to burn to) or 'remux' (although this term could also be used in other cases) depending on what was done to it. You may be able to tell by the size too but you have to be careful. Generally the nfo should make it clear what was done if it's a scene release or a decent releaser. Nil Einne (talk) 03:02, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Depending on the quality of the encoding, disk content and the number of sound channels, original blu-rays can be anywhere from 5 gigs to 50 gigs (dual layer) large. The merits of mkv can be found at www.matroska.org but afaik it's a far more efficient format than avi and less lossy. Therefore mkv files are large... I've seen them ranging from 4 gigs to 20 gigs. The format is gaining in popularity and is supported by more hardware media players nowadays. Sandman30s (talk) 07:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

MKV is simply a container format. It has a minor efficiency advantage with certain codecs and configs over AVI (particularly when it comes to VBR and B frames) and better support for certain things like the aforementioned, as well as multiple video streams and embedded (not hardcoded) subtitles; also for related reasons may have other advantages like when it comes to avoiding audio sync issues, seeking and support (meaning since there's a better defined way of doing that stuff, you don't get a bunch of different implementations which don't always work with different players). However the efficiency of MKV is largely dependent on the codec used since as stated it's simply a container format. MKV could contain lossless video, or as I hinted above the original unreencoded BluRay streams, or something encoded with a high efficiency codec at crappier quality then the lowest Youtube quality (and therefore of comparable low size). Generally speaking, any AVI could be remuxed as an MKV so it doesn't make any sense to talk about quality or size difference when it comes to MKV vs AVI, discounting the minor efficiency advantage except perhaps in regard to scene rules and common practices. Notably the WebM container is basically a subset of the Matroska one, albeit with only one possible video and audio codec, and that of course is one of the options Youtube uses for their HTML5 video support which gives a limited idea of the bitrate/quality variation possible. Nil Einne (talk) 12:31, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Appliance timers

They generally can turn things on or off every few minutes, but I'm looking for one that can turn things on or off every second, to attach to my microwave oven. Currently, even on the lowest setting, the outside of food burns while the center stays cold. So, I'd like to cook things longer, on a lower average power setting. My current workaround is to turn the microwave on and off manually, waiting in between for the heat to evenly distribute, which isn't very satisfactory. One of those microwave absorbing disks under the center also helps a bit, but not enough. And, yes, I have a manual microwave which is "always on" so long as it has power, time on the manual dial timer, and the door shut. StuRat (talk) 22:59, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I can hardly imagine a more effective way of destroying electrical equipment than cycling the power every second. Well, bashing it with a hammer, I suppose. Looie496 (talk) 00:59, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually may not be a bad idea. After StuRat spends $50-100 on the 'second' cycling timer and kills their microwave, they can spend $200-300 on a new microwave oven with an inverter/PWM and hopefully not have to complain here again. Nil Einne (talk) 03:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

When you turn a microwave to low, that's exactly what it does, it cycles on and off. Unfortunately, 1 second on and 7 off seems to be about the longest cycle, which isn't enough for the heat to redistribute fully. StuRat (talk) 04:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

The difference is that when you use the controls, you can be sure that the device has capacitors and stuff to protect itself against any power surges that might result. When you are cycling the external power rapidly, you're putting the device into a situation that it was not designed to handle. Any modern electrical device is designed to handle power fluctuations, but not an extended series of large fast fluctuations like that. It's possible that nothing bad would happen, but it's also possible that you would fry the circuitry. Looie496 (talk) 05:19, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm assuming you have a pretty simple Microwave with mechanical controls, since you can cut the power and reconnect it and have it keep cooking. If you feel like cycling the power won't hurt it, then go ahead. The best cheap solution I can think of is to build something yourself, if you have the skills. For an analog setup you could set up some sort of simple RC delay turn a relay on and off. You could even work in a potentiometer for control. I can't help you much, because I would go the digital way - use a cheap hobbyist microcontroller kit like the Arduino and use it to drive a relay. If you want to look more into prebuilt solutions, "pulse-width modified" is a way to describe an output that acheives an average voltage by turning a constant higher voltage on and off. Usually it applies to things cycling several times a second, but the industrial controllers I have worked with still use the term to describe things that can cycle on the order of several seconds. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 11:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Probably quicker, easier and safer to buy a new microwave oven that works properly. Astronaut (talk) 15:04, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree, but that solution was already given. I figured I could at least point him towards what he wanted. Sturat, I am curious what you're cooking that burns on a 13% duty cycle. I normally only need that low of power for defrosting, and I haven't had anything burn while using it. Maybe there is simple solution to cooking the food that doesn't involve buying a new microwave or modifying your existing one. Also, out of curiosity, how does the power setting work on your microwave? I'm picturing something like several sets of traces on the back of your timer dial, each for a different duty-cycle. If that is the case, you may be able to trim off some of the conductor for the lowest power setting, if you don't mind permanently modifying your microwave. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 16:16, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Microwaves seem to prefer liquid water over ice, so they can seriously overheat one thawed pocket while leaving the rest frozen. Unless, of course, enough time is allowed for the heat to distribute itself and for everything to thaw. At that point, heating by microwave becomes more even. For boil-in-bag items, I sometimes thaw them first in hot water, but this doesn't work for other items which would get soggy while thawing. StuRat (talk) 23:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

An alternative to decreasing the energy output would be to add a container of water to absorb some of that energy, thus decreasing the amount absorbed by the food item. Be sure to include a wooden spoon or popsicle stick to encourage boiling and avoid superheating should the water get that hot. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 22:57, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and nice use of a previous Ref Desk Q regarding the wooden spoon. StuRat (talk) 23:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I know this sounds weird, but try putting the food not in the middle of the microwave but to the side. They (talk) 22:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Presumably more microwaves are aimed at the center than the sides of the microwave, so that wouldn't help. I do sometimes do that, though, say if I have one end hot and the other end frozen. I try to position the frozen end towards the center and the hot end near the edge. StuRat (talk) 00:26, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

The reason why it's recommended to place things at the side is because the turntable is ineffective in the centre as it doesn't move the food around so may have the problem of parts of the food being in continous 'hot' spots (peaks of a standing wave) and others in continous 'cold' spots, this was also discussed on the RD before BTW. Or to put it a different way, there is a reason why most microwaves have turntables and if you're putting food in the centre you may be barely using them. (It may also depend on your microwave even if it does have a turnable [1].) Of course if you are using the microwave at non full power, it's possible that the turntable frequency and on and off frequency may be in sync meaning it may not matter where you put the food, I'm not sure whether this is always taken in to account. In any case, clearly the moving around is likely to be less effective when you use a microwave which achieves lower powers by turning it on and off seconds apart. Another reason why a microwave with an inverter may make sense. I don't believe it's generally correct that more microwaves are aimed at the centre BTW, in fact I think the results of those experiment aimed at measuring the speed of light, or the microwave wavelength or whatever or just a demonstrating the aforemention issue with food in the centre demonstrates that. E.g. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. In fact from those results I'm not sure whether the centre is even always the location of a peak/hot spot, it may commonly be but not always. Nil Einne (talk) 12:03, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I reasoned that they would design them that way, to minimize the effect of the center of frozen foods remaining frozen while the edges burn. StuRat (talk) 08:27, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The notion that it's recommended to place things at the side is because the turntable is ineffective in the centre as it doesn't move the food around is valid only if the axis isn't occupied if "things" are placed at the side. As long as the food is not off axis, shifting the food on the turntable will only "move" the axis within the food, which may be detrimental IF a peak is on the axis and the axis is near the edge of the food item.

However, (OR/wild guess) it would make sense to place the peaks off-axis when designing a microwave oven, as having a strong peak at the axis would defeat the purpose of a turntable. From the frequency (2.45Hz) and the speed of light (~3e8m/s) one gets a half-wavelength of ~6.1cm, and that should be the order of magnitude of a strong peak. Where the peak is will probably be hard to compute, and I wouldn't be surprised if designers worked out a new oven by applying a crude 1D model (say, make the oven a multiple of 6.1cm wide) and then try different heights and emitter placements until they're satisfied with the wave distribution.

I looked at my turntable, and it is mounted slightly (~1.5cm) off-center, so I'd guess the main peak will be off-axis by that amount, and neither a peak nor a node will be on the axis.

p.s. Not sure what this has to do with computing anyway... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:03, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a terrible idea without knowing the details of how the high-voltage electronics and magnetron will interact with a triac on the supply circuit, but I am curious what would happen if you plugged the microwave into one of your new dimmer switches. :-) Of course, don't try it unless you don't mind breakings things and don't mind buying a new microwave/dimmer/countertop. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 13:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm already aware that reducing the voltage to the magnetron is not a good idea. If it were, then that's how microwave ovens would vary the power level. They keep turning it on and off precisely to get around that problem. StuRat (talk) 21:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

October 9

Microsoft Word quote characters

Hi in Word 2007, when I use quotes it insists on putting in the characters ‘ and ’ instead of '. Is there any way of turning that off or forcing the '? I can do the most advanced things in computers but Word drives me nuts! Sandman30s (talk) 10:13, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Those are called "smart quotes". Info about how to disable that feature is here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:19, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that... would never have found that in Word's menu black hole. It seems to work and looks correct in Word; however there is one rogue line which, no matter what I do, when I copy and paste that line into notepad it still pastes the 'smart' quotes. The best part is that line looks correct in Word! Sandman30s (talk) 07:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

And I agree, that's quite annoying. I've been copying Python code from lecture notes, in order to run it, and have to manually fix every case where the word processor did that to them. StuRat (talk) 10:22, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Why are you using Word for lecture notes? (Or, why is the instructor doing such a silly thing, as the case may be?) --Trovatore (talk) 06:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

It's the instructor, and you'd have to ask him. StuRat (talk) 06:49, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

In many modern code editors, there is a function somewhere called something like "Straighten Quotes" which converts all smart quotes to straight quotes. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:36, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Short but strong passwords

I know, strong short passwords sound kind of like tasty, fat-free chocolate. Nevertheless one of the online services I use (and am required to use for my job, so don't say that I shouldn't use a service with such ridiculous requirements) has an 8 character limit (case sensitive, letters, numbers and symbols allowed). The consequences of this password being compromised are fairly high so I am interested in getting the best security possible. So, firstly, is even a randomly generated password of this length secure in this day and age? Secondly are there any tricks I can use to increase security e.g. will passwords generally recognise non-keyboard letters such as Greek or Chinese characters that probably won't be in brute-force character lists? Equisetum (talk | contributions) 15:34, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

An online attacker (e.g. a botnet) will surely try passwords in order of likelihood, meaning they'll try the random-junk passwords (henceforth RJPs) last. For an online attack they probably won't bother with RJPs, as their bots or the account will likely get blocked or rate-limited before they get that far. Online attackers are looking for low-hanging fruit, mostly. For offline attacks (where an attacker has obtained a copy of the password database), with a rainbow table, they'll still try real words first, but 8 characters of rainbow table is quite tractable (particularly if the database isn't salted). There's no way of knowing, without trying, whether they'll accept non-ascii (or non-latin) characters - a sensibly written service will, but a sensibly written service doesn't impose such a low limit on passwords. If they do accept say Chinese characters then they're at least doubling the effective password length (depending on how they're encoding stuff). This is, as you say, an unsatisfactory situation, and there's not much you can do to ameliorate their decisions. A random password, unique to this service, is probably the best you can do. I'd write a memo detailing "what will happen when our account at XYZ online service is taken over", so you can scope the damage should that happen. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:51, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

You might find this article interesting regarding offline hash cracking — apparently rainbow tables are more or less no longer needed, what with the speed of GPU hash crackers ("You can literally test all lowercase, alphabetic passwords which are ≤7 characters in less than 2 seconds. And you can now rent the hardware which makes this possible to the tune of less than $3/hour. For about $300/hour, you could crack around 500,000,000,000 candidate passwords a second."). --Mr.98 (talk) 02:16, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

But what web sites allow you to try 500,000,000,000 candidate passwords a second ? If they require each to be sent separately, accepted or rejected, then this notification sent back to the user, this is going to introduce a much longer delay. StuRat (talk) 02:41, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Read it again — we're talking about "offline hash cracking". --Mr.98 (talk) 17:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

The point is that, ideally, you want to assume that an opponent has somehow managed to capture the website's hash table, and you still don't want that opponent to be able to masquerade as you. --Trovatore (talk) 02:54, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I looked in to that blog post before and my understanding is it's somewhat mistaken about the use of rainbow tables. They are still widely used even with GPUs (in fact many rainbow tables require GPUs) because they can still speed up searches fairly significantly, I believe the blogger simply misunderstood how rainbiw tables are used. Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I doubt he's misunderstood that; he's saying that the speed of modern GPUs means you don't necessarily have to precompute tables. Having precomputed tables is fine and good, of course, and obviously if you use the same cracking software to precompute the tables, that only expands your capabilities. The main point of the post is that speed hashing has gotten to much higher levels than most people realize. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:14, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

No he said:

Rainbow tables are huge pre-computed lists of hashes, trading off table lookups to massive amounts of disk space (and potentially memory) for raw calculation speed. They are now utterly and completely obsolete. Nobody who knows what they're doing would bother. They'd be wasting their time. I'll let Coda Hale explain:

Which I'm pretty sure is wrong. See for example [8]. Note that you don't just use GPUs to precompute the tables. The tables themselves are designed to be used with GPUs. Note that I'm not questioning his basic premise simply pointing out one of his points is as far as I understand it, wrong.

Nil Einne (talk) 00:24, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Great advice, thanks. I think I should be reasonably okay with an RJP as this is a large system and there will be a lot of low hanging fruit around. Now... I just need a random password generator that I trust and to work out a way of remembering the output (don't worry about answering this - easy to google)! I don't think I'll even try non-ascii characters as I've just remembered a story from a while back of a piece of software (I think it was some turnkey forum software for websites) that would allow non-ascii characters but convert them all to spaces or something similar, turning the most secure passwords into the least secure at a stroke! Equisetum (talk | contributions) 17:02, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

KeePass will both generate and store passwords. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Worst case scenario: they only allow letters and numbers, and the letters aren't case sensitive. This would give you 36 possible characters in each position, so 36⁸, or over 2.8 trillion, possible passwords. If they can try one password a second, it should take almost 90 thousand years to try every possibility. As long as you use random characters, you should be fine. StuRat (talk) 23:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

You may be in trouble and if the data is sensitive, you may want to get your manager concerned. From the Linux journal - you probably have the hardware in your computer already and the cracking software is free. Zoonoses (talk) 06:34, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

To know the best way to defend yourself against those types of attacks you need to know a bit about how software like this works. For example, there are 4 character sets.

1. ?d – 0123456789
2. ?l – abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
3. ?u – ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
4. ?s – !@#$%^&*()`~-_=+\|[]{};:'",.<>/?

A password that uses all 4 character sets is stronger than a password that uses just one or two. Because of the character limit you should probably use a password like 3aA%9zX> that uses all charactersets twice. They (talk) 22:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

To generate a strong password (or passcode), try this:

• Make a photo using a digital camera.
• Now run a checksum-generating program on the file.
• The checksum, if it's long enough, is your password.

This assumes that

• The checksums are equally probable. Some freak layouts can cause this to break down, for example if the image file has a built-in check which works by making the checksum zero on every file.
• Noise will make the file contents largely random, that is, you can take 1000 "identical" photos and are likely to get 1000 different checksums on the files,
• The checksums are long enough. 32-bit checksums will be too vulnerable. 64-bit checksums will be quite safe for now. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Least computing power, long time audio recorder

Have looked around for something that is just audio and is simple to use, one command and its recording to download, also one that can keep recording unlike the "Sound Recorder" on microsoft OS which keeps stopping every 60 seconds. Any program with "Sound Recorders" simplicity and low memory usage but that keeps going? Thanks. Marketdiamond (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Audacity is nice, but has a more sophisticated interface than you're looking for. GoldWave is reportedly simpler. SoX (particularly its rec command) is about as basic as one can get. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Finlay McWalter! Marketdiamond (talk) 21:57, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Facebook's dynamism

Hi, How does the page of facebook is so dynamic? Is there a script behind it? I thought about it, but it can take a lot of resources from the server. Exx8 (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

A good starting read for this sort of stuff is Ajax (programming). Not sure exactly what technique Facebook are using, but it'll not be 1,000,000 miles away. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Facebook Platform describes the overall setup at Facebook. For desktop clients, they used to use an AJAX framework called FBJS, but they've replaced that with something called iFrames for Pages. For mobile sites they use a framework called Javelin, on which they build BoltJS. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:39, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but Facebook Platform seems only to describe the app API, not the overall Facebook site itself. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:41, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

The short, non-technical answer is a form of AJAX. In layman's terms, this means that your browser is constantly running a bit of Javascript that says, "Hey, Facebook's server, should I change anything?" If you hover your mouse over someone's name, for example, your browser says, "hey, what should I show this guy?" The server will give the script data ("Hey, put this guy's name and photo in here, and this list of shared friends"), and the script then tells the browser to display this. The "dynamism" is common to AJAX-like applications — it's all that Javascript working behind the scenes so that the browser doesn't ever have to refresh. As for the resources on the server, each individual call requires very little attention from the server — it's just text. (Even the photos are just text, because they are links to images, not the images themselves.) Now, if you multiply all of those little server requests times the millions of users — yeah, that adds up. It's non-trivial to code a site with the popularity of Facebook, as well as with all of those bells and whistles. You can make a very basic version of that sort of site with very little training at all, but getting one that won't crash or be sluggish when 100 million people do it at once requires clever programming, clever server architecture, and lots of processing and bandwidth capability. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if that explains the NASDAQ's feed of Facebook stock crashing the day of its IPO? Ok not funny for about 10 million ways.Marketdiamond (talk) 04:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Wikipedia on Blackberry Curve

Over the last week or so I've noticed the format of articles has changed when I open up Wiki on my Blackberry Curve-when I click on the individual segments to open them up they do not respond. Have any other user's reported a similar problem?

October 10

OS Change– Direct installation

I have Ubuntu 12.04. I want to change to Fedora. The problem is my DVD writer is not working properly. Can I do direct installation (as I have done several upgrades in Ubuntu)? --Tito Dutta ✉ 09:20, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

First, the simple solutions: Turn the ISO file into a bootable flash drive if you have one large enough. Also, the last time I bought a DVD burner it cost $30, and that was years ago.

In order to install without a flash drive or a new DVD drive, the simplest solution is probably to shrink the last partition on your drive. Create a new partition and set it up with the Live installer image. Reconfigure GRUB to let you boot to that. When you boot to and install from that partition, be careful during the repartitioning step of the install so you don't accidentally destroy your install media. After installing, delete the installer partition and grow your last partition to fill the disk.

You could also try installing to a VM, then imaging the OS partition from the VM onto a new partition on your disk, and setting grub to point to that. It would save the step of figuring out how to get a bootable live image onto a partition. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 12:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd advice strongly against messing with the grub or partition setup if you have no way of booting your computer if it goes wrong, i.e. if you have no functional DVD-reader. If it is only the DVD-writing that is defective, I'd suggest the really simple solution of asking a buddy to burn the Fedora DVD for you. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Or spending less than $5 probably on a USB stick, yeah. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:10, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

iPhone

Being deaf I wonder if there is an app. that will increase the volume of my iPhone. Any ideas will be much appreciated.--85.211.192.197 (talk) 09:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You can get louder results if you hook it up to headphones with batteries and an amplifier, like this one: [9]. StuRat (talk) 10:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks but I'm sorry and I should have made it clear that I was referring to the telephone element of the phone.--85.211.192.197 (talk) 13:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You won't find an app as the volume is built in. I suggest you get yourself this device.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:35, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Ignore secure connection hostname mismatch

I want make firefox ignore https hostname mismatches on some exceptions, is there anyway to do this? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:34, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Lower battery voltage; slower performance?

My Asus Eee Netbook came with a 3-cell 11.1 V battery. I purchased a battery from a reputable eBay seller that is supposedly an official first-party Asus battery compatible with my netbook. The battery arrived in perfect condition and has the proper Asus markings, but beyond that, I am unable to determine if it is indeed an official Asus battery. Anyways, this new battery says it is 10.8 V, 0.3 Volts lower than the original battery.

My netbook runs fine with it and I've been using it on the new battery for a few weeks now. However, I have noticed that it is performing a little slower than before I got the new battery under the same operating environments and workloads. Could the drop in battery voltage be responsible for the drop in computing performance?

Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 20:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. This could be the case with analog devices, like dimmer lights and slower fans, but digital devices like a laptop should work at full speed until the voltage drops too low, then they shut down completely. An exception might be if the slower fan speeds cause it to run hot, and it has internal software to choke the processing speed when this happens, to prevent a total shutdown from overheating and/or damage. StuRat (talk) 20:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Did you "notice" a performance change, or did you measure a performance change? We have a list of common computing-performance benchmarks, including a variety of free software implementations. Without direct measurement, it's moot to discuss "apparent" performance. Nimur (talk) 23:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Just use it while it's plugged in, that will show you if the battery makes any difference. And yes, I agree with the above, actually use a benchmark, not just how it "feels".. I personally doubt battery would make a difference, but I don't think it's as inconceivable as StuRat's reply might suggest. Mobile processors use pretty fancy power management these days, I wouldn't be totally surprised if the processor was slowed down as the battery voltage decreased.. Vespine (talk) 04:51, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

While there is a slight possibility, I think it's unlikely. The laptop may vary power usage depending on capacity remaining, it's unlikely to vary it on voltage because there's no reason to. But anyway, the bigger issue is it's very unlikely there's actually any difference in voltage. Unless the battery is different chemistry (which I think is unlikely, they're very likely lithium cobalt oxide cells, perhaps even bog standard 18650 ones), then voltage difference is probably not going to be that significant. It's possible the battery pack charging circuit has a different cut off voltage (4.2V is the general standard but some of the higher capacity 18650 cells by reputable manufacturers like Sanyo allow up to 4.35V IIRC), and of course the discharge curve does vary somewhat from cell to cell particularly between batches and manufacturer (see these random cells [10]), but you generally shouldn't trust the label to tell you anything useful, in particular minor difference in the nominal voltage is more likely to mean the manufacturer chose a different value for whatever reason (most use either 3.6 or 3.7V per cell as was clearly the case for both here). You need the datasheet to tell you anything useful. Incidentally, I think it's unlikely the fan speed will vary much depending on input (i.e. battery) voltage, I'm pretty sure laptops as with desktop PCs use complicated switching power supplies for all components with the variance being minimal and definitely not a simple relation with input voltage. (Remember that over the capacity range of the battery, there is likely to be a 2V variance or more.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

October 11

Organisation history visualisation

I wanted to make a chart showing the history of far-left organisations in my area. Anyone remotely familiar with the subject will know that such groups quite frequently undergo repeated splits and mergers (for those not familiar, think the People's Front of Judea and its associated splinter groups in Monty Python's Life of Brian) .Is there any kind of software that would be particularly suited to creating this sort of visualisation? I wanted to end up with something looking like this. Obviously it would be possible to do in any basic image editing program, but I was wondering if there was specialised software for this sort of thing. --149.135.146.88 (talk) 09:33, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

irrelevant discussion

Clicking on your link pretty much took down my computer, so I assume it's some type of video. This seems unnecessary, to me. A simple slide show presentation would be less CPU intensive, and would make it easier for users to step through it, to whatever point they want. StuRat (talk) 15:17, 11 October 2012 (UTC) Uh? Mine or the OP's? The OP's is a blog post with a click-to-enlarge PNG file. Mine is a collection of 30+ thumbnails. Neither page did anything like taking down my computer. I'd suggest the problem's on your end, Stu. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC) I placed my comment so as to make it obvious I'm talking about the OP's link. Yes, it was at my end, and I've since rebooted. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC) It remains impressive to me that you can blame the OP for your computer's problems, state quite baldly that you didn't see the page, make an assumption about what must have been on the page, criticize the page and/or OP (who can tell?) for doing it wrong (in your assumption), and offer up a non-sequitur of a suggestion for how to do it better based on your own misunderstanding of what the OP wants (an understand based, as you acknowledge, on your own computer's inability to let you see what they are linking to). What an utterly pointless exercise in foolishness, even by your standards. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC) This comment does not belong on the Ref Desk. StuRat (talk) 03:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe Graphviz could be what you're looking for. I've never used it myself, but here are some examples of what it can do. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Accumulated Double Declining Depreciation in Excel

The formula for computing double declining depreciation in Excel is relatively straightforward:

DDB(Cost, Salvage Value, Useful Life, Current Period)

So, for example, DDB(80000,8000,5,3) gives you 11520, the depreciation in year 3.

However, I cannot find a function that will give me accumulated depreciation (ie, the total amount of depreciation in previous periods, and the current one). In the above example, the answer would be 62720, which is basically DDB(80000,8000,5,1)+DDB(80000,8000,5,2)+DDB(80000,8000,5,3). Is there any way I can easily and automatically compute total accumulated double declining depreciation to date? ΣΑΠΦ (Sapph)^Talk 12:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

You can use VDB to calculate over an arbitrary period, so you can set the start period to 1 and the end period to the period you want total depreciation on. VDB Documentation209.131.76.183 (talk) 12:27, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Problems burning a CD-R: On The Fly error

I'm trying to create a backup copy of a software CD and I keep getting the error message "Could not complete the On-The-Fly disc copy process.". Here's the log data:

User Name  : Windows User Company Name : CyberLink CDKey  : REDACTED OS Version  : Windows 7 Home PremiumService Pack 1 C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\Power2Go\Power2Go.exe : Version 6.1.0.3802 CBS.dll : Version 7.7.4810

==================================================================

Total physical memory : 3563MB (3649400KB) Free physical memory  : 2181MB (2233952KB) Memory load  : 38 percent

Number of CPU : 4 CPU Name  : AMD A6-3420M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics CPU Speed  : 1497 MHz

==================================================================

11.10.2012 Task Type : Copy Disc

09:31:50, File(cl_DiscCopyCD.cpp), Line(90) -> Begin burning process Current drive: <F: ARTEC WRR-52X 2.25> Current writing speed(x): 32.0 ====== Disc Info ======= Disc Type: CD-R Disc Status: Blank, Appendable Num. of Sessions: 1 Num. of Tracks: 1 Disc Capacity: 336223LBs Free Size: 336223LBs Used Size: 0LBs ======================== ->Burn on the fly Current reading speed(x): 16.0 Burn option: w/ buffer underrun protection Burn option: w/o simulation Burn option: w/o overburn Burn option: w/ verify disc Burn option: w/o extra long disc

09:31:55, File(cl_Cdwrite.cpp), Line(2697) -> Setup drive Sessn: 1, Sessn type: Disc At Once Disc physical format: CDROM_MODE1 Trk: 1, Trk mode: MODE1

09:31:55, File(cl_Cdwrite.cpp), Line(1966) -> Start session Sessn: 1, Start trk: 1, Last trk: 1

09:31:55, File(cl_Cdwrite.cpp), Line(1992) -> Start track Trk: 1, Track start addr(LBA): 0, Trk size(sectors): 303348, Sector size(bytes): 2048

09:32:27, File(cl_Cdwrite.cpp), Line(2430) -> Write end/Close disc Burn option: w/ close disc Burn mode: DAO

09:32:27, File(cl_DiscCopyCD.cpp), Line(935) -> Burning Fail, ErrCode: 0xeb020b88

==================================================================

Error Code : 0xeb020baf

Any clue why it's doing this? 199.241.185.195 (talk) 13:48, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Usually the best way to solve problems like this is to Google for the error message. When I do so, I quickly see the following on a site called TechBlog: "If you ever see the error 'Burning Fail, ErrCode: 0xeb020b88' then I've found the solution today; Turn down the write speed of the CD-R / DVD-R drive to a lower setting and this seems to do the trick.". Looie496 (talk) 14:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Of course that's basically how you fix any error at all with burning. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:56, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

A simpler solution is to dd the existing CD to a file as a backup, and read it in future with something like ImDisk or otherwise mounting as a loop device. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:56, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Thumbs.db

I've copied content from computer to computer for the last seven years, and whenever I backup my Windows 7 computer's hard drive, I notice the existence of multiple thumbs.db files. I've read Windows thumbnail cache, but just to be sure, I wanted to ask — do I understand rightly that deleting these images should have absolutely no effect on my system? I'm not going to waste time finding them to delete them, but I've always been mildly concerned when I get a note warning me that a thumbs.db file won't properly copy from place to place. Nyttend (talk) 16:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine to delete them. If there is a Thumbs.db file, Windows will display thumbnails from its cache. If there isn't, it will regenerate the cache. — cdwn 16:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

"Absolutely no effect" is a very strong term. By removing the thumbnail cache, you're incurring a non-zero amount of extra work for the system's explorer.exe process, who will re-generate the cache at some point in the future. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is usually pretty trivial, and in most normal cases, this extra processing load should be, in practice, indistinguishable from zero extra work; but computers are very precise machines, and for the sake of precision, it's usually best to refrain from "absolute" statements. Nimur (talk) 16:58, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it won't be anywhere close to "indistinguishable from zero extra work" in practise. Image processing is a fairly involved business. — cdwn 17:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see; the article's comments about other forms of image thumbnailing in Windows Vista and Seven made me think that thumbs.db wasn't even used by my operating system. Nyttend (talk) 17:19, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, you are correct; if you are deleting Thumbs.db files from disks originally mounted in Windows XP, and then if you're only using them on Windows Vista or Windows 7 (or newer), the thumbs.db files need not be re-created in each directory. (Recent Windows versions use a centralized database for the thumbnails, as explained in our article and elsewhere on the web). I apologize if I've confused the issue, I mis-read your problem-statement. Nimur (talk) 03:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

ls -d in linux

Shouldn't ls -d show me the directories in a directory? (it shows .) Why is it like that? OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:05, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand how ls operates at a low level. You can see what it is supposed to do here:

$ cd "$(mktemp -d)"
$ mkdir foo bar baz
$ tee foo/a bar/b baz/c < /dev/null
$ ls *
bar:
b

baz:
c

foo:
a
$ ls -d *
bar  baz  foo

If you truly want to list the directories, you want ls -d *, or something like the following:

( shopt -s nullglob dotglob ; for dir in *; do [[ -d "$dir" ]] && printf '%s\n' "$dir"; done )

As for why it is like that, it seems expected to me. ls with no files in its arguments runs ls on the current directory. ls -d with no files in its arguments does the same with .. cdwn 17:13, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

ls -d * lists all files in the current directory, not just directories. ls -d */ is better.—Emil J. 14:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

That's not true, it will only list directories (and */ is not defined by POSIX). — cdwn 04:23, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Did you actually try it? -d means "if a directory is listed on the commandline, print its name rather than recursing into it." It has no effect on the behaviour for non-directories. Try it and see. Marnanel (talk) 04:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread the comment. Either way, as far as I know */ is only defined in POSIX as a symlink dereference. — cdwn 12:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

An alternative might be find . -maxdepth 1 -type d ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:20, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Does this not work in linux? (sorry I can only test in Solaris): ls -l|grep ^d Sandman30s (talk) 13:36, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

It works, though my shell insists that I quote the ^.—Emil J. 14:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

email and copyright verification

Note that this question has a legal dimension, but I'm not asking about the legal side, ie. whether something would actually stand up in court. I'm only wondering if there are any holes in this idea from a computing point of view. So let's say I have written a song, and I email the lyrics/ mp3 file to myself, and try to use this to prove copyright. If someone doubted it, I could just log in to my email, and show them the date of posting. Can this be faked? As a side question, I am curious if anyone knows of actual cases involving this, but just for reading interest. It's not legal advice, because I am a long way from having anything to worry about at this stage - just interested firstly in the forensic side, and (while I'm on the topic) if anyone has come across any news items on the legal side. From the legal point of view, I don't care which jurisdiction, just interested in any such cases that have made the news/ blogosphere. IBE (talk) 18:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

An email is just a text file; it's trivial to fake any part of it, including the sender and the date. I don't think one can do what you want with S/MIME either. There are Copyright registration services which, being trusted and accredited third parties, are a reliable way of dating a document; some may accept electronic submissions (I can't see why not). A simple email-self scheme, like other shonky forms of poor man's copyright, leaves many avenues open to later challenge. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

That said, sending it through a mail service often results in that service adding its own header lines. It might be possible for say HoTMaiL to confirm that a given mail was processed by their system at a given time - but as that's not the purpose of those headers, and confirming this kind of thing is HoTMaiL's job, one would not expect that using their headers to prove dates would be a trivial matter. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

If I email something to myself using, say, gmail, the message will reside on Google's server as long as I don't delete it, and the server will have a record of when it was sent. Unless I could hack into Google's server, I don't see how I could fake that. Looie496 (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, but getting Google to confirm (in court) what records the server has isn't easy. Google can reasonably say "we're an email service, not a notary - while we think the date records are accurate, we don't take sufficient steps to make totally sure they are, so we're not going to stand up in court and say so". That's the difference between them and a real notary or copyright registrar - being sure enough to testify about dates is their job (that's why you pay them). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:34, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

We may be talking at cross purposes here. Suppose I actually log in in front of someone. Can I fake things then? The date appears on the email, and is taken from Google's server, and the web address will appear on the browser, so it looks much harder to manipulate. Assume for answering the question that it does not involve contacting Google, just showing stuff on a computer. IBE (talk) 20:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

No, you're talking about the same thing but missing Finlay's point. You are likely right that items in your "Sent Mail" folder are exactly what you actually sent and can't be falsified by yourself, on a technical basis I would agree with you - but the legal response is "So what? It's plausible hearsay, but it is still hearsay. Where is your confirmation from Google that this specific item was submitted on this specific date?". And all that showing someone that you can log in and look at Sent Items does is let them swear an affidavit that they saw you type at a computer. Did they check where the wire went after it plugged into the wall? Even if you could persuade a judge to let you fire up a laptop in their courtroom, it's still just you typing at a computer. So you will need to get Google to provide a copy from their own server, certified by one of their staff as a true copy - which is just not going to happen, as Finlay says. What you are suggesting is enough to make an assertion of copyright, the same as faxing yourself chords and lyrics, or mailing the old way using a cancelled stamp on an envelope. (Both of which I'd suggest before or in addition to trying email) It will be enough for most purposes and even in court could stand up if combined with other proofs but it is not cast-iron by any means. So if you've just written the next Stairway to Heaven, use a notary or registrar. Or send it to me, I'll take care of it. :) Late note: possibly you could hire a major cyber-forensics firm to do an end-to-end evaluation of the Sent Item as an expert witness, for whatever that's worth. Franamax (talk) 21:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

An email could load external content when you open it. If you send yourself an email today to yourself you could later change this external content and the email message would show the reader what you want to show him. No need to fake date or hack the email server. It's quite simple and only low skills are required. For a better implementation, from a computational perspective, of the same idea see better Trusted timestamping. It's technically doable, but I don't know what to say about the legal aspect, how it stands in a court of law, and so on (it's also not the purpose of the RD). OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:58, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer - of course I'm still interested in any further comments on this, but it's exactly what I was wondering. I know the rules about legal advice, which is why I said I didn't care which jurisdiction. True legal advice requires a knowledge of a particular jurisdiction, so American examples would be useless to me in Australia if I were interested in advice. The significance of the legal angle is that it shows what experts have established in front of a judge, when money is at issue, hence establishing facts is taken very seriously. IBE (talk) 21:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I actually think there is a potentially bigger problem then highlighted above. Gmail supports IMAP and therefore it's possible to migrate or import email including sent email [11] [12] [13]. I've never done this personally so I'm not sure whether there's any actual sign of when or whether the emails were imported (rather then being added by Google themselves) but it wouldn't surprise me if there are no signs to the end user. That being the case, while Google may very well have their own internal records, getting them to testify about these is likely to be difficult as suggested above. So in fact spoofing emails which appear to have been sent at a certain time but weren't may be a technically trivial matter requiring no real hacking. You could use a service which doesn't provide IMAP, but you'd need to ensure there really is no way you simply aren't aware of to spoof emails on your account and perhaps more importantly, you always run the risk that the service adds something like IMAP which may enable such spoofing since it's unlikely to be a major concern for them as it's not their intention to be a timestamp service. If you use Google Apps and pay for something like Vault [14] it's possible there is something there sufficient but I'm not entirely sure and it seems a silly way to go about it if your sole intention for such a service is as suggested above. Nil Einne (talk) 03:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I've semi confirmed my hunch with Gmail. Using Thunderbird I moved some emails from the sent folder of one of my Gmail accounts to another. Then using the webmail interface and also 'show original' I see no sign that the email was anything other then what it purports to be, an email sent at the time (in 2005). Going further I found that you cannot simply open an email you save as an EML (whether or not you modify it) and then copy it to the sent. While the date shows up correctly with no sign when you open the email it's anything other then what it seems to be (including if you show original), in the sent folder in Gmail it shows up as having been very recent/when it was uploaded (I think or may be it's when it was opened in Thunderbird). The same thing happens if you open and copy it to a local folder and then move it to the sent folder on Gmail. This does not happen if you move stuff from Gmail sent folder to a local folder then to another Gmail sent folder so clearly it's just something that Thunderbird is doing (I guess it's storing some internal date of when it was modified which it sends to Gmail when it uploads the message).

However to further prove the point, I moved some sent stuff to a local folder, modified it including the date and most headers (with a simple text editor when Thunderbird was not running) and uploaded it back. And no sign it was anything but what it purported to be/what I uploaded (well I accidentally added a 'X-Mozilla-Keys:' header but if anything that just shows you can do whatever you want).

I did come across one interesting errata. It seems if the date is before 2005 or sometime between Jan 2004 and Jan 2005 (perhaps when Gmail went public in 2004?), it sorts incorrectly. While the date as shown in the folder and elsewhere is correct, the earlier stuff shows up on the top above everything else including stuff sent after they were added. Albeit these are also sorted, in chronological order (so 1990 shows up before 2004). This IMO is a bug. While this may be before Google Mail existed, it doesn't make sense to sort in that fashion. It's obvious it was before Google existed but if you migrated your email to Google there's no reason you want the older stuff showing up at the top. (And if you're truly spoofing, the person who trusts a date before Google Mail existed is frankly an idiot.)

Nil Einne (talk) 05:13, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Something which I have been thinking about and which [15] (found while trying to find out what's up with the sorting) suggests, it's possible there are some signs you can find, perhaps via IMAP that everything is not as it seems since I'm only looking at stuff from a very high level abstraction. However again, it seems risky to trust them as it's possible there would be some way to fix those as well (and even more so over many years). For example if doing what I'm doing screws up the IMAP sequence numbers you could likely use some tool to fix these by downloading and deleting all the content and then reuploading it in order. (As suggested there even if it didn't work because of the way Thunderbird handles such stuff.) This does of course mean that if you're are trying to trick someone, other then the fact if they are sufficiently competent they'd realise they can't trust the date anyway, if you don't know what you're doing you could easily leave signs of what you did. Nil Einne (talk) 05:26, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

P.P.S. As it turns out the stuff from 2004 and before is now sorting correctly, I guess it was just a temporary issue. I actually seem to recall noticing something like this before but I can't remember when or where. But anyway if you trust my sent folder, you'd believe I emailed Bill Gates in 1990 inviting him to join Google mail. Nil Einne (talk) 05:30, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the help. Feel free to add more. Also, I'm typing during a coffee break, so haven't had time to read it in full, but it looks clear and quite comprehensive. Just adding a thankyou note in case I'm caught up and have to read the full thing from the archives. IBE (talk) 05:06, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Text in php/html

I have a website (php/html) and would like to translate it with poedit. In order to do so I need to write all texts (which are displayed on the site) as: <?= _('Text') ?>. Are there any tools/scripts that help me to find all such "text" in an html file or that find any non-replaced text? bamse (talk) 19:33, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

There are a variety of Linux tools that claim to do that. Would that be helpful to you? If so, try googling for "html2po". I'm not sure what will happen to your php code, though. Looie496 (talk) 23:45, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. bamse (talk) 06:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I would just note that in your case, it looks like the script may already be trying to be internationalized and has some of that already built in. The _('Text') formatting often means, "I have created a function named underscore, which checks this text against a localization table, and then returns whatever the equivalent is for whatever the language settings are." (This is how Wordpress, among other platforms, does localization.) You might poke around to see if there's an easier way than the way you are approaching it — the text may already be in a file, somewhere, either translated or in a format that's easy to translate without modifying the original. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Not sure I understand what you mean. I don't have that _('Text') formatting yet in my html files. I am looking for an automatic way to add this formatting. After that, gettext will do the rest. bamse (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. I misunderstood before. I thought you were trying to modify code that was already gettext'd. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

October 13

I hate Farmville!

What's the nicest way to stop people sending me Farmville requests in Facebook? (And any other silly nonsense activities?) I seem to get up to half a dozen a day. HiLo48 (talk) 02:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

You could block Farmville or any other apps entirely by going to your News Feed, clicking the pencil icon to the right of the app title (e.g. “Farmville”, etc.), and clicking “Remove App”. Alternatively, you could message them and politely tell them to stop. 71.146.0.234 (talk) 06:45, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Geez, don't have a cow. :-) StuRat (talk) 08:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Good luck keeping Facebook from doing the one thing they care about doing: selling. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

But me getting annoying Farmville requests (and I got a Truth game one just now - hate them too), which I ignore, sells me nothing. HiLo48 (talk) 21:46, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

It's not about "you" per se those financial analysts on Wall Street are demanding to see scalable monetization. It's about the 10% who do go into farmville, especially online where its all measured by "clicks". Marketdiamond (talk) 00:52, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

But I see HiLo's point. Once you make it clear you aren't interested in buying a product or service, they would then do better by trying to sell you other products or services, not by continuing to try to sell the same old thing. That's poor marketing. I have a similar complaint about ads for cable TV I get mailed to me about once a week. By now they ought to have a fair idea that I'm not interested. StuRat (talk) 00:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Is the ROI to change the programming at the critical level where those that would completely sign off Facebook are greater than those that would finally succumb to the Farmville ads? Or better question are all consultants under the same MBA brainwashing lol? Marketdiamond (talk) 01:11, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Advertising customized to the individual is the hot new thing on the Internet, and Facebook appears to be behind the ball on this one. StuRat (talk) 01:20, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the above thread. As highlighted by 71, it isn't actually that hard to block requests from Games, games from specific friends etc. And Facebook does a lot of customized/targeted advertising in their actual advertising. The friend game spam is not Facebook advertising per se so it comes down to a matter of Facebook choosing between what their partners (app developers etc) want and what their users want (which varies between the user) although Facebook does do some degree of automatic customisation there (as well as real paid advertising with the recent promoted post feature) it's primarily up to the user to control what they want to see. Nil Einne (talk) 05:38, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Great points but it's all theoretical until OP (and many more) close their FB accounts because of it (or stop buying en masse). It isn't silicon valley calling the shots its Wall Street now, cause it is their money. There are millions of $s betting OP and others won't leave at the status quo. (For a time there was even more $ betting they wouldn't be effectively monetized but that's a whole other trade). Marketdiamond (talk) 01:49, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Numbers.doc

I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong section, but I'm trying to list a team's win-loss record by adding one to the win column for every game won and adding one to the loss column for every game lost. I have the scores for every game played by the team in a season and was wondering how to add one for every win or loss by using the > and < signs with the score. For example, if the team's score was in cell A1, the opponent's score was in cell B1, and the win loss record was in cell C1, how could I say something like “If A1>B1, add 1 to C1”? I'm sorry if I sound confusing, this isn't very easy for me to explain in writing. 71.146.0.234 (talk) 06:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd first be tempted to try just what you listed: "If A1 > B1, then C1 = C1 + 1". Apple numbers does have an IF function, although I'm unsure of the exact syntax.

The 2nd approach might be to use the SIGN function: "SIGN returns 1 when a given number is positive, –1 when it is negative, and 0 when it is zero.". So, you could do something like C1 = C1 + (SIGN(A1-B1)+1)/2. This might not handle ties, though. Adding the CEILING or ROUNDUP function in might fix ties. StuRat (talk) 08:32, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

• I'm mostly a spreadsheet-avoider, so this might not be the right answer, but here is what I would try to do. I would first create a column C that would contain a 1 if the game was a win and a zero if the game was a loss. Then I would create a column D that is the cumulative sum of all of the entries from column C on the current line and above (wins), and a column E that subtracts the number in D from the total number of lines (losses). Looie496 (talk) 15:51, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

You can't have C1 simultaneously be a value and add to its own value — that makes it self-referential. If column C is a running total of wins or losses, what you can do is have C2 be something like, =IF(A2>B2,C1+1,C1), assuming row 1 contains score data. Notice the row numbers — it references the cell above it. (If you paste it to different rows, the references should automatically update.) The IF syntax (for Numbers or Excel) is IF([test condition],[value if true],[value if false]). This means that the formula for C1 must be something like, IF(A1>B1,1,0), to initialize the values. Or you could do it the way Looie suggests, which doesn't mean you have to have a different formula for the first row. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:36, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Personal Hotspot on iOS

From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3574: "To use this feature, your wireless carrier must offer Personal Hotspot and your devices must meet certain system requirements." Why does Internet tethering on iOS require carrier support? It is technically possible to use Internet tethering with any connection without carrier support, Android phones and tablets prove this. Write English in Cyrillic (talk) 15:46, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no technical reason; they disable this feature if the carrier doesn't like it. A carrier might not like it because it means more traffic on their network. See the tethering article. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

As I understand the situation, the United States Federal Communications Commission has published several regulatory orders requiring service-providers (specific wireless carriers) to cease these limitations. However, enforcement of those requirements is pending litigation in several different jurisdictions. Until these legal issues are resolved, responsible vendors of mobile radio devices are complying with the current status-quo. It may be technically possible to circumvent such regulations (or contractual obligations) on some devices, but selling devices that flaut their radio license or service contract terms is typically a bad idea. You might find the FCC's web page informative: Open Internet, from FCC.gov, explaining some of the technical and legal issues. Outside of the United States is a different regulatory environment altogether: vendors who sell to diverse geographies have to find a compatible way to comply with regulations in lots of different places. You can check your iPhone's radio license by going to the device settings, "Settings > About > Legal > Regulatory" (and in some places, you may see additional licenses and other information). You should also see a radio license shorthand logo printed on the device, somewhere. Nimur (talk) 18:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

October 14

Downloadable Google Books only

Is there any way to search only those books which Google allows to download? --Tito Dutta ✉ 00:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

At this Google page click "Full View Only" under search for free downloads only, or "Google ebooks only" for downloads available both free and charge. Hope that helps! Marketdiamond (talk) 01:04, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, I have bookmarked the link!--Tito Dutta (talk) 01:44, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Glad to help! Marketdiamond (talk) 10:26, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Virus

If my computer is infected with virus, and I change the HDD to a new one, is it gone for good? Does the virus infected programs on the stuff like the motherboard? What I mean is when you start a computer, even without HDD, the motherboard has programs showing cpu temperature etc, so can virus infect that kind of stuff? Money is tight (talk) 03:00, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

It is possible, but uncommon, for malware to target specific hardware, or to install itself to nonvolatile memory other than the main system hard-disk drive. Nimur (talk) 03:24, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

You shouldn't have to replace a HDD to remove a virus - reformatting it should be sufficient. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:27, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

And you don't usually even have to do that to remove the virus. StuRat (talk) 03:33, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

True enough - I suppose it depends on (a) how clued-up you are on removing viruses (most people aren't), (b) how much money you have, and (c) how essential it is to get rid of it - which mostly depends on the value of the data on the drive, and/or how essential it is to have the computer working. If you know what you are doing, and/or aren't too bothered about being absolutely sure it is gone, just deleting it (with the proper tools) may be good enough. If you don't know what you are doing, replacing the HDD is foolproof (apart from mainboard viruses etc...). In between, reformatting the HDD (and reinstalling the OS if required) is safer than the first option, and cheaper than the second. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

If you are going to replace the hard drive anyway, it is vary rare for the virus to remain (ie. only in the case outlined above by Nimur). Otherwise, it is a pretty drastic solution to a virus infection. Try a virus/malware scanner first. (I was now going to mention how to manually remove a virus, but the usual sites I would check for virus information seem to no longer have manual removal instructions). Astronaut (talk) 10:47, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Gateway, Inc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway,_Inc. 1. Is Gateway still a company, owned by Acer now or only a TradeMark?91.79.154.141 (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC) 2. You wrote their Revenue = US$3.980 billion. What Year? Can You give me any reference on this value?91.79.154.141 (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I corrected the revenue number on the article after reviewing that it had not been changed since at least early 2008. As a unit of Acer I doubt there are any public and verifiable numbers on specific Gateway-only revenue. The best source online for public information on companies is Hoovers and they state that Gateway revenue alone is negligble and 0 profit 0 etc. here also that they are a unit of Acer. Marketdiamond (talk) 10:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Please refrain from using terms like "you" since almost every article is a collaboration of many editors, unless of course you are referring to a specific editors contribution that you have identified, just trying to prevent any confusion, thanks! Marketdiamond (talk) 10:25, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Coding LinkedIn

Hi, I have a business idea which basically requires me to make a website like LinkedIn, where people can make pages, and add information, and the website remembers it (practically exactly like LinkedIn). I don't have any coding ability, but I don't want to have a professional make it for me because I have no money, and I'm afraid someone will steal my idea and it will be the Winklevoss affair all over again. So, really, I need to know what languages I need to learn. Thanks for any help you can provide. 31.205.106.147 (talk) 13:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Do this class then this class. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:52, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you ever so much, Finlay, that's awfully kind of you to provide such assistance. I had never heard of Udacity before, but it appears to be greatly useful for learning new things for free. Thank you once again! 31.205.106.147 (talk) 15:13, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Just in case someone finds this thread in the future and finds the Udacity web pages have disappeared, the course names are "Introduction to Computer Science (cs101): Building a Search Engine" and "Web Development (cs253): How to Build a Blog". PleaseStand (talk) 03:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

October 15

Recovering a deleted iPad note

My iPad 2 runs iOS 5.1.1. I think deleted a note in Notes on accident and I would like to recover it. If I did delete a note then it was made AFTER my last sync. How can I recover it? Jailbreaking is acceptable. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I found this tutorial and comment board here that seems to be having success. Marketdiamond (talk) 03:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the method that I need to use only works for the original iPad. --Melab±1 ☎ 03:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that you will only get it back if you synced the the iPad somewhere, such as another iTunes or the iCloud. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Google search PDF URL decoder

This is more a Google search question than a Wikipedia question. That's why I am asking here.

• Shorter version: How to copy the PDF file URL from Google search page?
• Longer version: Go to this search result page (actually I did not search with this weird query, but I want you to get the result at the top of the page which I am trying to show you). The first result is "The human cranium from Bodo". I have downloaded the file and found and want to use it as a reference. But, how to quickly copy the URL? The process I follow is–
• Right click and copy link
• Paste in text editor, take only the portion between http and pdf and delete everything else, replace %2F with / %3A with : etc...

But, any easier way to copy the actual URL of a PDF file from search result? --Tito Dutta (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Try this online tool; basically it seems to automate the steps you take under 'longer version': http://industrystandardsoftware.com/online_tools/converters/convert-serp-link-to-direct-location-for-copying-and-pasting.htm. Alternatively, if you use with Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome you should be able to find a Greasemonkey to do the work for you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello, using IndustryStandardSoftware, I could not extract the PDF link given in the example above (see first line of "longer version"). I have installed this userscript, still have not found out how and where it is working! Thank you! --Tito Dutta (talk) 08:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

What happens when you use the tool? From your link, I get the first result as https://www.google.co.in/url?url=http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/archaeology/Publications/Palaeolithic/The%2520human%2520cranium%2520from%2520Bodo,%2520Ethiopia.pdf&rct=j&sa=U&ei=2817UI38MYnNhAedjYHIDA&ved=0CBQQFjAA&q=Bodo%2Bfossil+filetype:pdf+%22++The+human+cranium+from+Bodo,+Ethiopia:+evidence+for+speciation%22&usg=AFQjCNFSY5PqFSoMi0JIjyYnJ67Bb-qW7Q. Pasting this into the tool gives me http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/archaeology/Publications/Palaeolithic/The%20human%20cranium%20from%20Bodo,%20Ethiopia.pdf. Is that not what you needed? Apologies if I've read the question wrong. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

(If someone could provide better formatting for the link above so it doesn't spill over the edge of the page I'd be very grateful.) - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:55, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

In Firefox, I:

1. download the pdf
2. go to the download's entry in Firefox's Downloads window
3. right click -> copy_download_link

And you get the real PDF URL, not the Google redirector link. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The OptimizeGoogle and CustomizeGoogle extensions used to be good for this. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Also: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22The+human+cranium+from+Bodo%22+pdf ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Replacement for Console in Windows

I like to have a Unix-like environment ready for myself for numerous reasons, notably that it provides many programs I need like SFTP, SSH, etc. In Windows, I settled on Cygwin. However, Cygwin (obnoxiously) doesn't provide tabbed support. Console provides such tabbed support for Cygwin.

However, Console has two very obnoxious feature omissions:

• Lack of support for UTF-8, which leaves much of my Wikimedia bot's output as mojibake.
• Lack of Ctrl-C tunneling. If I try to ctrl-c abort out of my PHP script, nothing happens! I have to actually open a task manager and shut it down from there.

Is there a Console equivalent that has support for these two things, and also allows a tabbed console window? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 20:52, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

rxvt for Cygwin is certainly a better unix console on Windows than the NT console, but I don't think it currently supports unicode; its brother Rxvt-unicode does, if you can get that to work on Cygwin. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

You can indeed. I also suggest using screen for an equivalent to "tabs", although there are a number of even more GUI'd terminal emulators available for Cygwin. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:12, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

mintty doesn't do tabs but it does support Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab for switching between currently open mintty windows. It supports UTF-8 and ^C. -- BenRG (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Good Books for Learning JavaServer Faces

Any suggestions? I've done a bit of Java programming but was only introduced to JSF last week so am brand spanking new to it. Thanks. 78.146.75.224 (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it's also worth mentioning that Java is the only computing language with which I have any familiarity, which specifically means that I don't know any HTML, XHTML or CSS. Is it worth exploring one of these languages first to facilitate my learning of JSF? 78.146.75.224 (talk) 22:21, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

October 16

internet svc

my internet svc keep cutting off at work would like instructions how to run forefront to check for virus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.241.76.237 (talk) 16:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

It's highly unlikely that a virus is your problem. If you're running Windows and can't get an IT person to help you, you should go into the Control Panel to the Network part, and find the function that allows you to troubleshoot the network. Looie496 (talk) 19:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Faking EXIF metadata?

I've raised a WP:PUF for an image with confusing EXIF information — specifically, a public domain notice in the metadata. I'm quite uncertain of what's going on, and the only other person who's comment on the image isn't certain of everything either. Could someone who knows about EXIF metadata chime in on the technical side of things at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2012 October 16? Nyttend (talk) 18:25, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

The copyright license metadata field for images is easy to change in Photoshop. There is no "faking" — it's just a field you can fill in, edit, or not. It's not a technically-created field, in the sense that the camera doesn't generate it. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Not directly relevant to the original question, but for all your EXIF needs I recommend ExifTool. Free as in both beer and speech, and you can work with all the fields, not just copyright. One particularly nice feature is the ability to add or subtract a constant offset from all date fields -- take a picture of an accurate clock before you download your photos, then adjust all your pics by the delta that makes that one come out right. --Trovatore (talk) 23:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

October 17

VERY basic C Questions I can't find online!

Hi, I have experience with Javascript and am trying to jump into C, but I am finding some problems before I even start!

First of all, is C like Javascript in that I can just type my code into notepad? If so, what then? Do I save it as a .something file and run it in firefox? Or is there some other completely different process to even viewing the result of C code?

I'd appreciate an answer as soon as possible, and I'll be asking more questions once this one is answered! Thank you! 169.231.8.73 (talk) 07:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

C is a compiled language, so you must save as a *.c file (or *.cpp or *.c#, for variants), then compile that file, which generates an object files (*.o). Those object files and libraries are then linked together to form an executable (*.exe file), which you can run. There are free compiler/linkers out there, such as GCC. There also might be interpreters out there which can run C source code directly, but those aren't the norm. StuRat (talk) 07:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I need more help. I reached here, then here, then here, where I downloaded gcc-4.7.2.tar.bz2 I have no idea if this was the right thing to do, but now my computer tells me it doesn't know what program to open it with. Help me with figuring out how to get the compiler to a useful state? 169.231.8.73 (talk) 10:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

GCC is usually used in UNIX/Linux environments. The file you downloaded is probably for one of those, and is possibly source code that needs compiled as well. There are pre-compiled Windows version available with Cygwin and MingW - you can find links here. (A compiled program is called a binary) However, you may be better off downloading Visual Studio C++ Express Edition. It is a C++ compiler, but aside from a few minor differences C is a subset of C++. It will give you a nice editor, compiler and debugger all integrated into a simple interface. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 12:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, 169, but compiled languages like C are very different from interpreted languages like Javascript, and you don't yet have enough clue to understand the answers to the questions you are asking. I strongly recommend that you find a basic introduction to C to read -- you can find a number online, such as http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~ir/KS/Data/RMiles/contents.html. Looie496 (talk) 14:45, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Looie496's assessment. At my undergraduate college, before any engineering or computer science student was allowed to take a programming class, they were required to pass the Introduction to Computing course material. You may find the free online text very helpful. While this frustrated many students who believed they were "computer experts" - myself included - this simple class presented a formal introduction to material that is absolutely essential to understanding how a computer works. You must master these concepts before you attempt to program in a language like C. Before you understand these fundamentals - things like the way file systems work; or the role of the operating system in mediating software- and hardware- access - the best you can do with the C language is to copy-and-paste other people's code (and build-scripts); that approach has very limited utility in teaching you, or in getting useful work done. Nimur (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

[16] takes you through the steps of installing Code::Blocks and running a simple "hello world" program. I've never used Code::Blocks, but the page makes it look like a pretty good place for a beginner to start. That site also seems to have a bunch of tutorials aimed at beginners. (I'm working under the assumption you're running Windows. If not, let us know what you are using.) 209.131.76.183 (talk) 17:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Some follow-ups:

1) Are you on Windows ? If so, what level ? XP ? Vista ? Windows 7 ?

2) I disagree about needing a class before moving from an interpreted language to a compiled language. It actually is more difficult moving the other way, IMHO, as then you have to worry about defining functions before you use them, etc. You might want to start with a "for idiots" book (no offense, I use them, too).

3) However, C is a rather unpleasant language, and is more difficult to learn than many others. BASIC might be an easier starting point.

4) While you can use any old text editor to write source code, there are also editors customized for computer languages which will do things for you like highlighting incorrect syntax. Those can be quite helpful. StuRat (talk) 18:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say except the suggestion to learn BASIC. Dijkstra put it well: the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery.[17]. And the same goes for that pit of insanity they call PHP. For heaven's sake learn Python or something else structured! Marnanel (talk) 20:19, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm learning Python now, and it has some annoying, unnecessary complexities, like arrays starting at zero. And one thing it has that I find rather unstructured is implicit variable definitions. In FORTRAN, I always use the line "implicit none" at the start of each program and subroutine, to force me to think through the exact definition of each variable. Python also allows global variables, which is about as unstructured as you can get. StuRat (talk) 20:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Any programming language that isn't a toy defaults to arrays starting at zero. Using one-based arrays is a foolish concession to foolish programmers which fills anything more than trivial uses of array indexing with endless minor adjustments, and I note that since the OP is experienced in JavaScript they won't have a problem in that direction anyway. And (let me make sure I understand) are you actually criticising Python's ability to use globals while simultaneously suggesting the serious use of BASIC? Marnanel (talk) 20:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

My point is that you might as well start with an easier language, if neither BASIC nor Python is well-structured. Also, FORTRAN is a serious language and defaults to 1. The idea is to make it more closely aligned with how human's count, rather than how computer's count, to make it easier to use. When human language changes so you say "my zeroth transaction today was...", then it will make sense to program that way. Until then, the computer should figure out that array element 1 is at memory offset 0, so the programmer and end user don't have to concern themselves with such trivialities. StuRat (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help guys, but so far I'm still pretty clueless :(

My assignment is this. I cant even figure out how to get something on my screen that lets me write C code. Code::blocks doesnt seem to be working. 169.231.8.73 (talk) 23:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

openoffice calc - graphing "wild" data

I've been asked to graph weekly hit stats for our website. Most of the time, the range of the data is 0 to 500, however we had two weeks where the hits were in the 2000-3500 range. This makes most of the graph very difficult to see as it is so small. What would be the best way to graph this data so that all the data is visible? Is it possible to have two different scales on the y-axis, with 0-500 taking up the bottom 3/4's of the graph so the data is visible and the rest of the axis in a small scale to show the bigger numbers? Thanks! --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

You might want to try plotting on a logarithmic scale. It should be an option for the chart axis. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 13:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure about those figures? You should normally exclude robots, plus as well as the normal probes for weaknesses every so often sites get some hacker trying out all sorts of stupid things on it. But I agree if you are having sudden surges of interest then a logarithmic scale is what you want. But then again it may be right just to have the rest go invisible if you wnat to show the actual amounts overall. Dmcq (talk) 14:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

What information do you want a person who looks at the graph to be able to pick up from it? Looie496 (talk) 14:52, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Another option is to put a break line (doesn't Wikipedia have an article on this ?) in the tall bars in a bar graph, and write the number above them. I don't know if OpenOffice supports this, however. StuRat (talk) 20:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Torrent Download Problem

While downloading a torrent file , it just shows " connecting to peers " , and the download doesn't begin . How do I resolve the issue ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jug9 (talk • contribs) 14:17, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The only possibility is to use a different Bittorrent program, but that probably won't work. It is impossible to download a file if your program can't find a peer who will provide it to you. Looie496 (talk) 14:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Try another port. Many tracked torrents also are entirely unseeded. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It would be worth trying to find out whether the trackers think there are seeders; whatever site you got the torrent from ought to say, somewhere. If there are no or very few seeders then it's possible there may just not be any peers to connect to. If there are lots of seeders and you still can't connect, you will need to troubleshoot your client and/or your router and firewall settings. But not knowing your torrent program, your OS, or anything else about your situation, it's not possible for us to give any really specific debugging information or suggestions for you. There are just too many possibilities. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)