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November 11

Good Alternative to Microsoft Office in Windows 8?

Hey guys, it's been a while! I am currently in need of a free (as in beer) alternative to Microsoft Office. This is Windows 8 I'm using. The thing is, I'd rather it not be Open Office or Libre Office; I'd prefer to try something different. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:45, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

List of office suites provides some ideas, and Comparison of office suites compares their features and cost. Astronaut (talk) 19:18, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Astronaut! :) I had forgotten completely about Google Docs; probably will just go with that. Thanks again! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:36, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

MacBook Air given up ghost

My 8 month old MacBook Air is giving me a grey screen with flashing folder. I'm out of the telephone support period and I can't get a Genius Bar appointment till Thursday. They can call me tomorrow. I can chat with them in office hours. I can get as far as Internet recovery but is that any use to me? I didn't set up a time machine, was thinking of doing it when I had a moment to work out how. It says it will take a while and then after a bit it takes me to OS X Utilities. I don't think I have a time machine backup. If I try to reinstall OS X it tells me to select the disk where I want to install it but it is not allowing me to choose any disks. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:49, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The "flashing folder" icon is an error code that indicates no bootable device has been found. It can indicate a configuration error or a hardware failure. Be careful with the next steps: some instructions you might find on the internet to "repair" this condition may result in permanent data loss. The best next step is really to get help at the Apple Genius Bar. If your data is still recoverable, they are the best resource to help you get your system back to operation without damaging or destroying any data. Nimur (talk) 23:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I'm more than a bit annoyed about spending so much money and not being able to get an appointment for days. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

If you had spent $75 on a USB hard drive (which you should have set up when you bought your computer), you could easily rewind your computer to a day it was working. You plug in a blank hard drive and the computer will ask you if you want to use it as a Time Machine drive. There is no "working out how". It's that easy. So you really should only be annoyed at yourself. --209.203.125.162 (talk) 19:00, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, very helpful. Hard drives start at £70 in the UK. If they are essential to owning a Mac then they should be included. Or at least they should advise you to buy one when you buy a Mac. They give you enough hard sell about the extended warranty even though you have your statutory rights. And of course this is independent of having to wait three days for a Genius Bar appointment. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

The IP user is a bit snarky about it, but the point (s)he makes about backup is fundamentally an important one, and yes, Apple should advise you of it in the manual and frankly I'm surprised that they don't (I checked and it isn't mentioned). I don't think a backup drive should be included with the machine as some users may already own one (in the same way that I don't think that power adaptors or usb cables should be included with smartphones - it simply leads to waste). I'm not saying that this is what has happened to your machine, as it's impossible to tell without examining it, but any drive can fail catastrophically and irrecoverably at any point after purchase (for a device of such complexity is is simply not possible to eliminate the possibility of this happening). Therefore the only reasonable defence against loss of data is to maintain a reliable backup of any data you consider important. You need, at very least, an on-site backup (e.g. a backup hard drive), and for any data you wouldn't want to lose if your house got burgled, set on fire or flooded you need an off-site backup as well (i.e. some form of online backup). The following articles provide a very simple explanation of how to do this (there are of course other backup products, but I use these and they work well) on-site backup , off-site backup. I implore you, whatever the outcome of your current issue, to set up at least one of these (or an equivalent) immediately. Once set up, test it by trying to recover some data - a backup you can't recover stuff from is useless. I promise you, it will save a lot of headache in the long run. I have twice had to use my backups "in anger" and at those points I was very glad I had them. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 14:20, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

" Hard drives start at £70 in the UK. If they are essential to owning a Mac then they should be included." go to amazon.co.uk and you can pick up a selection of 500GB external HD for £35. They aren't essential for owning a Mac, they are essential for owning a computer, Windows, Linux or Mac. Hardware can fail anytime.Dja1979 (talk) 14:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

That is very helpful, Equisetum, many thanks. I must say that part of my hubris stems from having a university IT support system at my fingertips, which is all PC oriented, but then I decided to be a bit more independent and have some Apple equipment at home. The Apple Store told me that hard drives start at £70, and the price seemed to be the same in Argos. I didn't even know that external drives are formatted either for PC or for Apple. I do get impatient with IT that is nearly there but not quite. I am the person who used to press Next Page instead of Store Page on the dedicated word processor. I have form on this crap. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

November 12

Can I use wildcard in searching with google or other search engine?

For example, If I want to search Anscombe's quartet but only know the first word starts with an A, what is the fastest way to find it?--58.251.146.130 (talk) 02:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know it does not support that. It only has the wildcard * for complete words in phrases. However it will find things which are based on the same word if you don't include a phrase in quote marks. So no it can't find his works which start with A. With a suitable search it might find alphabetic indexes of the type of work though if you can specify that better or if you give the names of a couple of people who have written similar works. Dmcq (talk) 10:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

pre amp specs

Hi

I'm having trouble comprehending the below specs of a preamp more pertinently its frequency response specs 10Hz ~ 50kHz @+50dB (40Hz~15kHz : +0.06, -0.58dB)

So the part in the parentheses obviously says that the linearity from 40 to 15k is +0.06 -0.58dB, but the one before it: 10hz - 50khz @ +50db is the latter (@+50db) referring to the gain or is it the tolerance ?? The letter I kinda doubt since that'd seem awfully too large..

can someone clarify better on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.35.30.99 (talk) 03:07, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

This page can't be displayed

When I edit a somewhat larger page on Wikipedia and save, the page I see next is "This page can't be displayed •Make sure the web address https://en.wikipedia.org is correct. •Look for the page with your search engine. •Refresh the page in a few minutes. •Make sure TLS and SSL protocols are enabled. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Settings > Security." Is there a way to fix this? -- Jreferee (talk) 04:41, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you are running low on memory ? If so, try a reboot and don't run anything else, and see if that makes a difference. StuRat (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it might my internet connection. I'll call them to see if they can address the problem. -- Jreferee (talk) 06:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Why are YouTube annotations off by default? How do I set them to always stay on by default?

I don't remember turning the annotations default options to "OFF." How do I make it stay "ON" for any video again? It frustrates me to realize that after nearly finishing a video, I missed all the annotations. Thanks. --2602:30A:2EE6:8600:D59D:C79F:6214:1B7 (talk) 05:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Vanishing whitespace

I'm unsure if this is a Wikipedia problem or something from my end. I using Ubuntu 13.10, FF 25.0 and gedit 3.8.3. I added references here (note all the whitespace removed) which I had copied from List of football stadiums in Scotland. The original references had an access date from September but I was just double checking them for accuracy. Because of the old access date I wanted to update them so I copied all the 2013–14 Scottish Premiership into gedit and did a search and replace, then pasted it back and saved. Next I copied the corrected references to here (no whitespace removed). It was after that I saw that the first edit had removed a large amount of whitespace and I assumed I had made an error.

Next I did the same thing here but being careful about only replacing 30 September 2013 with 11 November 2013. However the whitespace was still removed. So finally I copied the references to here. I copied that article to gedit and making no search and replace copied it straight back to the article. As you can see the whitespace is gone. However, on my computer in gedit all the whitespace is still there.

Looking at the article from a readers point of view they are the same other than the addition of the references. However, for the editor it makes quite a bit of difference to how things line up in the edit window. Any one know why that is happening? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like the various software to render the page handles whitespace differently, with some removing it and some leaving it in. You might try using <br> to insert blank lines, instead.StuRat (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really bothered about the whitespace vanishing but I know some editors really want it. I just copied the line "| bases =" from {{Infobox airline}} and pasted into an article that I was editing. In that article just the same as here it automatically removed the whitespace. Weird. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Printing file tree to a text file

I have a very specific task that I'm looking to accomplish. Given an arbitrary directory path in Windows, I wish to print out the paths of all the files and folders within it in a very particular way. For instance, say I choose to apply this operation in C:\Users\Owner\Documents\. The tree would be printed out in this manner:

Books\
Books\Nietzsche\Beyond Good and Evil.epub
Books\The Republic.edub
Scripts\
Scripts\Generate-GUID.ps1
Scripts\Search.ps1
Scripts\Tree.ps1
Brochure.docx
Calibri.ttf

Folders are ended with a backslash while files are not and the tree structure looks very much like that displayed in the sidebar of Windows Explorer in Windows 7. I've tinkered with PowerShell, but I can't get it to work like this. — Melab±1 ☎ 14:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I think this should do it - from a command prompt, with your path set to the folder you want the information for, type

dir /s /b | sort /o:(some file location for your output)

--LarryMac | Talk 15:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

You could also use the command "dir /s /b /o:e > [filename]" to print to a text file, then use your favorite text editor's Find-Replace function to replace "C:\Users\Owner\Documents\" with nothing, giving you the directory list you asked for. -- 140.202.10.130 (talk) 19:06, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No. That fails to print the folders. — Melab±1 ☎ 11:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The output looks a lot like find in *nix... Perhaps CoreUtils on Windows may be of use? →Σσς. (Sigma) 00:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Converting an Excel file to a Word file

I am trying to take my Excel file and save it as a Word file. In Excel, it is a spreadsheet; in Word, it would be a table. When I do a simple "copy and paste", it works; the information gets transferred over from Excel into a Word table. But ... the formatting seems to get all screwed up (margins, column widths, the way that words do or do not wrap around, etc.). What looks perfect in Excel comes out looking very messed up in the Word table. (I spent many hours formatting the Excel file, so that it looks just right.) So, is there some "trick" to getting the Word table to look like an exact replica (in format) of the Excel spreadsheet? The whole purpose of this is to transfer a "form" that I created from Excel into Word, so that a mail merge can then be performed in Word. Therefore, I can't transfer the Excel information over as a "picture"; it has to be regular text in Word, so that Word can do the mail merge. Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It's not trivial, but it looks like there are ways to emulate a mail merge in Excel. Here's a page with an example document: [1]. Maybe that will help if you can't get the formatting right in Word. Katie R (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I had already seen that, and I had tried that. It's more trouble than it's worth. I prefer to use Word; it's just a matter of trying to get the Word document to format properly (as does the Excel document). By the way, this question is an extension of the following question (Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 November 6#Generate a report in Excel 2010), in which that same Excel mail merge link was discussed. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you would expect Microsoft to allow you to copy cell widths, word-wrap settings, etc. direct from Excel to Word, but it seems not to do this accurately. You will probably need to reformat the table in Word to match the exact formatting in Excel, and, even then, there are some differences in what you are allowed to do in Word and Excel. In future, of course, it would be better to design your documents in Word, but that advice doesn't help you with your current problem. Have a look at the table formatting menu and see how much you can match. I've had the same problem, and haven't found a solution other than time-consuming fiddling with layout, but perhaps someone else knows a trick? Dbfirs 22:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that is really frustrating. As you say, one would think that Microsoft would allow for a seamless transition from Excel to Word. I guess not. So, the only alternative is – before the transfer – to fiddle with the layout in Excel, so that it will come out correct in Word. Or – after the transfer – to fiddle with the layout in Word and adjust it to match the Excel. Very frustrating and very time consuming! Thanks for the reply. If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I know you can embed an Excel spreadsheet in Word as an Excel object. I can't find anything with simple searches that says if that will work with Mail Merge, but I doubt that it will. It may be worth trying if you haven't already. Katie R (talk) 16:55, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't think of that, and I may try it. My gut tells me that it will not work with a mail-merge. It's worth a try. I can't believe that what would seem like such a simple function with Microsoft integrated products is actually so complicated! Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:19, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Why could I only go to sites I had been to?

I keep the computer I use at home safe by limiting myself to Wikipedia and a few other select sites. I live near a college library and during the time I had spent on a computer there (Mozilla Firefox, Windows XP), I had gone to Hotmail, Facebook and imdb, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer comics (which don't work right at home), and Amy Dickinson, and I had done a couple of Google searches. I heard someone say the Internet was down. That couldn't be. I was going to Google and getting results, and I was looking at a children's feature called The Mini Page and able to go from page to page in that. I tried the other sites I had been on and they worked. I could go to any page In Facebook or imdb even if I hadn't gone to that page. But I couldn't go to any of the sites I hadn't seen yet, so I kept looking at Facebook and imdb. A few minutes later I heard someone say the network was back up. I still couldn't get to a site I hadn't gone to. A few minutes after that, everything worked. How could this happen?— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It's possible that all of the pages you looked at when the Internet was "down" were cached locally (because you or someone on the same network had looked at them recently). It must have taken a few minutes for caching servers to catch up when international connections were restored. Dbfirs 22:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Not the individual pages.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It probably has to do with name servers. Whenever you type the name of a site, such as google.com, a name server is consulted to translate that name into an IP address. Some systems are capable of caching those IP addresses for a period of time. So it's possible that if the computer lost access to a functioning name server (which is not all that uncommon), then you would only be able to use names that had been looked up recently. If that's the explanation, then you would still have been able to visit other sites by typing their IP addresses, if you happened to know them. Looie496 (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

November 13

computer simulation

what are the differences between parallel and distributed simulation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.89.56.15 (talk) 06:29, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, distributed processing is a subset of parallel processing, but with longer times for communication between nodes. Therefore, distributed processing wouldn't be efficient where lots of inter-process communication and coordination is required. Now you specifically asked about simulations, but the same limitations apply there as to other processing. A good example of distributed processing is SETI@home, while something like fluid dynamics simulations (say for weather forecasting) requires too much inter-process communication. StuRat (talk) 06:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Server 2003: OS not found

I'm exhausted from trying to fix this. I've googled and been to technet and many other sites. I know what the problem is but the many solutions suggested don't fix it.

The problem is that boot.ini, nldr and ntdetect.com are on D: while the OS is on C: They were on C: at some stage. They could NOT have been placed there during my initial install since D: is a RAID volume and was added after the system was up and running. I removed the drives from the RAID volume because I wanted to replace them with larger drives. If I put them back the system boots fine.

Basically I've done all the obvious things:

1. Made sure there is no removable media (stiffy, USB, CD/DVD, etc) in the server.

2. Checked that the BIOS detects the drive and is set to boot first - before CD or other device.

3. Booted with the OS install disk (load RAID driver from stiffy)and run a repair using the recovery console. I can log in to the installation normally.

4. Run chkdsk.

5. Run fixboot.

6. Run fixmbr.

7. Run bootcfg /rebuild and created a new boot.ini (I also copied ntldr and ntdetect to C:\)

I am stumped. I feel I am missing something. UltimateBootCD (one of my favourite tools) is of no use because it does not support the hp proliant ml150 embedded SATA RAID controller. 196.214.78.114 (talk) 13:03, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Windows7 Command line command to eject CDs and USB-drives ?

In the Windows7 GUI i have to right click on the device and choose "Eject".
How do I accomplish the same from the command prompt (C:\Users\My Username>_ ) ?
--46.15.204.16 (talk) 15:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

mountvol path /D, where path is the path at which the usb stick volume is mounted (which may be a UNC format path or just something like F:\). Just typing mountvol by itself lists all the mounts it can find. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:53, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

«Access is denied.» is the only result i get when i try: C:\Users\My Username>mountvol f:\ /D
…Which I find strage because my active user name shows up in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\User Accounts as: My Username,Administrator,Password protected.
(The current mountpoint F:\ is an optical drive which does appear in the list of current mount points.
And I get the same error message both with and withou any DVD in the drive.)
Any further ideas for what I might try?
--46.15.204.16 (talk) 18:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Your account is an administrator, but are you running the command with administrative permissions? With UAC on Windows Vista onwards it is unlikely you are unless you specified it. I don't think there's a simple way to request elevated privileges (at least for the same user) like there is for *nix with sudo [2]. If you are using a command prompt like cmd.exe or Power Shell, it's probably simplest to just start your command prompt with Administrative permissions (e.g. ctrl+shift before starting, right click and choose to run with administrator permissions) presuming you aren't concerned about that. Nil Einne (talk) 06:32, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both! :-)
--(OP) 46.15.66.100 (talk) 09:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Request unban on Google Groups

I am banned on one of the Google Groups. How to request the forum administrator to unban me? Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 16:08, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Home networking with phone lines

Dear Wikipedians:

My house has lots of telephone line (RJ11) jacks, almost one in every room. I was thinking of home networking my computers in different rooms with these jacks. I have done some preliminary research on the Internet and found out that a standards organization known as HomePNA has published standards enabling computers to communicate with each other over telephone lines. However, I was unable to find actual equipments (adapters, expansion cards) that does the actual networking on TigerDirect. I was wondering if any of you know where to I can find such equipments.

Many thanks.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/phone-network.htm

76.75.148.30 (talk) 16:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I take it that you're in Canada, so this Linksys stuff should work.[3] Compare it to the cost of WiFi first then get back and let us know either way. The benefit is that it will be harder for outsides to use snifters to capture your banking transactions etc.--Aspro (talk) 18:52, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. That is exactly what I was looking for! 74.15.97.233 (talk) 21:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Wii remote not pointed at screen, cursor still showing up on screen

Every so often, I have an issue with Netflix where I'm trying to watch a movie or show and the cursor for the Wii remote shows up on my screen which brings up the on-screen controls. Even though the remote is pointed away from the TV, the controls will sometimes pop up. When the problem gets too much to handle, I'll sometimes just remove the batteries from the remote but then I have to put them back in if I want to do anything like pause the movie. The issue isn't a problem with games and such since that's when you actually want the cursor to be on the screen. That's what is causing problems with my Google-fu. I keep finding results for problems with calibration and the cursor not showing up when it should. My issue is that it shows up when it shouldn't. I haven't noticed any correlation between the time of day or anything else.

Long story short, how can I convince the remote that it's not pointed at the TV? Dismas|^(talk) 18:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

If I remember my sister's Wii correctly, the remote has in infrared emitter and there is an infrared sensor we had to fit to the frame of the TV. While your Wii remote is facing away from the sensor, could the sensor be picking up stray infrared signal either bounced from the walls of your room or from another source, say the TV remote? The Wii Remote article has some details how the system works. Astronaut (talk) 19:59, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Astronaut has it exactly backwards, actually. The "Sensor Bar" that you put on your TV is the IR emmiter, and the wii-mote has an IR camera in the end.

But Astronaut has the right idea. I'll bet that the wii-mote is pointed at OTHER ir source. Possibly a candle, possibly, an incandescent light-bulb, or possibly a mirror that allows it to see the reflection of the "Sensor bar".

Next time you watch a movie on your wii, try to put the Wii-mote down so that the tip is pointed at something you're SURE isn't putting out IR. Or just cover it with something. APL (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

(EC, saying similar to APL)

No, that's backwards. The so-called "sensor bar" that you put on the TV is an IR emitter, and it's the Wiimote that "sees"/senses the light shining out from the bar. Then the Wiimote talks to the Wii base via bluetooth to tell it what it saw, etc.... (fun fact: you can unplug the "sensor bar", replace it with two tea candles, and everything will still work fine!) anyway, your idea still has merit: perhaps the wiimote is sensing other IR when the OP points it elsewhere? Also, clarification from the OP: does the problem occur with wiimote only, or do you have other bits and bobs plugged in? For example, if you have a "classic controller" plugged into the wiimote, you can use the sticks on the classic to move the pointer on screen, even if the wiimote is pointed elsewhere. In that instance, the pointer is supposed to stay on screen, even when the wiimote is pointed away. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! Yes, the emitters are in the bar on the TV and the receiver is in the Wiimote. And now that you mention the reflection idea, I think that's what it might be. There are framed photos on the opposite wall which is in the general direction that I had been pointing the Wiimote. Maybe next time I'll try putting something over the Wiimote. I wasn't aware that candles could be used instead of the IR bar on the TV though! That's pretty neat! Thanks again, Dismas|^(talk) 02:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

November 14

Subscripts

I have an old Windows XP PC. I'd like to see unicode U+2093 "_x", U+208A "₊", U+208B "_-". Any ideas? Regards --Chris.urs-o (talk) 11:22, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Which font has U+2093 "_x"? --Chris.urs-o (talk) 04:43, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Looks like when Internet was new

This morning a web page was slow to come up and it started out looking like web pages did when the Internet was new, with blue links. This is similar to what happened here, except thepage eventually changed to its the normal appearance. The explanation may be different from the one I was given before.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:03, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Or it might be the same as (or very similar to) my comment of 20:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC). If the whole style sheet hasn't yet arrived, the browser may attempt to display what it can; when the style sheet finally arrives, the browser may redraw the page with the correct styling. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:33, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I often get this effect, including on Wikipedia pages, because my internet connection is sometimes very slow. Dbfirs 15:57, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Online maps and aerial photographs

I'm trying to make a large, detailed map of an area by piecing together screenshots of online maps, but I can't find any that work. Google Earth is nice, but they've rendered the earth's curvature accurately enough that the edges don't line up properly, whilst both Google and Bing maps work properly in 2D, but I can't get the right level of detail. I'd like it to show county boundaries, but that's not an option. I'd like not to have brightly coloured roads everywhere, can't do that unless I remove all the place name labels as well...

Anyone know where I can find a good, high resolution satellite map style image, with the county boundaries and place names but no other markings?

213.104.128.16 (talk) 18:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Do u know these? OpenStreetMap Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop --Chris.urs-o (talk) 18:46, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

That Open Street Map looks interesting, but I have to admit I'm not overly fond of it, they've piled so many different labels and areas on that it's difficult to read with all the colours jumbled together, is there nothing where I can choose which layers of data to include or not? 213.104.128.16 (talk) 00:19, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you want to ask Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop or the german sister? I think they have the basic map without labels. Commons "Category:Maps of the world" is a nice collection too. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 04:48, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

As I said at the start, I can get a map without labels, or a map with all the labels, on google, what I want is a map with only some labels and not others. I don't suppose there's any way of exporting data from Google Earth without taking a screenshot? Something that can get a large area of map, a lot more than can be covered in just one screen? 213.104.128.16 (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Rammstein code

I have lately seen this image on Facebook and immediately got the joke: it's C++ keywords written so that they sound like Rammstein's Du hast. But I immediately also saw that this code won't compile. Now I got to thinking, is such a thing possible? Here's what I am thinking of:

• Every single line must sound like the corresponding line of Du hast. By "sounding like", I mean that at least the count of words, and the count of syllables within the words, must match. Individual vowel and consonant sounds aren't that important, to make this easier.
• Every single line must be compilable C and/or C++ code. To make this easier, each line needs only be compilable code by itself, the whole text need not be compilable.
• Punctuation marks are allowed where ever necessary. However, words must be C and/or C++ keywords, identifiers aren't allowed. (If they were, we could just as well borrow Rammstein's original German lyrics.) Numbers aren't allowed either.

I got as far as:

do

do { break;

do { break; if

But then I noticed that the second statement in the block would never be executed, and was unsure if C and/or C++ allow this.

So is this in any way possible? JIP | Talk 18:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, code structure that would never execute is allowed. That includes declaring functions without invoking them, conditional instuctions like

if( 0) { neverDone(); }

or

while( false) { neverDone(); }

skipping some code with return, break or goto. Modern compilers typically warn you when they find such inaccessible code, but that's not an error (unless you set a restrictive mode 'treat all warning as errors'). --CiaPan (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. In fact, that sample allowed me to go as far as:

while

while (true)

while (true) { break;

but then, I would need a two-syllable keyword, which can start a statement or a variable declaration, to sound like German gefragt ("have asked"). public or private would do, but neither is allowed inside the body of a function. JIP | Talk 18:52, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

How about while (true) { break; goto? I know the keyword goto must be followed by a label, and I said identifiers aren't allowed, so labels aren't allowed either, but then I did also say that each line only needs to be compilable by itself. Can the label be on a separate line? But after this line we run into trouble. The next line would have to sound like du hast mich gefragt und ich hab' nichts gesagt (ignore the apostrophe, it's only to mark colloquial German hab' instead of standard German habe, to make the word one syllable only), which would mean that goto would have to be followed by another keyword, which is not allowed. JIP | Talk 19:00, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

If I don't have any malware installed, why are open ports dangerous?

Why would a site with open port be vulnerable? You don't have to execute any package arriving at your ports. Why can't a web-site with open ports be perfectly protected from internet hackers? OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:23, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Having a port open means that the computer responds to messages that arrive on that port. (A port, in case you don't know, is really just a number that is encoded into a specific part of an internet packet -- it isn't a physical thing.) There is no difference between closing a port and not responding to messages on it. Looie496 (talk) 22:15, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but what makes it intrinsically unsafe to respond to messages? You don't have to execute as code anything arriving at your end. Indeed, the service listening to a port doesn't have to be able to do anything malicious (like deleting or updating your files). Why go to the extreme of not answering at all? OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:34, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Responding to a message tells the hacker that there is a program responding to that port. If the hacker knows of any security holes in that program that can be exploited to gain access to the machine or escalate privileges, you have a potential security problem. Sometimes just responding can cause a problem--if the response takes sizable computational or network resources, it is a potential target for a denial-of-service attack. So you are correct, responding is not intrinsically unsafe, but there are plenty of practical problems that could arise. Minimizing the number of open ports/responding services is an example of reducing the attack surface of a system and is generally a good idea. --Mark viking (talk) 23:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Accepting the message rather than just ignoring it completely with a closed port means that your system is doing some sort of work with the packet that comes in. That means you have one more piece of code that is doing something with network-originated traffic. Although just answering and not really doing anything should be safe, there is always the chance that there is some exploit in the network stack, your simple "do-nothing" code that is still at least doing a little bit, or somewhere else in the system that has to deal with that traffic. If you don't actually have a reason to let the traffic in in the first place, then it is safer to ignore it completely - otherwise you're increasing your system's attack surface (even if only slightly) in order to do something that has absolutely no purpose or benefit to you. Katie R (talk) 14:35, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Spending time responding to obviously junk packets is undesirable because it makes you more vulnerable to denial of service attacks. So you want to discard them as early as possible in the pipeline - preferably in your network router - before they even reach the server. I'd also suggest (without evidence) that leaving unused ports open suggests a poorly defended computer - and that may encourage the evil-doers to spend more time pushing your computer to look for vulnerabilities than if you gave the impression of running a tight ship by shutting down everything you don't need. On my web servers, I even go so far as to go in and delete every piece of Linux software and every library that's not needed to serve the purpose of serving web pages, lock down every port and so forth. SteveBaker (talk) 16:32, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

That's the same thing I do for the Windows Embedded Standard 7 systems that I work with - it is componentized, so I can only install the parts of Windows that are required for the software we install on the systems. (Number one customer complaint after I started working and migrated us to WES7: "what happened to solitaire?") The systems are for product-testing in industrial situations, and many will end up connected to networks but denied internet access, or in a facility that requires a long and expensive recertification procedure whenever something about the system changes, so we can't expect Windows Updates to be run on the systems (even though they can be done if a customer wants to). After the first year of shipping, I was able to go through the list of security patches released since we started shipping and demonstrate that each vulnerabilty on it did not affect our system because they affected components that were disabled, or would be stopped by our aggressive firewall settings. If it was running a normal Windows 7 install, there would have been all sorts of potential vulnerabilities without those updates and with the default firewall configuration. That's the value of reducing the attack surface by shutting off anything you don't actually need - a system that seems secure when you set it up can end up insecure due to flaws discovered in any of it's exposed components, and reducing the number of exposed components reduces the risk of a flaw being found. Katie R (talk) 20:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Allrovi down?

It seems that allrovi is down for a while, however, I fail to find any announcement about that. The [| Downforeveryone] site can confirm that it's not a problem on my end. I wonder if there is any way of getting feedback about what happened, or if all wiki links should be forwarded to allmovie. OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:29, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

November 15

Shutting down Win 7 without installing updates

In Windows Vista, when there were updates ready to install but it wasn't convenient to install them at that time, you used to be able to choose an option from the Start key that allowed you to shut down without installing updates.

In Windows 7, that's apparently gone. Windows Update has an option that says (approximately) "download updates but let me choose when to install them", but as far as I can tell, it doesn't actually work, which is unbelievably annoying. There's no way to predict how long the updates will take, and in the mean time, you can't reboot into Linux and use a decent OS. You certainly don't want to force-power-down the machine while updates are going on.

So I was thinking of the following crude workaround: When the Start key shows updates ready to install, if you don't want to install them yet, just close all apps, wait a little bit for any cached writes to be flushed to disk, and then press the power key and hold it for five seconds. Hopefully, that force-powers-down the machine before any updates can start, so it should be reasonably safe. Maybe it'll have to do a filesystem check the next time you start Windows, but that never seems to take *that* long.

Is this a reasonably safe workaround? Is there any risk that the updates will start before the machine can power down? --Trovatore (talk) 00:06, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know about your method, but this page has a few workarounds for Win7 to shut down without installing. --Mark viking (talk) 00:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much! I will try that next time. However, I am somewhat skeptical, because it says "You can also skip this problem entirely by changing Windows Update from automatic to manual", and as I noted above, that doesn't actually work. --Trovatore (talk) 00:34, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't answer the question but does solve the problem; disable updates altogether. 82.44.76.14 (talk) 00:35, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Trovatore, note that there is a difference between "download updates but let me choose when to install them" and "never check for updates" (ie you have to manually tell Windows to check for updates). I assure you that the latter does work (on my installation of Win7 Ultimate SP1). There's also "check ... but let me choose whether to download". Mitch Ames (talk) 09:29, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, that's probably true, but then what is "download updates but let me choose when to install them" supposed to mean, assuming it's not just a bug? Does it mean it won't make me install it as long as I don't shut down? That's a little silly if that's what it means. --Trovatore (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

On mine, a box pops up that says "Updates are ready to download", then I can check or uncheck the ones to install. I then must pick the "Install" button to start the install. If I log out, it doesn't do any updates. StuRat (talk) 05:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, ideally, though, I want them to download automatically; that's useful. I just want a way to shut down without installing, if it's not convenient to install at the time. Next time I'll try one of the methods from Mark viking's link and see if they work. --Trovatore (talk) 05:11, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

diff colors?

Several Unix utilities (notably ls) have in recent years acquired "colorized" versions. I'm pretty sure that diff is not one of them, although based on our article (specifically the Usage, Context format, and Unified format sections) one would be forgiven for getting the impression that it is. I assume that the colorizing there is for the benefit of the Wikipedia reader, but that it is not representative of the actual output of any mainstream version of diff (yet). But before I change the page to say that, I wanted to make sure by asking here. Anybody seen colorized diff output in the wild? —Steve Summit (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I can hardly reference my answer, but "no," I have not seen diff produce colorized output text; and I've worked on many different types of unix boxen. Almost all of the diff tools I've seen are directly GNU diffutils or a slightly tweaked derivative. Neither the source for the version I run on my machine, nor the source for the latest version from the FSF, (nor the source for the "diff" utility built into my subversion client) include ANSI control characters of the sort that are commonly used to colorize command line applications (in the spirit of LS_COLORS).

For clarity, I assume we are categorically excluding file comparison tools that use graphic interfaces, like Xcode's FileMerge and Perforce's version integrator utility. Those are not "diff-like" enough to call "diff." Nimur (talk) 01:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Hm... git help diff reveals that their utility does colorize! Evidently I haven't been reading the man pages lately... Nimur (talk) 01:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, whatever happened to that? You know, I saw a survey that said only 32% of adults had read a man page for pleasure in the last year. --Trovatore (talk) 21:16, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, pipe diff output through colordiff to get pretty colors. git diff, vim -d and emacs diff mode also have color options. --Mark viking (talk) 01:56, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

The colours in ls are usually the result of an alias set up by default on Linux installations. If you unalias ls the colours will go away. Astronaut (talk) 15:37, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

My PC prefers my neighbour's Wifi !

Hello Learned Ones ! Like most senior people around here, I moved from open country to downtown (winters ! ), & am puzzled at the great number of surrounding Wifi boxes my PC detects. Among others, my landing neighbour's, which is not protected by any WEP key and is always on, and to which my PC systematically prefers to connect itself when I open it. What issues may I expect if I let my PC connect itself to my neighbour's Wifi ? Does my neighbour detect my being a clandestine passenger on his Wifi ? Thanks a lot beforehand for your answers ( and best regards to Katie Ryan A if she is around) Arapaima (talk) 10:56, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Unless your neighbor is a little tech savvy, they will likely never know that you're using their WiFi. And due to the fact that you say you're in a city and their WiFi is unsecured, they probably aren't all that savvy. They would just need to scan the network, which is easy to do, to find that you're on it. Even then, it would just give your IP address and not anything like "Joe's computer". And there would be no way of telling if it was you or somebody on another floor of the building, next door, etc. I'm also assuming that you're not streaming video games and movies all day long as well. If you're just doing a normal amount of surfing and downloading, then they won't detect any decrease in speed. Dismas|^(talk) 11:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

It could also be a NSA Honeypot_(computing). It could also be a Bait_car. See paranoia.196.214.78.114 (talk) 13:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I just leave mine open all the time. At first I unscrewed the antenna when I was online on wire, but decided not to care. There are ways to use the router's firmware to find out how many are online, but I've forgotten how. I mean, I'm connected to the world Internet, right? What can happen locally is a trifling risk by comparison. My biggest security need is when banking online, and that's entirely by smartphone because the bank's Anroid app provides much better security than any Web page access can. So, a little common sense can give you enough armor without piling on so much that it hampers action. Standard Wi-Fi encryption methods are not a terribly heavy burden, but the protection they provide is even lighter, as are the dangers in that direction. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:54, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm a bit busy today and probably won't be able to get an answer for you, but if you let us know what operating system your computer is running, I'm sure someone around here will be able to track down some instructions for your particular setup. Katie R (talk) 14:28, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

If you have a Mac, do System Preferences -> Network, be sure your own WiFi connection is selected, then click 'Advanced' and you'll see a list of Preferred Networks. This list will probably have your neighbor's WiFi on it. Select the neighbor's network, hit '–' and then 'Apply' and from now on it shouldn't try to connect to that network unless deliberately chosen. On Windows 7, the corresponding settings are probably in Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Manage Wireless Networks. EdJohnston (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm puzzled that your computer would ever try to connect to a WiFi network without you telling it to. I've never seen that behavior - so I'm skeptical that this "just happened".

I should point out that using someone else's WiFi connection is illegal - and while it may seem like a victimless crime - that's far from being true. For one thing, you're slowing down their connection to the Internet - which is not a nice thing to do - but far, far worse, they may have a data connection that has bandwidth caps - so you might cause them to hit those caps when they otherwise wouldn't - which might deny them acceess to the Internet - or (most likely) result in them getting an outrageous bill for their usage.

These things are serious matters. I have sometimes agreed with neighbors to share my WiFi network with them (once for free because it was a little old lady who only wanted to see pictures of her grandkids online and post to Facebook - and once where the person agreed to pay me a small amount each month to help out with the cost). But if I found someone using my network without my prior agreement, I'd persue the matter most vigorously.

Furthermore - when you use someone else's WiFi, especially if it's unsecured, you're leaving your computer wide open to all sorts of malware and other nastiness. It's a common trick to leave open an unsecured WiFi connection and write software to scan data packets for credit card information, usernames and passwords sent to well-known banking and credit card sites, Amazon, PayPal and so forth.

Overall, this is a dangerous thing to do - so you need to prevent it from happening.

Another comment I have is about the number of nearby WiFi connections. It's not uncommon to have a dozen or more WiFi networks in range at any one time - and with that many of them, it's easy for your own to be continually competing for bandwidth with them. I use an Android app on my tablet called "WiFi Analyzer" that shows the amount of radio power being received from other WiFi sources nearby in a graphical form. If your WiFi router is on the same frequency as others nearby, it won't perform well. Fortunately, hardly anyone knows how to change that frequency - so most routers operate on whatever band they were shipped with. So it's worth looking to see which band is least used by your neighbors and to dig out the manual and figure out how to switch your router over to use it. I did that when I moved house recently and despite having more than a dozen neighbors in range, I now have a band all to myself. Things like Netflix work *so* much better having done that! I was also able to reposition my router to maximize the signal strength throughout the house using that same tool. I now make a point of checking for other new WiFi sources every few weeks so I can see if someone new moved in and muscled in on "my" band!

SteveBaker (talk) 16:23, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, a computer shouldn't auto-connect to a network that it has never previously been connected to, but once it has connected one time, it might well connect automatically on later occasions. Looie496 (talk) 17:49, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

That's certainly true - but why would you connect to a neighbor's network even once without permission? I suppose the best spin one could put on this would be if you'd connected to an open network that coincidentally had the exact same name sometime in the past...but even then, I'm not sure that the WiFi software on your computer would get confused. I'm pretty sure it can distinguish different networks with the same name - I've used two WiFi routers (with same name and password) in the same building before and had my software automatically pick the one with the best signal strength - and to do that, it has to see them as separate machines. SteveBaker (talk) 19:39, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, now, if your router is called 2WIRE573 and your neighbor's is 2WIRE381, honestly I could understand someone clicking on it by mistake. Who remembers these things? --Trovatore (talk) 22:42, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I've had similar things happen with networks that have the same name on my smartphone. The biggest examples are at McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts. Many of their locations have free wi-fi which my phone connects to automatically even at physical locations I've never been to. Dismas|^(talk) 21:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Portability of HID Keyboards & Mice.

I'm making a device (whose final development I plan to Kickstart sometime next week!) that behaves like a USB HID keyboard and mouse.

I know the device works great with Linux and Windows - and it should work with any computer/tablet/smart-phone that can use an external HID keyboard and/or mouse...however I'm unclear that all modern computers, tablets and smart-phones are able to do that.

Can anyone confirm for me that (at least):

• Apple computers
• iPad's
• iPhone's
• Android tablets & phones

...work OK with HID/USB keyboard and/or mouse.

I note (for example) that my Nexus 7 tablet supports Bluetooth keyboards - and I'm trying to get a hold of one of those special USB On-The-Go cables to try my HID "keyboard" to be sure that works...HOWEVER, I've noticed that hardly any software supports using a HID keyboard in games (eg using the arrow keys to move around instead of the touch-screen). This seems like just laziness on the part of the implementors.

I'm also interested to discover whether HID joysticks are widely supported and whether there are restrictions on what they can actually do.

Basically, anything you know about odd restrictions or limitations of HID keyboards and mice is valuable.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:03, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Original Google Nexus 7, Android 4.3 stock, no-name OTG cable off Amazon marketplace:

• keyboard: works okay in text applications like AK Notepad. Games (tried Metal Slug 3, Bladeslinger) ignore it.
• mouse: works okay in stock launcher (shows a mouse pointer as you'd expect); apps that expect touch events (Angry Birds Space, Contre Jour) work fine - I expect they're not distinguishing mouse and touch events. Bladeslinger (the only 3d shooter-type game I have on it) doesn't respond to mouse
• generic usb gamepad (usb ident as "Gioteck PS3"): nothing notices it
• Genuine Microsoft XBOX360 wired controller (Xinput): nothing notices it
• mass storage (flash memory stick): I use 3rd party app "Nexus Media Importer". Supposedly 4.4 and CyanogenMod can properly mount usb-mass-storage without apps like this.

My 2 year old HTC Desire S phone (android 2.3) does not support OTG. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:32, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

That kinda mirrors what I found with a Bluetooth keyboard - so probably they appear the same to applications. Thanks for such a comprehensive report! SteveBaker (talk) 19:34, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking at this report, a 360 controller works fine, it's just that many games don't think to look for it. The relevant section of the Android API shows, as you'd expect, that apps can enumerate the available devices, get their ids and capabilities, and get MotionEvents from them. But, as you've determined, OTG cables are rarely used and so games often don't support them. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 09:43, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

November 16

Google search with vertical bar in string

In Google can I do a web search with a string that contains a vertical bar, |? I mean I want to find pages which have the exact string between quotation marks "A|B" for example. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 05:27, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Google ignores most symbols, take a look at [4] and [5]. Moreover, Google uses the pipe for "or", see [6]. So, short answer, you can't. Symbolhound allows you to search with special characters (I don't know how many sites they have indexed, though), here's what they return [7].Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)