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April 11

Make your own movie by hacking

Is there such thing as putting a scene in a movie that you alreadly saw made by somebody —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.23.137.200 (talk) 02:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Comedy TV shows will often show a real scene followed by a fake one, for comic effect. StuRat (talk) 03:04, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

If you're asking how to do it you only need a movie editor program.--92.251.215.5 (talk) 11:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

...and also some way to capture the starting movie in an editable format. StuRat (talk) 12:19, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

You mean you want to make a fan edit? 66.127.52.47 (talk) 22:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes,Like can you put Lindsay Lohan in the Nutty Professor 2:The Klumps in a computer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.23.137.200 (talk) 22:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

When Industrial Light & Magic did this in the movie Forrest Gump, putting Tom Hanks in pre-existing film clips of people like John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, it was the state of the art in CGI. It is now 16 years later and is easier to do because the tools have gotten better; if Lohan participated in the effort and posed and spoke her lines, you could do it, if you had millions of dollars, yes. Without her cooperation, you could do it with further millions of dollars by creating the highest-resolution possible textured model of Lohan, and you'd mocap an actress to do the animation of Lohan walking around and saying her lines. She would not look perfect. She would look OK. Her face in particular would look more plastic and unconvincing than Lohan's actual face, because of the uncanny valley effect. Possibly the hardest problem, though, would be her voice. You can't synth another person's voice this decade with a computer and have it sound convincing. You would have to hire a soundalike imitator actress. So, the short answer is, "Yes, with many millions of dollars and a couple of years' work." Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you are exaggerating the cost. With digital editing, it does not cost "millions of dollars" to do compositing. Depending on the source material and the destination material, it can take a lot of TIME, to be sure, but even then it's hard for me to imagine it taking a million dollars worth of man-hours. It is not trivially easy to do this well but it is not even close to being that labor or technology intensive. You can accomplish this with off-the-shelf software these days. There are lots of YouTube examples of this—e.g. this one overwrites characters from Law Abiding Citizen with characters from Team Fortress 2. Tough work to pull off, but not millions of dollars worth of tough work... kids do things like this as their final project in film school all the time. (Though, of course, maybe trying to scale that up to feature-film length would be pretty time intensive. But my point is that this is not just "only film companies can do it" technology anymore.) --Mr.98 (talk) 12:59, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Awesome Team Fortress clip. I would assert again it'd take millions of dollars to insert a live-action actor into a live-action feature film. Assuming we are talking about a lead role or something and not a cameo. Time is money, and I don't think we want to get into time<->money conversion rates. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

To see this taken to the extreme, watch the comedy spoof Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. The entire movie is an old Chinese film into which Steve Oedekerk added himself, re-dubbed the entire original dialog and basically turned it into something of a cult classic. The "See also" at the end of the aticle has more examples. Zunaid 12:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

c program

please suggest to build this program: There is a book stall where 5 different books present in 5 different bookshelf .1st book in A,2nd book in B,3rd book in C, 4th book in D, 5th book in E.the MRP of books are Rs.50.00, Rs.60.00, Rs.80.00, Rs.100.00, Rs.120.00 respectively.Write a c program in terbo c to calculate following :

1) If I input names of book and each quantities then calculate the total amount to perches and print it

and also print in which bookshelf it stored.Supriyochowdhury (talk) 05:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like Turbo C homework, but I can give you some general ideas:

1) You'll want arrays of 5 book names, 5 shelf names, and 5 prices, all in corresponding order. (You could skip the shelf names, technically, if they are A-E, in ASCII order, but the array makes the program simpler and more flexible.)

2) Recognizing the name of a book to purchase will be the hardest part. You may want to convert the name to upper or lowercase and do the same for the typed name when comparing. It's also important to limit the comparison of the strings to the length of the book names, as random characters may exist past that point. Typos and leaving off words like "the" will still be a problem, though, so presenting a menu which lists all 5 and has the user type in a number is safer, if allowed. StuRat (talk) 12:03, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

My 1440x900 has decided it's a 1280x720

Resolved

I use a monitor with a resolution of 1440x900, and it has always worked fine up to now, but this morning I turned it on and it's stuck at 1280x720, in the middle of the screen, with huge empty black areas at each side. I'm using windows 7 with an ATI Radeon HD 3650, when I go into display settings 1440x900 is no longer available. Something about the aspect ratio get changed? How can I fix this?--92.251.215.5 (talk) 11:19, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Have you tried a reboot ? Have you tried changing the color depth and refresh rate ? (Some resolutions are only supported at certain color depths and refresh rates.) StuRat (talk) 11:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah i tried both of those before I finlly fixed it.--92.251.143.238 (talk) 19:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Aha using CCC I managed to detect a new monitor (my current and only one oddly enough), and then force it to 1440x900, problem apparently fixed.--92.251.215.5 (talk) 11:44, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Gmail in Mail (Mac)

Resolved

In Mail I have configured it to work with my Gmail account. It works OK, but how can I get rid of the 'Gmail' folders that have duplicated the 'inbox', 'outbox' etc...basically it has it's own section on the left at the bottom and I want to remove it. This screenshot should help but I was thinking maybe there's other Mail users out there who have also set up their Gmail accounts to work with Mail and so have experienced this as well. Chevymontecarlo. 12:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

VB v6, Excel reference and components, server-side program

I have a copy of VB v6 with Excel and FrontPage references and components. The New Project screen in VB shows a bunch of Active X and IIS Application wizards and the server is FrontPage enabled and also runs ASP pages. With these resources it seems that I should be able to use a client side form and script to send data to a server side copy of Excel and get a web page spreadsheet returned with the processed data. Is there a Wikipedia reference I can consult that will help me do this? 71.100.3.207 (talk) 14:25, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Before trying to help you find information on using these technologies, I would like to point out that if your only goal is to build a form that submits data to a server, processes it server-side, and returns a web page in a spreadsheet format with the data, there are many, many, many better ways to do it. If you are really certain that you need to use all of those systems, others may be able to give further advice. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 18:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Exactly how are those better? He's already set up his server to run ASP. He's already learned VB. Now you want him to learn those languages and set up his server to run them. Why? He's using a server, a scripting language (VBScript) and an IDE (VB6). That's quite a lot of "systems" for you?--Chmod 777 (talk) 19:09, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

This link may help: [1]. This article is less relevant, but may still help: [2].--Chmod 777 (talk) 19:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

"Floating server"

What is a "floating server"? I tried searching but there doesn't seem to be an article on them 82.44.54.83 (talk) 19:52, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

That is not a specific name for a specific item. You need more information to get a definition. Where did you hear the term "floating server"? If we know where you heard it, we may be able to tell you what it means in that context. Without context, it could refer to a lot of things - including computers designed to float in the middle of the ocean. -- kainaw™ 22:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

It was on Stargate SG-1 episode "Chain Reaction". Maybourne said the NID delivered orders to it's cells via encrypted newsgroups hosted on "floating servers" 82.44.54.83 (talk) 22:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

It's technobabble, then; it's something they made up to make it sound plausible. Now, they didn't actually need to make anything up, it's perfectly possible to use public key cryptography to ensure that no one aside from the intended recipient knows what you're talking about. In the context, it sounds somewhat like a real-life botnet. Paul (Stansifer) 02:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like they mean that the address of the servers change constantly so tracing traffic through them or tracking down the owners is impossible. It is possible to mimic that sort of behaviour, but using a "server" for it is silly. You'd use a laptop and drive from one wireless connection to another - some people do that. Those doing real illegal stuff don't bother. They just send emails out to millions of people (for free) with attachments that ignorant fools open. Then, they use those computers to do illegal work and send out more emails to more ignorant fools. -- kainaw™ 02:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

[I am revising the section heading from Question to "Floating server". See WP:TPOC, "Section headings".
-- Wavelength (talk) 03:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)]

Adobe Reader

Hi, I'm trying to read a form on Google Chrome, and an Adobe Reader warning popped up saying something about "Compadibility" and I clicked "Don't Show Message Again." Well, I NEED to see this message again, because now the form won't open at all. I really need to fill out the form, so can anyone tell me how to open that Adobe Reader pop up again? Moptopstyle1 ("I Feel Fine.") (talk) 20:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you be a bit more specific on what it said about compatibility? It may be possible that you are running an older version of Reader than the document is stored in; you can download the most recent version here. Intelligentsium 23:51, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I actually didn't read the whole thing, I just read the word Compadibilty, but I think you're probably right about the whole "Older version" thing. I'll download the new version and see if that helps! Thank you Sir!:) Moptopstyle1 ("I Feel Fine.") (talk) 01:41, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I downloaded the new version of Adobe, but it still will not open the form I want. It opens Adobe, but the form is not displayed? Now what? Moptopstyle1 ("I Feel Fine.") (talk) 04:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

April 12

Touchscreen technology and human health

Touchscreen#Capacitive (permanent link here) says the following.

As the human body is also a conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the body's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance.

Does use of touchscreen technology pose a risk to human health? -- Wavelength (talk) 03:51, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Touching anything results in a distortion of the body's electrostatic field. I don't think it can possibly have any effect on health except in the obvious case of very high fields. Even several million electrostatic volts from a Van der Graaf generator is usually considered harmless. Dbfirs 07:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

You probably meant the Van de Graaff generator though ;) --Ouro (blah blah) 08:38, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

... oops! So I did! I missed off the second "f" and saw it was a red link, so my subconscious must have thought of the band and made the wrong correction. Thank you. Dbfirs 13:34, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I examined http://www.touchscreenguide.com/index.html without finding an answer. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Whats the best website where i can learn Javascript language fully?

Im making my website but ive seen that there is many ccool things i can do with javascript not only with my html knowlege, so i decided to learn javascript, ive been trying to find normal Site where i can learn javascript, but i havent found any, so can any1 help me please?

check out my works: www.aodgx-club.ucoz.org and my newest www.godzilla.ucoz.co.uk what is made specially for my aliance, so if u have any advice say it nopw ;)

I don't think you can expect to learn any modern mainstream programming language fully, unless you design it (and even then it's unlikely, given the process that makes it mainstream). I found http://www.quirksmode.org/, http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning, http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/script and http://www.w3.org/DOM/faq.html useful. None of them is about JavaScript alone, though. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Douglas Crockford's book JavaScript: The Good Part is very good. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 09:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually there's more than one good part :) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I have some advice which I will say now. First, your website does not explain its purpose very succinctly; you might want to put a quick summary to explain the website and its purpose. From what I gather, it's an enthusiasts website for a videogame or role-playing game, but your main page should specify. You don't need javascript to do this; it is just proper website design to explain your purpose. Nimur (talk) 17:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

non profit association / donations

Hello, I wonder if you can help me. I am a trustee of a non-profit organisation (not a charity) based in the UK. We are currently trying to set something up in order to receive donations online from people who wish to donate to the organisation. However, all the sites I have looked at (such as justgiving.com, etc) seem to be aimed around charities rather than non-profit organisations. We are very short of funds and cannot afford to do very much that will cost us money. It seems like justgiving and others rely on taking a 5% cut of gift aid on donations. Does anyone know if there is a site which can deal with donations to a non-profit organisation, or a v. cheap / free way of setting up a donation box on our wordpress site?

Many thanks, Handy2010 (talk) 10:06, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Paypal has a scheme for accepting non-profit donations - see here. Their partner MissionFish has a scheme for registered charities and exempt organisations (as variously defined in complicated ways) - it's here, but I don't think it covers non-charity nonprofits. You can always ask them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 10:17, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Paypal charges 2.2% + $0.30 per-transaction for nonprofits, assuming that the transaction volume isn't huge. I believe that that's about as low as the fees can get, unfortunately, because it mostly reflects the credit card fees. (according to interchange fee, it averages out at 2%). I thought that Amazon FPS might be cheaper, if harder to implement, but it turns out that I was wrong, unless a heck of a lot of people transfer from their bank accounts directly. Paul (Stansifer) 12:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

In one of the previous WMF fundraisers it was claimed Moneybookers fees were generally lower then PayPal. I don't know if this is still the case, a quick search suggests it's somewhat complicated so I didn't bother to compare it myself and I couldn't find any specific rates for non profits. It seems Moneybookers does tend to put more of the fees on the sender. I believe Moneybookers is also more focused on the European market and is a UK regulated company, whereas PayPal has a more of an international focus and PayPal's European operations are regulated as Luxembourg bank. I believe PayPal does allow people with a credit card to make payments without an account. Of course you could offer more then one option.

BTW note that the rates you are quoting are "To be eligible, you must have documented 501(c)(3) status or you will not receive the reduced nonprofit transaction fees". Since we're discussing a UK based non profit, it seems unlikely they will be registed in the US. The fees for UK registered charities are here [3] (1.4% + 20p) however since the OP specifically said the organisation is not a charity, it seems unlikely they will qualify.

Interesting enough, Google has no fees until 2011 at least for non profits who are also part of their Google Grants program [4] however it appears to only be valid for US registered non profits [5] even though they do have a Google Grants program in the UK [6]. There's also a Youtube linked program [7] which again is apparely offered in the UK however it simply uses Google checkout so I presume again has nothing extra for UK registered charities let alone non profits.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Those of us who use e-banking might be happy to make donations directly from our own bank accounts to yours if you publish your bank details. Obviously, it would be wise to set up an account that accepts only in-payments. For those without e-banking you could provide bank credit slips. You might be no better off if your bank charges you for setting up or for in-payments. Dbfirs 20:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there something like snapshot.debian.org for Ubuntu releases?

Hi, Debian recently started to offer a snapshot service at http://snapshot.debian.org/ - making a local mirror for large-scale, tested patch roll-outs obsolete. Is there a similar service for Ubuntu, and if not, are there plans to implement this in the near future? -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 11:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thoes Small Icons What Are In Line With The Title

this is also on the Miscellaneous page

like on protected, spoken and featured pages

when mediawiki:sitenotice is being used, they stay in line with the title

on my wiki, they dont stay in line (see here)

iv coppied

• Common.js
• Monobook.js
• Common.css
• Monobook.css

to my wiki but it just wont do it, i dont want to use "demospace" because i want to use my own custom icons

how do i get it to work?

-Sghfdhdfghdfgfd (talk) 12:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It's being transluced from a template. You need to copy the template and any translutions the template uses for it to work. 82.44.54.83 (talk) 12:56, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Disappearing Ink(jet)

Hi Refdeskers, I bought an HP Inkjet printer last fall. I've barely used it since then, maybe 20 pages or so, and those mostly black. However, lately I've been getting these "Ink Alert"s popping up, and sure enough, when I check the ink status, its been dropping steadily since I bought it, and pages I print now do in fact back up that the ink has run out. Is this a normal think for inkjets to do? Where does all that ink go?

See this link, which claims that the ink cartridge that came with your printer probably has a "G" at the end of the cartridge number, meaning HP skimped on their quality by shipping you a "starter cartridge" containing about half the normal amount of ink. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, thats a bit of a chapper, isn't it? Even still, given my minimal use of the printer, would the ink level just decline over time like this?

The only place it would go is if it were dripping out of the bottom of the cartridge — take a look inside the printer underneath the cartridge(s) to see if there's any leak. (Personally, I don't remember ever seeing an ink cartridge leak that was not caused by me in some way.) If not then I guess HP gave you an even lower amount of ink than is discussed in the article. I would expect that would be the problem, and would expect that the sensor system for detecting the ink level is just pretty inaccurate. Sorry! Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:34, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Wait a minute, there's more. Someone smarter than I will have to elaborate on this point, but I recently opened an ~8 year old factory-sealed box with a brand "new" HP color ink cartridge in it. It refused to print anything. No ink came out. The ink doesn't just evaporate or disappear, so I assumed that it had congealed / solidified within the cartridge or something. Since you were able to print with your cartridge, this was probably not what occurred to you, but I mention it as a possibility. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:38, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe a typical ink cartridge contains a sponge full of ink. It's not perfectly sealed, so the liquid portion slowly evaporates and the solid portion plugs up the sponge. Considering how freaking much they charge for ink cartridges, they sure are junk. StuRat (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Current HP starter cartridges contain only about 20 pages-worth of ink (depending on page density, of course). This forces the user to pay the extortionate price for a new cartridge soon after the purchase of the printer. Many retailers in the UK warn the purchaser about this and use it to sell replacement cartridges (on which they make much more profit) along with the printer. From personal experience, I suspect that HP also sabotage the starter cartridge to cause problems if an attempt is made to refill it! Dbfirs 21:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The inkjet article and in particular the Inkjet head design and following sections all provide some possible explanations for what you have experienced here. In my experience, inkjet printers are sold at remarkably low prices, yet replacement ink is incredibly expensive (so much so, it seems almost worthwhile buying a new printer each time the ink runs out). On the other hand, I have used the same laserjet printer for over ten years and never replaced the cartridge - there is little sign of it wearing out even after some thousands of pages. Astronaut (talk) 11:58, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a 14-year-old laserjet printer that is still printing, but it has used many toner cartridges (and refills). I seem to get only a couple of thousand pages at the most. You must have a magic cartridge, Astronaut! (or possibly you print low-density pages) Dbfirs 20:02, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Inkjet printers also have warm-up and head-cleaning routines that waste a surprising amount of ink. (I don't know exactly how the HP ones work, but the Epson ones have a little sponge to the side of the paper track that the print heads squirt ink into to flush out any gunk in the print heads.) APL (talk) 15:46, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The old cartridge mentioned above that would not print might be due to it being deliberately time-limited. I refill black ink cartridges - after much practise I can now do it quickly and without getting ink everywhere. 89.240.34.241 (talk) 22:43, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, some cartridges have an inbuilt chip, but I don't think it stores the time. (I was wrong - see below - it can store dates.) How would it know the current time unless it asks your computer? (and you could tell it lies). I agree that refilling saves much cash, but sometimes print quality deteriorates. Dbfirs 01:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I doubt if the chip kills it, but it may be designed to clog with dried up ink after a certain time period. Just normal evaporation will do that, provided they "accidentally" forget to seal the cartridge properly. Planned obsolescence rears it's ugly (printer) head again. StuRat (talk) 03:43, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually some catridges do expire [8] [9]. While not something the manufacturers yell and scream about, these things aren't big secrets and the error message you get will always tell you the catridges has expired AFAIK. They can get the time from the computer but those which expire the catridges also often have an internal battery backup clock [10]. As you may notice that's mostly HP. Epson catridges don't expire by date, but they do monitor the ink levels (well so does HP) and will sometimes/usually? completely refuse to print if the ink is out or the catridges are refilled (although some companies have designed resetters although I believe you have to reset before the ink runs out otherwise it might not be possible). Canon catridges also monitor the ink levels but they will generally print if the ink is out or the catridges refilled if you overide the monitoring (which is recorded in the printer EEPROM and may create warranty issues). (As with the rest, Canon won't work if the catridges don't have the chips at all.) In all cases although some may be worse then others, the ink monitoring isn't that great and some tests have shown upto 50% wastage or something IIRC.

Incidentally HP and Epson in particular also seem to more vigiriously pursue manufacturers of alternative catridges and chips. Oh and from memory all of them also have region coding for some of their catridges and printers. I've discussed some of this before with more references if anyone is interested.

Nil Einne (talk) 06:00, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct (again)! I'd forgotten that modern printers have processors with backup batteries. Dbfirs 08:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The solution may be to buy an old second-hand printer that uses simple cartridges - which is what I do. 89.242.91.98 (talk) 10:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Config file keeps "vanishing"

Is there anything which would cause a WinXP computer to lose track of its system configuration file, and what can be done to correct it? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 20:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

To clarify: I have both Pro and Home editions on my rig. Whenevcer I try the Professional one, I get a warning message that it can't find the system config file, and if I try the Home edition it can't find my C: drive. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 20:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

What's the exact text of the message, and when does it appear? —Korath (Talk) 21:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears whenever I try to boot. For Pro, it's "The system cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original CD-ROM. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair."

For Home, it reads "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information." —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 22:07, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The first looks like a corrupt registry. This should allow you to boot, at least. —Korath (Talk) 23:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

That's a no-go on this rig since I turned off System Restore. Any other suggestions? (As an aside, I'm able to load it using a boot disc, and will be moving my essential files off of it tonight so that I can reformat and reinstall.) —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 03:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Just a guess, but could the two keep the config files in different places in an otherwise shared directory structure ? StuRat (talk) 22:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Benchmarking AWB's typo fixing

I'm interested in quantifying the processor use / run time of AWB Typo rules. Really this is an attempt to see if we need to be more cautious about rules that aren't used much in practice for the sake of increasing speeds. Ideally I'd like to be able to say that "rule x adds y milliseconds to each 1,000 characters of page processing" or something like that.

AWB uses the .net implementation of regex libraries, and there may be other overhead in there for the plugin too. Obviously different expressions will have different time, and the word's they're checking will vary. I'm just looking for some general idea about how to benchmark these with some precision. Shadowjams (talk) 23:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Not to side-step the issue, but I'd be very surprised if the bottleneck wasn't the data transfer (over the 'net) rather than any processing. 94.168.184.16 (talk) 11:31, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Not really. I'm asking only about the length of time it takes to process a page, not the whole experience of AWB scanning. But even if you include the AWB scanning time, for longer pages (even moderately longer), the processing takes a significant amount of time... perhaps longer than the download. That's mostly because the download is pure gzipped text and it's done through the API. Even a large page is at most a few 100k.

This is even more significant if the selection of the page is sometimes done intelligently... after scanning a database dump offline, or perhaps at random, or from a selection of pages from a category or new, etc. There are over 3,000 AWB typo rules and the processing on a long page can take a few seconds on my machine (not cutting edge, but not too old). Shadowjams (talk) 00:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Excel to VBA to VBScript

Excel macros are written in VBA so thee must be a way to convert a simple spreadsheet entirely to VBA and then to VBScript. Where can I find a reference to doing it? 71.100.3.207 (talk) 23:03, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Your logic is faulty. Excel macros are indeed written in VBA, but the behaviour of Worksheets (calculation of formulas etc) and other objects is not. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

April 13

Traveling salesman problem and taxicab geometry

How does the complexity of the traveling salesman problem change if the distances are determined by 2-dimensional taxicab geometry and constrained to have at least one integer coordinate (meaning they must be on "streets" but not necessarily at intersections? NeonMerlin 04:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Travelling_salesman_problem#With_metric_distances says that the Manhattan metric case is still NP-complete. I don't see how the constraint to have one integer coordinate changes this - as far as I know, you can specify the TSP on integers to begin with. Going from any rational TSP to an integer variant is just scaling, and computers (even abstract ones) don't do really real numbers, anyways. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:40, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Windows XP Pro doesn't boot

On boot, the computer would hang on the screen with the Windows logo and the running bar beneath. Boots fine if I press F8 and choose Last Known Good. How do I fix it so I don't have to press F8 each time? (Tried system restore, doesn't work. Can't reinstall because it is in French and I don't have the CD.)F (talk) 06:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You need to reinstall. Contact your computer manufacturer and ask for a copy of the CD. Or try Microsoft. Ale_Jrb^talk 13:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I used to have a similar problem. It was eventually cured by disabling a defective graphics driver. You can get XP to show you what is loading when it starts up. As far as I recall mine used to hang after it had loaded mump.sys (or some similar name). Mump.sys was working OK, it was what it did next that was the problem. Unfortunately XP does not tell you what is happening at that point. Try restarting it in Safe Mode. If it loads up in Safe Mode, then something it is loading in ordinary mode is the problem. 89.240.34.241 (talk) 22:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

information technology

Electronic Commerce enables an organization to operate in the areas much beyond their physical relation” Elaborate

WP:HOMEWORK. That said, you might appreciate the article on electronic commerce. Dismas|^(talk) 10:48, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Question about editing PHP and javascript files

I'm a programming novice. I made some small fixes to the sidebar in my website, using the following method. I feel like there must be a more efficient method, and I am wondering if you can suggest one, for the next time I need to do so.

The main challenge was FINDING the file that contains the sidebar. To do so, I first went to one of the pages on which the sidebar appears, and used the "inspect element" tool in firebug to find some identifying feature of the sidebar. In this case, it contained an identifying number, #######. Then, I downloaded the page in Filezilla and searched for " #######" in the original PHP file. In one of the locations where ####### appears, I saw the name of a javascript file. I downloaded that file, and, hallejuah, it is the place where the sidebar is stored. (For confidentiality, I won't provide the file name, but I did a google search and can tell you that it bears a generic resemblance to this file). Is there a more efficient method to locate the file that contains the sidebar?

The next challenge was editing that file. Is there a more efficient method than downloading the file in Filezilla, editing the text in Mac OS "Text edit", and uploading it again? JD Caselaw (talk) 12:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

1. No, sorry, there isn't really a better way. Why not? Because there are about a million different places that could be stored, depending on how the website was set up. If one knew that the site was set up in a predictable way (e.g. it was a WordPress site and was set up like most generic WordPress sites are), then you could say, "Oh, this kind of site always keeps its data here." But if not, then you have to either go through the code (which won't be very helpful if you aren't experienced in reading code and know how Javascript/CSS/HTML/PHP files transclude content), or, as you did, find something that will search through all the files for the right text. So I would say you're doing it pretty efficiently for someone with your professed novice ability.

2. Basically all file editing is a version of what you are describing—get content, edit it, upload it again. There are programs that can automate some of that. I think TextWrangler can let you directly save to an FTP server, skipping some of the laborious bits. It's also a more full-featured text editor than Text edit (and is free). There are other methods that are similar that are available, but they're all of the same nature. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It depeneds entirely on who wrote the code for the site - quite frankly, they could have put anything, anywhere they wanted. If there isn't any documentation, and you can't ask the person that wrote it, then there isn't any magic way to find it.

With regards to editing a site, do you not have a local copy of the files? You should do. You can then perform any 'find/replace' etc. and editing on your local copy, then just upload any changed files to the server. This helps if you have to change server, or if your host goes down etc. Ale_Jrb^talk 13:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That is indeed how one would generally maintain one's PHP website. Strictly, if one wanted to be safe, one would have a locally-hosted copy (running off a local apache or whatever) that one would use for experimentation and development and would then push changes back to the live site only when confident that they're okay. There's no substitute for understanding one's codebase, and while PHP is perhaps more amenable to tinkering that other web development systems, it's still a complete programming language, with the capabilities, and risks, that brings. Navigating the sourcebase (of your local copy) will probably be a bit easier if you use an Integrated Development Environment which is PHP aware - this article compares the PHP features of several IDEs. Incidentally you're right to hate FTP, not just because it is clunky but because it is insecure; see if your web host supports SSH instead, and if it does use WinSCP edit: an SSH/SCP client to move your files to the site. If you end up doing a lot of development, you'll probably have a "publish" script that automatically pushes changes from your development copy to your live site (using something like rsync over ssh). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Although if you are just worried about security, you could use FTPS if it's supported (which may or may not be more likely then SSH) Nil Einne (talk) 16:54, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone!!! 207.237.228.236 (talk) 20:30, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

If you have shell access to the server and it is a Linux or Unix server... Once you knew the number (lets say it was 12345), you could quickly find which file(s) contain that by typing at the command prompt grep 12345 and pressing enter. You'd see a list of which files match the string and what the line that matches looks like. -- kainaw™ 04:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Opera Mini proxy for other browsers?

Opera Mini uses Opera servers as a proxy to render web pages into a faster format (see here). Would it be possible to make a plugin for another browser (say, Mozilla Firefox) that can utilize this same functionality too? The main benefits would be speed (if you are on a slow connection) and anonymity (because of the proxy). Now, I know that I can already run Opera Mini directly on my PC using a Java ME emulator, like MicroEmulator; but having to use the phone interface is awkward and inconvenient. I want to be able to use the typical Firefox buttons and keyboard shortcuts and bookmarks and stuff, but have the browsing done through the Opera Mini protocol. Has anyone done anything like this? It would be kind of analogous to when one uses a third-party instant messenger client instead of the official AIM, MSN, Yahoo, or whatever clients. Thanks, --169.232.246.47 (talk) 19:58, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

This would be difficult to accomplish because as far as I know, only Opera (the company) knows how their special markup language works. This could be reverse engineered, but it is also far more complicated than a simple IM protocol. Most third party IM clients only support text chat and a few basic "extra" functions for protocols that are not open source. These protocols can change at any time and if Opera Mini's rendering engine, markup language, or any component necessary to display a web page were to change, the plugin would no longer work. You see this with the multi-protocol IM clients from time to time, and I could only imagine that it would be worse with Opera Mini. It could be done, but I'm not surprised that no one has put the effort into doing it. Caltsar (talk) 20:24, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Much of the speedup is to be had by downsizing images and removing content that's not appropriate for the small-footprint environment (like java applets or flash). Some of this can be achieved with a web accelerator, which has the advantage of retaining the normal web protocols and file formats while reducing bandwidth (and, depending on the context, maybe latency). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I know in the past (don't know if they still do, perhaps it's on by default but you can disable it) Vodafone NZ use to do the downsizing images and perhaps other things when browsing through a mobile Nil Einne (talk) 23:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

XP Pro SP2 Blue screen

Windows XP on start up blue screens with: "BAD_POOL_CALLER" Tech Info: " ***STOP: 0x000000c2 (0x00000040, 0x00000000, 0x80000000, 0x00000000". Safe modes OK. Restore point to: -30 days no help. Any pointers before a reload of the OS? 70.177.189.205 (talk) 23:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Prior to it going sour, did you notice your PC behave in any unusual manner? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 04:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, At Windows logon, upon logging on, it would say "Loading" and then bounce back to Windows logon.70.177.189.205 (talk) 10:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Did this start to happen after you installed a particular program/hardware/update? It could be a driver problem. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:25, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

If you are being logged out instantly it is usually due to a bad profile. Try logging in under a different user, or go into safe mode and try to log into the Administrator account.

April 14

Setting up an external image editor

I need to change the background of many images from here and would like to use (Windows) IrfanView as the external image editor. Studied the Mediawiki installation instructions extensively, but something is missing. Selected the default external editor on My Preferences, and added this to my monobook.js on the Commons:

 addOnloadHook(function() {
    var editTab = document.getElementById("ca-edit");
    if (!editTab) return;
    var editURL = editTab.getElementsByTagName("a")[0].href;
    addPortletLink("p-cactions", editURL + "&externaledit=true", "EE", "ca-exted", "External editor", "");
 });
 

Whenever I try to edit an image like this, I get the following (index.php) in my text editor and no image.

[Process]
Type=Edit text
Engine=MediaWiki
Script=http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php
Server=http://commons.wikimedia.org
Path=/w
Special namespace=Special


[File]
Extension=wiki
URL=http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:TPSMV1P112.jpg&action=edit&internaledit=true

I am using FF 3.6.3 on Win XP SP3 and frankly, I am lost. Can someone help me through this? Ineuw talk page on en.ws 00:33, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Latex: 2 Questions

1. How can I force headers, footers and pagenumbers to be displayed on chapter title pages? I'm using report document class and fancyhdr package. I've tried putting \pagestyle{fancy} before and after \chapter{XX}
2. How can I stop toc and tofigures pages from displaying pagenumbers? I've tried putting \pagestyle{empty} before and after \tableofcontents.

59.93.41.156 (talk) 03:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a LaTeX user myself, but a friend of mine suggested checking out http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/fancyhdr/fancyhdr.pdf for your first issue, while the second one can be solved with

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead[L]{}
\fancyhead[R]{}
\fancyhead[C]{}
\fancyfoot[L]{}
\fancyfoot[R]{}
\fancyfoot[C]{}

(according to her, that is). -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Disown child processes without forking

In POSIX, is there any way for a parent process to disown its children without changing its own pid (as happens if we fork and continue only as the child), or to disown some of its children but not all? NeonMerlin 03:10, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

No. --Sean 16:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Python: Filtering with inequalities

In Python, is there a way to use "filter" with an inequality as the function? More specifically, is there a (very brief) way to use "filter" to pluck, for example, all items less than 5 out of a list? --Lucas Brown 03:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The lambda keyword is probably as brief as it can get:

newlist = filter(lambda x: x<5, oldlist)

98.226.122.10 (talk) 04:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Why didn't I think of that? Anyway, that should do nicely--thanks! --Lucas Brown 19:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Python has list comprehensions --194.197.235.240 (talk) 06:00, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

...thus: newlist = [x for x in oldlist if x < 5]. Filter is fine if you have a pre-built (and possibly complex) test function, but I think list comprehensions are easier to construct and more intuitive for simple comparisons. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:30, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm doing stuff with time comparisons, and I've already implemented the process with list comprehensions. --Lucas Brown 19:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Can using a laptop on a bumpy road damage it?

My company-issued laptop's hard disk failed this morning. It's a brand known for low-quality and correlation does not imply causation, but still I wonder: these past 2 months I've been using it for programming during the 30 minute company bus rides to and from work. The roads around here are awful, and it's a steady stream of bumps and jitters. How resistant are today's laptops to this sort of thing? It's certainly not a normal working environment, but it's not so bumpy as to prevent me from being productive... 59.46.38.107 (talk) 06:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I certainly would prefer a solid state drive for that application. StuRat (talk) 06:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

This is the sort of thing that probably affects the mean time to failure; so if you ran hundreds of test cases with laptops in a bus and compared the failure rate to laptops not used in a bumpy bus, you'd probably notice a trend. The extent to which that trend decreases the expected lifetime for a single laptop depends on how severe the mechanical stresses from the bumps are, but it is a real and known effect that shaking reduces the lifetime of a hard-disk drive and increases the chance of catastrophic failure. If you know the laptop make and model, or the hard-disk type, we might be able to dig up some mechanical stress test reports. Also, as StuRat has suggested, a solid-state drive is less likely to fail because of mechanical jostling - and many laptop hard-drives can be replaced with SSDs, so this may be an option if you're concerned. After hard-disks, the next most likely mechanical failure trouble spot for laptops tends to be the monitor backlight or the screen itself. Nimur (talk) 14:28, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Rest the laptop on a cushion on your knee (assuming you arnet driveing).--BandUser (talk) 17:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

VBScript and JavaScript

Is the software to write VBScript and JavaScript applications free? Or is it similar to CSS where you get the basic software free, notepad/notepad++, and then have to pay for more advanced software such as DreamWeaver?

Thanks --195.49.180.89 (talk) 10:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You can write JavaScript, CSS, and HTML just fine with notepad++, and doing so is a perfectly reasonable way of working. You never need a web development program like DreamWeaver; while some people find such programs easy and productive to use others find them restrictive and the websites they produce amateurish. Large websites are almost always generated by programs that its maintainers have written (using languages like PHP, Java, and Python) rather than built either with a text editor or a website builder like DreamWeaver. If I can suggest one free tool for you, the Firefox extension Firebug allows you to edit and debug everything you've discussed fine, and many other related web creating things to boot. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You do not have to pay for DreamWeaver. People choose to purchase DreamWeaver to avoid typing out what they want - and too often to avoid learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I write a lot of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML and have never used anything even similar to DreamWeaver. -- kainaw™ 12:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm in the same boat but it's worth remembering that this knowledge did not come for free. It takes an immense amount of time to become fluent in HTML, CSS, and Javascript to the point where you can easily read other's code and can easily write your own to accomplish your tasks. If you multiplied that time by even a conservative wage, you're talking a huge amount of money that you've invested in it—far more than the cost of buying a Dreamweaver license. I've had people ask me, "how do I learn these so I can do the same things you can do?" and I really don't have a helpful answer ("play around with it for, I don't know, five years, and by then you'll probably be at the same level I am"). Dreamweaver can be a useful way for people to jump into web design without trying to learn all the basics first, much less learn how the basics of the code interface with their ideas of good design (which is a somewhat different question). I don't use Dreamweaver and have never had the need for it, but I understand that not everybody wants to take the more tedious (and potentially less promising) route, especially if their full-time occupation does not involve web design. Some people honestly do just want to buy their fish a day at a time and not learn how to become a fisherman; I don't think that's necessarily a bad choice depending on their situation. I only wish applications like Dreamweaver and etc. played better with hand-written code. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The notepad approach to web design is long and tedious but you can make anything with it once you are good at it. The Dreamweaver approach is to have a program that abstracts away a lot of the underlying code (but not all of it) in exchange for you getting to design things in a more "visual" fashion. (Instead of typing in the name of the font you want, and changing its size and styling, and then saving and viewing the page in a browser, you can just select the font properties the same way you would in, say, Microsoft Word, and see what that looks like immediately). On a Computing board you are almost universally going to get people who prefer doing it the slow and hard way—it's something of a systemic bias, because that's how self-professed "Computer" people do things. There are advantages to doing it that way—you have better control over what you make, and can do certain tasks a lot quicker, once you know how to do them. And that's the rub: it takes a lot of time to get good at hand-coding things. Dreamweaver and related products let you jump over a lot of the technical stuff, but at the cost of things generally looking less fine-tuned and often with more buggy or problematic code. Suffice to say, you don't need Dreamweaver to do Javascript or CSS or HTML. Most sites are not made with anything like Dreamweaver—they are just hand-coded in notepad or other development products. But it takes a lot of time to learn how to do that well. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

My favorite VBScript and JavaScript editor is Visual Studio. There is a free version just for web applications that you can download called Visual Web Developer Express. The code hinting for JS and VBS is much better inside Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer than in Dreamweaver. It's also a bit easier to learn than DW. I use PrimalScript for administration scripts. But you're just writing JS and VBS for web development, try Visual Web Developer.--Chmod 777 (talk) 20:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Cryptography: Password entry method

I'm looking for more information on a method of password entry where a user doesn't have to remember an alphanumeric string as a password, instead they remember a pattern. A user picks a pattern from a grid, thus:

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16

So in this case their password would be 1, 2, 6, 10, 11. The next time they log on they might get:

4	8	3	15
1	13	2	16
14	9	7	12
5	11	10	6

And their password would be 4, 8, 13, 9, 7. Has anyone seen this before? --Rixxin (talk) 12:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Something similar is mentioned in Password#Alternatives_to_passwords_for_access_control. However, these systems are not very practical.

In this case, the underlying numbers would be irrelevant; the password is still the thing that the person remembers. (It doesn't have any security implications that there's a different format for transmitting it from time to time, because the user and the attacker both get to know what that format is.) I believe that graphical passwords like this aren't used because they don't carry enough information. On a 4x4 grid (assuming order matters), the number of possible length-5 passwords is only about half a million. There are three times as massing length-4 passwords that use only lowercase letters and numbers. Also your example password is contiguous (which makes it a lot easier to remember). There are fewer than 16*4*3*3*3=1728 contiguous length-5 passwords possible, which is an extremely small space.

Essentially, text-based passwords sit in a sweet spot of being possible to remember and reconstruct accurately, while still covering a large possible range.

It is possible to use 2D art to identify objects to humans. If you see a different image than the one you're used to, you know that something is up:

The key fingerprint is:
c6:b1:78:d6:fc:0f:eb:6e:3d:47:0d:4b:f9:c2:9c:0d paul@saffron 
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|                 |
|                 |
|        .      . |
|       o =    E  |
|      . S o  + B.|
|       +   .  * =|
|            o. o |
|            .+o .|
|           ++ .o |
+-----------------+

Paul (Stansifer) 14:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Pull-down menus are used at http://languagetesting.info/mail/email.php. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Internet Connections window crashes

After a fresh install of WinXP on my rig, I tried to set up an internet connection thru my LAN (as I've done in the past). However, upon attempting to open the network connections window Explorer crashes, and upon attemting the New Connections Wizard it crashes. What the heck is going on? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 15:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be a problem with the installation. I would suggest reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. If possible, try using another Windows XP disc. And when you say windows Explorer crashes are you referring to the explorer.exe process and have you tried rerunning the process? 174.22.229.237 (talk) 22:59, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Getting Quicktime onto my Mac

I've got an iMac which I keep offline, and a PC which is online. The version of Quicktime on my Mac needs updating so I was going to copy over the application file from my PC, which has been recently updated. I assumed this would work. But then I looked at the two 'Quicktime Player' files on both machines and the one on my PC is just 1.7MB and the older one (2007) on my Mac is 24MB. This seems like quite a difference in size and made me think that it's not going to be as easy as just copying the application file over. Any thoughts how I should get a new QT on my Mac? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.76.107 (talk) 16:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You would need to copy the Quicktime files from another Mac. The PC's files would be different because they are written and compiled for a Windows environment. Also, with Quicktime on the Mac you are updating several core components of the operating system while on the PC you are updating the player and a few plugins. On OS X, Quicktime components are scattered all over and finding all the files you need to update is no trivial task. Connecting to a network temporarily or downloading the Quicktime installer for Mac from Apple's website would be the way to update. From the PC, go to apple.com/quicktime, find the download link, and find a small link titled "Get QuickTime for Macintosh." Caltsar (talk) 17:14, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Linux group root?

On Linux, is there any way to allow a non-root user to perform actions as root if they only affect his own group? I'm thinking, in particular, of the following commands and corresponding system calls: adduser, deluser, moduser, passwd, chown, chmod, su, sudo, kill, renice +. NeonMerlin 17:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Those are inherently rooty actions. I wonder if what you really want is virtual servers for the different groups. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 21:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

vpython related error

window xp is installed on my computer at derive d:vpython was installed on my computer.by deleting some files or otherwise ,it does not work properly.if i uninstall python25 ,and vpython from my computer and then install both first python 25 and vpython on D:\python25 .installation becomes successful but programmes does not work,for examle bounce.py does not work properly by giving this message : raise Runtime Error,"Neither numeric ,nor numarray could not be found." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.110.243 (talk) 17:21, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Python/TI-BASIC: indirections

TI-BASIC (the dialects of BASIC used on the TI graphing calculators has what they call an "indirection." It work as follows: a be a string (let's say that a="b"), and let x be a variable storing any value (let's say that x=1). Then we can store the contents of x as a variable whose name is the string in a with the command x --> #a--i.e., after executing that command, a variable b would be created (if it didn't already exist) with 1 as its contents.

To take another example, consider the following TI-BASIC code:

:abcde(l)
:Prgm
:Local t, n
:dim(l) --> n
:For t,1,n
:l[t] --> #"a"&str(t)
:EndFor
:EndPrgm

After executing abcde({2,3,5,7,11,13}), the variables a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, and a6 would be created (if they didn't already exist) and a1=2, a2=3, a3=5, a4=7, a5=11, and a6=13. After all that explanation, my actual question is rather disappointingly short: is there a similar feature in Python? --Lucas Brown 20:33, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You can do something like that by monkeying with the globals() dict, but it's generally not a good idea, and doesn't work for locals() at all. Just using a regular dict is usually the way to go.

Python 2.6.4 (r264:75706, Dec  7 2009, 18:45:15)
[GCC 4.4.1] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> a = 'b'
>>> x = 1
>>> globals()[a] = x
>>> b
1

Winston365 (talk) 21:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

What you probably want are arrays, if you are interested in storing things by number, or dicts (called hash tables in other languages), if you're interested in storing things by name:

arr = [2,3,5,7,11,13]
#after this, arr[0] equals 2, arr[1] equals 3, and so on.
dt = {'wp': 'wikipedia.org', 'gg': 'google.com'}
#after this, dt['wp'] equals 'wikipedia.org', etc.

The # operator in TI-BASIC is an example of reflection. Reflection is very powerful, but (a) it's almost always possible to do what you want without reflection, and (b) it makes it very unclear what you're doing. I seem to remember (I last programmed in TI-BASIC a long time ago) that TI-BASIC was weird in that you sometimes needed # to do some things. Paul (Stansifer) 01:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Purchasing a Motherboard

Before purchasing a motherboard what should be known to make a decision? I know the question isn't very specific but I would like to know what motherboard details I should be researching before I decide to purchase a motherboard. (Sorry if this question was asked before I could not find a similar question in the archives.) 174.22.229.237 (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

What kind of CPU do you want to plug in? This will narrow your choice. What size will fit in your case? How much memory, disk drive connectors, slots, USB, firewire (maximum growth potential)? Memory technology? Do you want built in video or sound, or will you supply your own cards? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree on all counts with Graeme Bartlett, and would add customer support as a criterion. How quickly do they respond to e-mail requests for help? At least one motherboard manufacturer has a terrible reputation in this area. (Maybe all of them do, for all I know.) Another issue that may be something for you to consider is how much overclocking support the motherboard features. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Hang out on a site like anandtech.com for a while and get a sense of what brands are good and bad. For a low end system, building up from a motherboard instead of getting a mini all-in-one isn't really worth it any more. For higher end, you have to have a sense of what features you want, since boards go off in different directions. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 21:35, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Wikipedia Logo

File:Misplaced WP logo.jpg

My WP logo is covering the article names. Why doesn't the WP logo appear in its correct location?--478jjjz (talk) 21:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Does this happen when you're logged out? Does it happen when you're logged in, but using a different browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera)? Does it happen when you're logged in on a different computer? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:51, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Internet explorer is a poor excuse for a browser. There is probably some incompatible .css being used by Wikipedia that every browser except IE can handle. 82.43.89.71 (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I am using Internet Explorer 8; my OS is Windows Vista. This happens on my computer whether I am logged in or out of Wikipedia. I don't like using other Web browsers.--478jjjz (talk) 21:58, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have a solution that doesn't involve stopping the use of Internet Explorer 8?--478jjjz (talk) 23:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't suggest you stop using IE. I asked you to see what happens on another browser. I asked you to try another machine. You may have a wonky toolbar installed in IE, or an odd security setting (a firewall or adblocker or something) on that machine. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:14, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Do you see that button to the right of the address bar? It looks like a piece of paper that's been torn in half. Press that button and it should reload the page in "Compatability mode." (If you don't know what I mean by address bar, I'm referring to the box with the address of the web page your visiting. It's near the top of the screen above the Google toolbar.)--Chmod 777 (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I followed your instructions and my problem has been resolved. Thank you very much.--478jjjz (talk) 23:15, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Pings

If I ping a server every 10 seconds for an extended period, say for example google.com or wikipedia.org, will the server admins get angry over that? Will it cause any problems for them / would they implement countermeasures to stop the pings? Could I get in trouble for it? 82.43.89.71 (talk) 21:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Google.com and Wikipedia.org are made up of many different servers. It's not a one-server-per-domain setup. People perform 34,000 searches on Google per second, so I sincerely doubt they would notice a single ping every ten seconds. You would need perhaps 20 different computers all pinging Google once every 100 milliseconds or so to take down a single Google or Wikipedia server. Even if their intrusion-detection system generated an alert, I doubt the admins would care. And even if they cared, they'd probably just move on, because server admins are very busy people.--Chmod 777 (talk) 22:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Really just 20 in "20 different computers all pinging Google once every 100 milliseconds or so to take down a single Google or Wikipedia server"? I'd think a single server could handle more like 20,000 such simple pings per second. How did you arrive at the "20" figure? 84.153.207.171 (talk) 11:49, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

This is how I arrived at the figure. And you? How did you arrive at the 20,000 figure?--Chmod 777 (talk) 17:55, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Download games on iPad?

I was wondering if you can download games from online on the iPad and play them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toon1334 (talk • contribs) 22:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Only those sold/distributed through the App Store and need to individually be approved by Apple for content. You can't just download any game off the internet and run it on the iPad. The iPad also does not support Flash games unless they are compiled specially for the iPad and distributed via the App Store. It's a much more constrained application environment than a personal computer (regular Macs do not put any such restrictions on you and you can run whatever you want on them). But about the same as an iPhone. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:26, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

April 15

Serial port?

Just wondering, but is this a serial port? Thanks in advance, --The High Fin Sperm Whale 02:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it depends on your definition of Serial port. If you mean RS232 compatible, then no. If you mean a port for serialised data, then yes. See also PS/2 connector --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:26, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Most of the time when people refer to a "serial port," they're talking about a DB-9 port. Such a port is often colored light blue. The best way to refer to the connector you linked to is as a PS/2 port, as that avoids any confusion. But PS/2 ports still send data one bit at a time, instead of in parallel, so in that respect, they are serial. USB ports also are serial, but no one calls them "serial ports" because doing so would be confusing.--Chmod 777 (talk) 02:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Computer problem

My computer is now working but in earlier days something strange used to happen. Whenever I turned it on it used open but automatically after 2-3 seconds it used to off. And again open and this cycle continued. So, I called a computer engineer to stop this. He formatted the computer but didn't told the reason. What was the problem actually?? --Extra999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 12:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

If formatting it fixed it, it was a software problem. Most likely a virus. -- kainaw™ 13:11, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about your computer, Kainaw, but all my computers are still doing the BIOS RAM test after 2-3 seconds. Comet Tuttle (talk) 13:54, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The question states that it is 2-3 seconds after "open". I assume that is after "logging in" or at least after "getting to the login screen". -- kainaw™ 14:12, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Welcome screen came (Windows XP Prof) and then the desktop. From that onwards, I mean 2-3 seconds. --Extra999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 15:35, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Robozzle

Does anyone know where I can find solutions (direct solutions not hints) to Robozzle.com? Joneleth (talk) 15:28, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Symbol

Resolved

I am looking to find a symbol so I can put it into a word document it is similar to the equals sign = but it has 3 parallel lines any ideas were I would find one thanks. Mo ainm~Talk 17:16, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Triple bar (cut and paste from the Wikipedia article into Word). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:18, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thats great thanks, wasn't aware it was called Triple bar. Mo ainm~Talk 17:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

You use charmap for this. Press Win+R, enter "charmap" and press Enter. Select font "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode" or some other Unicode font. Select "Advanced mode", and "Sort by Unicode interval". Now you can find all mathematical operators under "Mathematical Operators". In particular we find ≡ as U+2261: IDENTICAL TO. Thus you can insert this character in Word by writing U+2261 and pressing Alt+X. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Media program

Whats the easiest way to get music off an ipod onto a new computer? I would like to convernt the format into mp3 alost in the process. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.158.3.71 (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Monitor: no signal?

So I have a standard HP Pavilion computer (a1648x) with a swapped out video card (Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT) and a 500 watt power supply. (these installations are not recent, but I wanted to include all the details) Everything's been working fine for the past few years but all of a sudden I woke up this morning to find that the monitor refuses to display anything. It's still on, but every time I unplug/plug it in to an outlet it just says 'no signal'. I tried hooking up an old CRT to the computer but that one doesn't work either. What do you suppose the problem is? I have had no recent software changes. Is my video card/ motherboard broken? I still hear sound on boot and the keyboard and mouse are working. The last thing I did was put in in standby last night, but when I got up the power was off.

Thanks in advance. 20:28, 15 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.192.73.12 (talk)

Have you tried removing the video card and connecting your monitor to the motherboard's onboard installed video? (If your motherboard has one) 174.22.229.237 (talk) 21:02, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I haven't. If I removed the graphics card, would it automatically switch back to integrated graphics? 98.192.73.12 (talk) 21:16, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it should automatically detect changes. If not, you may have to change a setting in the BIOS. 174.22.229.237 (talk) 21:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The good news is, your monitor is probably OK, and that's typically more expensive than a graphics card. StuRat (talk) 21:31, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, that is good news. Sorry for the delay, I'm having a hard time removing the video card right now. If the computer has no video signal, how do I access BIOS? 98.192.73.12 (talk) 21:35, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Well that is a good question. Considering you have to connect your monitor to a different GPU it should automatically detect that connection and not continue using the previous card for display. 174.22.229.237 (talk) 21:39, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Hah, looks like I'm having a *very* difficult time removing this card. Any advice on taking something out of a PCI express card? should I just pull straight up? 98.192.73.12 (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Well first you should make sure the metal plate at the back of the card is not screwed in. After that is taken care of you should gently grab the sides of the card and shimmy it up without putting pressure on the printed circuit board of the card. I'm not sure if there are any flips that you need to pull up on the slot. It probably depends on the motherboard. It is similar to removing RAM. 174.22.229.237 (talk) 21:57, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Do you suppose that the card burned out? The fan on it still works. 98.192.73.12 (talk) 22:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe it is a possibility. From the information you provided it seems to be more likely a problem with the video card. 174.22.229.237 (talk) 22:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

If you ever manage to get it to boot properly with display using your integrated graphics I would advise you to uninstall any drivers you have for the video card you've been using. It might possibly have been a driver problem and you could try reinstalling your video card and seeing if there are any changes. 174.22.229.237 (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate all your helpful advice. I think I might have lost the original PCI device that ran to my motherboard's onboard graphics. I have a suspicion that this may be a software issue-- I'm trying to find a friend who will take my hard drive and do a system restore for me. That is, a fairly irrational suspicion, but a suspicion nevertheless. 98.192.73.12 (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Previously selected links

Does anybody know of any way, be it browser, add-on or anything, to know when the last time you clicked a specific link was. I ask because I find it increasingly annoying when I see some user page, talk page or contribs link that is purple rather than blue and I have no idea why or when I clicked it. Thanks--Jac16888^Talk 00:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Any respectable browser will have a good history function which should allow you to see at least what day it was that you clicked on the link. Google Chrome goes a step further and gives the time the link was clicked. All of this is moot, of course, when you or your browser clears the history. Xenon54 / talk / 00:56, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I am a complete idiot. Cheers--Jac16888^Talk 01:00, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Internet searches for non-linear notations

Mathematical formulas use numbers in different positions to signify different things: for example, right-hand subscript for the base in a positional numeral system, right-hand superscript for exponents. Sequence summations and sequence products, derivatives and integrals, matrices, and other mathematical expressions and formulas use numbers in different positions to mean different things. Chemical formulas use numbers in different positions for indicating different things: for example, right-hand subscript for number of atoms; right-hand superscript with + or - for ionic charge; left-hand superscript for isotope; left-hand subscript for atomic number.
Because the layout of those expressions is not completely linear, the task of searching for any of them on the Internet seems to be very challenging. How can one do an Internet search for a mathematical expression, a mathematical formula, a chemical formula, or a chemical equation?
-- Wavelength (talk) 01:18, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Just look for keywords that you'd associate with the formula or equation. Keep in mind that a lot of the pages containing those formulas will be pdf's rather than html pages. Indexing software can make a pretty bad mess of pdf's sometimes. In some cases though, it will index a formula like "H₂O" as H2O, so you can look for that. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 02:06, 16 April 2010 (UTC)