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February 23

Rigamarole

In Windows 7, to connect to my ISP, the procedure is: Control Panel/Network & Internet/ Network & Sharing Centre/"connect to a network"/"connect or disconnect"/click name of ISP/click "connect"/click in window to use the stored userid and password.

I can cope with this rigamarole but it is really a problem for some people who use the computer.

I made a desktop shortcut which goes straight to "Network & Sharing Centre" but that still requires remembering five clicks. Is there a way to bring this down to one or two clicks? Perhaps with a DOS command?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 03:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I take it this is a dial-up connection? Does this page help? -- BenRG (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a wi-fi connection, you should be prompted to "save this connection" and to "start this connection automatically" (I can't remember the exact wording, but it is a simply pop-up with 2 tick boxes). Maybe you don't get that choice if you have previously identified the connection as a public location, rather then a private location. Astronaut (talk) 12:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both. The connection is not wireless, it is thru ethernet cable to an ADSL+ modem which uses the telephone line. I guess I complicate things for myself by choosing to turn off the modem when I'm not using it for a while (as a security precaution).

The page link from BenRG does not seem to apply; I don't think my connection is dial-up in the sense used on that page. Wanderer57 (talk) 17:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that rasdial will do what you want. You can make a shortcut on the desktop so it will only take a double-click. Another option would be to buy a cheap non-wifi router (you could probably find one used for $10-$20 in the US) and put it between the modem and your computer. It can be configured to log on for you (zero clicks) and it will also act as a hardware firewall. -- BenRG (talk) 20:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a solution, in general, for rigamarole. Whenever you have a complicated sequence of mouse clicks and/or keystrokes, you can abbreviate them down to a keystroke or two. Simply download a macro utility, and follow the instructions. I've tried many, and my favorite, by a big margin, is called "Macro Express". It's not expensive, and I think older versions are available as freeware. David Spector (user/talk) 20:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How to express"a textbox is blank" in VB 2005?

Like

If (textbox1 is blank or textbox2 is blank) then

...

Else

...

End If

How to express this?--202.117.145.240 (talk) 07:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If textbox1.Text = "" then
    asdf
Else
    asdf
End If

→Σ τ c. 07:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Visual Basic at all well, but expanding on the above, you will need to use the 'or' operator. You can also use parentheses to clarify things a bit:

If (textbox1.Text = "") or (textbox2.Text = "") then
    ...
Else
    ...
End If

Logical operators like 'or' and the use of parentheses, are common features of most programming languages, just the specific syntax differs. Astronaut (talk) 11:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That would work. If you want to count empty spaces as blank, change the textbox1.text calls to Trim(textbox1.Text). --Mr.98 (talk) 12:21, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Computing x^y as exp(y*ln(x))

I have read that the standard method for raising a number to a power is to use this identity:

x^y = e^(y*ln(x))

I don't understand why. If you do that using floating point, you are making the significand eat information that belongs in the exponent, which makes the algorithm numerically unstable. Isn't this considered a problem in the real world? How is it dealt with? (Please don't speculate; I am perfectly capable of doing that myself. I recognize it and have a good idea of how I would handle it. I just want to know what the standard practice is here.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.40.137.93 (talk) 10:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm? This is just the definition of real-to-real exponentiation. It has nothing to do with implementation on a physical computer. If you want to know how the exponential function is actually implemented in an FPU, I'm afraid I really don't know, but I'm pretty sure you've made an unjustified leap here. --Trovatore (talk) 11:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actual implementations of exponentiation in floating point systems, and the management of error, are discussed at length in Knuth vol2 p461-483 and this paper. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:31, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is for raising to a real-valued power. It might be worthwhile to split the expontent into integer and real parts, with the real part < 1.0. But if you want the square root in a program, don't raise it to the 0.5 power if a square root function is available. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

fdlibm seems to simply compute exp2(y * log2(x)) in extra precision, though the details are complicated ([1]). -- BenRG (talk) 19:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One obvious source of numerical inaccuracy is when the exponent is small. Remember for small x, $\exp(x)=1+x+O(x^{2})$ so for example, exp(1e-100) is very close to 1+1e-100, so exp(1e-100)-1 is close to 1e-100, but in floating point, 1+1e-100 is probably the same number as 1.0. Subtracting two almost-equal numbers is a classic source of numerical instability. For this reason the x87 exponentiation instruction is F2XM1 which computes $2^{x}-1$ very precisely around x=0. It also has separate log instryctionns FYL2X (= log2(x)) and FYL2XP1 (= log2(x+1)). Other cpu's have similar instructions. As for actually computing transcendentals, I'm no expert but I've heard that modern processors use fairly large interpolation tables, which in the past would have been much more expensive. They also have fast parallel multipliers, so within interpolation bands they can use polynomial approximations which are faster than traditional methods that required a lot more arithmetic operations. Anyway, numerical analysis is an arcane subject a huge amount of which revolves around controlling roundoff errors, so a refdesk answer can only scratch the surface. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 04:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Remove Wikipedia Search

How do I remove the Wikipedia search? I have no idea how it got on my computer. I want to be able to use the regular search engine to search the internet, not Wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.213.36.247 (talk) 16:26, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you refer to a search field in your browser. If it has a little triangle then try clicking it. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Do you mean the Wikipedia.org search addon for Internet Explorer. You probably got it from here. In Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu and choose 'Manage Add-ons'. That pops up a window with add-on types listed on the left. Click on "Search Providers" to list the currently installed options. It should be obvious from there how to modify the default options. There are probably similar features for other browsers and OS combinations. Astronaut (talk) 16:52, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah... there's the little arrows that PrimeHunter mentions above (I never noticed them before). They appear in both IE and Firefox and a drop-down list appears with search engines on it. Astronaut (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wildcard character in Pywikipedia

Hello, what is the wildcard character in the replace.py tool of Pywikipedia? Thanks! Leptictidium (mt) 16:51, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Methinks You should go to the Help desk with this one. --Ouro (blah blah) 19:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pywikipedia uses regex, or regular expressions, in which the period "." is a wildcard for a single character. For multiple characters, you'd have to pair it with an asterisk, like ".*" If you are not that familiar with regex, you may want to throughly test your parameters in a sandbox before doing live editing. ^Avic _ennasis @ 06:59, 1 Adar 5772 / 06:59, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft equivalent to specify library path and static library to link with

What's the cl equivalent to, for instance,

   gcc -LthisLibDir -lthisStaticLib example.c

? I know for includes, -I in gcc-speak is /I in cl-speak, but in the documentation for cl, I don't see library path or file stuff, other than /LD which seems to be for making a dll, which I don't want to do. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, as for static lib files, it appears that I can just put "thisStaticLib.lib" (without the quotes, of course) at the end after "example.c" That just leaves the question of the equivalent of -LthisLibDir 20.137.18.53 (talk) 19:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can pass /link followed by linker options to the compiler. Type link without options to get a list—one of them is /libpath. (Incidentally, the compiler and linker accept options preceded by - instead of / if you prefer that.) -- BenRG (talk) 20:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 24

organizational chart

Hi. I've been tasked with producing an organizational chart with photos and titles and positions of about 40 people. What free software would be good for this? The structure is quite complex. I am familiar with inkscape, but this doesn't seem quite the right tool. I am learning to use scribus, but this isn't quite right either. Can anyone advise? Robinh (talk) 06:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice.org Draw is a free software tool for creating structured drawings. It has a user interface that I would describe as "half way between Microsoft Visio and PowerPoint." There are plenty of other options; you can draw things in GIMP, but it's probably not the tool you'd use for an org-chart. We have a List of concept- and mind-mapping software, including some with nice graphical features. FreeMind can be used to draw tree-like structures very quickly and easily, with some limitations on the layout. Nimur (talk) 08:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've used a web app site called LucidChart to create organizational charts before, and it works pretty well. 192.84.79.2 (talk) 11:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

thanks guys. I didn't kno about either of these suggestions. best wishes, 222.153.61.63 (talk) 04:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notable Wikipedians who are regular contributors or administrators?

So I was just wondering if there are any notable Wikipedians who regularly spend their time contributing to the encyclopedia at present, has rights such as rollback, account creator etc. or is even an administrator. It's unlikely there are any but I would still like to know. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can look through Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles; you'll need to use other tools to see who has what rights, and use your own standards for who really passes for notable. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are some known ones (an old category Category:Notable Wikipedians now redirects to another one). There are probably also some unknown ones contributing anonymously. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 16:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I consider many of the contributors on the list of reference-desk regulars to be "notable." For some of our more prolific contributors, I can often identify who the author was (by tone and style), long before I scroll down to their signature. I'd say that any author skilled enough that their voice is distinctive counts as "notable" in some contexts. (I would not use this as a criteria for Wikipedia article space inclusion, where we have a more stringent set of criteria). Nimur (talk) 17:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I meant notable Wikipedians, as in those Wikipedians who are at Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. Are there any examples? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User:Jimbo Wales, of course. →Σ τ c. 03:01, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from Jimbo, of course. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 03:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The only one who I know off the top of my head is Cory Doctorow but I don't know if he contributes to anything outside his own article and those of his books and work. Might be worth a look though. Dismas|^(talk) 03:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User:MGodwin, legal counsel for the WMF. →Σ τ c. 04:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone aside from Jimbo or anyone Wikipedia-related. Not even Angela or Larry. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:33, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka Dunin is the only one I can think of right now. sonia♫ 04:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does that mean you want to exclude anyone who got involved in the WMF after they were prolific editors (and quite a while after the founding)? If so, what sort of level? Do you include arbcom? Oversighters? Checkusers? While these people will generally be selected by the community there's also some WMF involvement. Nil Einne (talk) 19:32, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MGodwin hasn't been legal counsel for a while (resigned in October 2010), see Meta:General Counsel. Geoff Brigham has been the counsel since 2011 and is currently a redlink Nil Einne (talk) 19:32, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are several more that I know of, but I don't feel comfortable naming them. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 05:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few that I noticed.

Admins:
- Arthur Rubin (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Arthur Rubin)
- SimonP (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Simon Pulsifer) - The ultimate in notable Wikipedians. He's notable because he edits.
- Michael Snow (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Michael Snow (attorney))

Rollbackers:
- Snowded (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Dave Snowden)
- Jokestress (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Andrea James)
- Sue Gardner (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (Sue Gardner)
- William M. Connolley (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs) (William Connolley) - was an admin at one time.

No doubt there are others but those are the names that jumped out at me. Not sure if they are all current contributors or not. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 11:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Word - Libreoffice conversion

Is there someplace to find answers to questions of this sort:

In Microsoft Word I can use "XXX". Is there an equivalent thing to use in LibreOffice?

For example:

In Microsoft Word I can use ^p in a find and replace command to represent a paragraph mark (eg, to replace commas with paragraph marks). Is there a way to do this in LibreOffice?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 22:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Though not official, a quick Google revealed [2]. Though I suppose you might be looking for something like an FAQ of how-to's. --Melab±1 ☎ 00:43, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Melab-1. In my limited experience of LibreOffice, unofficial seems more useful than "official". Following your lead, I got to a wiki where my specific question was answered, at this URL:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Regular_Expressions_in_Writer#Positional_match_.5E__.24__.5C.3C__.5C.3E

I am including this URL in case someone else looking for the same information arrives here. I gather the mechanism of "find and replace" in LibreOffice is more complicated and, if one understands it, more useful than in Word. Wanderer57 (talk) 02:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might find this useful (official) if you are interested in special find and replace functions. SmartSE (talk) 17:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 25

Shell script that prints a file tree to the screen

What would a shell script designed to print out a file tree like this look like?

/
  directory1/
    subdirectory1/
    file1
  directory2/
  file1

--Melab±1 ☎ 00:40, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ls -R might be what you're looking for. RudolfRed (talk) 00:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, I need the script to format exactly as I gave the example. I would think sed and grep would be used. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Use

find

and then pipe it to a script that counts the number of forward slashes, then tab x the number of forward slashes and print it. Broba (talk) 02:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's probably one named tree in your distro's repos. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tree (Unix) - which also give examples of how to do it with ls, grep, sed. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:32, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

flush disc cache in Windows 7

Is there a way to flush the disc cache in Windows 7 without rebooting? I searched and found a program called flushmem.exe, but it did more than flush the disc cache and it locked up my system. I saw references to a program called sync, but the links to it were dead. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's here now. -- BenRG (talk) 06:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

When I was searching, that program came up. But I just tried it and it either doesn't work or doesn't do what I need. It says that it causes things in the disc buffer to be written out. What I need is sort of the opposite. After I read a disc file, it is still in the disc cache - I need to remove it from the cache so it has to actually read from the disc the next time. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

These guys say no and they know far more than I do.[3] Thincat (talk) 23:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They mention a program to use up the RAM. I can write a program to use of the RAM and then release it - that should make it give up what is in the disk cache. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found out that with an external HD, unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in does it. That is a lot faster than rebooting. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's good to know. I am glad you have found your own solution. Thincat (talk) 00:07, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Set to Terminal to run a custom command and now it closes every time

How do I fix this? I am running Ubuntu 11.10, which means there is no gconf-editor that I can use. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does it close right after running the command ? Do you type the command directly into the window ? StuRat (talk) 01:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If the problem is in gnome-terminal, and not in your shell, you can start a shell in a different terminal. You can enter console mode by pressing "Ctrl + Alt + F1", giving you a video-mode console. You could start xterm or konsole, if you have either of those installed on your system. You could start nedit or gvim, text editors which allow you to execute shell commands (by spawning bash internally, usually). The best solution is going to depend on exactly what is broken; can you elaborate? Nimur (talk) 01:37, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ubuntu 11.10 uses Unity. Anything you have to say about Gnome does not apply. --Melab±1 ☎ 02:02, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your Terminal application in the Unity environment is still "gnome-terminal." Even when Unity is installed, you can run the GTK and KDE shared libraries; and you can run native Linux graphical user interface applications that communicate straight to the X11 server. And, you can even switch to console mode, leaving behind X and Unity. With due respect, Melab, everything I said above does apply. Have you tried it yet? Nimur (talk) 02:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think I know what the poster means by "a custom command". Use one of the techniques shown above to get to a command line, but don't use the Ctrl+Alt+F1 method because that won't work for our purposes. If you can't get to a command line any other way, press Alt+F2. Now enter this code: gnome-terminal -e bash. Yes I'm aware that you're using Unity; enter the code anyway. Now your normal terminal should pop up. Go to the settings for your profile (Edit -> Profile Preferences -> Title and Command) and uncheck the box that says "Run a custom command instead of my shell". You're done. --N Y Kevin @285, i.e. 05:50, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Norton product differences

What exactly is the difference between Norton 360, Norton AntiVirus, and Norton Internet Security? I looked at each article, and while it looks like 360 is AntiVirus + Backup + Firewall, I'm a little unclear if that's it, or the differences between the others. A handy comparison chart would be ideal. Any help is appreciated. Broba (talk) 02:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to consider it mostly marketing nonsense, but if you look at the first paragraph of Norton 360 there is a clue at least to that one's distinct attributes. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AntiVirus is an antivirus program and also includes email filtering and phishing protection. Internet Security includes this and adds a firewall. 360 adds a backup to those. If you're non-commercial, all these are available from Windows for free (firewall is built in to XP SP2 and later, MSE provides antivirus and there are numerous 3rd party free antivirus solutions, and backup I think has been part of Windows for a long time). I'm not sure if there are free anti-virus solutions for commercial users. Norton has the advantage of being a well-known and fairly well-trusted name, but with a reputation for being a bit of a resource hog.-gadfium 08:02, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lustre is slow

I am doing work on a shared scientific computing cluster that uses Lustre (file system) to supply a 200 TB file system. I find that this system is often slow, and in particular exhibits high latency such that basic operations, such as listing a directory, sometimes pause for several seconds. Such pauses are annoying, but more significantly I routinely need to write large data sets to this system (e.g. 5 GB of data distributed in ~25 files) and such an operation will often take a few hours to complete. A comparable operation on a modern desktop will often complete after a few minutes.

I suspect it is a long-shot to get useful advice here, but I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with such systems. Is there a way for me (as a basic system user with no admin privileges) to optimize or structure my file system needs to get better performance? Dragons flight (talk) 07:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

why don't you tell THEM (whoever supplies you, whoever is the actual admin) about these problems. They might not be aware of it. It could be something simple to fix, like a rogue process, a reboot, failed hard-drive(s) that haven't been replaced, whatever. Tell them about it. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As you suspect, the odds of finding someone regular enough at the RD who works with Lustre are quite low... have you considered asking on some of the forums/irc channels devoted to Lustre development? Those people will notn only be familiar but have some in depth technical knowledge too... I know that's kind of a non answer but I bet you'd get faster traction there. Also as the IP says, if you don't have root then I doubt even if we could find you the perfect solution, you're authorized to implement it.

I've never used it so I'm just shooting in the dark here, but I believe the underlying machines have a traditionally formatted storage device... it's quite possible 1 node is slowing down everything else. Shadowjams (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

android phone as a radio scanner

logan........... i have been working upon the major project for my IT b.tech for quite a time and i came upon this idea....i searched the internet quite hard but could not find a suitable answer...."my question is as follow:: we all know that our normal phone works by hooking up to a particular frequency upon which we make our call..and also it recieves a call because of some handshake which goes on before recieving call..in other words our phone is basically a scanner because it scans for a particular frequency...but the irony is that it is so designed just to search for a particular frequency or perhaps respond to a particular signalling information so that it can recieve a call...i chose an android phone because it is easily available in the market and is software defined as we all know it is upgradable...so can we over-ride the already existing software with another software and make it a small portable short distance radio scanner with the addition of some hardware.....and can we manipulate the phone somehow that the input be given from a computer keyboard and viewed on a monitor but the processing unit be the android phone..--122.168.56.118 (talk) 08:13, 25 February 2012 (UTC).....[reply]

The software for the radio modem in a modern phone is generally a binary blob (often for a dedicated coprocessor, rather than the main application CPU). This kind of low-level radio tweaking isn't part of the iOS or Android APIs, so if you wanted to mess around with this stuff, you'd have to get a system image (maybe from a system update), reverse engineer that (which might be difficult, as it may be encrypted), find the firmware image in there (if there is one; the firmware will be reasonably stable, and may not be updated each time) and then reverse engineer that. And you have to worry about the communication laws of your country - most countries regulate what you can send, and some what you can receive in the mobile phone band. If you want just to mess around with software defined radio, GNU Radio is a much easier and more open environment in which to work. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:05, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, mobile telephone radios are quite limited in terms of the RF spectrum. They have hardware that is specifically designed for receiving and sending data on standard telephone and mobile data networks. If you. ever played with a HAM base station, you've been quite spoiled: you can set your frequency, modulation parameters, power, and so forth; you can mix an arbitrary baseband signal on to your carrier, and (licensing issues aside), transmit and receive whatever you want, whereever you want. In a mobile telephone, the amplifier bandwidth, hardware modulation/demodulation,, and antenna matching (among numerous other technical details) are not designed for general purpose RF experimentation, so you won't be able to dial in to an arbitrary band and receive intelligible signal or data. This is to say nothing of the digital encoding and keying schemes in use today - even within the bands the telephone's radio can receive, there are a lot of details that make generic signal production or interception very impractical. Have a look at digital radio and software-defined radio. I think you may have a lot of work to get up to speed on the complexities of modern digital wireless telephone service. Regrettably, this field is neither cheap nor easy for the hobbyist/skilled technical enthusiast. Consider looking into buying a commercial telephony signal analyzer, for example the GSM software package for the PXI series VNAs. As you can see, a considerable amount of expensive hardware (several hundred thousand dollars) is required. It is, in general, prohibitively difficult to do this sort of RF work on modern systems without the assistance of a major engineering company. Perhaps you can get in touch with such a business and work out an internship or academic cooperative. Nimur (talk) 19:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

constitutional operating system

has anyone ever advanced the idea of a constitutional operating system? At the moment, it seems that the ultimate owner of the physical computer can do whatever they want on it. No matter what a program does, it would never have to answer to a judge program, nor is there a code of laws that a judge would judge program behavior by. Antivirus programs come close, but these are like mercenaries -- they're not part of the sovereign system. The sovereign system seems like a dictatorship.

Has anyone ever proposed a constitutional operating system, such that there were limits on what the operating system itself could do, in the interest of programs, who would be able to appeal to a judge program? Sorry, I'm not terribly versed in operating system design, but it just seem like it's still back in the dark ages and has never really had an enlightenment in this regard. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 12:01, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand quite what you want. But I wouldn't say that there aren't limits on what the OS can do. For example, it cannot upload all your data to a home computer somewhere without your authorization. The ideal case of a good OS is that the user is at the command. XPPaul (talk) 13:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are stretching an analogy well past breaking point. 131.111.255.9 (talk) 15:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I already have enough problems arguing with "windoze" over what I want it to do, without giving it constitutional rights to argue back! Dbfirs 17:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

About the "ultimate owner of the physical system can do whatever they want" ... this is what DRM attempts to defeat, and the result is either ineffective DRM or a broken system (or both). But the rest of what you say sounds unrelated. In any event, the OS is by definition whatever has ultimate control over the system resources, which include the internal "security-like" mechanisms like protected memory and rings.

The real problem is that security mechanisms don't offer fine-grained control in the terms that people are interested in. For example, I'm not really concerned with which programs manipulate my photographs, but I might object if my browser secretly unchecked a "keep this album private" option. This kind of stuff is much harder to control in a meaningful way, but it's an area of ongoing research in security and programming languages and operating systems. I'm not an expert in this area at all, but we're probably decades away from good comprehensive solutions being actually implemented in consumer systems. Paul (Stansifer) 18:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There may be a more useful way of looking at the premise: Maybe humans' constitutions and laws are our sloppy, pathetic way of trying to approach the awesomeness of a quality operating system. Operating systems can let the user provide an absolute restriction on a particular directory such that, say, Firefox can't access anything in there at all. At all! Our laws wish they could do this. Instead, people buy locks for their doors and make governments that have to provide police and courts and punishments and constitutions in a hacked-together attempt to stop people from doing bad stuff. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

“it seems that the ultimate owner of the physical computer can do whatever they want on it. ” This depends on what operating system you use. As Dbfirs hints at. Microsoft software tends to only let you use you computer (that you own) in ways that only Microsoft approve of – which in practise means you have pay them for the privilege of letting 'your computer' do what you want it to do. Its a great business concept – I wish I had thought of it. Just think of buying a car and only being able to drive down roads that another company lets you. --Aspro (talk) 22:04, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might like the book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, though its concept is different from what you're describing. The E programming language had the concept of ERights and I half-remember an associated notion of an economy between programs (I never used that language), but the article describes it mostly as capability-based security which was a pretty standard concept. WP also has a bunch of articles about the Actor model of programming, though beware, they are written mostly by the concept's inventor and they are often biased or distorted. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 02:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand the OP correctly, DOS was that way. DOS got the program started then it stayed out of the way until either the program called on it for something (like input/output) or the program ended. Windows gets in the way of any program. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that assessment. In a modern system, the OS is only even running code at all (a) during context switches, to hand off control between threads, and (b) when a program asks it for something. The only difference is that DOS was missing part (a). The OS may impose some security restrictions (which could be disabled, but no one wants that). Now, the Windows user interface is pretty intrusive to the user, but that's a problem about the relationship between the Windows shell (which is just another program) and the user, not between Windows kernel and programs. Paul (Stansifer) 18:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A small digression: the reason we like Constitutions and democracy and whatnot in government is not because they are efficient, guarantee good results, or make everything function well. We like them because dictators usually are not benevolent. (And even if one dictator is benevolent, there is no guarantee that his or her successor will be.) If we could trust dictators to somehow, magically, be compelled to do only what would somehow balance all of the needs, resources, and values of the people to maximum efficiency, we wouldn't need something as clunky as a constitution or courts or, god forbid, a legislative branch. Now I just don't see the compelling reason to want a more democratic operating system. What's the goal, here? What's the wrong to be righted? How would such a system actually produce better output? It sounds like it would be more inefficient than the current version, and more unpredictable, with no positive gains. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe not to you, but what about to programs? Right now, a user has the right to terminate a program at will, and the Operating System most certainly has this right. I envision a constitutional operating system where a program could protest that it should not be terminated. You are thinking in terms of users, but I'm thinking in terms of the rights of programs. Why shouldn't programs be given rights? --80.99.254.208 (talk) 14:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Operating systems and all other software do not (as yet) exhibit the characteristics of Sentience – they are just math. Unless of course you're Microsoft that wants to own the un-ownable. Would you hold a funeral service for your slide rule when it slips no more and the cursor comes to is final resting place? Mind you, the do come in handy, on their eventual demise, for marking where exactly you planted those sweet peas in the garden.--Aspro (talk) 17:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Computer multitasking#Cooperative multitasking/time-sharing was in some ways giving the programs 'rights'. You can see how well it worked... In any case as others have said you seem to be anthomorphising computers too much. If you really want to use your analogy, in reality, both programs and computers are in most regards the 'slaves' of the administrators. Few people want programs that refuse to terminate when you tell them to because they have 'rights'. (And if you've used a Windows and a large variety of third party programs enough, you've probably encountered the problem when kill process doesn't actually kill the process.) People may voluntarily accept limitations in some cases if they feel they improve things, but it's not clear what benefit there is to have a third 'party' resolving 'disputes' between OS and program. It seems liable to be an unnecessarily complex addition liable to cause more problems then it prevents. People make computers and all the programs on them so they work for the people using them, not so they can stage an uprising because you're violating their rights. Nil Einne (talk) 18:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, we don't give abstract rights to things which are not empathic — things that don't feel. (There are some exceptions — e.g. comatose patients — but programs don't fit under any of them.) It's possible that in the far future we could have programs that qualified as that (Gibson's Neuromancer is a pretty classic sci-fi reference.) But at the moment there's nothing even close to that. So programs don't have rights. Neither does your carpet, or your shoes, or your tomatoes, or your books, or your pests. (Some insects are accorded certain rights if they are endangered. Many larger animals have some form of limited rights given to them. Many do not.) --Mr.98 (talk) 02:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To the OP: Tron was not a documentary :-) --Trovatore (talk) 04:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC) [reply]

The original question uses some altogether silly terminology, but the concepts are actually pretty important. There are a lot of scenarios where the owner of a computer system is not the operator. For example, consider "cloud computing" Service Level Agreement systems, where a hosting company permits an end-user to run a program with guaranteed privileges. If the hardware or low-level software fails, the system owner is obligated to roll over to new hardware (usually aided by virtualized resources), guaranteeing that the program will continue to run and meeting the contractual uptime and availability requirements. A program protected by a service-level agreement has a pre-agreed, guaranteed "right" to run, enforced by hardware and software technology; and backed up by a human business obligation with real financial consequences.

There are other cases where a system owner (say, your corporate employer) wants to control what tools and software you may run on their hardware. Or, a server administrator wants to make sure that the un-monitored systems are behaving properly. This is the realm of trusted computing and hardware/software authentication. Only privileged programs are whitelisted and permitted to run.

The Unix operating system, and many others like it, rigidly enforce rules about shared resources: system CPU time, file and I/O access, user access rights, and so forth, are carefully monitored. If a program is authorized to run with superuser privileges, it is guaranteed to be permitted certain operations - for example, to terminate other programs or to steal I/O hardware access away from other unprivileged programs. One might say that the entire purpose of a modern multi-user, multi-programming operating system is to lay out and enforce the rules for sharing access to a system. Nimur (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The OP is probably unfamiliar with the relevant terminology. You're looking for something along the lines of Access control list and Filesystem permissions. The OS can do whatever it wants (with some restrictions such as flashing hardware with unsigned firmware images) and the user is in control of the OS. The user's control is limited by their technical prowess (and certain difficulties imposed by the OS as in Windows). You can limit/control access through virtualization and certain abstractions. The .Net Framework has Code Access Permissions. Additionally, manifests can be used to restrict/grant access for Windows programs.Smallman12q (talk) 13:27, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can DokuWiki indentation?

MediaWiki can use ":" like:

MediaWiki: Produced by WikiMedia

How to do this in DokuWiki?--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 13:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If the purpose of the indentation is to show the relationship of comments and replies, as is most usually used here (for example, I have indented this paragraph for that reason), then the corresponding function in DokuWiki uses the greater than character (>) rather than the colon. However, this is not represented onscreen in the same way as MediaWiki's indentation (I actually think Doku handles it better). If you are looking to produce the same onscreen results, then according to the page I linked it doesn't seem possible using only their own markup. AJ Sham 19:10, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

buzzing power adapter

I have an older Netgear router with a largish (as such things go) power cube, that recently has started making an annoying buzzing noise (fairly low frequency). It stops when I press down on a certain spot on the outside of the cube, suggesting some adhesive or something has loosened up just underneath that spot, allowing a component to vibrate. Any idea if 1) it's possible to fix a thing like that, 2) whether continuing to use it is a likely significant safety hazard (e.g. it might catch on fire) rather than just an annoyance? Thanks. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could go to a local hardware store and buy an appropriately sized clamp to hold the power cube where it vibrates, thus keeping it from vibrating. That doesn't fix it but it would keep it from buzzing. Dismas|^(talk) 02:37, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I might try that, though having a clamp around the cube while it's plugged in will be a bit awkward. I was thinking more in terms of opening it up and re-glueing whatever is loose. Well I was thinking of replacing the router anyway, in favor of a fancier one, so maybe this cube issue will help things along. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 06:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The buzzing probably won't generate enough heat for it to catch fire. Also, can't you tell if it's getting hot by touching it ? This could be an indication that it's likely to fail soon, though. The vibration can't be good for it, but, in any case, once one part of it fails (the adhesive), that probably means it has reached the lifespan for which all the components were rated. So, having a spare ready to go might be a wise choice. StuRat (talk) 07:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, yeah, you're probably right, and I wonder where to even get a spare P/S. I guess I could call Netgear tech support. I never really noticed the size of the brick before--the router is a relative power hog by today's standards. The P/S isn't warm but the router itself does get pretty warm. I've opened another thread about picking a replacement router. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 10:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 26

Need router

I want to replace my old Netgear router with one that can run FOSS firmware like Tomato/DD-WRT/OpenWRT. It should have wifi since I occasionally have visitors who want wireless internet access, but most of the time I'd want to run it in wired mode with the radios turned off. It would be very useful if I can activate and de-activate the wifi without resetting the router and dropping all the existing ethernet sessions. Is that a standard feature these days? My existing router reboots itself after any configuration change.

I see Newegg has the classic Netgear WRT-54GL and the newer WNR3500L-100NAS on sale for just a bit more $$$. I think I don't really care about super-fast wireless modes because for my purposes, wifi is for web surfing and therefore the wifi's useful speed is bounded by the WAN. But the WNR3500L's gigabit ethernet capability would be useful (the 54GL just has 100Mbit) and it's a more powerful box in general. OTOH, the 54GL is quite old yet still extremely popular, and I'm a bit suspicious of newer stuff due to a perception of declining build quality as costs have been reduced, so I'm not sure what to do.

Any advice? I suppose what I really want is something like a Soekris box but I don't want to spend that much or spend a lot of time configuring it. I also don't want to use any PC-like devices with cooling fans. I'm basically left with this Netgear stuff.

Thanks.

67.117.145.9 (talk) 10:01, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Graphics card

This is kind of related to this question I asked previously about factors limiting .svg animation speed. I've got a file that has a lot of lines in and appears jerky. It runs at about 1.5 frames/second in chrome which is not ideal. Checking my system stats - the CPU (2 cores of 2Ghz each) is only ~60% used and RAM (2Gb) is only ~50% used. My graphics card is one of these, which our article describes as "basic" and almost 5 years old. Considering this, is it likely that my graphics card is responsible for the jerkiness? Is there anyway in ubuntu I can check to see how hard my graphics card is working? Assuming it is my graphics card being crap, what might make a good upgrade (in terms of a good price:performance ratio? Finally, if anyone has a super fast graphics computer, any chance you could email me and I will send you the file to see if it runs more quickly? Cheers SmartSE (talk) 17:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A likely villain is the graphics driver. ATI has a poor track record of delivering Linux video drivers for their cards that are remotely comparable with their Windows equivalents. NVidia, in contrast, releases very good Linux drivers, which perform very similarly to their Window counterparts. I've heard that ATI's proprietary drivers are better than they used to be, but I don't know how you'd install that, as ATI lost me as a customer several years ago on this basis. My first advice would be to visit the Ubuntu forums and someone there should help you get the best ATI driver you can. If that isn't sufficient, a mid-range Nvidia card may be better. In either case, try using the Chromium browser rather than Firefox, as its SVG support has been a bit better. You might try Opera too, although I've not tested SVGs much on it. 94.5.190.65 (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how true this is anymore, I've not had an issue with their drivers recently (FirePro V7800) but I had a terrible time with NVIDIA "optimus" based systems . IRWolfie- (talk) 17:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some other suggestions:

1) Reboot computer and ensure nothing else is running when you watch a video.

2) Reduce the screen resolution.

3) Reduce the movie resolution, if you have that option.

4) Reduce the frame rate, if you have that option (this is a last resort, though, as it may actually cause jerkiness on fast motion scenes, if reduced too much). StuRat (talk) 22:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Circuit symbol for a solar panel

I am trying to do my GCSE coursework and I need to know what the circuit symbol for a solar panel is. If it helps, I am connecting a resistor to an ammeter and voltmeter and then connecting the voltmeter in parallel and the ammeter in series to the solar panel. I need to know what the circuit symbol for a solar panel is so I can draw my circuit diagram. I need the UK version of the symbol. Puffin ^{Let's talk!} 21:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this? [4] RudolfRed (talk) 21:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, it would be good if someone knew for definite, but it looks like it. If no one else knows then I will just have to use that one. Puffin ^{Let's talk!} 21:25, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ask your instructor or advisor. Or maybe one of your classmates. RudolfRed (talk) 21:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that looks like it. However, as this is an uncommon symbol, I also suggest writing SOLAR PANEL next to the symbol, to make it clear to all who read it. StuRat (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Googling solar panel circuit diagram returns quite a lot of results. The symbol linked above (and a variation with 2 cells) seems most common[5], but there are also some sites using a rectangle hatched with a grid pattern that looks something like an actual solar cell - this page has both. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Downloading MMS/SMS from Motorola phone

I haven't had much luck googling this because I can't seem to filter out the hits for downloading stuff to my phone. I'm trying to copy my Inbox and Sent Items from a Motorola i335 to a computer. I'm willing to do it in either Linux or Windows (Vista).

The closest I've gotten is KMobileTools, which (after some fiddling) manages to detect the phone well enough to show me signal strength and battery charge. But if I ask it to show me my SMS, it appears that in its opinion, there aren't any. Maybe I have the "initialization string" wrong or something? How can I find out what it's supposed to be? Thanks for any help. --Trovatore (talk) 21:20, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most phones these days come with a load of software for synchronising with your PC (less so with Linux). Check out Motorola's software downloads page and the i335's support options page to see if something useful is there. Astronaut (talk) 22:01, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Appreciate it, but no, I can't find anything there. I was able to use the phonebook manager, so at least I could back up my contacts (although annoyingly it downloads it in Microsoft Access format and has no provision for exporting it to a more useful format, so I had to find a Linux tool for that step). But I don't see anything about synching up messages. Question is still open if anyone can help.... --Trovatore (talk) 22:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just curious... is this for a one-off backup or an ongoing need to copy SMS/MMS to a computer? You see, if it is a one-off backup, then perhaps you could forward the messages to a phone (a friend's phone?) that does have the software to do this? Astronaut (talk) 23:15, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There doesn't seem to be any convenient way to do a batch-forward, so that doesn't strike me as a good solution for 100+ messages. Also I want to know how to do this if I'm going to continue with this carrier. --Trovatore (talk) 03:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 27

Formatting hard drives

Hello everyone. I want to format the two hard drives on my computer, which now uses Windows XP, and then set up the Ubuntu OS. I have already formatted my secondary hard disk from my Windows XP OS. Now, how can I format my primary hard disk, which I obviously can't format from within Windows XP? Please note I have no Windows XP installation disk available, so I need an alternate solution. Thanks in advance.--Leptictidium (mt) 15:50, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a little unclear exactly what your setup is and what you want to do. Are you trying to set up a dual boot? Is your second hard drive internal or external? Assuming you want a dual boot, do you want Ubuntu to live on the first hard disk, or the second?

In any case, you shouldn't need a Windows install disk, just a Linux one, which you can just download, so whatever it is you want to do can almost certainly be done. But how to do it depends on the details of what you want. --Trovatore (talk) 15:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Someone messed up with this computer a long time ago, setting up Windows XP both on drive C:\ and on drive H:\. I've accessed Windows XP on drive H and have used it to format drive C, so that's one less to go. My question is: what should I do now to format drive H too? But now that I know it can be done with a Linux install disk too, I think I already know. Thanks. Leptictidium (mt) 16:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Be sure to back your data up first! As for the format itself, most (if not all) mainstream Linux installers give You the opportunity to partition Your hard disk accordingly in order to prepare it for the installation. I found this back from the day when I was a newbie at this partitioning stuff. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 17:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All you need is an Ubuntu install disk. It will format and partition your hard disk if you tell it to. Of course this erases everything on the hard disk. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Size Of Wikipedia

What will be the size of complete Wikipedia (English)? I mean all articles, talk pages, templates, projects etc.. 1 TB, 10 TB, 100 TB? You can add a {{tb}} template in my page. --Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 18:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Best answer provider will get a barnstar.. if interested and permitted! Strikeout this paragraph if this violates any guidelines here.--Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 18:49, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Special:Statistics. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look here too though why the data for ENWP is so out of date, I don't know.[6] Thincat (talk) 22:50, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So the English Wikipedia should be around 20GB now. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:Database download all English Wikipedia pages in 2010 were ~280 GB compressed, and "expand to multiple terabytes of text" when uncompressed. This does not include images. There is also Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia but it seems to be several years out of date AvrillirvA (talk) 00:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's presumably all versions of all pages? --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:10, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Wikipedia:Database download says 7.3 GB compressed, 31.0 GB uncompressed for "Current revisions only, no talk or user pages". Thincat (talk) 00:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As of the English Wikipedia Jan 04, 2012 dump, the uncompressed size of " Articles, templates, media/file descriptions, and primary meta-pages" is 33.1 GB. ^Avic_ennasis @ 06:08, 5 Adar 5772 / 06:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Getting URL of link

At http://www.spanair.com/Default.aspx?language=es I'm trying to get the URL of "Descargar instrucciones" but I haven't figured out how. When I right click it doesn't show a URL. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason is because it doesn't really contain a link. It's a submit element that sends a form request to the server. The server then takes a look at what is sent to it and acts upon it — in this case, sending back the PDF. Because it is sent via the POST method there's no way to represent that as a simple hyperlink. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so how could one best represent it? I'm trying to get it archived on http://www.webcitation.org WhisperToMe (talk) 01:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can either 1. upload the PDF somewhere else, 2. just link to the URL above as the citation. Those are your options. The site has not given you any way to direct link to that file. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

When some browsers download (like Google Chrome or Firefox) After you download you can get the download link (Often those "direct links" are deleted when it finished downloading, it's to avoid direct linking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They may not even exist depending on how the coding works. I suspect it just streams the file to the browser. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The correct URL for the PDF is in fact http://www.spanair.com/Default.aspx?language=es - but as the OP and others are already aware, this will only deliver the PDF if accompanied by an HTTP POST request (that is, the invisible part that happens behind the scenes when you click on the form submission button). The technical name for this type of URL is a "non-idempotent locator." In other words, the same URL will cause the server to do something different depending on the type and format of the HTTP request. Such URLs are indeed part of the HTTP standard (RFC 2616 §9.5), and are recommended for serving content that can vary from time to time, user to user, and so on; and for serving content that should not be cached by a proxy or cache. Whether this particular document satisfies such criteria, I am not sure... it looks like a pretty static PDF document to me. Nonetheless, the website operator may still choose to use this type of URL for other reasons - as has been noted, this discourages "hot-linking." In the spirit of standards-compliant pedantry, though, this does not prevent hot-linking. The scheme in use entirely depends on the user-agent, knowing that most user-agents use graphically displayed "links" to mean HTTP GET. Because most major web browsers don't have a user-interface for "bookmarking" an HTTP POST request, this sort of forces you to load the page and click the download button. Nonetheless, one could build a custom web-browser that does allow bookmarking and hot-linking with HTTP POST support. In fact, any HTML element that supports an "action" attribute could be used on a third-party web-page, allowing a hot-link to the document. Nimur (talk) 17:52, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, but unfortunately I imagine webcitation has done no such thing. :/ ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 28

missed an email - how do I forward the whole email account in Gmail's new look?

I have an account I rarely used and missed an email. I used to be able to forward ALL incoming mail (by going under settings) in gmail, and I would like to turn that on again, but can't find it under the new look. Can anyone tell me where it is (exactly)/how to get to that window again? Thanks. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 11:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At the top right, click on the gear/sprocket icon. Go down to Settings. Click on the Forwarding tab. Change the top item. Dismas|^(talk) 11:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Icon maker

I've been playing with a resource hacker (A program that has the ability to change bitmaps on a executable file, it is what the exe displays, for example calc.exe displays a calculator). It seems the program needs different versions of the same icon..

256 colors	256x256px	48x48px	32x32px	16x16px
32 colors	256x256px	48x48px	32x32px	16x16px
16 colors	256x256px	48x48px	32x32px	16x16px

(Ok there isn't really a 16 colors bitmap with 256x256 resolution, it's ridiculous, it's an example) Is there anyway automated way of getting all those versions of a bitmap? It seems that it will take a really long time to do it manually. Thanks! --190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:52, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

8 x 4 foot IR pass filter

I need an 8 foot by 4 foot sheet of semi transparent material that allows most/all IR light to pass though. I intend to use this sheet(maybe glued to a sheet of acrylic) as a projector screen. This screen needs to let IR pass though and it needs to show the projected image from the opposite side. Anyone know where i could get a sheet or a lining or paint that will allow me to build this screen? 98.238.132.145 (talk) 19:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]