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March 1

Android app paranoia

How do I determine whether an Android app is trustworthy or not? The app I'm considering installing is Android Lost

How do I know

who is writing the software?
what personal information could the app access from the phone and store in its own servers?
that the app won't start spamming me (or popping up commercial messages or whatever)?
what happens to my data if the company goes bankcrupt, can the data be acquired by a less trustworthy company?

From the webpage, I get the impression that Android Lost is written by just one person, whose name I didn't find on the page (maybe I didn't look hard enough, or was tired, its late here.). Installing the app means putting a lot of trust in the developer (whose name I don't know), who doubtlessly is working hard to produce an app that appears to be in high regard, and who lives by donations. What if this good guy gets tired of his low-income situation, and turns info a bad guy who discovers new ways of making money from the resources he controls by having his app installed in many phones; ways of making money that are not beneficial to the phone owners (annoying popups, fraud, identity theft, or phone-botnets (if such beasts exist)).

What guarantees to I have against something bad happening?
How ugly could it get?
Am I being paranoid, or do my questions represent common sense caution?
A final question - what is the status of open-source, quality Android apps?

Thanks, --NorwegianBlue^talk 00:42, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Often the app's permissions can help determine if the app is going to do something it shouldn't. Permissions are enforced by the system, so if the developer doesn't declare a permission they can't use it. But this particular one looks like it actually does need a lot of potentially dangerous permissions. Unfortunately, if the source code isn't available, it can be very difficult to determine what the app is actually doing. It seems to be trustworthy currently; if you're concerned that it may change in the future, disable automatic updates and then check the reviews before manually updating. If permissions change, a manual update will be required regardless of your preference, so use that opportunity to research the change. Reach Out to the Truth 02:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, let's try and get some answers.

To discover the author, I searched for the app in the Android Market. It seems to be made by a guy called Theis Borg. A little further Googling leads me to believe that that's this guy.
At the app's page on the Android Market you can click permissions and see all the features on your phone that this app will be able to access. Basically it's everything, but that's not too surprising since this is an app that allows you to control your phone remotely. It does mean, though, that the app could (as in, will have permission to) access information on your phone, including your IMEI number, your location, details of your SMS messages and more.
Given the permissions you have to allow for this app, the answer to this is, 'you don't'.
This might get a little close to 'legal advice', so I'll reserve the right not to answer this one right now...
You might want to read the section about security on the developer's website - particularly the section saying "Trust: Basically all of the above is just text. You _will_ have to trust me that I am a nice guy and all that I say is true. If you do not trust me that is quite OK - then you should not install this app. No hard feelings from my part."
Worst case scenario? Someone else can take control of your phone and all the information therein, and deny you access to it. Although you would have the phone in your hand, it would be as useful to you as if it was stolen. As I say, worst case.
Paranoid? Yes, you are. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing. This app feels legit to me, and the developer has got his contact details, including home address, freely available on the net. That's generally not something that you do when you're out to rip people off. Also the reviews seem quite positive. On the minus side, I don't see any reviews of the app from 'big media' - I'm thinking Engadget, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, those sorts of things. That doesn't mean it's not good, just that it hasn't broken into the mainstream. Final point is that the app has over 100,000 downloads in the last month alone. Google is normally pretty quick at dealing with issues in the Marketplace, and if any of those 100,000+ people had reported something fishy with the app it wouldn't still be around for download. My advice would be to check out alternatives to this app (I like Prey personally) and have a think about the permissions, weigh up the consequences with the benefits of the software and then make a decision.
Sorry, but I'm not quite sure what you meant by this question. And I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask.

Hope all this helps! - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Worst case scenario: You have your emails, passwords, bank info, phone numbers on your phone. They use your phone to call their own premium rate numbers, as a relay for their terrorist/drug activity, to WikiLeak your secrets, to plant incriminating information, to harass your family and friends, to access your bank accounts, to steal your identity (if anyone would want it after all the previous steps). Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

If it's open source, then you can read the code and compile it yourself... Rich Farmbrough, 16:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks everyone for your responses! Special thanks to Cucumber Mike for a very thorough and useful answer. Sorry about being unclear in the last question. I meant to ask about the availability of open source, high quality apps for Android, because my impression is that just about everything is closed source. But I think I'll research the question a bit more myself, and come back with a separate question about this if necessary. --NorwegianBlue^talk 18:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FDroid's repository includes only free and open source applications. That's what I use. I just found AOpensource.com as well, which I haven't taken a look at yet. You can probably also find others that aren't included in those resources by searching the Android Market for terms such as "free software", "open source", and "GPL". Reach Out to the Truth 18:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I just browsed both sites superficially now, and saw lots of stuff that looks interesting. Excellent! --NorwegianBlue^talk 21:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Browser appearance off, can't remember changing settings

Never mind: I've moved this to the "Color doesn't change for links when I visit them; is this an update-related problem?" section at WP:VP/T. Nyttend (talk) 14:12, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Motorola RAZR V3i - Voicemail Problems

I have two questions about a second-hand Motorola RAZR V3i that I've got that I would like help with please.

Q.1 - When ever I get a voice message & try to listen to it again, the recording says "Press option 4 to listen again" but when I do press option 4 to listen the recording asks me to select an option & lists all the options again. It doesn't matter how many times I press option 4, I can't listen to my messages again & the recording just keeps repeating the options. Am I doing something wrong ?

Q.2 - When I've gone to various phone shops & asked them about this they keep teling me that I,ve got to go into the phones settings or options & "Set them properly". And some have even asked me why the No. 1 Key doesn't have the Voicemail symbol on it (the one that looks like to circles joined by a line either on their top or bottom), as they say "Should be as it's on all phones". Scotius (talk) 13:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My first reaction would be that this sounds more like an issue with your carrier (your phone company) than the phone, presuming, of course, that the '4' key actually works. What carrier do you use, and in which country? (e.g. Verizon, USA; O2, UK; Telstra, Australia) - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:12, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm on T-Mobile in the UK. Also I should of said that's it's not just the '4' key but all the keys when selecting an option. They don't make a tone noise like when they do when you are dailing a phone number. But when I do want to make a call the keys do make a tone. Scotius (talk) 12:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On your phone, enter the Settings Menu, then Initial Setup, then DTMF. Change the setting from off to on (or whatever - I'm not sure of the exact wording). It should now work. DTMF signals are the 'touch tones' you hear when you "Press 1 for the robotic voice department, Press 2 to be put on hold, Press 3 to go round in a circle until you hang up", and it seems the previous owner of your phone turned them off for some reason. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:45, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In the DTMF menu, it has three options: off, short & long i've set it to long. Is that okay ? Scotius (talk) 11:53, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno, does it work? :-) (I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here, since I don't have the phone here, and I can't reproduce your problem with anything I do have to hand. But if you try long and it works, great, if not try short, and if it still doesn't work let me know and I'll have another think) - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've just tried by phoning my voicemail & was able to listen to an old voice message. So I'm taking that as it now works. Thanks for the help. :D Scotius (talk) 13:38, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DEP and CometBird

Data Execution Prevention is killing my Comet Bird every few minutes or so. I am running Grease Monkey and Shockwave Flash - all other add-ins are disabled. Anyone familiar with this problem? Rich Farmbrough, 16:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Not this in particular, but you can turn off DEP for selected programs. In my opinion programs that are stopped by DEP are either buggy or poorly designed, or perhaps they are suffering from malware. 09:44, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I resolved it by changing the scripts I was running under Grease Monkey. Since the 486 there have been hardware facilities to protect memory segments, and on a software level, a Greasemonkey script should not be able to behave too badly in this respect, however I am chalking it up to a script bug for the moment. I had suspected malware infecting the browser executable, but reinstalling the browser did nothing, changing the scripts cured it. Not conclusive, but indicative. Thanks for your reply. Rich Farmbrough, 16:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Windows compression?

What is this? When I click on a folder and click on properties on windows, I apparently compress it? And it doesn't even make it a file like zip, 7z, rar, gz. etc. Now it displays the names with blue letters, what this actually do? 190.158.184.192 (talk) 21:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is NTFS compression. Shadowjams (talk) 22:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So the processor uncompress it everytime I open the file? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.158.184.192 (talk) 22:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. The process is mostly transparent to the user, but I think there is very little benefit to using it with the size of hard drives today, and there are drawbacks. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The value in disk compression is mainly speed rather than space, it takes less time to read a compressed file (even allowing for de-compression). On the other hand most disk-intensive file formats have compression built in, certainly consumer formats. The majority of other big files are generally stored in an extrinsic compression such as bz2. A good example of a file where transparent compression is useful is a Wikipedia dump, the 4 January 2012 "pages articles" dump is 33.1G but only takes 19.1 G on my drive thanks to NTFS compression. Rich Farmbrough, 16:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Official looking Yahoo email

I am a BT Yahoo customer and have just received the following email purporting to be from them. The sender has a bt address, but I am wondering if it is genuine. Email reads as follows:

"Thanks for using Yahoo mail, This message is from yahoo messaging center to all yahoo free account owners and premium account owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center. We are deleting all unused yahoo account to create more space for new accounts.

To prevent your account from closure Click here for a quick update."

I'm inclined to believe it's a hoax, but I suppose there's always a chance it could be genuine. Can anyone advise me? Have anyone else received this or similar emails? 86.162.52.212 (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The poor grammar and spelling is a definite sign for me that that's a hoax. Further, I believe Yahoo simply closes accounts that have not been logged into for some time (it must have been about six years ago now, but my previous one was closed for inactivity along these lines) and would not need you to specifically click on a link to see that your account's being used. sonia♫ 21:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Very fishy. If you are worried about Yahoo closing your account because of inactivity, the obvious thing to do would be to use your account for what it's intended for, send an email or whatever. No need to click on a link in a suspicious email. See also here. --NorwegianBlue^talk 22:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You do need to regularly (once every 6 months or so) log into most email services to keep them active... however do that by going directly to the site yourself... don't click on the link in an email like this. Shadowjams (talk) 22:16, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See this blog post from Sophos. Although it refers to Hotmail in this case, the principle is the same. For the avoidance of doubt, every email which says it is from your email provider, your bank, Facebook etc, which says that 'in order to confirm your details' you just need to click a link is a hoax. No exceptions. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 23:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up everyone, BT Yahoo is actually my main account so there shouldn't be a problem, but the thing that threw me was the email came from an @btinternet.com address. 86.162.52.212 (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Email addresses can be easily forged. If you are somewhat computer-savy, you can save the original email (which is almost certainly HTML) and inspect the source. This will usually reveal the actual address the link would take you to. I tend to do that occasionally out of curiosity, and in 95% of all cases, it's a link to a Windows ".exe" file on some server in Elswhereistan. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just for reference, the process is called email spoofing. Vespine (talk) 05:14, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One thing to do when you get these kinds of e-mail is to hover your mouse (not click) on the link, so that the address shows up. If the domain name is anything other than yahoo.com, or whoever the mail claims to come from, it's a hoax. JIP | Talk 05:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 2

Embedded that uses an Intel Atom E6xx that comes with a housing

Have any embedded developers seen an embedded computer that comes with an aesthetic housing like Toradex's Xiilun PC? I contacted them and they say they are not for sale because of heat problems. --Melab±1 ☎ 15:11, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone? I am also trying to order an Intel Atom CE4100. --Melab±1 ☎ 02:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Boxee Box? Acer Revo 2? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 04:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I meant the processor package itself that I can swap with one in a Google TV device. --Melab±1 ☎ 05:22, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone answer this? --Melab±1 ☎ 01:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chrome extensions

Despite my best efforts, Chrome seems to refuse to allow me to remove my Chrome extensions, even when I go to do so specifically from the extensions part of the options menu, they always reappear. Any suggestions on axing them? Mingmingla (talk) 03:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Uninstall then redownload and reinstall Chrome ? StuRat (talk) 05:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If only. This happens on all my instances of chrome when I sync them. Mingmingla (talk) 17:38, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This makes me wonder if the problem lies with the syncing. If possible, try to double check that you exit Chrome properly on all but one computer (preferably turn the computers off), then use this one instance as your 'master copy'. Enable & disable extensions as needed, then close down Chrome on this computer before opening Chrome in another location. Any good? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming it's working. They haven;t appeared yet. Mingmingla (talk) 01:53, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why would history disappear?

I'm not aware I did anything to cause any of this. I was out of the room when I heard my computer making noises like when there is a Windows update and it shuts itself off. In fact, this is what was happening, and then the computer turned itself back on and I got a screen saying Windows did not shut down normally and asking what I wanted to do. I chose the simplest option, which I believe was to pretend nothing happened and start in the usual way. Without that screen in front of me I don't know exactly what it said. I got Windows back and got the Internet back, and some of the sites I had been on came up, but not all. I was, however, logged out of all sites that I had been logged into, even though in all cases I said I wanted to remain signed in. And when I went to CTRL-H tried to got back to the one site that didn't come back up, I saw no history other than the three sites that had just come back. My only clue about why the computer shut off is that I am doing a full scan with McAfee and it has a check box to say I want the computer turned off if a problem is found, something I'd rather not do in case I need to save something. I have merely seen a message in the past if something was detected when a scan was not going on, and I don't think I have any preferences set that would turn off the computer. But I am careful what sites I go to.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:05, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible you had a power fluctuation ? Did the lights flicker ? If you don't have a UPS, this is fairly likely. StuRat (talk) 19:10, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have a surge protector, but it's a basic one. Wait. I just realized. The plugs are so close together the computer kept coming unplugged yesterday. It's really hard to push all those plugs in properly when some larger ones are touching the smaller ones.

Also, I should have looked to see if there was a specific error message when the screen saying Windows didn't shut down normally came up. I don't remember the lights flickering and, while the weather has been bad this week, I don't think there was wind of severe weather that day.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that a surge protector doesn't protect your computer from low voltage, only from high voltage spikes (and of course, from guys named Sergio :-) ). But, one of the plugs coming loose could also be the problem. I suggest you plug some things in elsewhere, like the printer, to avoid that problem. Use extension cords if needed. StuRat (talk) 02:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you still think McAfee could have been responsible, you can check its logs. If it found something and shut the computer down, McAfee should have logged that event. However, I can't imagine McAfee doing some improper shutdown which would cause your PC to report "Windows did not shutdown properly" at the next reboot. Astronaut (talk) 08:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

People have told me to Google, and I forgot about that. I tried another forum so we'll see what happens there. Thanks to Astronaut, and when I get home I'll do that.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:46, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To StuRat: I decided even though it's cheaper to have my own printer, on those occasions when I want to print, I do it at a library. having my own printer would cause me too many headaches. The power strip or whatever it's called has the modem, the monitor, the computer and my telephone answering machine plugged into it. There are plenty of plugs but the modem and answering machine have very large plugs.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you mean they have wall warts. In that case, I suggest a short extension cord with a triple outlet at the end, which will allow you to plug the normal-sized extension cord plug into the surge protector, and the wall warts into the outlets on the extension cord. This should allow you to push the plugs all the way in, preventing intermittent contacts, and also gives you a couple extra outlets. Make sure you get an extension cord with a ground/earth, if either the modem or answering machine cords have grounds. StuRat (talk) 19:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the log but I can't find anything obvious. There was a lot of activity at the time the computer shut itself off but of course that would have been when I went back to the Internet. I don't really know how to read that sutff but I assume that one list shows every time I go to a new web site.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:53, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To StuRat again: yeah, that's what they have. The plugs are firmly in place now, though.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are they still jammed right up against each other ? This is bad for another reason: heat. Those wall warts generate a lot of heat, and need to have space around them to allow air flow, or they will get too hot, shortening their life and possibly posing a fire hazard. StuRat (talk) 20:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They have some space between them and the others.

I just noticed something while McAfee was doing a scan which I didn't start. It said turn off the computer if NO threats are found, which is not what I said. That's actually useful because it's only 38 percent finished. It goes a lot faster but slows everything down if I start the scan.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymous

how can i become a member of anonymous? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Who1200 (talk • contribs) 21:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you have to ask, then you're not eligible. Sorry.-gadfium 22:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Virtual Private Network (VPN) and being anonymous

Services such as TorrentPrivacy and Btguard advertise completely anonymous browsing and torrent traffic. TorrentPrivacy claims to achieve this by using OpenVPN and by not keeping any logs which can associate a particular IP address with particular torrent or web traffic. As TorrentPrivacy stated here, “We have connection logs, but we don’t store IP addresses there. These logs are kept for 7 days. Though it’s impossible to determine who exactly have used the service.” This seems to me as if it should be a truly secure service, but I don't have the technical knowledge to make a determination. I chatted with them, and they first said their service is "practically untraceable," then that it is totally secure:

[Heavily edited]

Q:
You told TorrentFreak "We have connection logs, but we don’t store IP addresses there." Is there any possible way any entity could get my IP address while using your service?

A:
They can't get your original IP, but they can get the encrypted IP created by our SSH Tunnel.

Q:
Is there any way for me to be traced by any governments or organizations?

A:
In the United States it is illegal to put torrents on regular connections. It is technically illegal to download a torrent file under piracy act. [Apparently they assume all torrents are illegal, and it's only "technically" illegal]

Certain departments track internet crimes and privacy [piracy?]. That,s where our software comes in, by encrypting your orignal IP and keeping you practically untracable.

Q:
You say "practically untraceable," but under what circumstances could it be traced?

A:
If you run our software, everything will be encrypted

Q:

cool... and once everything is encrypted, there is no possible way to trace me?

A:

Exactly

The claim is first "practically untraceable," then it's completely untraceable. So what's the verdict? Are such services truly secure and anonymous or not? If not totally secure, under what circumstances could the anonymity provided by services like TorrentPrivacy be breached? B^e——C_ritical 20:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is only as secure as their internal policies permit. Ultimately, IP addresses and whatnot have to be in the clear somewhere or else you wouldn't be able to use these services to connect to anything else. None of the questions you listed above actually address how they're implementing the technical aspects, what their data retention policies are, where their data is stored, how vulnerable it might be to government seizure, or any of that. So: something like that is "practically untraceable" by the average internet user. It is more difficult to trace for the average government agency. However, it may well be more likely to attract the attention of said government agency (per the "only people with things to be ashamed of use encryption" fallacy that is popular), and so it may not wash out as an improvement. But "completely" untraceable/secure/etc? There is no such thing, nor can there be. — Lomn 22:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So it all boils down to whether they could be 1) hacked or 2) store IPs in such a way that someone could get the IPs by physically taking a computer? I think that's what BtGuard is trying to address in this response:

Response to Q1: “It’s technically unfeasible for us to maintain log files with the amount of connections we route,” BTguard explain. “We estimate the capacity needed to store log files would be 4TB per day.”

Response to Q2: “The jurisdiction is Canada. Since we do not have log files, we have no information to share. We do not communicate with any third parties. The only event we would even communicate with a third party is if we received a court order. We would then be forced to notify them we have no information. This has not happened yet.”[1]

How insecure is that?

Also, doesn't the base country, such as Seychelles for TorrentPrivacy have something to do with it? Or is the country of the server you're using with the service the only important thing? B^e——C_ritical 00:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They're being a tiny bit economical when they talk about the logs. They mean they don't habitually keep logs, but if a court or government agency tells them to, they'll have to (subject to due process, in those few countries that still have such things) and they won't be allowed to admit do it. And, for the truly paranoid, how can you know that this (or any other) VPN company isn't run by the FBI? If I were one of those tricksy fellows who provides MPAA and RIAA with technical intelligence, heck, this is exactly what I'd do. 87.114.90.137 (talk) 02:52, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a bit paranoid, for example, to think that the people at Pirate Bay [2] are going to be government agents. Sweden surely has some due process, and this is what they say "If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt, e.g. in murder cases, that they have a case for demanding subscription information from IPredator they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned - a fine is not enough... Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities: IPredator will never hand over any kind of information. IPredator then has to hand over the subscription information entered by you, which is all that we are required to do." They also say "We took the time to completely overhaul our VPN server infrastructure. The machines are now booting from USB sticks straight into a RAM disk... no more hard drives, no local swap space, and of course no logs. " [3]. Anyway... B^e——C_ritical 04:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how these services work: instead of sending data in the clear to a target computer, with a return address pointing to your computer, you send encrypted data to the VPN provider, which sends it in the clear to the target with a return address pointing to the VPN provider. Data sent to that return address is encrypted and sent back to you. Everyone above seems to have focused on the possibility that the VPN provider might reveal your identity, but there are plenty of theoretical weaknesses in this system that don't require the provider's cooperation. For starters, your data still goes over the Internet in the clear, and might contain some clue to your identity, such as a browser cookie. Also, the transfer rate of Bittorrent (for example) tends to vary with time, and the rate of data sent between your computer and the VPN will vary in the same way as the rate of data sent between the VPN and the remote peer; with enough traffic information it might be possible to associate you with that P2P connection with high probability. (And note that the VPN doesn't hide the fact that you're using the VPN; this already narrows down the list of suspects by a lot.) -- BenRG (talk) 04:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that I didn't know... so then a "deep packet inspection" of the data sent from the VPN provider to the target would reveal the nature of the data being sent? As to the rest of your post, I think they got an Anonymous hacker by similar correlation combined with the fact that Hide My Ass keeps IP records. But I don't know. So it is definitely theoretically vulnerable from a variety of angles: the VPN might reveal logs, traffic patterns provide clues as to which computers are communicating, a government could theoretically turn the VPN into a sting operation even if they weren't one to begin with, they could be hacked, and probably a lot of others which haven't been discussed. However, what I'm getting from this is that if you are *ahem* a normal user of these services, they provide a level of protection sufficient to prevent extortion trolling, and other forms of mass litigation. That if everyone had used them, there would never have been the mass lawsuits brought by the MPAA and RIAA, or others trying to get settlements. VPNs which do not keep IP address records would also provide enough protection for people in China and other oppressive countries to send government secrets, secrets about opposition movements and other information which is illegal in those countries. However, they might not provide enough protection for example for terrorist activities where the full weight of the VPN's host country's government would be behind acquiring the information? Is this about correct? B^e——C_ritical 07:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 3

Keyboard shortcut in Internet Explorer

Something odd happened a few minutes ago. I went to type the four tildes as my signature and caught some other key (possibly SHIFT-ESC?). It deleted much of what I had typed and I couldn't recover it with CTRL-Z. Why on earth would I want a shortcut to remove paragraphs of what I had written? SHIFT-ESC isn't one of the shortcuts listed in the help. What happened and can I control the keyboard shortcuts in Internet Explorer 9? Astronaut (talk) 10:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Shift-Esc does what you said... funny one that, I didn't know of it. However Ctrl-Z works for me, and so does Ctrl-Y to redo. I'm usually paranoid after typing a lot in a wiki edit and tend to save the text in notepad before posting, as I've had wikipedia hanging before and it's not a nice feeling to lose your thought patterns. There's probably a way of trapping it with some funky keyboard interrupt utility, but I don't know of a way in Windows. Sandman30s (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How to read natural earth's maps?

Hello, I've tried to download the database of natural earth and I got some text files... Does anyone have any software to read those text files? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.68.222.18 (talk) 10:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the site's own data creation guidelines give a hint on how to use the data. For example, the one I looked at (coral reefs, because it was a small file) contained data that suggests it is a ESRI Shapefile - ie. it a .zip file containing a .prj, .shp, .shx, and .dbf files. Astronaut (talk) 11:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kindle Fire...not e-paper

It was almost a shock to read suddenly on Wiki that Kindle Fire has not got e-paper screen. I was under impression that Kindle ebook necessarily means e-ink as a matter of rule. Well, what it has it then ? The usual LCD like laptops ? Or IPS (whatever that might mean) is something great that makes LCD soft on eyes (like e-paper is) not harsh on eyes, that could not be read without light and could be read in broad daylight (as opposed to typical LCD), or is Fire just a tablet...? Jon Ascton (talk) 14:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as the article says, the Fire is a tablet computer, not a dedicated eReader. It's meant to compete with the iPad (at least, it's meant to limit the iPad's encroachment onto Kindle territory). It uses the same in-plane switching LCD display technology as the iPad, which is faster and more colourful than eInk, at the expense, as you say, of contrast, daylight-visibility, and battery life. They say IPS and eIPS are much friendly on the battery than older LCD technologies, but it's still not the month or so you supposedly get from a "real" Kindle. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that Amazon continues to sell epaper Kindle readers too; they've segmented their product offering, so people to travel a lot, where regular recharging is difficult, can still get the epaper one, and they sell their own tablet for people who mostly use it at home. The also have a Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, and Windows PC. And they offer an online reader for any connected HTML5 device. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:47, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The basic Kindles still use e-ink. The Kindle Fire is meant to be an iPad competitor and uses an LCD screen. They happen to be manufactured by the same company, but they're really quite different devices. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:50, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that eReader and eBooks ≠ eInk. eBooks are simply are really just a couple o different kinds of file types (.pdf and .epub, for example). You can read eBooks on pretty much any device, from smartphones to desktop computers, not just ereader devices. Mingmingla (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch runs Android and it uses electrophoretic ink. But I'm sure Android's capabilities are locked down on the Simple Touch. I know that both the bootloader and the boot ROM are locked up, so you can't install a custom kernel or bypass this by patching the bootloader. I know that the Fire's bootloader is not signature checked (search Google for FIREFIREFIRE) and the new Kindles are easier to hack. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:52, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikispaces user rights

Hello. I'm used to editing Wikipedia, but am new to the site Wikispaces. I tried to ask this question on that site's Discussion Forum, but was ignored. Here is my question:

I'm working with a project to create a wiki/forum. I've created it, and have the job of setting it up and organizing it. As such, I have the "user rights" of organizer and creator. The "creator" user right gives me the ability to make other members "organizers" (a higher-level user right) and to demote organizers (the latter is something only creators can do). As part of a mutual agreement, I'm making a small group of other people "organizers," and I'm dropping all of my user rights. Will I still be listed as the creator? If I am eventually made an organizer again, will I get my creator rights back? dci | TALK 19:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure how to answer this question; I did look at the FAQ, but I didn't see anything obvious. I suspect, however, that if you contact them, the Wikispaces support people may be of more help than their forum. But if anyone here knows the answer, obviously that would be more immediately helpful than that link. --N Y Kevin @967, i.e. 22:12, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bash problem with single quotes

Hello! I've written a script in GIMP that creates a playing card for a specifed rank and suit. Here's how it can be succesffuly executed from the terminal:

gimp -i -b '(script-fu-playing-card "2" "Sans" 1 0 "/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png")' -b '(gimp-quit 0)'

This produces the 2 of hearts; that is, the rank is a string (the first arg after script-fu-playing-card) and the suit is an integer {1..4} (3rd arg). The problem is that now I'd like to embed this command inside two for loops that iterate over suit and rank, but putting $suit and $rank variables inside that command doesn't return their values because of the single quotes. Removing the single quotes and escaping the double quotes and parentheses returns weird errors like GIMP-Error: Opening '/home/me/"Sans"' failed: No such file or directory. Haven't had luck with escaping everything, even the single quotes. So basically, how can I substitute values for the 2 and 1 in the command above with values in vars $suit and $rank while preserving the single and double quotes necessary for the command's execution (in a terminal in Ubuntu Linux). Thank you very much (this has been a big headache).--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:23, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but it is completely impossible to insert anything other than literal text into single-quotes at the command line. It's even impossible to embed a literal single quote into single quotes. The whole point of single quotes is to prevent the shell from doing any expansion or interpretation of the contents, so that you can be sure the contents you entered are used as-is. You might try using $(echo "'(script-fu-playing-card" "\"$rank\"" '"Sans"' $suit "0 \"/home/.../$suit-$rank.png\")'") instead of '(script-fu-playing-card ...1-2.png")'. Note that the echo command will insert spaces between arguments automatically. And make sure your script is running under bash (check the shebang). --N Y Kevin @957, i.e. 21:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I hit similar problems all the time and, while (in my experience) it is usually possible to solve them using a bash script, sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth. I end up creating a text file using emacs and just source that. Emacs is great for this sort of thing. In this case I would start with

  echo {1,2,3,4}{1,2,...,13} > f

and then manipulate f using keyboard macros ('f' is my name for a nonce file). Then ". ./f" sources file f. Works every time, but it is perhaps not an elegant solution. HTH, Robinh (talk) 00:17, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to "interpolate" variables into a single-quoted string you can just end the single-quoted string immediately before and restart it after, e.g. '(script-fu-playing-card "'$rank'" "Sans" '$suit' 0 "/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/'$suit'-'$rank'.png")'. The escaping approach would also have worked except that you forgot to escape the spaces (which are not shell argument separators but rather part of the third argument you're passing to gimp). You need to write $script-fu-playing-card\ \"$rank\"\ \"Sans\"\ $suit\ 0\ \"/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/$suit-$rank-2.png\"$, or something like that.

In situations any more complicated than this I would certainly advise using a better programming language than bash, which pretty much sucks for anything complicated enough to need debugging or maintenance. These days you can usually rely on Python or at least Perl being present. -- BenRG (talk) 04:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(expanded quoting lesson, mostly written before BenRG's reply) If you want to do this without guessing, here's the key: First, understand the command syntax as a sequence of words. Second, decide what you want to put in each word. Last - and I really mean LAST - choose the quoting mechanism(s) to build the words.

The original command consists of 6 words. The first 3 are gimp, -i, and -b and they are simple enough that they don't need quoting. The other -b is also simple.

The last word is (gimp-quit 0) and it needs to be quoted because it contains a space and parentheses. If the space isn't quoted, then this one word would be split into 2 words. If the parentheses aren't quoted, they'll be a syntax error. This word is quoted by adding apostrophes to the beginning and end.

Notice that the quoting apostrophes are not part of the word. They're a piece of shell syntax, not part of the syntax of the gimp command. The word is passed to gimp as a string that is 13 characters long, beginning with the left parenthesis and ending with the right parenthesis.

Other quoting methods would work equally well in this case. You could change the apostrophes to quotation marks, like this

gimp -i -b '...' -b "(gimp-quit 0)"

or remove the apostrophes and quote each special character individually with a backslash, like this

gimp -i -b '...' -b \(gimp-quit\ 0\)

and gimp couldn't possibly tell the difference because the word that results from the quoting is identical.

Now we come to the hard part. The longest word in the original command, also quoted with apostrophes, contains not just spaces and parentheses but also quotation marks, and you want to add variable expansions to it. The biggest obstacle to doing this correctly is trying to somehow fit your answer into the pre-existing pair of apostrophes that surround the word, as if they were a non-negotiable piece of syntax for gimp itself. Instead look at them instead as part of shell syntax, which they actually are (gimp never sees them), and understand that the different styles of quoting are different ways of expressing the same thing, and solutions will suggest themselves.

The simplest (and ugliest) is to do the backslash thing. Drop the apostrophes and put a backslash before every special character in the word, then you can throw in a variable expansion anywhere you want. Like this

rank=2 ; suit=1 ; gimp -i -b \(script-fu-playing-card\ \"$rank\"\ \"Sans\"\ $suit\ 0\ \"/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png\"\) -b '(gimp-quit 0)'

That's unpleasant, so you'll be looking for something better. Replacing the apostrophes with quotation marks is also possible, and it will enable variable expansion. The side effect is that you'll have to put a backslash before each quotation mark in the word itself. There are 6 of them, which is still a lot of backslashes, but less than before:

rank=2 ; suit=1 ; gimp -i -b "(script-fu-playing-card \"$rank\" \"Sans\" $suit 0 \"/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png\")" -b '(gimp-quit 0)'

That's tolerable, but there's an even better way which will get rid of all the backslashes. You only need to realize that different kinds of quoted and unquoted strings can be combined to form a single word. For example, these commands have the same effect:

echo '((foo))'
echo '('"("foo\)')'

In both cases the characters that need to be quoted are quoted. In the first case, the letters are also quoted. In the second case they're not. That makes no difference because letters aren't special so quoting them has no effect. The result is the 7-character word ((foo)). This sort of mixed quoting can be applied to produce a word that is mostly inside apostrophes but has a few unquoted pieces with variable expansions in them, like this

rank=2 ; suit=1 ; gimp -i -b '(script-fu-playing-card "'$rank'" "Sans" '$suit' 0 "/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png")' -b '(gimp-quit 0)'

The shell builds the big word from these pieces:

'(script-fu-playing-card "'
$rank
'" "Sans" '
$suit
' 0 "/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png")'

All the spaces and quotation marks are inside the apostrophe-quoted pieces, so they survive to become part of the word, and the variable expansions are unquoted so they work. After variable expansion, the pieces are put back together. One last improvement is to enclose the variable expansions themselves in quotation marks. If you don't, then when the variable's value contains a space, the word gets split. It won't happen here since rank and suit don't contain spaces, but it's a good habit. Doing that, and adding the loops, I get this:

for rank in A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q K; do
  for suit in 1 2 3 4; do
    gimp -i -b '(script-fu-playing-card "'"$rank"'" "Sans" '"$suit"' 0 "/home/me/Pictures/Cards-png/1-2.png")' -b '(gimp-quit 0)'
  done
done

68.60.252.82 (talk) 04:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am Stephan Schulz, and I approve this answer! Very well explained! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:04, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your excellent responses, especially from 68.60.252.82. Once I understood how bash processes the words, as explained above, it made a lot more sense. This will be an indispensible reference for whenever I run into another bash problem, as well.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

.m2ts

The .m2ts file, I'm told is the highest quality of Codec that a video can currently be on a computer. Is this correct? I know it depends on the bitrate/second and the highest the .m2ts has is in the 30,000's. Can anyone else explain this properly to me?Zaltaire (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it would help to define 'quality', but the answer is mu. .m2ts is a container format, not a codec. Additionally, bitrate is just a heuristic. Cleverer encodings can achieve better fidelity (again, appropriately defined as e.g. perceptual PSNR) reproductions of source data at smaller filesizes, but potentially at the cost of greatly increased complexity of encoder and/or decoder. However, the reason it is a heuristic is that higher birate means having more 'space' in which to store your approximation to the source material. All else being equal, this should mean your encoding can be more faithful to the source. As for the 'highest quality' of codec, if we take this to pertain only to fidelity of reproduction, then this would have to be some lossless codec - however impractical it might be for general use. 131.111.255.9 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I don't know about this codec specifically, but I doubt if any codec is universally better quality for all types of video. Cartoons might have one best, slide shows another, etc. StuRat (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The highest quality would be a "raw" video stream with no compression. No compression artifacts would be introduced whatsoever. (Quibble: "codec" stands for "compressor/decompressor", so technically a codec with no compression is a misnomer ... but a "raw" codec would be called a "raw codec" anyway, so I'll let it stand!) Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here (full paper, summary) is a comparison between different lossless video codecs, which concludes:

In Video Capture and Video Editing Area the overall clear winner is Lagarith.
In Maximum Compression area the overall winner is YULS.
The most balanced and flexible codec is FFV1: relatively good speed and high compression for various presets.

--NorwegianBlue^talk 07:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Before video data reaches the first codec, information has already been lost. Video data undergoes color space conversion, introducing rounding-error and clipping. Next, it undergoes chroma subsampling, because most codec algorithms (including lossless codecs) expect data in this format. So, "lossless" really only refers to data preservation by the codec, but does not mean "bit-identical" to the source data. A modern digital camera, or video software system, has a sophisticated media graph. If you would like to learn about how codecs fit into this picture, I recommend investigating GStreamer, a free software media and video pipeline. It will be a bit of a technical deep-dive to get into its source, available on GStreamer's website; but it will help orient you to the many stages of the software and hardware pipelines that take video frames from "somewhere" and put them on your screen. Codecs are only a small part of the story! On modern systems, high-quality video playback is one of the most demanding tasks your computer is asked to do - so you really should compare end-to-end quality, rather than codec bit-accuracy. If a codec stalls the pipeline to improve quality, you may lose audio synchronization, drop frames, or corrupt the image elsewhere. So, beware of claims by codec engineers - especially claims of bit accuracy - if they are uncaveated by engineering realities! Nimur (talk) 17:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This surely depends on your intended purpose. If you are storing the video for immediate playback then you do have to worry about dropped frames. If you are storing the video for archival purposes or as an intermediate during editing, then dropped frames should not be something you have to worry about unless the system is incredibly flawed since it should not require real time performance and therefore should not be dropping frames. (Performance does matter, if it takes you 1 minute to decode a frame editing is likely to become unfeasible.) Of course in the archival case, it probably doesn't make sense to convert to a lossless format if your source data is already compressed and you are not doing any editing unless perhaps your source data is in a format you consider unsuitable for archival, e.g. a proprietary closed source format so you do need to convert to some format.

BTW, perhaps I'm mistaken but I was under the impression many lossless codecs do infact support Y'UV444 (i.e. no chroma subsampling is required). I believe some also support RGB, so colour space conversion may not be needed. (Remember this surely depends on your source data. If your source data is YCbCr, then you may not want to store it as RGB. Even if it was RGB sometime early on, if you don't have access to that data, it's a moot point to you.) Of course you may eventually need chroma subsampling and colour space conversion, precisely when in the process you should do that is something you need to consider.

Also from my experience, many lossless codec developers/engineers do understand these sort of things, however they do expect their users to already understand them as well so don't bother to offer explainations. I don't think it's really the fault of engineers if people use their codecs without understanding what they are doing. (Although realisticly, I expect most people considering lossless video compression who don't know what they are doing will quickly change their minds when they realise the bitrate needed. The bigger problem is people encoding video with lossy compression with perhaps excessively high bitrate and other such things.)

Nil Einne (talk) 04:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 4

Anvil Studio: Scrolling the piano-roll

I have a problem which should have an obvious and easy solution, but doesn't. I'm using Anvil Studio to compose MIDI, and can't for the life of me figure out how to get it to show me notes higher than C 5 or higher than the B above that on the Piano Roll view. How can I do that? 97.125.17.72 (talk) 08:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most MIDI instruments, synthesizers, and software have a limited 7-bit range for notes. This means that most syntesizers and software only permit a total range of 127 notes - because of a technical detail of how MIDI works. See, for example, the MIDI Note On- and Off- message format. Some synthesizers can expand the range by presetting a range with a custom Channel Control/Mode message (compare to the "octava" 8va and 8vb in conventional sheet music notation). However, there's no guarantee that a specific MIDI instrument or hardware sound card would understand such a special control/mode message. I'm not specifically familiar with Anvil, but it sounds like it is range-limiting you on purpose to remain compatible with the lowest-common denominator of the standard MIDI synthesizer output. Nimur (talk) 17:08, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Even though 7 bits may sound limited, 128 notes (0 to 127) is very adequate. Refer to the chart at Range (music) which uses middle C = C4. Here's the MIDI range, depending on what you call middle C.

Middle C	MIDI range
C3	C-2 to G8
C4	C-1 to G9
C5	C0 to G10

In any case, C5 to B5 are not near the upper limit of the MIDI range. --Bavi H (talk) 02:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just downloaded the current version of Anvil Studio. The Piano Roll defaults to showing one octave from Middle C (which Anvil Studio calls C5) to the B above it (12 notes). The bottom half of the screen is devoted to help information. According to the help text, "To change which notes and octaves get displayed on the grid, press the Add Sounds button." (?!) Thankfully, in the Add Sounds dialog box you can choose both the lowest note and the number of notes to show. For example, if you want the Piano Roll to show the entire MIDI note range with a scroll bar, you could choose Lowest Note = "C 0 (midi 0)" and Numer of notes to show = 128. --Bavi H (talk) 03:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for. 97.125.17.72 (talk) 03:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you are comfortable installing programs from zip files, may I also suggest Sekaiju as another possible MIDI sequencer. Note that you have to change the language from Japanese to English: Alt+S, L, English, restart. (Or before starting Sekaiju, open Sekaiju.ini and change Language=Japanese to Language=English.) --Bavi H (talk) 03:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

google docs image problem

Hi. I have a large (2.5MB) jpeg image which I would like to include in a google document. Using 'insert -> image' does not work, giving an error "The image you selected is too large. Only files smaller than 2000 by 2000 pixels are allowed." OK, so I open the image in gimp and save at 4% quality, which reduces the size to about 40K. But this does not solve the problem: google docs gives the same error. This is presumably because the resolution (which gimp reports as 3072x1728 for both the original image and the reduced quality copy) is still too big. Can anyone advise (kubuntu/windows 7; free software only) please? Robinh (talk) 08:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to save it at a lower quality level, but at a lower resolution. Good old xv can do it. Also, ImageMagick can do everything. Try convert -resize 1536x864 old.jpg new.jpg. ImageMagick is, as far as I know, available for every OS on the planet, and usually installed by default on most Linux systems. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since you're already using GIMP, the feature is right there - select Image > Scale Image, then change the width to 2000 or less. AJ Cham 09:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

thanks guys. Two perfectly good solutions! Best wishes, Robinh (talk) 09:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

From vector to coordinates, from coordinates to vector

If you have a svg image, can you convert it back to its mathematical coordinates or if you have some mathematical coordinates (imagine circle, r = 30 pixel, position (50, 50) in a imagine 100 x 100 pixel), how can you convert it into an svg file? XPPaul (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Start by reading the W3C Standard describing the SVG Rendering Model, and learn the primitive data types. Then, decide on a case-by-case basis. For example, SVG has a primitive to render a circle; or, you can approximate a circle by rendering as many line segments as you like. So, you have to decide which model to use when you draw a circle for your own project. In general, the SVG Coordinate object is the data primitive that defines position in a rendering context. A coordinate can be used as part of another element, like a spline, line-segment, or circle. If you want to convert a general SVG document back to cartesian coordinates, by definition you must use an SVG renderer (or, you can sloppily re-implement one of your own). If your SVG document has a lot of line-art, you may be able to extract those coordinates and draw them using a dramatically simplified subset of the full SVG specification. Nimur (talk) 17:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're looking for a way to render mathematical coordinates as SVG graphs, gnuplot is a common way to do it. Going backwards from SVG to a gnuplot-like language is probably not possible (or doesn't make any sense, anyway — SVG is already a structured vector format; so converting the SVG circle specification to another one seems like a rather arbitrary conversion scheme). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

math question on program

I posted a question on the math reference desk that is actually a script, and perhaps this is a better place to ask if others get the same results. The mathematicians can tell me why that happens, if so. Thanks. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 19:42, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is the question: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics#weird_result RudolfRed (talk) 21:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think they're answering your question pretty well. You should consider condensing your explanation a bit. And you're also leaving out the most important details: how you are working your random numbers to get a dice throw; is there something going on with your math here (seems to be your expected values might be wrong). It seems either you're getting artifacts due to the underlying RNG you're using, or how you're handling it. Use the same method and see if your distribution is uniform.

It also appears everything may just be working fine. Why don't you ask the math desk this simple question: For n rolls of a fair dice, what is the largest expected number of runs of consecutive 6s. That would provide you the longest expected number of busts for your "enormous number" of runs. Shadowjams (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a follow up, here's a little perl program that will count for you the number of runs of each duration for a given n. It does this by rolling a dice, seeing if it's a consecutive run, and then recording the length of the runs. It should provide you a reasonable approximation of what you'd expect.

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $last_roll = 0;my $in_a_row = 0;my $x = 1;my %count;
while (1) {
    my $roll = (int rand(6)) + 1;
    if ($roll == $last_roll) {$in_a_row++} else {$count{$in_a_row}++ if $in_a_row > 2; $in_a_row = 0}
    $last_roll = $roll;
    unless ($x % 1000000) {print "\nIn a row\t#\t($x runs)\n"; foreach (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %count) {print "$_\t\t$count{$_}\n"}}
    $x++;
}

I get this distribution after 100 million runs:

In a row        #       (100,000,000 runs)
3               321785
4               53392
5               8887
6               1488
7               271
8               40
9               5
10              3
11              1

Does this match your data at all? Shadowjams (talk) 21:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not what the script was. The script was originally this: http://codepad.org/bU68pFDc - as you can see, it busts! Keep running it and it keeps busting. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 10:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

sorry, it has a mistake (it shouldn't exit but just exit the loop), but you get the idea...

As I said on the Math desk, some language implementations (including Perl) use libc's defective random number generation. Try again using Math::Random::MT. Paul (Stansifer) 18:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know it's not the same program... I'm not rewriting the OP's program for him/her... I was however trying to help the OP wrap their mind around random walk distances. As for perl's RNG... I suspected it wasn't very robust, although that link is interesting. I actually looked at some distributions of numbers that came out of it and they were less uniform than I'd expect, although I didn't get any more elaborate in checking than looking at a few runs, so that's just an anecdote. However, I'm not sure they change my results significantly, although I may try one of the modules and see what happens. Shadowjams (talk) 20:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ran it again using MT. No statistical difference in results. Shadowjams (talk) 21:23, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Skype: incredibly loud artificial background noise

If I use Skype on my latest laptop, more often than not I get artificial background noise (the other end not hearing it at all, not like feedback or anything). It works up and down in loudness in waves, can get really quite loud and can easily disrupt conversation. The sound definitely comes from Skype, and is inseparable in the Windows mixer from the actual Skype conversation. I don't know if this is related, by my Skype-computer combination also deducts system sounds from the microphone input (the other end can't hear music I'm playing, for example). Does anyone have any ideas on how I can rid myself of this din? Thanks! - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 20:33, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does it happen when you don't have it deduct system sounds from the microphone input? That seems like the obvious thing to rule out first. And I wonder if you can't describe the noise a little bit better. Is it white noise or something else? --Mr.98 (talk) 20:51, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not white noise, it's more like someone with one of those handheld electric fans passing it by your ear every few seconds. I've never found a way to stop it deducting my output from the input, but it's probably possible. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 21:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that might suggest it's not that is that the sound is independent of whether or not I have my microphone enabled or disabled (another sign it's not feedback). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 21:20, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it is the other end's processor fan or disk drive? I find that a significant problem with built-in microphones in laptops. Ask the person on the other end to use an external mic, or a headset. Astronaut (talk) 16:54, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds an interesting idea, will have to try it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 16:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 5

Migrating all SVN metadata into root directory of working copy

I edit some text files using PlainText on my iPod touch and my iPad. They are synced through Dropbox, which then syncs with my computer. I use subversion to keep track of these files and to do this I copy over the files from /Users/User/Dropbox/Plaintext/[SpecificFiles] to the working directory after clearing out the visible files. Now I have added folders to these files and this procedure has become annoying. You know how each directory of an SVN working copy has its own .svn/ folder? I want to migrate the information in each .svn/ folder into the .svn/ folder in the root of the working directory. How do I do this? --Melab±1 ☎ 04:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One thing you might try is updating to the latest version of subversion. It uses one .svn file for the whole tree instead of one per directory, so that might make your task easier. RudolfRed (talk) 04:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How will I update the current working directory then? --Melab±1 ☎ 20:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I use Mac OS X. Is there a way that I can update to the latest SVN without compiling and building? It's all a hassle. --Melab±1 ☎ 20:32, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unable to play audio file

I recently downloaded a song from a file sharin program called Soulseek. When I clicked to play the audio file, a pop up appeared that said, “The file you are attempting to play has an extension (.mp3) that does not match the file format….” After I pressed ok, another pop up appeared and it said, “Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file.” The audio file is an mp3 according to the properties. It is 8.9 MB in size. The name of the file is displayed. However, the length of the audio file (I do know that it is 3:54 long), the bit-rate, and all the other properties are not displayed for some reason. I’ve been researching the Internet to see what I could do to make it play. I went to a website where I read someone mentioning K-Lite Codec Pack, so I downloaded its full version and its updates just to try, but nothing worked, nor did I completly understand how to use it, but I tried everything there possible though, so I uninstalled it. I also tried uploading the audio file to 4shared to see if it would play there, but it could not play there. However, for some reason, 4shared mistakenly read it as just a 32 kbps, forty-something minute long song. So, my question is, with all this in mind, what do I need to do to play the audio file? By the way, I was able to contact the person, who is apparently a DJ because it is included in his username, yesterday on Soulseek by searching for the file again and then clicking the option of “Send this user a message,” and he replied back in Portuguese though saying that he has no problems playing the file. I don’t speak Portuguese. However, I was able to understand what he said because I speak Spanish fluently, which is similar to Portuguese. I added the extra info that he replied back to me in Portuguese if his location sheds light or not on the problem. Willminator (talk) 05:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My go-to program for looking at audio files is the freeware foobar2000 (while the name might not inspire confidence, the program is nevertheless great.) For checking file types in general (e.g. in case the file is really a zip archive of the mp3) there is file (command). Googling for file command for windows finds Windows versions. Please be mindful of viruses if you install one of those, only download from trustworthy sites. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 12:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This morning I did some research and I tried downloading a special media player that supposedly plays everything called, VLC Media Player, but when I tried to play it there it said that it doesn't support some weird extension that I don't remember and that there was nothing I could do about it. Then, I downloaded GPSpot and it wasn't able to read the song's audio codec. I downloaded Foobar2000 like you told me and it was unable to play the audio file I've been trying to play, but it did work for my other songs. 88.112.59.31, or anyone here, would you mind if I ask you, if it is permissible, if I can send to you the audio file so that you can be able find out what the codec is, if it is fixable, or if there is nothing one can do? The person I got the song from at Soulseek, like I said previously, told me that he didn't know what I was talking about because he can play it. Willminator (talk) 16:01, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about getting a look at the start of the file in a hex editor and comparing the first few bytes to those listed in List of file signatures or on this site. It might indicate what the file actually is. Astronaut (talk) 16:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I downloaded Freware Hex Editor XVB2 and the hex editor said, 00 00 00 00 00 00 00.... I opened another song, and there were pairs of numbers. I don't know how that guy is able to play the song and he was confused when I contacted him saying that the song didn't work. I guess I'll have to move on, but I'll try to contact him again and I'll tell him that I've tried everything I could to play the song. Willminator (talk) 18:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

movement of mouse (computer)

How is the movement of the mouse is measured? Is it by micky? Thank you.175.157.248.35 (talk) 09:15, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Start by reading this section of our article. The "mickey" is a sort of a joke terminology; most technical mouse specifications usually use "count per inch" or "dot per inch" as the basic unit of mouse motion. For example, USB mouses follow the HID device class specification. The actual measurement of mouse motion varies; originally, a spinner wheel with a rotary encoder converted mouse motion into digital counts. Modern optical mouse systems use a complex optical sensor and onboard miroprocessor to track motion. Touch-screens and trackpads usually use capacitive sensors and software processing to track movements. Nimur (talk) 09:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Win32 API, at least, officially uses mickeys ([4]). The name is obviously a joke, but there is a need for some term to describe the raw motion deltas reported by the mouse. -- BenRG (talk) 18:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Password Folder

Is there any way to protect a certain folder in Windows 7 with a password, or at least make it hard to access to anyone but me? I'm using a computer with a single account on it, so this isn't a matter of administrator privileges. Inter change able|talk to me 18:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you concerned about others accessing the folder via the Internet, or by logging directly onto your computer ? StuRat (talk) 20:02, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Others coming along and using my computer while I'm logged in; the computer can't access the Internet and I'm using another one right now (so downloads such as TrueCrypt below are out of the question). I want to make the folder such that if anyone tries to open it, they will receive an "enter password" prompt or something similar. Inter change able|talk to me 21:12, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And do you want to allow them to use your computer, or is it OK to prevent that, as well ? If so, setting your computer to screen lock whenever you leave for a minute would do it. The problem with just protecting one folder is that if you open any of the files inside it, you will likely have temporary copies created elsewhere. StuRat (talk) 21:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I still want to allow them to use the computer; I just want to protect that one folder. And what do you mean by that? Will other copies of the file automatically be distributed throughout the computer? Inter change able|talk to me 21:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know other copies appear to be in other folders, but they might just be links back to the original. In this case, hopefully they would only be able to see the original file name, but not it's contents. StuRat (talk) 23:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

TrueCrypt 82.45.62.107 (talk) 20:18, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This advice is for Windows XP, not Windows 7, but hopefully it still applies there:

1) Set up a "secure" user name that only you can use. You could just use the Admin user name for this, if you wish. Leave the general user name available to everyone else.

2) Log in under the secure account, right click on a folder, pick the "Sharing" tab, then check the "Make this folder private" box. The folder will have to be owned by the new user name to do this. You might want to just move the contents of the old, unsecure folder into this new folder.

3) Set the secure user name to screen lock when not in use, in case you walk away and somebody else walks up before you have a chance to log out. StuRat (talk) 23:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That works; thank you very much! Inter change able|talk to me 00:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if I click Properties → General → Advanced there's an option to "Encrypt this Folder", but it's not clickable and I don't see any way to make it that way. Inter change able|talk to me 01:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently folder encryption is available only on business/premium editions of some versions of Windows; perhaps you have a home edition. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 09:02, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could encrypt it.. like compress them and 7zip them... when they won't be available as you have to decompress the file you want to use.. but it's more secure... 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:54, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I advise against using NTFS encryption in any case. It has its uses, but if you don't understand how it works you can easily have problems. For example, if the files are accessible to an account that has a weak password, or no password, or that is set to log in automatically, then they aren't secure even though they're shown as encrypted. If you ever reinstall Windows then any NTFS-encrypted files will probably be lost forever, even if they're on an external drive that wasn't plugged in when you did the reinstall. Truecrypt is better because its security model is simple: a volume is mounted or unmounted; to mount it you enter a volume-specific passphrase; when it's unmounted it's secure. -- BenRG (talk) 18:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can't search using Google in Firefox

In Firefox, when I try to search Google, it will not search until I log in to my Google account. Works OK in Chrome & IE but not Firefox. Has anyone any idea what is wrong? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gurumaister (talk • contribs) 19:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems not. Can you help us out with a fuller description of what's wrong? When you say it 'will not search' - do you get an error message? If so, what? Or does your computer simply 'hang' or crash? Or maybe you are taken to a different website. All these things are possible problems, and each has its own solution. If we know more about the problem we might be able to find the answer. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:10, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, silly of me. Whenever I enter something into the search box and press search, I get the login dialog box for my google account and I can't get past it without logging in. Hope you can help me. Gurumaister (talk) 18:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It shouldn't be a problem as long as you have a Google account. Does this happen every time you try to search, or after you log in does the problem go away for the rest of the browsing session? Inter change able|talk to me 19:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no it isn't a major problem but I don't want to have to log in just because I want to use Google. Once I'm logged in I can search as often as I like. But no one else I know is forced to sign in first - is there a setting I can change that will get rid of this nuisance? I am grateful for any suggestions. 82.71.20.194 (talk) 19:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

gluing images side by side

Given three images, each 4096 pixels wide, I want to glue them side-by-side to create a single image 12288 pixels wide. What's a good way to do that with, say, GIMP? You'll understand that I don't want to rely on the accuracy of my mouse-dragging; and I plan to do this several times, so a script would be especially helpful. —Tamfang (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't exactly a script, but if you set the snap size high it will make this task much easier to do by hand. Shadowjams (talk) 22:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Basically you want to make a panorama. If you google for "panorama gimp" you'll get a number of relevant pages, including a video tutorial, but this script might be the most useful. Looie496 (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We also have a comparison of photo stitching applications. Such programs can do more than simply placing the images side-by-side; they can "stitch" and blend images together, taking account of features that are common to each frame and providing a smooth blend and geometry corrections. I recommend Hugin as it is very feature-rich, but requires a good deal of technical knowledge. Nimur (talk) 23:18, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want to glue them together, ImageMagick can, of course, do it. Try convert +append in1.jpg in2.jpg in3.jpg out.jpg. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 6

Ethernet Ports' IP Addresses

Good Afternoon!

In a computer with multiple Ethernet ports, does each network interface (i.e. Ethernet port) have its own IP address, or does the computer have a single IP address which is shared by all of the network interfaces?

Thank you, RefDeskers!

07:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Normally each port has its own IP address.

In a corner case the addresses might theoretically be the same. E.g. a router between separate subnetworks, and the router has the same private IP address on each. Such a configuration might cause problems, though, such as an ambiguity with the bind(2) system call. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 08:58, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh goodness, where to begin. Every ethernet capable device has a 48 bit MAC address, each of which should be unique (like a serial number; although you can fake them, so they're no good for authentication). Those devices may connect to an IP enabled device, in which case they could possibly be assigned an IP address.

What you're talking about works on layers of abstraction... ethernet is below TCP which is below IP which is below HTTP, etc. There's a lot of those layers. And your question is mixing up about 3 of them. So while my answer is correct, I worry you may be wondering about something else... Shadowjams (talk) 09:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a supplement to the links that Shadowjams provided, the article OSI model gives an explanation about the different layers of abstraction that Shadowjams is referring to. --NorwegianBlue^talk 10:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that link. I couldn't think of it at the time... I wrote my answer... OSI model is the perfect article to start with. Shadowjams (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Vector animation

Does there exist some kind of software that would let someone define animation similar to how a vector image is described and then export the animation using a variety of parameters like length of the video, frames per second, and pixel density? --Melab±1 ☎ 04:08, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's how Flash works, and there are other vector animation formats as well. Looie496 (talk) 06:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can always generate an animated SVG, then screen capture it (or convert? I don't know of any converters though). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is SVG animation, you need to know some xml, there are lot of tutorial out there... IDK about external links but.. this might help 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Programming Languages

What programming language are programming languages written in? For example, what is BASIC written in? And what is that language written in? And so on? Thanks. Eiad77 (talk) 05:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eventually you get down to machine language. A step above that is assembly language. StuRat (talk) 06:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What you are really asking is what language the compiler or interpreter for each language is written in. The answer is that it varies -- I think C is probably the most common choice, though. In fact, modern C compilers are themselves written in C. In the very beginning, compilers or interpreters for languages such as BASIC or FORTRAN were written in assembly language. Looie496 (talk) 06:01, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So is an instruction set the lowest level of a computer language? Eiad77 (talk) 06:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For all practical purposes, yes. Microcode is a level still lower, but there's no longer any connection with a programming language as it's usually understood.-gadfium 08:18, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The language itself is defined using a programming language specification, which might be a mathematical description, a description in a natural language, or a reference implementation (e.g., a compiler that other compilers are expected to conform to). Implementations of the language (compilers or interpreters, for example) are initially written in a language that has already been implemented for the platform - but once you have a working implementation, you can write a compiler/interpreter in the language itself - this is called bootstrapping. This is popular as it means you only need knowledge of the one language to understand and help develop the implementation. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 11:21, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Historically many were written in a combination of C and yacc/lex. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler is written in Haskell. CPython (the default Python implementation), Perl 5[5] and the earliest Java compiler are written in C. --Colapeninsula (talk)

I don't really see the difference between a self-hosting compiler than a not self hosting compiler... 190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For most purposes there isn't any. It's only when you get into questions like "What programming language do I write a compiler in?" does the property matter. If you have a self-hosting compiler system, you don't need any other external systems in order to make changes to and re-write the compiler. - Also, as no one has mentioned it yet, the essay Reflections on Trusting Trust (direct link) is an interesting read on the topic. Although the main point on trust is ancillary to the current topic, there's a good overview of what goes into bootstrapping a compiler - that is, how you introduce/encode a new programming concept into a compiler. -- 71.35.120.88 (talk) 16:56, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bootstrapping (self-hosting) is often done out of an attitude of self-reliance, or as a form of dogfooding. It requires extra effort (since you need at least a basic implementation in some other language to get started), but it does mean that the team building the compiler only has to think about one language. Paul (Stansifer) 19:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all the answers everyone, it's much appreciated. Eiad77 (talk) 20:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Clocks inside my computer, changing time

Hello, Wikipedians

Some software can have its use restricted time-wise. Is there any 'clock' inside my computer which such software synchs up to? I'd like to change any such clock, ie change the date, but have no idea how to do this on my own. If you know of any techniques I would be very thankful!

Thank you in advance. 83.108.140.82 (talk) 17:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the system time usually requires admin privileges. In all probability the person (boss? teacher? parent?) who has placed time-restrictions on your computing would not have given you such privileges, as it would make it ridiculously easy to circumvent those controls (but you knew this). Even if you changed the time, most modern OSes are set to update it automatically via NTP. AJ Sham 17:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, using an invalid system time will break network and security services. For example, an SSL certificate or a Kerberos ticket is only valid during a period of time ... which must be mutually agreed on by both sides! Now that modern operating systems are highly network-enabled and highly secure, these issues may impede basic system functionality; so it's sometimes critical to have your system clock set to a correct time. You can read anecdotal stories of some of the ways a system, e.g., Windows, will break: here's an MSDN blog called SSL and System Time written by a Program Manager at Microsoft. I can attest to seeing similar "weird unexplainable system errors" when I have tried to muck with my system clock on other platforms, including Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux, and Solaris; and of course, I rely on Kerberos for authenticating my Mac to my home network. So, such problems due to "faked system time" can occur on almost any networked operating system. Nimur (talk) 19:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keeping in mind the above warnings, in Windows you normally double click on the time in the lower, right corner to bring up a full clock and calendar. If you have the proper privileges, this is where you change the time or date. StuRat (talk) 19:31, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this another case to use Linux, which lets you do with your computer that (you own) rather than what Microsoft allows you to do? On linux, one simply syncs and its remains in perfect time until the seas boil dry/ or that astroid hits/ or what ever..--Aspro (talk) 19:41, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really a valid point. On Linux, if you are not a computer administrator (Superuser, root, zeus, on the wheel, or whatever)..., you may not change the system time. See, for example, date. This is entirely a matter of "are you the system administrator," not "is your system's kernel open-source." And, as I have pointed out above, even if you are the system administrator, incorrectly setting your system-time will break other services, especially network and security services.

Along the same lines, your hardware's real-time clock accuracy is independent of your operating system; whether you run Linux, Windows, or NetBSD, your hardware clock will drift at whatever rate its hardware tolerances and the laws of physics dictate. This is the motivation for network time protocol, or for using a secondary clock source. Running Linux is not sufficient to keep your clock "in perfect sync," which is why most Linux distributors pre-install an NTP sync service, ntpd. In fact, on Ubuntu, the system is pre-installed with ntpd openntpd_3.9p1+debian-1_i386, a Debian-provided port of OpenNTPD, which is not part of Linux at all; it is pulled from the OpenBSD project. Nimur (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK. So, I should have said running a Linux distribution with ntpd installed. But one can instal that oneself. Linux doesn't stop you. I've just checked my clock time against a radio clock and is spot on still and nothing seems broken, so please don't try to confuse me with computer science- I just want an Operating System that works, instead of an OS that works - just. 'Linux' is open source, so yes, I can make it do what I want (-when I suss out how that is), It does not deny me those rights and sudo is often all I need. And as for having to edit the Windows registry...@#✻ !!!– forget it!--Aspro (talk) 21:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There was a time when software was offered free (often on a 5.25" floppy glued to the front of a magazine) for a limited period of time, after which you had to pay for a code which you could enter for further access. (See Shareware and Crippleware for a little more on this topic.) Failure to enter the code would prevent the software from working, unless you worked out that you could just re-set the date on the computer and 'fool' the software that you were still in the grace period. Unfortunately, I believe that software manufacturers have got wise to this since the days when men were men and disks were floppy, and this no longer works. I'm sure there is probably some other way around these limits, but I'm not going to find it for you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Free Web Based/Hosted Bug Tracker

I'm about to release a fairly detailed tool for a game (Dwarf Fortress if you care), and I'd like to have a system setup where people could submit bugs or feature requests. All of the bug tracker software I found required that I download it and host it, which isn't an option for me at the moment. Is there something out there where I could register, create a new application, and then invite others to come and issue bugs/feature requests? Thanks! Chris M. (talk) 21:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it's open source you could check out github, or google code, both have issue/bug trackers. However I don't think they have free host options for non open source projects. Vespine (talk) 22:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is going to be open source, do you happen to know if I can restrict a project on github so that I'm the only one who can update the source? I don't mind if others view or use my source for their own purposes, but I'd like to be able to control the code completely if possible. Thanks! Chris M. (talk) 22:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can always ask them just to email you bug reports. Not as good as a proper bug tracking system, of course, but it is free. StuRat (talk) 22:07, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to be releasing it on a forum so there will be the option of just posting messages to let me know of bugs. It's partially something for myself, or any dedicated users who want to help test extensively.

Out of curiousity, what does it do? It doesn't happen to be a version of Dwarf Therapist that works on Linux, does it? Actually, wait, if it is that, lie and say that it's something else. Paul (Stansifer) 23:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 7

Factory settings

I purchased a new laptop and want to donate my old one to a charity. How do I set it back to the original settings (I no longer have any disks (of course)). 99.250.103.117 (talk) 01:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]