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May 6

How do I copy/transfer saved Xbox360 games?

A good friend is moving to Boston next month and I've had many hours' worth of gaming saved on game-save files from a few games. I tried to connect a Belkin transfer cable between my laptop and his XBox360 but it didn't seem to get anywhere? (How can I make the transfer happen this way?)

I also wonder whether the game-save information can be transferred from his account to a new one of mine.

Failing the other methods, I see USB ports. How easy is it to put on a USB card and are there possible snags to watch out for? Thanks. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to use a memory card. See Xbox_360_accessories#Memory_units. RudolfRed (talk) 06:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can use a USB flash drive for storage now. You'll want to get a new one, then hook it up and (I think) format it. Use the storage manager to copy save files to the flash drive. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 15:45, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why did the IANA choose port 80 for HTTP?

Hi Guys - Why did IANA choose port 80 for HTTP? Did Berners-Lee's web server run on port 80? Tewner (talk) 12:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think TBL had it at 80. It's certainly 80 by the time of the first public HTTP documentation in 1991. Unfortunately I can't find old releases of CERN httpd on its website (only source for v3 from 1996). The changelog (which goes back to v0.1 in 1991, presumably matching that HTTP spec) doesn't mention a port change. So I think we can say, for anything remotely public, TBL always had it at 80. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It was probably the next big step up from Gopher (protocol) on port 70. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:58, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaning an imac's screen

What do you use? I was about a second away from spritzing it with Windex and then it occurred to me "this isn't glass!"--108.54.17.117 (talk) 13:04, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google it up, man. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:32, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I recently investigated precisely the same question and I believe the Apple approved method for cleaning pretty much all iProduct screens is a microfiber cloth srayed lightly with plain water. Vespine (talk) 00:39, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Water is only going to remove water-soluble schmutz. If you get some type of oil on it (like skin oil), this could be a problem. A Windex-soluble device sounds like a bad idea, to me. StuRat (talk) 22:21, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Along with warnings that most of their screens are coated with various useful things that will get wiped off if you use some kind of astringent cleaner. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:38, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually i've found that even with oily marks like fingerprints, a very slightly damp cloth is all you need. I think all iDevices these days have oleophobic screen surfaces. Vespine (talk) 23:10, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

CSS Code

Hi, I only started coding a couple of days ago, so I'm pretty clueless, and I'm just trying to look at other people's code to learn. I am coding in CSS to style websites that already exist, so I can't change their code; this CSS is for Stylish on Firefox. I want a side bar to stay fixed where it is on the page, and not scroll up, and "position:fixed" works fine for this. But the page has a navigation bar on the top, which I don't want fixed, and it isn't. The problem is, when scrolling down, the top bar disappears like I want, but the sidebar then has a lot of empty space above it. I want the sidebar to scroll up with the page until the page is scrolled down by 250px, and then to be fixed to the side. Is that possible?

I know I'm not the best at explaining things, so I'll give an example. Imagine the Wikipedia logo on the left spanned the whole top of the page. I would want the sidebar below that logo to stay fixed to the left, but let the logo scroll up. The problem would be that the links would have a lot of space above them when the page is scrolled down, because of the space the logo took. So I need to have that sidebar scroll up the size of the logo, and then be fixed.

I think it only possible if I use JavaScript, but I don't think that's possible with Stylish. Thanks for any help you can provide. 109.148.90.185 (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some fancy not-quite-fully-standardized way to hack that to work with just CSS, but it'd probably be simpler to do in JS, you might look into Greasemonkey . ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rather disappointingly, CSS isn't as general a style description language as one might like. In particular, one can't reorder how elements are arranged in HTML (one can often work around this with layout CSS, but it becomes increasingly complicated) and one can't change which elements are inside which. And CSS has very limited capacity to add and remove content from HTML. CSS certainly doesn't allow one total control over all aspects of every website. People have done amazing things styling in CSS Zen Garden, but the HTML for that is deliberately very simple and entirely semantic, which makes doing things much more straightforward. If your intention is to learn CSS (which is still a worthy and useful goal, as CSS is still a valuable thing and mostly a big improvement over what we had to do in HTML alone) then I'd personally recommend generating your own HTML and CSS together and following a sensible CSS tutorial (e.g. Dave Raggett's). Taking a look at how people did some wildly different things with the same content on CSS Zen Garden is also a useful learning tool. I think if you try to learn by simply manipulating the CSS of existing, often rather uncooperatively written, pages, you might get rather frustrated, and miss some of the deeper ideas of how things are supposed to work. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure Finlay is aware of this, but just to clarify for others, CSS Zen Garden has a lot of semantically appropriate HTML heavily augmented by lots of completely meaningless cruft HTML to make it easier to do more with companion CSS. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:20, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from the general problems, what you're asking to do, as far as I know, isn't even possible with just CSS. The CSS can't know that you want the logo to only scroll as far as the logo and then go to the very top. I can't think of a way I'd implement such a thing in pure CSS, in any case, even if I did have arbitrary control over the HTML. You would need some kind of Javascript in any event to do something like that. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:19, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your help. I first decided to leave it with the space above it, but I then changed it so the top bar is narrower, such that it is never above the sidebar. It looks good like this, I think. I will definitely look at learning HTML and JavaScript, like you suggest, and I will look at Greasemonkey, as I have it installed, but I've never used it. Many thanks to you all for all of the help and support that you have provided! 109.148.90.185 (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 7

wrong .doc association

Please pardon a basic question. It's a Windows question, and I'm not a Windows user. On my dad's computer, when he clicks on a .doc file, Windows tries to open it with Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can't. I know I need to tweak the extension/opening-program association, but I don't know how to do it. My web search has turned up only this page, which talks about "Associate a file type or protocol with program" on the Start menu, which isn't there on the computer in question. The computer in question is Windows XP. (Sorry I can't give you the exact XP version, but I don't even know how to discover it.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try right-clicking on any Word .doc, then pick "Open With > Choose Program..." from the contextual menu. Select Microsoft Word and check the box with "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file". The other way is to go to the Tools menu on the My Computer window, select "Tools > Folder Options" then the "File Types" tab, scroll down to "DOC" and press the Change button, then select Microsoft Word. --Canley (talk) 01:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! That was quick. And it worked! Thanks much. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:09, 7 May 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Resolved

I've used this before for a similar problem. →Σ τ c. 02:10, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

git configuration in ubuntu

Good evening everybody!

I am a new user of ubuntu and git,and now I want to download some source code form a remote repositry,so I should make some configuration.

but I can't find the file of '~/.netrc' and '~/.gitconfig',can somebody tell me the exactly path of this two file in ubuntu or tell me where to find articles about the configuration of git in ubuntu ?

Thank you very much!

ZhishangYang (talk) 12:27, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need either of those files (only if you needed to store special config details, in which case you'd create them yourself). You simply need to have git (sudo apt-get install git if you don't have it) and then you can just use it. For example, to clone the source tree for git itself, you just say git clone https://github.com/git/git.git Git (software) and the git manual page (which will be installed when you install git itself) are between them pretty comprehensive in pointing you at documentation - but if you're just cloning a repository to read code, you probably don't need any configuration at all. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your patient and kindly support!

I have already install git in ubuntu.If directly download the source code using the command as you inform,the problem occurs like this:

root@Presario-V3700-Notebook-PC:~# git clone https://--------------- Cloning into **... error: server certificate verification failed. CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt CRLfile: none while accessing https://-------/**.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

The source repository is private and the owner have already provided the download instruction as follow:

Please edit your ~/.netrc as follows (using your own login/password pair):

(private information) login ... password ...

then edit ~/.gitconfig as follows:

[http]

   sslVerify = false

[user]

   name =  
   email =

Finally checkout the code for the following command:

git clone .....

The problem is that I can't find the file of '~/.netrc' and '~/.gitconfig'!

You suggest to create them manually,but can you tell me the exactly path they should place ?

Further explanation about '~/.netrc' and '~/.gitconfig' and how to create them will be grateful!

Another question is how can I visit the 'git manual page' as your inform?

Looking forward to your early reply!

ZhishangYang (talk) 03:50, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~/.netrc is the full path. ~/ just means "my home directory", so if your account is "zyang" that would be /home/zyang/.netrc . But most programs understand the ~/ thing natively. To read the git manual, just enter man git in the command line. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 07:57, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much!

By following your instruction,I have make the right configuration.

Thank's against for your selfless support!

Yours sincerely,

Zhishang ZhishangYang (talk) 13:48, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting photos by edit date in Windows 7

When I sort photos (jpegs) by date in Windows 7 explorer windows, or Photoshop's "Open" window, they are always sorted in order of the date-stamp in the photographer's camera, even when this is accidentally set to the year 2030 (or with the clock set correctly but the photo taken a few months ago) and even after I've edited them in Photoshop and saved them under different names they are still sorted by the original date instead of today's date. This never happened in XP, and is becoming a real headache and I haven't been able to find this issue discussed in the Windows support forums. Any suggestions please?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you right click on the column headers in Windows Explorer it pops up a menu which lets you check some more options. These create additional columns, which you can then sort by. As well as "date" you'll find "date created", "date modified", "media created", "date acquired", and many more. Try some of these. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, hundreds of options in fact! Thanks.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:01, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Disabling Norton Identity Protection

Hello. How do I disable Norton Identity Protection in Google Chrome only when I visit WebCT? Since I installed the new version of Norton 360, my browser crashes when I load Blackboard. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 14:23, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly can't recommend you keep Norton; if it were me I'd uninstall it (download ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/removal_tools/Norton_Removal_Tool.exe first, since it's basically a virus that can't be uninstalled normally) and replace it with something else. For a paid solution NOD32 is good, for free Avast! is. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Excel help (again)

Seems like I am always seeking help with Excel spreadsheet problems. (The program's "help" is not very useful.) Anyway, I am making a spreadsheet for a mailing list, and one column will be e-mail address. The default for Excel is that whenever you enter something that is e-mail format (e.g., name@domain.com), it automatically turns it into a hyperlink. This gets annoying during data entry because whenever I go to that box, it pops open my e-mail. I know how to disengage the hyperlink one-by-one after an item is entered. Is there anyway to format the page, or even the column, to not make hyperlinks in the first place? → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of Microsoft's 'helpful' features, known as 'auto correct'. Here are some instructions for turning it off, specifically for Excel 2003, but with a bit of lateral thinking you should be able to apply it to all versions. Since auto correct can be useful in some situations (lik corecting comon mispelings) you can either choose to disable it completely or to just turn off certain aspects. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that worked. (By the way, Excel 2007 no longer has a "tools" menu, the route to finding the auto correct settings is more convoluted now.) → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 21:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I thought it might be - that's why I chickened out and just told you to work it out yourself! Glad you found the solution though. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:55, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Transparent images in Firefox

Whenever I try to copy a transparent image in Firefox, the background becomes black and makes the picture unusable. Is there a way to fix this so that it still has the normal white background? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 22:48, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem probably lies in whatever program or document you're viewing the copied image in, rather than in Firefox or the image. What are you viewing the copied image with? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same issue the other day but I use chrome and opened the image in photoshop. I even tried to copy and paste it straight in. Don't have any suggestions sorry.. Vespine (talk) 00:39, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean you saved the original image file and opened it in Photoshop (rather then going through the complicating step of copying the image to the clipboard after it has been rendered by the browser) Nil Einne (talk) 02:25, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

By copy to the clipboard, I simply meant right click the image and select "copy image", then paste it into photoshop, it's not a complicating step. But I did also try to save it to a file first, both had the same result. Vespine (talk) 23:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Saving the images works on my case, it's just that FF seems to muck the transparency up whenever you transfer things to the clipboard. Might be due to the way the latter works, too. Blake Gripling (talk) 00:28, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know in particular how Chrome works when it comes to copying images to the clipboard (I'm presuming this is Windows not that I know for any browser), but I disagree it's not a complicating step. It's fairly likely that copying the image copies the image after it's been partially rendered by the browser. Information such as PNG transparency could easily be lost. Saving the image from the browser would normally save the original file, so no information should be lost (of course the tool you're importing it to needs to be capable of processing the information in the first place). At the very least you can be fairly sure of what's going on which you can't be with copying the image unless you properly understand how Chrome's copy function works. (And actually you also need to be sure of what precisely the receiving tool is importing, with Photoshop, you should be able to import what you want but with some tools it may get complicated.) The Firefox example of the OP seems to demonstrate this. Nil Einne (talk) 03:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 8

Looking for nice PHP IDE

Hi all,

I want to build my own website using JS, Ajax and JQ on the client side and PHP and SQL on the server side. I was looking for IDE that will allow me to work easily with these and espcially with PHP, Eclipse doesn't seem to be good enough and so I get to Cloud 9 IDE. However, my understanding now is that PHP files can't be run from cloud 9. Cloud 9 is my favorite now becuase it's on the web (meaning that there is no heavy download or need for plug ins) and it's easy to deploy with it. I also tried to work with PHP designer 8 (which fully supports PHP and HTML5) but the debugger seems no to work so well (instead of checking from one break point to another it goes from one code line to another). Any advise that would help in setting up nice IDE that fully supports (meaning, save files, open files, debug files, run them and etc) PHP, HTML5, JS and etc and allow easy deployment on remote server, and preferably web based IDE, is wellcomed.--Gilisa (talk) 10:12, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can reduce some of the complexity of interacting with a remote server by having a local one for testing: XAMPP ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It really doesn't answer my question(s) and bring nothing new to me.--Gilisa (talk) 07:30, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How do you prevent a cached page from jumping to a 404 error?

I found this link on a web site and saw a headline which, based on the URL, was a Google cache. I intended to scroll down, but all of a sudden the cached content on the page was replaced with the actual content from the web site.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:13, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to stop the redirect (in Firefox) by hitting the Escape key as soon as the cached page appeared. There's a text-only version of the cached page here. Alternatively you could try disabling JavaScript, which is probably what's being used to force the redirect. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:12, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I was on a Firefox computer just now but I saved what you linked to.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:01, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Windows app to periodically click on a point ?

Is there a free Windows XP program which will click on a point every few seconds ? The important constraint is that I don't want it to click on the mouse pointer position (I already have XuMouse for that), I want to be able to specify the coords where it clicks. Every 5 seconds would be a good interval. StuRat (talk) 17:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does it have to leave the mouse pointer where it was before? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 17:55, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, yes. StuRat (talk) 18:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I often use the AWT Robot. With about two lines of Java code, you can create a program to move the Windows mouse-cursor to an arbitrary X,Y coordinate and fire a mouse-event (a click, a double-click, or whatever). Let me know if you want some sample code. Nimur (talk) 18:11, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go:

About the simplest sample robot-code you can get

class Robot
{
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
 java.awt.Robot r = new java.awt.Robot();
 r.mouseMove(100,100);
 r.mousePress(0);
}
}

Slightly more code, but including the delay and a configurable click-location

class Robot
{
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
 java.awt.Robot r = new java.awt.Robot();
 
 final int delayInMilliseconds = 5000;

 int x = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
 int y = Integer.parseInt(args[1]);
 while(true) {
  r.mouseMove(x,y);
  r.mousePress(0);
  Thread.sleep(delayInMilliseconds);
  }
}
}

Compile by running javac Robot.java and then run: java Robot 250 300 to click at x=250, y=300. Again, you can improve the robustness of this code.

Of course, if you want to be platform-portable, use a mouse mask, instead of hard-coding "button 0"; and catch the possible exceptions, errors, and so forth. You can easily modify the program to run a scheduled click; or to configure the location of the click, and so on. And, believe it or not, you can even link this function into your FORTRAN program using Java Native Interface, as explained in this tutorial from the Stanford Department of Statistics. Nimur (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"javac" is not recognized as a valid command. StuRat (talk) 18:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

JavaC is the Java Compiler. It is installed as part of the Java Development Kit. The easiest solution is to download the Oracle JDK 7. You can also use other Java compilers, like the free-software OpenJDK, but Oracle provides a one-button installation package for Windows that "just works," and is free to use for your purposes. Nimur (talk) 18:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I downloaded the Oracle jdk-7u4-windows-i586.exe file and installed it, and rebooted, but "javac" is still not recognized at the command prompt. Is there something else I need to do ? StuRat (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Did you make sure it added itself to the path? Nil Einne (talk) 22:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How do I do that ? I looked for it in the installed directories, but couldn't find a "javac.exe" or anything like that. StuRat (talk) 22:49, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I still can't get my PC to recognize the "javac" command. StuRat (talk) 01:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Could use AutoHotkey. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or Sikuli [1]. Pretty much any general purpose (GUI intended) Macro (computer science) or Automation tools should be able to handle that in some fashion in fact, and as the sikuli case shows, even some specialised ones. Nil Einne (talk) 22:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Android phone calls through PC over USB

I've read that when an Android phone is connected to a PC via Bluetooth, it's possible (on both Windows 7 Ultimate and Xubuntu, both of which I'm using) to answer calls by pressing a key and talk on the PC's headset. Is there any way to do that with a USB connection? I'm using a rooted Nexus One with Cyanogenmod 7, and have lots of USB ports but no Bluetooth dongle. Neon Merlin 21:53, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there is, but I couldn't tell you by what process. There's quite a populous #android channel on irc.freenode.net that probably could help. While USB Bluetooth dongles can be comparatively pricey locally (but still a drop in the bucket compared to a smart phone / wireless plan), if you're willing to wait you can get them incredibly cheap online (at dealextreme for example). ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:56, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Supposedly, MyPhoneExplorer does that. - Akamad (talk) 23:06, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 9

Do virtual machines have virtual hardware serial IDs?

It would seem that if they did, that would open the risk of people creating virtual machines exactly like the ones on which they activated their activation keys for proprietary software. Do they? If so, how (not do, I'm not naive enough to think the geniuses haven't prevented what I'm suggesting) do they figure out something that only real, physical hardware can do so people can't just run copies on virtual machine perfect clones of a physical machine on which one license was activated? 69.243.220.115 (talk) 00:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of ways, including hardware keys and simple judicious human (not mere key-based) validation. I dare say most companies consider this hassle to be more trouble than unlicensed use itself, which is why without voluntarily attaching a virtual machine to a network, most software is aware of almost nothing at all. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some software periodically "calls home" to a company server to report that it is running and activated etc. With the proliferation of computers 'always online' this is becoming increasingly common, its been used by windows for a long time and I believe Adobe software does this too. If said company stars getting dozens of hits all from the "same" piece of software reporting that it's running on the "same" hardware, then the jig is up. Vespine (talk) 04:36, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Adobe does make use of phoning home in their Creative Suite line. That's mostly the reason why most workarounds that attempt to circumvent this involve modifying the hosts file. Blake Gripling (talk) 07:14, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Dongles. 2. Virtualization software only supports a small set of emulated hardware devices, which are unlikely to match the hardware of a real machine. 3. Traditionally the x86 CPUID instruction was not virtualizable, so you couldn't make a CPU claim to be a different CPU without expensive dynamic recompilation. I guess this has probably changed with the new Intel and AMD virtualization support. 4. Most businesses are lawful neutral or lawful evil. The threat of a lawsuit is enough to keep them in line even without any technological enforcement. Corporate-wide license servers are for their convenience—it's the easiest way to keep track of how many licenses they're actually using. -- BenRG (talk) 00:27, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

iPhone volume

Since I am partially deaf I wonder if there is an app to increase the volume on an iPhone. I have one called "Vol.Set" but is barely makes any difference. Don't mention hearing aids, I've got those too !--85.211.154.241 (talk) 10:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using headphones? If so different, better headphones are likely to make more difference than anything else. The white 'earbuds' you get with the iPhone are a little weak, especially in noisy environments or for those with reduced hearing. This article may give you a start in choosing a pair. I would probably recommend a full-size pair that you can wear over any hearing aids that you use, although they are traditionally more expensive than other types. Also, I hate to ask this of you, but I just need to check - have you turned up the volume as far as it will go using the hardware buttons? Finally, from the research I have done, it seems that the 'volume boosting' apps need you to jailbreak your phone, and even then opinion is split over whether they actually work. Some people say that they cannot increase volume over the previous maximum, and some say that they don't work at all. Hence I recommend a pair of decent 'cans'. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:47, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The limit on the volume of an iPhone is likely because it can't produce louder sounds without becoming distorted and/or damaging the equipment. What you need is an external amplifier, which will require a power source (batteries). A good pair of noise canceling headphones may be what you need, and rechargeable batteries are important, as you will go through batteries quickly otherwise. StuRat (talk) 16:48, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Dong" sound when networking icon is loaded

Hello there, today I have noticed that networking icon in taskbar creates a "dong" sound when it is loaded. Though It's a matter of 1 second process, but I want to disable it anyway. I checked the sounds option but could not locate anything unusual. How can I disable it? thanks in advance--180.234.62.141 (talk) 12:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can you tell us which Operating system you use? (For example this might be Windows XP, Vista or 7, Mac OS or Ubuntu among others). - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is solved. After using Microsoft fix it 50229, the problem goes away. I am using W7 Ultimate 64 bit edition.--180.234.63.237 (talk) 07:05, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BibTeX: treat URL field as newline-delimited group?

In BibTeX, is there a command-line option I can add to have separate lines in the url= field treated as separate URLs, in order to work around a Mendeley export bug? Neon Merlin 22:26, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 10

Buying a camera

I went to the store today to look at new cameras, and the one which caught my attention most was the Nikon Coolpix S6300. Is this a good camera? And is £150 a good price for it? I currently have a Samsung S1050; is the Nikon a big step up and worth upgrading? I mainly want it for HD video which my Samsung doesn't do. I also like to take close-up pictures of plants and insects, however I read that the Nikon is bad at so called macrophotography, is this true? Thanks for the info and advice! Buyingacamera (talk) 18:18, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Go to a local retailer and demo some. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:35, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right, which is exactly what I did; I went to the store today to look at new cameras (played around with them a bit within the confines of the store which glue them onto the table and start beeping loudly if you pull the security cord too much) and the one which caught my attention most was the Nikon Coolpix S6300. However, I am not an expert on cameras, which is why I am asking for a third opinion. Buyingacamera (talk) 19:30, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want thorough research, go to a site like Digital Photo Review or Steve's Digi-Cams. If you want good advice from a human, go to a real camera shop, not a mass-merchandiser that has its cameras on leashes. --LarryMac | Talk 19:52, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your advice, however if it were possible for me to go to a professional camera shop I would have done so. There are none near where I live, and I am unable to travel long distances. Nor am I experienced with cameras, so all the massive amounts of detailed information available on the various websites really mean nothing to me because I do not understand it, which is why I am asking here on a page where people who may understand this stuff can simplify it for me and answer my 3 basic questions. I am not asking for particularity "thorough research", at least I don't think I am, just yes or no answers. If it helps, here my questions in bullet-point form;

Is £150 a reasonable price one would expect to pay for a Nikon Coolpix S6300?
Is the Nikon Coolpix S6300 significantly better than the Samsung S1050, or is the overall deference negligible?
Can the Nikon Coolpix S6300 take very close-up shots of things a few centimeters from the lens?

Thank you Buyingacamera (talk) 20:04, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From the official Nikon technical specifications for S6300:

It sounds like you're quoting UK prices; here in the US, the S6300 should be much cheaper. If you have settled on buying a Nikon point-and-shoot, I would recommend the more expensive, but better S8200. It's one of the best point-and-shoots on the market. By my math, £150 is about $250 (US), which is more than I'd pay for a "middle of the road" point-and-shoot like the S6300 - especially when the S8200 costs about the same. Here in the US, you can find the S8200 for that $250; and it has a bigger screen, a better lens with sharper focus and a lot more zoom, and a few more features to round things out (better metering, better face-detection, better auto-focus). In any case, if the price is higher in the UK, it's probably more expensive across all brands and models; but you may still consider shopping around a bit more.
I have a tendency to look for flaws in photographic images. In Nikon's low-light sample images, I am impressed by the low noise (they use great sensors); but I see chromatic aberration (a mark of a moderate- to poor- lens). This is "expected" in a $200 (£150) point-and-shoot camera. I am very picky, and I can justify spending more on a better lens (and an interchangeable-lense camera); but you might not be so picky. Compared to the Samsung S1050, the Nikon has much better image quality. The S1050 is also almost 5-year-old technology (it was released in 2007), and it has been discontinued from new production. Samsung's latest toys in their point-and-shoot camera price-range have dual-screens (one on the front). It's a fun gimmick (especially if you're photographing portraits of kids - you can animate a dancing bear or whatever and show it on the forward-facing screen, and the kids laugh and smile when you shoot the photo). That's going to be the deal-breaker for "image quality" to many consumers - but doesn't affect actual image-quality of the Samsung device on technical merits. I have not found many great full-sized Samsung S1050 images to compare, so I'll decline from commenting on its image-quality specifically.
For S6300: the close focal point is approximately 50 cm, when at minimum zoom; approximately 1 meter when fully zoomed. This is not bad for a point-and-shoot lens (though it is not competitive with specialty macro-lenses, or even, say, the iPhone 4S). There's also a "macro mode," with a purported 4-inch focus distance; but I'll mildly suggest you accept that number with caution. Even if accurate, you have a 10x optical zoom - so... unintuitively - you will get a "closer" shot by standing at a farther distance and zooming to maximum-telephoto zoom on the S6300. If you stand close and zoom out, your image magnification will be less (see some explanation, and magnification for some math). You should not expect the point-and-shoot to compete with much-more-expensive DSLR cameras equipped with specialty macro lenses. Those lenses have large apertures, primary (fixed) focal-lengths, and very tight close-focus-points; but one Nikkor macro lens costs more than your entire camera; a good Nikkor macro like the AF 60mm is about $600 (~£400 to £500? I apologize, I don't know how Nikon sets its market prices for products sold in the UK; it's not as straightforward as a direct dollar-to-pound conversion).

Hopefully this will provide some perspective. You should get the camera that is most suitable for your needs. "Good camera" is very subjective. Personally, I am a fan of the iPhone 4S; but I also carry my Nikon D90, which is too bulky and heavy for most casual users. Nimur (talk) 00:13, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! Thank you so much Buyingacamera (talk) 11:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)It seems like a good price considering that amazon.co.uk, which normally has lower prices than retailers, is selling the camera for almost £8 more. A quick glance at some online reviews for the S6300 shows that its minimum focusing distance of 10 cm and its light weight makes it very challenging to get good macro shots. In other ways it appears to be a good point-and-shoot camera, though if ultra-portable isn't a critical factor and you want passable macro capabilities, it would probably be worth continuing the hunt. P.S. I think in exchange for the advice you should upload your photographs to Wikipedia! ;) Julia\^talk 20:18, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Either the size/quality looked good to you or not. The technology is advanced enough that there is a lot of room for preference alone. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:38, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Networking - ICMP

Is the ICMP protocol in the same layer as IP or is it encapsulated in IP? --TuringMachine17 (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Control Message Protocol says "Although ICMP messages are contained within standard IP datagrams, ICMP messages are usually processed as a special case". -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:24, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I ask is because I have a general understanding of networking and I know that a protocol in one layer should only communicate with thos directly above/below it. Wikipedia and other sources describe ICMP as being in the network layer (as is IP) and seem to be used together as I have seen when using wireshark. Is this because TCP/IP dosn't follow the OSI model strictly. --TuringMachine17 (talk) 21:47, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, TCP/IP doesn't map very well to the OSI model (and it only gets more complicated when more levels of encapsulation are used). And lots of network equipment sneaks a peek at other layers (e.g. ethernet routers may examine the IP headers of the packets they're forwarding and do "helpful" things) which again breaks the neat OSI layer-by-layer view. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:57, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ICMP is encapsulated in IP. It's at the same level as TCP and UDP. I have no idea why the Wikipedia article groups it with IP instead of TCP. Probably that should be fixed. -- BenRG (talk) 00:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ICMP is really the control plane for IP (it would have been better if it had been called IP-CM instead) rather than a layer above it. IP needs ICMP to function - ICMP manages reachability, flow control, and route advertisement and redirection - all for IP datagrams. Internetworking with TCP/IP by Douglas Comer puts it well "It is important to keep in mind that even though ICMP messages are encapsulated and sent using IP, ICMP is not considered a higher level protocol - it is a required part of IP. The reason for using IP to deliver ICMP messages is that they may need to travel across several physical networks..." This built-on-but-somehow-irrevocably-wedded-to problem is an artefact of the very layering worldview that OSI espouses. When folks talk about the same stuff in ATM they wisely use a three-dimensional view like this which acknowledges the reality that for each layer there is an in-layer control plane sending management traffic along side the normal "user" traffic of that layer. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:37, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I hope is an apt illustration of ICMP's incestuous relationship with IP; how ICMP echo-request packets are handled by intermediate hosts. If I send an ordinary IP packet to google.co.uk(74.125.132.94), I'm making a one-off end-to-end communication through IP (where I can afford to be ignorant of the route) and I'd expect only to receive a response from 74.125.132.94; intermediate IP routers are expected to only read the IP headers of my packet, and to route it accordingly (or just drop it on the floor if they can't handle it) - in a strictly layered view, they've certainly got no business inspecting the data encapsulated in that packet and changing their behaviour on that basis - and they certainly don't have any business sending me a reply. But if I send 74.125.132.94 an ICMP_ECHO packet with a TTL of say 7, I do get a response from one of the intermediate machines:

  > ping -t 7 google.co.uk
  PING google.co.uk (74.125.132.94) 56(84) bytes of data.
  From 209.85.253.92 icmp_seq=1 Time to live exceeded

Who is this 209.85.253.92 character? I've never send him anything, yet he's sending me an ICMP reply packet. If ICMP was layered strictly on IP, 209.85.253.92 wouldn't have looked inside the IP packet as it passed him (just as he doesn't look inside TCP or UDP packets). But to response it's clear that 209.85.253.92 did look inside the packet at the encapsulated data. In fact, when he received a packet with its TTL of 1 (which means it would be decrementing it to 0 itself) he checked the ip:protocol field, saw that it was 0x01, which he knows specifies ICMP. Then he broke the encapsulation to open the ICMP header and read the icmp:type field. In this case he saw that value was 8, an ECHO REQUEST packet. So he dropped the packet (which a pure IP system would do anyway, as the TTL was expired), but he also generated an ICMP Time Exceeded packet and sent that back to me (other IP packets, and other kinds of ICMP packets, wouldn't). So this shows that ICMP isn't layered strictly on IP, but that it gets special sideways access to the IP layer, which real users of IP like TCP and UDP don't. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:11, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Except that ICMP Time Exceeded, as the article itself indicates, can also be returned for TCP and UDP packets. So the routers really don't need to looke 'inside' the packet just for this. traceroute (except the Windows version, which uses ICMP if I'm not mistaken) and tcptraceroute are built on this principle. Unilynx (talk) 20:59, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 11

Microsoft Office Live/Office 365

I've been using Microsoft Office Live Small Business to host three small websites (and that's all). Now that is going away and being replaced by Office 365. But at that page, I don't see anything about it hosting websites (which is all I want to do). Will it host small websites? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The comparison page at [2] says that all the plans at level P1 and above will have web site hosting. RudolfRed (talk) 04:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:55, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And a follow-up question: I registered two of the domain names through Microsoft Office Live. Will I have to move them to a different registration site? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:56, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. [3] RudolfRed (talk) 05:29, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

thank you. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:46, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

International Galaxy Nexus in Canada

Dear Wikipedians:

I am thinking of buying an international unlocked Galaxy Nexus smartphone available on Google Play (google.com/nexus) and bring it to Canada (Toronto, Ontario) to use. The specific Canadian carrier I have in mind is Telus Mobility (http://www.telusmobility.com/en/ON/home/). I am wondering if the phone can be used with the carrier?

Thanks,

70.31.158.164 (talk) 15:16, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Customized Mac sorts for searches in finder?

Hello all. So I was wondering if there is a way to make a customized sort for finder searches. I currently have "name", "kind", "date modified" and "last opened" in finder as the default sorts. In other words, once I do a search for foo, I can then sort the results by these sort criteria. But what would be vastly useful is combining some. Let me give an example. I'd love to be able to sort by name, but only of documents modified in 2012. Is there any way to do this?--108.14.206.103 (talk) 16:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are a lot of (not well documented) ways to make Spotlight do more complex, advanced searches. Check this page out for a list of them. I don't think you can advanced sorting, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:50, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lines appearing on zoomed-in photos from my camera

Whenever I take a photo with the optical zoom set at maximum, my Canon PowerShot A540 camera creates faint lines on the resulting images; see the full-resolution version of File:Glendale Ridge Archaeological Site.jpg for an example of this phenomenon. Why is this the case, and what (if anything) can I do about it, aside from taking photos at reduced zoom? It's definitely only happening at that zoom and not at others; you don't see it at File:Epsilon II Archaeological Site.jpg or File:Ice on washed-out old road in the Hoosier National Forest.jpg, taken a few days later, but I uploaded the Epsilon II panorama that I did instead of a more zoomed one specifically because the zoomed one displayed the same lined effect as the Glendale Ridge image does. Conversely, the phenomenon hasn't been going on forever; I've had the camera for four years (and bought it used from a friend), and I don't remember this "effect" showing up in pictures from when it was substantially newer. I took File:Kintner-Withers House from the road.jpg about a year before Glendale Ridge, and due to the extreme distance of the subject from the public right-of-way, I zoomed in all the way, but the lines don't appear. Nyttend (talk) 00:36, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you don't have some type of special effect turned on ? It rather has the look of being printed on rough paper, where you can see the grain of the paper, which might be what this special effect is supposed to do. StuRat (talk) 01:07, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Truly amazing! If I had to posit a guess, I'd say you have a "defect." What in the world might cause that? Without tearing apart the electronics or connecting up a software debugger, or grabbing the raw data (which would invariably require proprietary tools)... it's nearly impossible to know... but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd gravitate towards these few possibilities:

The power-supply might be aging. It might be injecting noise into the photo when the lens is fully extended; perhaps when fully mechanically extended, the zoom motor is still drawing power and causing electromagnetic interference. This may have changed since the last year, because mechanical parts and contacts tend to age poorly, compared to electronics. Or, a capacitor may be dying; capacitors can slowly change over long periods of time, and that can manifest as a slowly-degrading PSRR. A camera's imaging sensor, being "sensitive," will naturally pick up on even a very miniscule change in the power-supply noise.
The sensor might be aging, but why the symptom should only manifest when fully zoomed is a mystery. CCD sensors, like the one in your camera, read out interleaved lines (similar to interlaced video, but commonly implemented using between 2 and 6 fields); and it looks like you're dropping one entire CCD field. It's possible that in telephoto mode, the firmware sends a new set of sensor configurations (generally that would be done to improve quality and tune the sensor for the optics); but if the firmware is buggy, that "tuned sensor configuration" might be going haywire ... but why don't we see this in your first photo??
A software (or firmware) bug is possible. Between Glendale Ridge and Kinter Withers House, your device changed its reported focal-plane resolution in its EXIF data (despite the same focal length, same focus point, and arguably the same sensor). This suggests that you updated the camera's internal software. Knowing anything about the complexity of image processing that goes on inside a camera, but lacking the specific details for your Canon A540, it's nearly impossible to diagnose... but "a software bug might be responsible" is almost tautological in this case; unfortunately this insight doesn't help fix it! You could check for a new updated firmware from Canon.

Absolutely fascinating "glitch." Any other information or symptoms you can provide might hint at the root-cause, and possibly hint at a solution; but realistically, the probable fix will be "replace the entire unit." Nimur (talk) 02:09, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, throw in one more possibility. The final CCD field might not be "dropped" - perhaps it's just exposed incorrectly. If so, that could be caused by a timing bug, (a software race condition, for example - though why it occurs only recently is still unexplained); or it might be a defect in the autoexposure metering algorithm (which would also explain why it's only occurring at maximal zoom - autoexposure metering depends on the optical characteristics). Nimur (talk) 02:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing your old (fine) and new (problematic) files, the following differences can be found in the exif data…
Digital Zoom: None
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1
Digital Zoom Ratio: 2.8
Digital Zoom: x5.5
Focal Plane Horiz Resolution: 12515 dpi
Focal Plane Horiz Resolution: 34417 dpi
Focal Plane Vert Resolution: 34366 dpi
Focal Plane Vert Resolution: 9372 dpi
Image Created: 2011:03:03 10:48:29
Image Created: 2012:02:06 11:33:15
Image Height: 1584
Image Height: 2112
Image Size: Large
Image Size: Unknown
Zoomed Resolution: 1024
Zoomed Resolution: 2816
…suggesting a comparison with another file would probably be more telling. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:23, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

... or try disabling digital zoom completely, and try to reproduce. Nimur (talk) 02:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see a problem there. It says it's doing digital zoom, which often produces crap, as it must interpolate between pixels. You need to find a way to prevent it from doing digital zoom. StuRat (talk) 03:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Digital zoom for a comparison (although it doesn't have the horizontal lines). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:40, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry for providing confusing information; I thought my camera did digital zoom by reducing the image size (simply cropping the edges), so I interpreted the identical file sizes as an indication that the house photo was only optically zoomed. I can testify that I didn't knowingly change anything with the camera's software; as far as I know, the settings haven't been changed, as both landscape and default modes (which are the only things I use for long-distance shots) have very few changeable settings with which I'm familiar, and I do my best to keep them the same, except for issues such as flash and image resolution. I'm not a fan of digital zoom, so I avoid it when possible, but whenever I go to the maximum optical zoom, it both moves the lens and gives me a little notice on the viewfinder telling me what the zoom is; this appears when I'm unambiguously on digital zoom and doesn't appear on reduced optical zoom levels. This is precisely what happened with this image, which I took today; you can see the lines somewhat against the fenceposts on the left side, but they're not as clear elsewhere; perhaps that's because the camera wanted to do flash, as it was cloudy and in a rather wooded neighborhood near dusk. Most of the more clearly "lined" photos have a greater contrast between light and dark; for example, you can see it more clearly at File:Epsilon II Archaeological Site zoomed.jpg, which I've just uploaded. Nyttend (talk) 04:46, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual behavior by Agama Navigator 535

Hello there, I am having trouble with my mouse pointer for the past two months. The mouse has suddenly become unusually fast. It's clicking speed, scrolling and moving is way too fast that I can't work with it properly. For example, if I drag and drop a file/ multiple files, instead of moving the files, mouse pointer forces them to open immediately. In browsing, I can't easily select texts or sentences by moving pointer over them. It takes multiple strike to select that text and sentence. If there is a web link in sentences, it opens that link instead of selecting it. I lowered the pointer overall speed from its driver (dpi range is 800 to 2000). Even reinstalled the driver. But it did not work at all. I tried updating its firmware but failed due to the unsupported hardware version. I went to control panel to lower its speed, unplugged it from usb port and re-plugged it. But no changes seemed to appear. I am using Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit version. How can I rectify this problem?--103.10.77.226 (talk) 11:10, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At the risk of sounding obvious, have you tried a different mouse old boy? Could be a hardware rather than a software problem. You should also try a different USB port if you haven't already!. Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 22:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I don't have different mouse. I tried in different USB port with the same result.--180.234.194.218 (talk) 23:44, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, get one. They're under $20. I'm almost certain that will solve the problem. If not, return it. StuRat (talk) 00:03, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Capablanca Chess (10x10 version) vs Go:Which is more complex?

Capablanca experimented with at least two larger boards...I'm asking about the 10 by 10 board here. The snap (and perhaps correct)answer is that Go is more complicated than Capa chess, but I'm not so sure. Thanks in advance for your responses.Rich (talk) 11:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just now put this in hopefully more appropriate Miscellaneous reference desk.Rich (talk) 12:03, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apple's "Numbers" Spreadsheet

I find this a very unsuccessful and complicated programme which replaced Apples AppleWorks spreadsheet. Is there a basic spreadsheet programme, (free or cheap!) that anyone can recommend please?--85.211.154.241 (talk) 12:15, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LibreOffice Calc / Category:Spreadsheet software ¦ Reisio (talk) 14:22, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For Apple, this should probably be NeoOffice, the marriage of OpenOffice and Aqua. I don't know how far native MacOS-X interface support for the other OpenOffice variants has come. I don't, as a rule, use spreadsheets.¹ But from my experience with other iWork programs, I always found them useful, and much easier to use than the corresponding tools from other office suites. I can actually write something in Pages without cringing all the time, and Keynote's consistent rendering of everything, including PDF, is beautiful. So I'd be interested in what is wrong with Numbers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

¹ Either they are just lists of numbers, or incredibly error-prone spaghetti programs. In either case I prefer simple ASCII files and my own error-prone spaghetti code that is at least written sequentially, and does not consist of a two-dimensional global array and code smeared out over all the individual cells.

Another alternative is to just ask us what you're having trouble with in Numbers. The odds are that there is an easy way to do what you want, but you just don't know how to do it. (Which I sympathize with.) The only trouble I've had with Numbers is that you can't really customize charts to the degree that I'd like — in trying to make it "easy", they remove a lot of control (like many Apple products). --Mr.98 (talk) 17:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the sympathy! My problem mainly relates to printing. I have quite large spreadsheets which will only print on the one page, VERY small requiring a magnifying glass to read, or over a number of pages which are then difficult to read since part of the information is on separate bits of paper. The old AppleWorks never gave the the same problem. I am trying 'OpenOffice' but that seems no better.--85.211.154.241 (talk) 06:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. That seems to be a fundamental problem - if you need to cram too much content onto one page, things will necessarily get smaller. But you can try to hand-optimize the sheet. Select all columns, then go to Table->Resize columns to fit content to automatically make the columns as small as the data suggests. If that is not satisfactory, go to Table->Allow border selection, then rearrange the borders to fit onto one page. File->Show print view will show you how Numbers will currently distribute content to print pages. For more advanced tips, use the Inspector, as described in this Mac Observer article. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:49, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great stuff, thanks for the ideas, shall give them a try.85.211.154.241 (talk) 08:03, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tools to sort and filter academic papers

I'm subscribed to e-mail alerts for several subjects at arXiv and am receiving more than I can keep up with. What text mining and text classification tools, if any, are available to help sort and filter the new papers and help decide which ones to read right away? Neon Merlin 12:47, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why not read the abstract of each, and use that to decide ? If you get so many you don't even have time to read those, then I suggest you unsubscribe from some of the less interesting ones. StuRat (talk) 22:21, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Battlefield 3, 32-bit v 64-bit

Battlefield 3 is a 32-bit game (on task manager, is has a *32 and it installs in the x86 Programs files folder). Is there any advantages on installing it on a 64-bit Win 7 machine vs a 32-bit Win7 machine? Thanks Acceptable (talk) 18:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Everything else being equal, I don't think so. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:20, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

32-bit Windows has a 4 Gb limit on address space (excl some server variants which can make use of PAE). Of this address-space, some is used for memory-mapped devices, then Windows itself uses a chunk then so does anything else running (e.g. Antivirus, etc) - so there may be 2-3Gb available for the game.

In a 64-bit OS the 4Gb limit still applies to 32-bit apps, however each 32-bit process can address 4Gb.

Whether or not this improves real-life performance depends on many factors, not least whether the machine has enough physical memory for this to make a difference, and whether the game itself uses that much. Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 20:45, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

video editing

anyone know any programs I can download to speed up a video of mine, such that when I change the frame rate the sound gets faster too?

As it is, I'm editing in avidemux, which doesn't change the sound, so I have to export the sound file, speed that up too, then join the two together in windows live movie maker, since for some reason if you import a sound file to avidemux it reverts back to the original as soon as you close the menu. it's worked so far, but just this one time, movie maker refuses to open this file, saved in the exact same format as all the others.

Kitutal (talk) 23:40, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Do you just want to speed up the sounds, which will increase the pitch and make everyone sound like chipmunks, or do you want to compensate for that and bring the pitch back down to the original ? StuRat (talk) 00:06, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

same pitch, just taking less time. except it turns out I can do that in windows movie maker, for as long as that keeps working, somehow missed it all this time... Kitutal (talk) 10:00, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

mixing drive types in a raid

I'm thinking of getting one of those 4-bay usb/esata RAID enclosures and would be using drives of similar capacity but several different brands. The enclosure comes with a Seagate drive and I have some existing Samsung and Hitachi drives that I want to put into it as well. Is there likely to be a problem? Also, is it ok to use so-called "Eco" drives in a raid for personal use? I don't care if that makes it operate a little slower since it's mostly for archival storage on USB, but I wonder if it could impact data integrity. I do know the usual reason for "raid" drives is they time out faster in case of media errors, since they don't want to degrade server performance and they expect the raid itself to take care of error recovery. This would be RAID 5 (unless someone thinks I should really burn a drive worth of space and use 1+0) if that matters. Thanks. 66.127.55.46 (talk) 05:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is QR code really free for all to use?

The fact that the QR code technology is legally open-to-use is obvious, since it's patent has been expired (and Denso Wave has ignored the patent rights if it was still valid). However, ISO distributes the specification for a great fee. More than that, the spec is fully copyrighted and cannot be distributed without permission from the ISO (which you do not get any license in most cases). That means you must buy a "license" to use the work from ISO and it is technically impossible to implement QR without payment. Or you will have to use a library (you will have to comply to the license of the library, most are copyrighted). Or even traveling to 70 years after ISO's death - when the technology is out-of-date. What do you think? 123.24.100.217 (talk) 10:19, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

QR is "free" in that you can build and distribute applications that use it without paying anybody. The ISO standard is not free. In the same sense, I can make and distribute copies of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, but that does not give me the right to freely use English textbooks to learn the language. You can use other sources for than ISO for QR, just as I can choose to learn English from other textbooks or people. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:04, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are two things to distinguish between here. One is the technique for making/using/reading QR codes. The other is the expression of the standard as a document sold by ISO for $225USD or so.

The technique of making the QR codes is not synonymous with the expression of the standard. Techniques are covered exclusively by patents. Exact expressions are covered by copyrights. (There is mucho fuzziness in these definitions, but let's ignore them for now.)

If the patent is expired, there is nothing to prevent one from re-expressing the technique of how to read/make these through either the use of the patent or the use of the ISO standard. You just can't distribute the exact ISO standard expression itself. Re-writing it in your own language, however, is completely cool by the standards of copyright.

Is it true that it is technically impossible to implement QR coding without the ISO standard in front of you? I doubt it very, very much. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:41, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are links to 10 archived discussions which are more or less related to this discussion.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:46, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes I can't tell if you're a bot or just confused about what the OP is asking about. Not one of those links come anywhere close to answering the OP's question. This is not a helpful response. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it's certainly possible to implement QR libraries without reading the standard, since there are many existing implementations you can refer to, among other things, so you can reverse-engineer the spec. You might have to read the standard if you were implementing some kind of certification suite for standard compliance. In practice most users will just care that your library works. It's also of course possible to read the standard without purchasing a copy, for example if your library has it. 66.127.55.46 (talk) 15:13, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like we need a project WikiStandards where people could write up a standard that is more standard than the ISO standard, which is the first and final resource for all developers. Wnt (talk) 16:11, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are Open standards. I don't see the advantage of using Wiki software; the whole point of standards is that you freeze them from editing after they are finalized. Anyway, the amount of money we are talking about here is not very much as far as I can tell (a couple hundred dollars is peanuts in the scale of things). I don't think access to ISO standards is any real barrier for development. Patents are much more problematic. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:17, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is some confusion about what standards are for. They are, in general, almost useless for developers, except in the last steps of checking an implementation for conformance to the standard. They basically represent agreements between developers/vendors of already-existing implementations, who want their products to interoperate with each other, so they write down what various features are supposed to do. As such, their essential characteristic is sign-off by the vendors. In some cases the committees rather ruthlessly strip out any info about how to implement anything: they just say what what the output of something should be, not how to make the output (which can be difficult). E.g. the standard for something like mpeg video would give enough info to write a decoder (since it says what video output should result from mpeg input) but says absolutely nothing about how to write an encoder (the complete specification of an encoder is basically that it produces something that the decoder can play back, so the standard only describes the decoder). Also, some standards (not QR) are secret (only paid-up industry members can see them under confidentiality agreements): DRM schemes are a typical example.

In the ANS standardization process (at least sometimes), the standardization committee produces a series of drafts that members vote on until they reach a version that they submit to ANS as the official standard. That means the last draft and the actual standard in practice say the same thing. In some cases, the drafts are allowed to circulate online so people can see them for free (I think the ANSI C draft standard is online like that). The main reason to pay for an official copy is so that you could certify compliance, but it's quite possible to develop an uncertified but working implementation based on drafts.

It might be worthwhile to write some on-wiki specifications for stuff like QR, but "Wikistandards" is not needed for that--just write a Wikibook about QR codes. Wikibooks is a good repository for that type of info, and it's actually a better editing environment than Wikipedia in all sorts of other ways too. 66.127.55.46 (talk) 20:49, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

cyber crime involving January Makamba

please let me know if the above mention person who has been appointed as a ministry of Tanzania goverment is wanted by home land security of USA — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikemike2012 (talk • contribs) 10:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is no hint of anything like that online. Note that we have an article January Makamba, although I would not put any great reliance on it. Looie496 (talk) 18:33, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, our access to news from that part of the world is not good. I just barely found a source describing his appointment. [4] Google News indexes some articles about him though [5] none of which sound like he's on anybody's hit list. Wnt (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

internet 300 yards away

Okay so i gots me a friend who lives on a ranch. His only interweb options includes the following:

satellite

Satellite is too expensive/limiting/slow to be a real option for his internet needs. He has on his property another house roughly 300 yards away which does high speed cable internet. The house is not in line of sight due to trees. I want to get internet from that house to the other house someway. I have already considered running a line for Ethernet but i think that requires a power line to follow it for repeaters - which is costly.

I had an idea that i wanted to bounce off y'll - drop 1 line from the house with internet to the house without internet (300 yards away) and then directly connect a wifi router to one end and a wifi receiver (like a USB card or something) to the other end. I have no idea if this can be done while maintaining a stable internet connection that is low latency that can be used for online gaming like World of Warcraft. Any other ideas out there would be great - thanks 98.238.132.145 (talk) 22:02, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]