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November 21

C++ constructors

Suppose that I don't want a subclass's constructor to call the superclass's constructor. I also don't want to make a fake superclass constructor. I believe that both are against my religion.. Is this possible? --140.180.241.187 (talk) 06:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure I understand your question, but if I understand you right, then the answer is no. That is, the language is explicitly constructed to prohibit what you want to do.

I only have the 2003 language standard at hand. There is paragraph 4 from chapter 12.6.2 ("Initializing bases and members", [class.base.init]) which says that if a given base class is not named by the constructor init list of a constructor of a subclass, and the base class is a non-POD class, then the subobject inherited from the base class is default-initialized, i.e. the default constructor of that base class is implicitly called. Furthermore, by paragraph 5 from chapter 12.1 ("Constructors", [class.ctor]), if there is no user-defined default constructor and if the default constructor cannot be implicitly defined, the program is ill-formed.

Anyway, why would you want to leave the member variables that were inherited from the superclass uninitialized? — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've just had a quick look at N3337, the working draft most similar to the published C++11 standard. Here the situation is somewhat more complicated because now constructors can delegate their work to other constructors, but I think what I wrote is still true, see 12.6.2/8. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 13:27, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is being talked about is a way of breaking the basic contract for use of a class. If a class is designed to ensure something then if it can just have everything zero because someone left out a constructor call then the whole basis of classes is broken as far as C++ is concerned. If you include the definition of the class in the same module or there is cross module optimization then there may be opportunities to inline any required work. Dmcq (talk) 17:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

32-bit or 64 ?

I just bought a Dell Optiplex 320 with Windows 7. I'm pretty sure that's the 32-bit version, but how can I tell for sure ? And does that model even support the 64-bit version ? StuRat (talk) 07:06, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Control Panel > System and Security > System, I'm guessing from the screen print here. Ssscienccce (talk) 07:44, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The tech spec [1] doesn't list Windows 7 as an OS, so it was probably installed by whoever he bought the system from. The CPUs listed all support 64-bit operating systems, but you'll have to check the system properties to know what version is installed. Windows key + Pause/Break is a quick key combination to bring it up. "System type" under the "System" section will tell you if it is 32 or 64. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 13:25, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. It's 32-bit, as I suspected. StuRat (talk) 18:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update: whoever YOU bought the system from... I swear last time I read it I saw "My brother just bought", so apparently I am going insane. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 15:11, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Must be, I never typed that. StuRat (talk) 18:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Wikipedia has dangerous side-effects, we should have a warninglabel: "Warning: This website is highly addictive and may cause insanity". Trio The Punch (talk) 19:20, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Converting a CTRL key into a FN key

I have a lovely new laptop. Its quite small so some keys have duplicate functions, eg the four arrow keys become, when FN is pressed, the HOME UP DOWN END keys. Unfortunately the FN is on the left hand side and the arrow keys are on the right hand side, so two hands are needed just to jump to the end of a page. The keyboard has two CTRL keys, one on either side. Would it be possible for me to convert the right hand CTRL key into a second FN key? I am running Windows 7 at the moment. At some stage in the future I'll be changing over to a Linux OS, hopefully almost-instinct 10:05, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It may depend on the make and model, but this can often be done by changing a BIOS setting - e.g. see here. Googling "swap fn ctrl keys" gives lots of promising-looking links. AndrewWTaylor (talk)

Sorry, I misread the question - the link above is about swapping the left-hand Fn and Ctrl keys. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keyboardremapping is usually simple (KeyTweak) but the FN key on laptops is more complicated. Some models that have a [fn] key do send detectable messages when that key is pressed/released. However, these messages are not standardized between different devices and also, some devices with a [fn] key do not produce any message at all when the key is pressed (the key is handled at the hardware level on that device). Which laptop do you have? Trio The Punch (talk) 13:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Its a Samsung NP530. Since [fn]+various other keys operates things like brightness and volume I can see why that key might be treated differently :-( almost-instinct 15:18, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, just been looking in the manual for Keytweak: "Keytweak cannot affect the Fn key of most laptops. This because the Fn key itself does not generate a scancode, but rather modifies the scancode of other keys on the keyboard. The scancode modifications take place upstream of KeyTweak’s functionality". I think that draws this conversation to a close. Boo. Thanks for your time. Actually while I've got your attention.... Why when one's machine has a 128GB drive does the computer say "Total size: 92.3GB Space free: 64.7GB" I figure the difference between the two numbers is thanks to the OS and all the other preinstalled junk, but where's the other 35.7GB? Is the computer reserving that for its own purposes? almost-instinct 15:27, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You may well be able to do this AutoHotkey. I've personally used it to do something very similar before. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is the drive an SSD? Often, a significant percentage of a SSD's space is used for load-leveling. As cells in the memory are written and re-used, they slowly wear out. By swapping around where things get stored, the drive can be worn out evenly, so it lasts much much longer. This can only be done if there is enough unused space, so part of the capacity is reserved. The system may also have a hidden partition that is used for recovery. You can use disk manager (in computer management) to see if this is the case. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 15:59, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you have a recovery partition. It may be somewhat hidden. It contains a backup of the preinstalled OS and drivers. Trio The Punch (talk) 16:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try this trick, maybe you can get the keycode. If you press a button the site displays the keycode. Trio The Punch (talk) 15:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The keycodes for the arrows are 37, 38, 39, 40. With the [Fn] key down that becomes 33, 34, 35, 36. With the right hand side shift key down they stay 37, 38, 39, 40. Perhaps I can reassign the shift+arrow keys to 33, 34, 35, 36. And simply forget about the [Fn] key, which (unlike SHIFT and CTRL) doesn't produce a keycode. Thanks for the links to that useful-looking software. I've a friend who will help me play around with it. As for the drive - yes its an SSD. I choose it because of the speed benefits - all my big files will living somewhere else - so I'm not fussed that its doing this in the interests of speed. Thank you for your thoughts on that too. You're all very lovely :-) almost-instinct 19:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will mark this as resolved since you seem to be on the right track, but feel free to remove the {{resolved}} tag if you have more questions. Trio The Punch (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

XKCD

What does u+2o2e refer to here? Rojomoke (talk) 12:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode character 202e, RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE, reversing the direction of character presentation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:03, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately explainxkcd.com is not up to date. Trio The Punch (talk) 12:06, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rojomoke (talk) 12:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To explain the joke... standing guy starts some boring rant, black hat switches direction so standing guy now speaks in reverse. Read it backwards for what he is saying (and see if you can spot the small error). Astronaut (talk) 12:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

explainxkcd.com is up to date if you know where to look (they should really update their home page..). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not up to date, you just agreed with me by disagreeing with me. Let's get married!

Trio The Punch (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Off-topic: the reversed 'THE' is misspelled... --CiaPan (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How, exactly, does one use this character? I've seen youtube videos get it from a character map; can it be done on a keyboard? I feel the answer must be "yes" because I've had it happen to me accidentally once or twice. 146.87.49.176 (talk) 14:16, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Efficiency of bit serial CPUs for massively parallel High Performance Computing and graphic processing.

How do a Bit-serial architecture such as a Serial computer perform in in terms of operations per joule and operations per second and square millimeter chip area. I am speculating about a system with bit-serial CPUs integrated on memory chips, preferably DRAM memory. About 10 000 CPUs per GB memory. Given that they would only need a few thousand transistors per CPU this would be a small part of the chip area. Since each individual CPU is relatively slow it would not need cash memory or other optimizations such as out of order execution to hide the memory latency. These optimizations totally dominates the area and power consumption of a normal CPU. Could this be a reasonable approach? Gr8xoz (talk) 16:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I wanted to help you cache your mistake. :-) StuRat (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC) [reply]

The problem is what would it be good for? There were a number of bit serial massively parallel computers around thirty years ago but for instance the ICL DAP had 4096 elements a 64x64 array which is a workable size. Much larger than that and there just aren't the problems that map properly without very much better interconnection. The later DAPs had a 8 bit processors and some local 8 bit memory rather than expanding the array. There's not really much point in using anything except a proper processor with floating point nowadays for a large array and for small arrays the effort of making them wouldn't be worthwhile for a manufacturer that I can see. So you'll need a killer application first. Dmcq (talk)

How about finite element analysis ? This only requires that each node interact with the adjacent nodes. StuRat (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the wide market for powerful graphic cards and FPGAs show that there is a market for simple computing elements in parallel. GPUs are used more and more for general computing (GPGPU) applications. If a massively parallel bit serial design could be used as a GPU but use less power and be more flexible that could be a killer application. Other than that there are a lot of embedded applications that currently uses FPGAs to implement parallel computations. Some applications could be video/audio encoding/decoding, computer vision, data compression, scientific simulations and so on.

The ICL DAP had all elements work in lock step as a SIMD system, that limits the range of problems the system could effectively solve considerably. I actually think you equally well could define it as being a special 4096-bit CPU as 4096 1-bit CPUs. I was thinking about full CPUs with floating point operations in a serial implementation. Each CPU can access all memory but have fastest access to the 1 Mbit memory block that are closest. As I understand it the most costly part of a a system today is the data paths, not the logic and this minimizes data transfer. Since each CPU can operate independently with full memory access it is much more flexible than a GPU. The question is could it beat it on performance for a given power and chip area? Gr8xoz (talk) 20:41, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a full processor you might as well access a larger chunk at once. Memories nowadays return a number of bits at once, and allow the data close by to by accessed faster as the line it is in has already been selected and just a small chunk returned externally. By the way another problem to cope with is error detection, a major reason the DAP only allowed access to the same address in each processing element was so error detection could be across each row and column of the array rather than having anything within the elements. Dmcq (talk) 00:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes a typical DRAM is organized in a number of matrices and access one row at a time, often a few hundred bits per row. The problem is that it takes about 10 ns to access one row. A parallel processor needs to wait or use a cache large enough to hide the latency. In that time the serial processor operating at lets say 2 GHz reads about 20 bits per channel, one channel per operand, one for instructions and writes out the result, in total 80 bits. The transfers would obviously go through a few shift registers holding a row of data each, acting as a micro cache of a few bytes. Normal computers does not have bit error detection hardware, some memories have but that could easily be implemented on the DRAM row level. The DRAM row length should be optimized with regards to the number of CPUs that likely tries to access the same memory matrix, their relative timing and the number of data channels and so on. Then of course the next question is how the different semiconductor processes would mix if it should be done on a single chip. Gr8xoz (talk) 01:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well actually the error detection is less important nowadays as one can replicate the difficult bits and detect errors that way. So you are actually talking about internally working in a bit serial fashion in the processors. The big problem with that is the multiplying, that takes time proportional to the square of the number of bits in a word. That I believe is why later DAPs had 8 bit local processors added. Dmcq (talk) 10:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

By the way Ericsson recently acquired a firm that designed something along the lines you are talking about - not integrated with the memory but no-one has bothered with that - the chips are used mainly for video compression. The search term for that sort of stuff is 'associative string processors' Dmcq (talk) 10:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes serial operation internally and maybe more importantly in the routing system/buses that connects the CPUs to the memory matrices. The actual read out of a memory matrix is of course parallel. As I understand it there are a mainly serial implementation of multiplication that scales linearly with the word length in both time and number of gates, called serial parallel multiplier or something similar. A pure parallel implementation scales the number of gates as the square of the word length. I will look up 'associative string processors' later, I need to return to work from my lunch break now. What do you mean with "replicate the difficult bits and detect errors that way" do you talk about repeating important calculations and check that the results agree? Gr8xoz (talk) 12:18, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

By replicating I mean just duplicate the processor on the chip and compare the outputs, that way you can detect errors in the processors as well as the data. It can be cheaper than replicating all the hardware or running problems twice. Of course if you don't want any downtime duplicating or triplicating all the hardware is better anyway and you can get away with less hardware per processor for detecting errors. Dmcq (talk) 15:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Partitioning hard disk in Windows 7

Is there a built-in utility to do this ? The 1 TB USB external hard drive in question is already partially occupied by movies, so I'd like to leave the occupied part in place. StuRat (talk) 18:20, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309170.aspx Trio The Punch (talk) 19:14, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I tried that, but the "Shrink Volume..." option is grayed out for that partition, which is FAT32. The other hard disk can be shrunk, and is NTFS formatted. Is that the problem ? If so, am I just SOL ? StuRat (talk) 02:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DiskPart is something of an underachiever (presumably to leave market space for the paid for disk partitioning software). You're probably better off booting your computer from a Linux live CD (ubuntu, fedora, debian, or gparted-livecd) and use gparted or KDE Partition Manager. 87.113.165.189 (talk) 02:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have Puppy Linux. Are either of those available on it ? StuRat (talk) 04:40, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have another drive that you could move the contents of that HD to, then repartition it, and then move them back? That would probably be safer. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:24, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've used the partition editor in Puppy. I mostly works OK (I only had one instance of it screwing up the partition in some weird way). Like Bubba advisies, it is safer to back up to another disk first. Astronaut (talk) 18:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How do I run the partition editor ? StuRat (talk) 15:49, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Googling "puppy linux partition editor" indicates that Puppy Linux (like a large number of Linux variants) uses the Gparted partition editor. Either look for "Gparted" or "Partition Editor" in the system menu, or run the command "gparted" at the command prompt as root or with sudo. (It's a graphical editor, even if you launch it from the command line.) -- 205.175.124.30 (talk) 21:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Tried it, but the resize option is again dimmed out. Does resize not work on FAT32 partitions ? StuRat (talk) 23:45, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The partition may be dirty; scan it with Microsoft ScanDisk and make sure to cleanly unmount it in windows. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:51, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find ScanDisk, but ran a defrag with no problems. That means it's "clean", right ? StuRat (talk) 15:28, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And obviously make sure, if you're doing this in Linux, that all partitions on the target disk are unmounted. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, if the disk is unmounted, gparted's "Move/Resize" option is grayed out. If mounted, the option is lit, but only allows me to increase size, not decrease, for this partition. StuRat (talk) 15:44, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How did the team making Eclipse (which itself is mostly written in Java) for Windows make it an exe?

I know there are various third party applications out there for turning Java programs into Windows runnable .exe programs, but how specifically did the folks that produce the Eclipse binary for Windows make that software an .exe and not a JAR? I read somewhere that Eclipse is built with PDEBuild, but it seems that that is something that uses Ant, which itself orchestrates the building of things Java, which doesn't answer the question (without plumbing the depths of PDEBuild source) how exactly at the root of it all Eclipse, which was built with PDEBuild, which used Ant, which ran javac commands, made an .exe file instead of a JAR. 20.137.2.50 (talk) 20:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eclipse starts from a native code launcher, Eclipse Launcher, the job of which is to find an appropriate JDK (or, I guess if you're not building for Java targets, a JRE) and launch javaw.exe. Doing this, rather than have the shortcut be to an invocation of javaw.exe, gives a bit of resilience (e.g. in cases where someone uninstalls the JRE) - it should give a more useful error report than "executable not found". That page shows how the IDE can be started manually with an invocation of the java executable, rather than using the native launcher. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:29, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I were an engineer there I would continually surprise my bosses with miraculous speed improvements to Eclipse's startup routine, i.e. what is available while launching, how soon it's available, how fast it is to interact with in the first few moments. I'd do this by slyly, slyly, ever so slowly, translating Eclipse into C++ and writing it into the launcher. The other teams wouldn't even notice until it was too late! since it's c++, they wouldn't even notice the modest size increase versus the rest of the bloated codebase! As they saw the C++-baesd launcher's footprint catching up with the rest of the project, their only thought would be "yeah, that was bound to happen eventually. wonder what took so long"? Little would they suspect that their precious Eclipse was about to be eclipsed. I would next perform a whole coup and having reimplemented all of of Eclipse with a faster C++ version right in the launcher program, I would simply stop launching Eclipse at all! People would catch on, and start downloading just the 'streamlined' launcher. Muhahahahaha. Step one: take over responsibility for maintaining the launcher. Step two: the world. --178.48.114.143 (talk) 21:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Guess what! You can get started right now! Here's the Eclipse Platform common code repository. Chances are very high that you won't have permission to make a commit to the official repositories, but you're encouraged to clone the git repository. If your changes are an improvement, it's very likely that you can make a strong case for inclusion. If, however, your suggestion is to re-architect the core platform code without telling anyone, that's not very good software engineering. Good communication about the intent and implementation of program code is a prerequisite for effective professional software development. Making changes that you think are wonderful, without consulting the many other experts who have worked on the project for a long time, is not necessarily the best way to make improvements. Nimur (talk) 00:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 22

Mysterious Folders

On unhiding all hidden folders, I discovered that my flash drive has three hidden folders on it, named ".fseventsd", ".Spotlight-V100", and ".Trashes". Can I safely rename (or better yet, delete) these folders? Pokajanje|Talk 00:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, but I would recommend ignoring them. http://hostilefork.com/2009/12/02/trashes-fseventsd-and-spotlight-v100/ Trio The Punch (talk) 00:32, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative to Google Documents?

Are there any services similar to Google Docs that allows multiple users to edit a document and track changes to each user?

Is there a local network software that does the same thing as Google Docs sharing capability?

Cliffbament (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft SharePoint will, but I think it has a clunky check-in, check-out type locking scheme. 87.113.165.189 (talk) 15:56, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

why is there no link between CAP theorem and Quorum?

How does Quorum (distributed computing) fail to negate the CAP theorem?

For example, given five known database servers I send my transaction request to all five at the same time.

As soon as I get a failed result from any of them I know that the transaction has failed and can report same.

As soon as I get a transaction acknowledgement from any three database servers then I know that the result is good and can report same.

In the meantime if I get transaction status unknown or insufficient responses I retry. Hcobb (talk) 17:38, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're confusing eventual consistency with immediate consistency; and along the same line of reasoning, conflating a retry-until-success with "availability." In such scenarios, although the system is functional for many practical use-cases, it is not complying with strict requirements of consistency, availability and fault-tolerance at every instant. Nimur (talk) 13:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then the CAP article isn't very clear. You could make a provably minimal quorum system in the sense that it transmits the least number of messages and still is as consistent and reliable as any possible scheme given X percent failures in the system. Hcobb (talk) 15:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Scam or just desperate?

Okay, some lady, whom I appear to have no friends in common with, added me on Facebook. She has 12 friends, all of which are men. Since I accept just about anybody that isn't blatantly malicious, I accepted her request. Almost immediately she started talking about what she looks for in a man and asked what I look for in a woman. I tried to hint to her that I wasn't really interested in dating her, but she didn't seem to take that hint. She only made her account 2 hours ago, and while she says she is 20, the pictures she has posted look more like that of a teenager (if those are even really her pictures). On the other hand, she didn't seem to be afraid of the fact that I run spam traps and report spammers when I told her I have a Yahoo! account but it's a spam trap. She wants me to create a Yahoo! Messenger account and add her on Yahoo! Messenger. I tried to get her to message me via email (that would reveal an IP address), but that idea didn't work. The last thing she said to me was "okay baby". So is this some kind of scam to try and hack into my PC or is this just some desperate teenager looking for attention? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 19:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds a lot like a "flirty" chatbot. If you want to play along use a nonstandard chatclient, maybe they use a security flaw in Yahoo! Messenger. If it is a real person it may be a case of ewhoring. Google "ewhoring". Trio The Punch (talk) 19:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This, perhaps. 87.112.97.202 (talk) 20:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think it's definitely a real person behind it, otherwise it's one hell of a good bot that is able to comprehend what is written to it. I know this because I at first thought it might have been a Mafia Wars person or someone that followed me from Conservapedia (since it has a lot of politically conservative things liked)and had a little conversation with "it". Any suggestions for luring an IP address out of "it"? I want to have a little bit of "I know what you're up to and I have your IP address" fun with this "thing". Another thought is that, considering the seemingly phony conservatism that this person is pawning off, this could be some kind of attempt at Poe's Law PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 22:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if they fixed this security flaw, but back in 2009 you could simply use netstat-n while transferring a file. Use a proxy. Send him/her/it something, e.g. your favorite song. Or ask a random Wikipedian to host a file on a http server at a URL that has never been used before. Send the person the link, search the accesslogs of the http server. Trio The Punch (talk) 23:42, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's a fair chance it's neither. There are a variety of scams which don't involve any attempt at hacking. E.g. there's blackmail mentioned by 87 but also the sort of 'advanced fee' type of fraud where they'll convince you to give them money whether as a gift or to help them when for some strange reason the cops come after them or their relative gets sick or whatever nonsense. While the advance fee type of dating fraud tends to target dating websites, perhaps for some reason they think you're a suitable market. Nil Einne (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Computer not automatically booting from the hard drive

The short: Boot device not found when i turn on the computer.

What works: Selecting the hard drive from the boot menu. Leaving a windows CD in the drive and letting it time out, which then boots the hard drive

What i have tried: Confirmed the hard drive(s) are seen in the bios, confirmed that the hard drive(s) are top of the boot list. Updated/re-flashed the bios. Modified boot sequence to HD > USB > CD > NIC > Floppy. Disabled USB, CD, NIC, & Floppy. Format/reinstall Windows 7. Format/reinstall Ubuntu 12.04. Grub repair off live CD on both Windows and Ubuntu. Tried 2 different hard drives. Tried the same with bootable USB with same results.

My temp solution is to just leave the win7 CD in the drive and let it time out which then boots the hard drive.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Just to clarify; when i 'let the cd time out' what i mean is when it boots from the CD it said something like "Press any key to boot from the CD or DVD..." then after 5 seconds it decides i don't want to boot from the CD/DVD at which point it just boots from the hard drive. If the CD is not in the drive then i just get the error "No boot device found..." – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: Tested both hard-drives and USB flash drive on a different computer, and all 3 boot just fine (well, one hard drive BSOD when windows tires to load but that is to be expected as it wasnt installed on that hardware, and the other one boots in to ubuntu just fine, as does the USB drive.) – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Could the issue be that the hard disk takes some time to show up ? I have an external hard drive like that. When I first turn it on, I might as well go get a cup of tea while I wait for it to appear. So, by the time you wait for the time-out, it may then be visible to the PC. I think the long lag for some hard drives might be because they are huge (TBs) and feel the need to do some type of startup test (obviously it can't test every bit, but maybe it tests one bit on each sector or some such thing). StuRat (talk) 06:30, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That might be it, however 1 hard drive is 80g while the other is 200g – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 06:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any difference between a cold start (PC off over night) and a warm start (reboot) ? StuRat (talk) 06:56, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Same result either way. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 14:09, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a time-out issue, does disabling quick POST help? I.e. enabling the complete RAM scan, which would give the drive enough time to rev up and do its own POST? BTW, you did not say the PC booted from DVD when DVD was disabled in the BIOS? You tried disabling DVD etc. but you had to re-enable DVD to use the DVD trick?

Since one of the PCs is to "blame", maybe reset the BIOS to factory settings? I had to do that once in 2 months on one PC, it seemed that BIOS settings got messed up there to a point where it wouldn't boot any more.

Could you tell us what caused the problem to show up? Did the PC refuse to boot when you got it, or did it only happen after a certain change? (I'd guess it could be grub, but that's only a guess. One of my coworkers had a nasty grub fail once. Why that doesn't show up on the other PCs is beyond me, tho.) - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 08:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Saving modified SmartArt in PPT 2010

I am running Microsoft Powerpoint 2010 on Windows 7. I am using the SmartArt graphics that came with the software to create organization charts and have modified the color scheme and gradient for some of the elements. Is there anyway for me to save what I have modified as a custom SmartArt style so that I don't have to repeat all the modifications for every subsequent chart? Also, it will allow me to re-use this custom smartart for other presentation files. Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 23

sentence syntax program

I am looking for a program which I can use to signify sentence syntax above the words. --82.81.171.245 (talk) 09:39, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are several programs that might be useful: http://ai.stanford.edu/~rion/parsing/index.html Unfortunately they are all fairly technical and might not be exactly what you are looking for. KarlLohmann (talk) 16:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Java J2EE can a program check whether a user would be able to access a URL?

If I have various web resources protected by <security-constraint> entries in the web.xml is there a way to check whether a logged-in user would be able to access a particular URL? It would be useful to display links conditionally so that the user can only see URLs that they could access. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:04, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is a tricky one. I have written a (1)program in java that does check if the logged in user can edit the video being looked at (for youtube), however this was done by having my program login for the user. What i think your asking is if your program can assume the ID of the user and test his credentials against another website. However, if you can make the user login though the java program then u can store his information (temporarily) and use that to test the other websites. – Nerd(Talk|Cont) 18:02, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am talking about the same website; as far as I can see there is no way to tell if a user will be restricted from a particular path without the user trying to go there. So if you have a menu of directories you cannot easily omit directories that the user cannot access. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:04, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any webmail services that do not show real names?

I'm trying to find a webmail service that I could use for Wikipedia email. The problem is, that I apparently cannot completely hide my real name from being disclosed somewhere. The "send mail as" feature from GMail only works partially, as when you hover over the nickname, it still shows the real name. I know I could put a fake name in, but that just doesn't seem right. Any advice? Klilidiplomus+Talk 12:27, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I use gmail with GishPuppy] to hide my ID. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:00, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a word of caution, do not rely on what you may or may not see when you hover over something or what is otherwise exposed via the UI. Instead look at the entire original email (e.g. via the 'show original' function in most webmail services) and make sure there's nothing revealed that you don't want to be revealed. For example gMail won't generally publicly reveal the IP of the computer used to send the email, IIRC even if you use the SMTP service which I presume Q Chris is doing, but many webmail services and many ISP servers will. Nil Einne (talk) 13:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am still worried about when sending an email to someone that also has a Gmail account using Wikipedia's email feature. Klilidiplomus+Talk 15:07, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really get what you mean. If you are using an email account which is publicly associated with your real name, then finding a way to hide the real name in the gmail is clearly utterly pointless. If you are concerned that Google is going to reveal your real name without your permission then either choose a different provider or use an account with a fake name. Nil Einne (talk) 12:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the problem with creating a 2nd, anonymous Gmail account. The "fake name" can be something like "Prefer Anonymity". You might be able to set this account up to forward mail to your regular Gmail account. StuRat (talk) 15:45, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@StuRat There are some people who will never lie (even to a machine) for religious or moral reasons. Klilidiplomus has asked for a way to do it without giving false names and clicking terms and conditions which say that you will not use false names. I think we should give him ways to do that. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't lying when you make it clear it's not your name, and that the reason is that you prefer anonymity. StuRat (talk) 23:53, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google "anonymous email" you'll find a lot of websites like this one and that one. You can test them by trying it on yourself first. You can check the source of the email you received to make sure there is no identifiable info. If you need to send an attachment try Amnesty. Trio The Punch (talk) 17:07, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It might not seem right to use a fake name for gmail, but it's a good idea to, whether you actually send email or not (because historically you do not even have to send email for people to get to that information). ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:37, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Brute force Ingress invitation code?

Is there some way I can brute force an Ingress invitation code? I believe they're 8-characters in length. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.144.193.174 (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Only if the system accepting input is poorly written. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:51, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sharing bookmarks ?

Is there any way to share bookmarks/favorites between my various web browsers ? I use Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and, if need be, even IE. I'd like to keep the same bookmark structures in each, so that when I add a bookmark to one, it appears in the rest, too. Just exporting and importing them would be rather painful, since, even if it worked, this would require me to import into the other 3 every time I add a bookmark. StuRat (talk) 23:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Xmarks (no Opera support). Google "sync bookmarks between browsers". Trio The Punch (talk) 02:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 24

Windows 8 fast startup feature

What could cause the fast startup feature in windows 8 to stop working if it worked fine before? 176.248.109.88 (talk) 01:16, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

talking only from my personal and short experience, I think the only thing the fast startup feature actually do is to hibernate the pc instead of turn it off… I realize that by the lcd built-in in my board …so, maybe if you deactivated the hibernate function of your system that could be the reason.

Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 20:47, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MSIE 8 on XP

I run MSIE 8 on XP. When I have multiple browser windows open and one or more is slowly loading content, it often keeps putting itself as the top window. Is there a way to stop it doing this and to have the window I have selected stay as the top one? -- SGBailey (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

TweakUI is your friend. Download it and try this. Apparently it doesn't happen if you open separate threads, it only happens if you open a new window from an existing thread/process (e.g. via right click "open in new window" or ctrl+n). Trio The Punch (talk) 15:43, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The best thing you can do is to install chrome or firefox.

Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 20:45, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Iskánder, IE is a bad browser, and the alternatives are free. Trio The Punch (talk) 03:59, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but that wasn't the question, was it. :-) Thanks. -- SGBailey (talk) 21:54, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Weird C++ linking problem at work

I am facing a really weird C++ linking problem at work.

The basic idea is this. We are working on a Windows application (I am using Windows 7 on my work computer). I am running Visual Studio 2008 and Xoreax IncrediBuild as a distributed compiler on top of it. We have developed a Windows native C++ library, and I want to create a Managed C++ wrapper on top of it so it can be called from C# code.

The code compiles but does not link. I get linker errors about undefined external symbols for numerous functions in the native C++ library that are both declared and implemented in the library code. I have found out that these all come from functions that call functions from other objects, where the functions are both declared and implemented in the .h file. If I move the implementation to the .cpp file, the code links OK.

As an example, this doesn't work:

StdAfx.h in my wrapper:

#include "NativeLibrary.h"

NativeLibrary.h:

#include "Inner.h"
class Outer
{
  public:
    int GetMagicNumber() const
    {
      return myInner.GetMagicNumber();
    }
  private:
    Inner myInner;
};

Inner.h:

class Inner
{
  public:
    int GetMagicNumber() const;
};

Inner.cpp:

int Inner::GetMagicNumber() const
{
  return 42;
}

But it does work if I change NativeLibrary.h to this:

NativeLibrary.h:

#include "Inner.h"
class Outer
{
  public:
    int GetMagicNumber() const;
  private:
    Inner myInner;
};

NativeLibrary.cpp:

int Outer::GetMagicNumber() const
{
  return myInner.GetMagicNumber();
}

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? JIP | Talk 15:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I tried your not working code in g++ (as it's often instructive to use another compiler). My only observarions:

I had to add #include "Inner.h" to the top of Inner.cpp (perhaps you just didn't cut and paste that)
I wrote a simple main.cpp:

#include <iostream>
#include "NativeLibrary.h"
int main(){
  Outer o;
  std::cout << o.GetMagicNumber() << std::endl;;
  return 0;
}

(which I guess is what you intended).

That all compiles, links, and runs fine in g++

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:37, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If your Inner.cpp really didn't #include inner.h, I think it should. To my mind, for both c and c++, modules should #include their own public interface, so you will get a compile-time error if you inadvertently change the signature so that the definition doesn't match the declaration. If you do allow that error to happen in C++, and you compile one .cpp but not the other, you may get a link error due to the differences in name mangling. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:47, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Inner.cpp #includes Inner.h and NativeLibrary.cpp #includes NativeLibrary.h. I just forgot to write it in the above example. Maybe this is specific to Visual Studio 2008 and Xoreax IncrediBuild. What is weird here is that the native library compiles and links fine by itself, but my wrapper which calls the library compiles, but does not link, even though all the symbols I get linker errors about are declared in the native library. JIP | Talk 16:59, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then I'd again suspect name mangling. In addition to mangling names to encode C++ information, Microsoft compilers also add in stuff for the calling convention (for example, win32 API calls are FAR PASCAL, and are mangled as such). When cross language calling one has to take this into account, and you may have compiler settings that are using a default that makes the imported symbols mangle differently than those exported. You should be able to run DUMPBIN.EXE on the object files to see what the mangled names are. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note, mostly for posterity. I'm wrong about win32 (and showing my age): X86 calling conventions shows that win16 calls were FAR PASCAL but that win32 calls are STDCALL. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:54, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I ran DUMPBIN.EXE on the .dll and .lib files of the native library at work. The results don't even show the symbol GetMagicNumber, in any plain or mangled form, anywhere. But then I took another Windows native C++ library, which also had a Managed C++ wrapper, and wrote similar code there. The code compiled and linked OK, and DUMPBIN.EXE showed the symbol GetMagicNumber. The problem must be in the settings of either the native C++ libraries or the Managed C++ wrappers. I looked at the compiler and linker command line options in the Visual Studio 2008 project properties, and the only significant differences I could find were the compiler options of the native C++ libraries. Here are the options of the library that fails to link:

/Od /I "..\..\..\..\bin" /I "..\Include" /I "..\..\Core\include" /D "WIN32" /D "_DEBUG" /D "_WINDOWS" /D "_USRDLL" /D "_VC80_UPGRADE=0x0600" /D "_WINDLL" /D "_AFXDLL" /D "_MBCS" /FD /EHsc /RTC1 /MDd /Yu"stdafx.h" /Fp".\Debug/NativeLibrary.pch" /Fo".\Debug/" /Fd".\Debug/" /W3 /nologo /c /ZI /TP /errorReport:prompt

Here are the corresponding options of the library that links OK:

/Od /I "..\..\..\..\bin" /I "..\Include" /I "..\..\Core\include" /AI "..\..\..\..\Bin" /D "_DEBUG" /D "WIN32" /D "_WINDOWS" /D "_USRDLL" /D "_VC80_UPGRADE=0x0600" /D "_WINDLL" /D "_AFXDLL" /D "_MBCS" /GF /FD /EHa /MDd /Yu"stdafx.h" /Fp".\Debug/AnotherNativeLibrary.pch" /Fo".\Debug/" /Fd".\Debug/" /W3 /nologo /c /Zi /TP /errorReport:prompt

(Very minor editing has been done on the options, to mask away any application-specific names, to preserve our trade secrets. All the actual compiler and linker options are intact.) Maybe the problem is somewhere here? JIP | Talk 18:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

sentence syntax program (Continuation(

I dont look for "parser online" or programs that parser sentence .I am looking for a program which I can use to signify sentence syntax above the words.thanks --82.81.171.245 (talk) 18:17, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you are looking for something like this:

<font=Courier>

....A..............................A....A 
....D..............................D....D   
A...J.........................A....J....J    
R...E.........A...........A...R....E....E    
T...C.........D...........D...T....C....C    
I...T...N.....V......V....V...I....T....T....N
C...I...O.....E......E....E...C....I....I....O
L...V...U.....R......R....R...L....V....V....U
E...E...N.....B......B....B...E....E....E....N
=====================================================
A brown fox quickly jumped over the slow, lazy dog.

(I haven't diagrammed a sentence for decades, so I hope I did it right.) If this is what you want, try "diagram English sentence online" for your search.

The periods are just added because Wikipedia wants to make spaces narrower than characters (on my browser, at least). What's the proper way to stop this ? StuRat (talk) 15:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's an html entity - "& nbsp;" is your friend --82.227.17.30 (talk) 20:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@StuRat: (e/c) I see in your wikimarkup that you have tried to do this both by inserting a space in the beginning of each line, and by specifying a monospaced font. Inserting a space in the beginning of each line should be sufficient; the example I've written below works in my browser. And by the way, "over" in this context is a preposition, not an adverb. Wiktionary gives the following example of "over" as a preposition: "The dog jumped over the fence.[2]

This looks ok in my browser:

                                 P
                                 R
         A                       E         A    A 
         D                       P         D    D   
    A    J                       O    A    J    J    
    R    E          A            S    R    E    E    
    T    C          D            I    T    C    C    
    I    T    N     V      V     T    I    T    T    N
    C    I    O     E      E     I    C    I    I    O
    L    V    U     R      R     O    L    V    V    U
    E    E    N     B      B     N    E    E    E    N
    ---------------------------------------------------
    A  brown fox quickly jumped over the slow, lazy dog.

--NorwegianBlue^talk 20:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't look right on my browser (Opera 12.11 on Windows 7). StuRat (talk) 05:06, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Weird. It looks fine if you use Opera 12.11 on Vista. Trio The Punch (talk) 15:13, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just tested it on a fresh Win7 build 7600 install with Opera 12.11 build 1661 and it looks fine. Trio The Punch (talk) 15:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@82.227: You've got a space between the "&" and the "nbsp;" which shouldn't be there, it should be " ". Writing StuRat's example using your technique, combined with <tt>specififying a monospaced font</tt> would work, but the markup would be horrendous:

Click "show" to see what it would look like

<tt>                               P                               R       A                       E         A    A       D                       P         D    D  A    J                       O    A    J    J  R    E          A            S    R    E    E  T    C          D            I    T    C    C  I    T    N     V      V     T    I    T    T    N  C    I    O     E      E     I    C    I    I    O  L    V    U     R      R     O    L    V    V    U  E    E    N     B      B     N    E    E    E    N  --------------------------------------------------- A  brown fox quickly jumped over the slow, lazy dog </tt>

--NorwegianBlue^talk 20:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So what would you recommend, instead ? I suppose I could leave the periods in and change the foreground and background color to match before each set, then change them back after the dots. StuRat (talk) 05:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to use the <pre> HTML tag for preformatted text. Trio The Punch (talk) 15:06, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content

                                  P
                                  R
          A                       E         A    A 
          D                       P         D    D   
     A    J                       O    A    J    J    
     R    E          A            S    R    E    E    
     T    C          D            I    T    C    C    
     I    T    N     V      V     T    I    T    T    N
     C    I    O     E      E     I    C    I    I    O
     L    V    U     R      R     O    L    V    V    U
     E    E    N     B      B     N    E    E    E    N
     ---------------------------------------------------
     A  brown fox quickly jumped over the slow, lazy dog.

Lenovo ThinkCentre's eSATA port

Dear Wikipedians:

Is it just me or has anyone noticed that Lenovo ThinkCentre (desktop)'s eSATA port in the back is extremely unstable? I plugged in an eSATA hard drive with the hope of booting from it, but about half the time ThinkCentre failed to pick up the hard drive and it doesn't show up in the boot menu. By comparison, the front panel USB port marked "1" seems much more stable.

What gives?

Thanks,

70.31.154.178 (talk) 23:06, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Link dump: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=SF09-D0099 Hcobb (talk) 23:57, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. 174.88.154.30 (talk) 17:00, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Without knowing stuff like how many different cables you've tried and how many different drives you've tried, the amount of useful information we can provide to you is close to zero. Nil Einne (talk) 14:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, allow me to elaborate. I have a standard desktop SATA hard drive that I have put into an external hard drive enclosure made by Vantec. I will get back to this post with detailed model and make information once I get back to Kingston. The eSATA cable was the default one that came with the enclosure. It is a grey-colored eSATA cable. The external enclosure is capable of both eSATA and USB connections. 174.88.154.30 (talk) 17:00, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 25

What is the current standard for form descriptions?

Is Extensible Forms Description Language the standard or is there a new one. I'm actually looking for a definition language for which a user friendly editor is available, that can be compiled to a web form, for which an open source library is available. And most importantly, has a DotNet WinForms implementation so I can show the form directly in an application. Thanks! Joepnl (talk) 15:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A bit more information: there are lots of validated surveys to score a subject (quality of life, eyesight, etc). I'm looking for a standard format which these questions would fit in. Joepnl (talk) 17:42, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

2.0 Megapixel cell phone camera ?

I bought a Samsung 425G cell phone. The manual says it has a 2.0 Megapixel camera, see page labeled 177 (actually page 121, counting the unnumbered forward pages) here: [3]. The camera settings allow for a max resolution of 320×240, which, by my calculations, means 0.0768 Megapixels, or 1/26th what they advertised. Why the huge discrepancy ? My guess is that they mean 2.0 Megabits (not Megabytes or Megapixels), and that they are using 24-bit color. However, the advertising clearly says Megapixels, not Megabits. So, did they screw up the advertising big time ? StuRat (talk) 16:21, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many cameras record video at a much lower resolution than they will take still images (because their CPUs can't compress full-resolution video in real time, and/or because the bandwidth of their serial flash memories isn't fast enough to store it). Are you sure that you can't take stills at 2 Megapixels? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:28, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, that must be it. I see where it says in the manual it supports resolutions up to 1600×1200. Apparently the settings are just in the wrong places, with the video res showing up under the options for the stills. I haven't found where you set the still resolution yet. StuRat (talk) 16:37, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It should be in the camera mode options screen. Note from the later using the camcorder section that camcording is a mode of camera; if you're only seeing resolution options 174x144 or 320x240, then you're in camcorder mode and need to get back into camera mode (which is an option in that same menu). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. StuRat (talk) 16:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

reverse the direction of the mouse?

I just got a new mac mini with a magic mouse. It works fine except it's exactly backwards--when I flick my finger up it scrolls the screen down and vice versa. How do I reverse the direction (and why would they make the default backwards?)--108.14.111.183 (talk) 21:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify what you mean, that gesture on the Magic Mouse seems almost the same as the motion of the wheel on a regular mouse - you roll the wheel as if you were rolling it away from your hand - and the text on the screen scrolls down so you can see the top of the page? If so, that is exactly the kind of behavoir I would expect. Anyway, this page from Apple describes the basic gestures you can use, and system preferences lets you configure it (though I somehow doubt it will let you reverse the scroll direction). Astronaut (talk) 21:28, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, no it's the exact opposite of a scroll wheel (which is the problem). If it was a wheel it would be the same as me pushing the scroll wheel toward the screen and having this text climb up the page. Anyway, I know there is a solution because this happened to me once before but my friend who is a computer guy, fixed it but I have no idea how.--108.14.111.183 (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It all depends on if you think the window stays still and the wheel is moving the text or if you think the text stays still and the wheel moves the window. They are completely opposite motions. Sadly I am a PC person and know nothing of Mac setup. -- SGBailey (talk) 21:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you go to System Preferences -> Mouse or System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom, you can tick (or untick) "Scroll direction: natural" to change the scroll direction for mouse and trackpad. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that the way the OP describes is correct. It's intuitively backwards if you ask me. I have Macs at home and only discovered that Apple had done this after using my mother-in-law's Mac. They have a newer OS and the Magic Mouse. I hate it but have gotten sort of used to it. Dismas|^(talk) 14:27, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The change came with MacOS 10.7 (Lion) to be more compatible with iOS devices (where the metaphor is that you "drag" the screen around directly). As I wrote above, at least in Mountain Lion, you can disable this change. I skipped Lion, so I do not know if it can be disabled there, too. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Skype 6.0 broken on windows 7

I just logged into skype, and it started a forced update to 6.0.

After it finished, it said the program stopped working. I tried to start it again and found out i don't have access to the skype program folder. I tried to gain ownership in Windows 7 by using various tricks including elevated command prompt, and even activating the hidden Windows 7 administrator ("net user administrator /active:yes")

No option allows me to gain permissions for the folder, and it claims that it's unable to display the current owner of the folder when i go to the security tab?

This is my damn computer and i have admin on it. How can i tell windows to let me use my own damned computer? Or.... how can i get skype working again? This really pisses me off!

137.81.118.126 (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows/Skype-won-t-install-quot-insufficient-privileges-quot/m-p/1005556/highlight/true#M74534 Trio The Punch (talk) 14:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 26

Disk space discrepancy

Used Space on Disk differs from Total Size of all files?

My Hard Disk Drive on my laptop says Used Space is 22GB, but when I open the Drive and read the size of all files (by Select All and view Properties), the size on Disk shows only 12GB. Why the difference? (I did try to Show all hiden and system files before viewing their total size on disk)

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.161.64.74 (talk) 03:30, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a title. StuRat (talk) 04:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC) [reply]

What operating system is this for? Some versions of Windows have Restore points that take up space. RudolfRed (talk) 04:47, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it's Windows. How do I get rid of those restore points to clean up my disk? It's 10GB that I don't know where it's coming from and I feel like it's a waste of space. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.161.64.65 (talk) 06:44, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An easier way to get a sense of where your disk space is going is to use a disk space visualizing utility, like Sequoia View. On the use of Restore Points, see this FAQ, which includes instructions on how to disable them, if that's really what you want to do after you understand what the space is being used for. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:31, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WinDirStat. The Disk Cleanup Utility can clear all the System Restore points except the latest one. If you want to delete them all you need to disable system restore. Trio The Punch (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What a POS article

I'm talking about Persistent object store, of course. Surely somebody has done something using storage tiers, distributed / cloud computing, and messaging systems to push computation deep into the best little data warehouse in Texas by now?

Not to be confused with object-oriented storage system of course.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9173897/Dell_announces_object_based_storage_de_duplication

Hcobb (talk) 18:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Missing app on Android phone

I have a Droid 4 running Android 4.0.4 (not rooted). I had an RSS reader app on my phone called "NewsRoom". Shortly before Thanksgiving, the feeds stopped updating. I figured that maybe the authors of the few blogs to which I had subscribed were taking a vacation of something.

As of today, the feeds still hadn't updated, so I checked the site manually, and found the my app had simply failed to indicate that the feeds had updated. I looked in the list of installed apps on my phone and NewsRoom is no longer listed. It is also gone from the Google Play Store.

I found the website for Trileet, the company that made the app, but:

The linked-to Twitter page has not been updated since April.
The Blogger blog was gone ("Sorry, the blog at feedmonger.blogspot.com has been removed.")
The support link goes to some parked page.

I cannot find any recent mention of this app or this problem on any blog or forum, even though they claimed to have over one million downloads. What on earth happened, and why is there (almost) no trace of this app?

98.103.60.35 (talk)