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June 11

GOOGLE TALK50.13.121.201 (talk) 12:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

WHEN MAKING A CALL WITH G-TALK I CAN HEAR WHO I'M CALLING, YET THEY HEAR ME NOT. HOW DO I FIND OUT HOW TO RESOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

TYPING IN CAPS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING AT US! Look in your audio device's properties, check the mic is plugged into the correct hole in your computer. Do other apps work with your mic?Zzubnik (talk) 12:31, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Make sure you actually have a microphone. Not all computers do. Mingmingla (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And make sure your computer knows where to look for sound input. My camera/microphone is normally unplugged; when I plug it in, it doesn't work until I use the relevant control panel to say "take sound from...". —Tamfang (talk) 00:15, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From the sound Control Panel/System Preferences, look for an input volume slider, too. Crank it all the way to max. Make sure no "Mute" box is checked. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:11, June 16, 2014 (UTC)

Android app to divert calls to VOIP?

Is there an Android app which diverts all incoming calls to VOIP?

I have a need to get a second mobile number where I can still receive texts/calls, without carrying it round everywhere. I was thinking, just get a cheap smartphone and prepay SIM; leave it at home charging on the wifi. Forward all texts by email to my Samsung S4.

Phone calls are more complicated. In the UK, 'forward all calls' needs a fixed term contract (expensive for what is minimal use), or I'd be paying per minute for every forwarded call. Instinct says there should be an app out there that sends everything to my Skype/Viber. My phone has native support for an SIP phone, eg INum Initiative.81.145.165.2 (talk) 14:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Google Voice may meet your needs. It gives you a new number and you can control how it forwards texts and calls to various devices. Katie R (talk) 15:11, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, it's not available in the UK. MChesterMC (talk) 08:38, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

sapi5

how to make sapi5 voice portable on the usb flash drive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.219.69.167 (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

June 12

How to zoom in on a video?

How can I zoom in on a video? The video was shot from VERY far away with no zoom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:8051:4D60:1449:B59E:A166:DCD9 (talk) 06:37, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Use a program like Adobe Premiere to permanently zoom in and alter the video. You could also use an open-source video editing tool. Some players such as VLC will allow you to zoom in on played video. Bear in mind that zooming doesn't add extra detail. Zzubnik (talk) 13:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

except on CSI, from what i hear —Tamfang (talk) 00:12, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also relevant [1]. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:19, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How to convert MPEG-4 into MPEG-2

I have a video that was saved as MPEG-4 & when I tried to watch it on my TV (by plugging a USB into the back of the TV), a message box say that the video is in the wrong format. I read the manual & found that the TV only supports "MPEG-1/2", I guessing means MPEG-1 or 2. I've looked for several websites to try & convert it into MPEG-2, but it either takes to long (I use the computers in the library & only have 3X1 hour sessions on the computer), or need to download/ install something (which I can't do on the library computers). Does anyone have any better ideas ? 194.74.238.6 (talk) 13:58, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that transcoding video is inherently computationally intensive. No matter what, it's relatively slow. See e.g. Comparison_of_video_converters for software that can do it. I've used FFMpeg in the past for similar tasks. It is free and open source, but will require some training to use properly. It looks like encoding.com might allow you to upload your file, have them work on it, and you download the new file later. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:24, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've found that Handbrake is very fast with converting, and is free. Zzubnik (talk) 14:57, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It usually takes long to convert a video - and encoding.com looks expensive, if I'm reading it right. If you only have one video that needs converted, and don't mind giving me a copy, I'll do it for you - we'd need to communicate over email, just drop me a line on my talk page and we can set it up. Otherwise, best of luck:-)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Videographic scene changes

What term(s) do videographers use to refer to videographic scene changes like the ones in this video?

La Seine à Paris - YouTube (5:08)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Film transition. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:51, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. This video uses such a wide variety of film transitions that I suppose that there could be an extensive glossary, covering many more terms than the ones in that article. Wikipedia does not have, at this time, a glossary of film transition. Where, on the WWW, can I find a glossary of film transition?

—Wavelength (talk) 16:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A list of effects (which can be used in transitions) available in the default install of Adobe Premiere Pro is here. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 19:30, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your reply, which also answered a third question that I was considering ("Is there a software program for producing film transitions?").

—Wavelength (talk) 23:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

June 13

World of Tanks

Why is World of Tanks considered an MMO? I am told it is a series of 10 v 10 or 15 v 15 engagements. --Tarcil (talk) 00:55, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am a big player of this game. Keep in mind that while the normal public match is 15v15, there are also clans, and Clan Wars, which allow you to attack and defend land based upon a map of the U.S. Diplomacy and rivalry plays into it. There are also other modes, including team battles and historical battles. But yes, the general gist of the game is 15v15 for 15 minutes. I refuse to try to decipher what the actual definition of an MMO is, but I hope this will help. Justin15w (talk) 14:40, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Simplest algorithm that cannot be reversed easily?

What is the most straightforward algorithm in cryptography (in real life or just for educational purposes) that cannot be reversed easily?OsmanRF34 (talk) 18:24, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "cannot be reversed easily"? Some algorithms, like fingerprints, are not intended to be reversed. Others are meant to be decoded by a recipient. The complexity of the algorithm will tend to increase along with the difficulty of reversing it, so it's hard to pick a point and say "this is the most straightforward cipher that is hard to break". How hard is "hard"? —Noiratsi (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing you're thinking of, but the Diffie–Hellman key exchange is a one-way function that formed the basis of a lot of modern cryptography. —Noiratsi (talk) 19:38, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is Cryptographic hash function what you're asking about? Katie R (talk) 19:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or Trapdoor function? --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:08, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One of the conceptually most simple is prime factorization. Basic idea is, I pick two large prime numbers, p1, and p2. Then, finding m=p1*p2 is trivially easy. But, if only m is known, finding p1 and p2 can be quite computationally intensive. Going one way is easy, the other is hard, so these are also sometimes known as one-way functions. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why would he say a corrupt file stopped the scan?

I use McAfee with Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 9. Several weeks ago my virus scan just stopped. It was at less than 1 percent and I couldn't restart it (though if I had waited, the scan went just fine the next day after I turned the computer back on). I went to tech support (by chat) and when I described the situation the person asked if I was seeing one file name stay on the screen. Yes, in fact, the file name is supposed to change many times a second. He said that was a corrupt file which would have to be removed. I knew not to do that myself because I didn't know what that file did. He sent me to a different tech support site (which started with chat but was changed to phone at some point) which would require me to pay, $70 US, or several times that for a year's subscription. But I got put on hold for a very long time and I had to rejoin the real world, so I hung up. The next day, I decided to try and see if I could do a scan and it completed with no problems identified. That was a month ago. All my weekly scans have completed with no problems identified.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:20, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it more likely the index which it uses to find the files was corrupt, so it couldn't find the next file to scan. Apparently when that happens, rather than give a useful error, it just freezes. Of course, there could be other explanations, like that it ran out of memory. That's always what I suspect when a program just freezes up like that, because then it lacks the memory needed to do anything else, including displaying an error message. StuRat (talk) 23:14, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's likely going on here?

I have an iPhone 3GS. I have a Bytech charger you can plug into a car charger or a wall plug, and you plug a USB cable into it. The Bytech has a little red LED on it which is lighted when the thing is plugged into a power source. I have had two 30-pin-to-USB white cords break in the following way: charging my iPhone by connecting the white cords to the Bytech charger plugged into my car's charger port, the iPhone would periodically stop being in charge mode and then go back to being in charge mode (the red LED never went off; there would be stretches of time when it was all plugged in, the red LED on, but the phone not in charge mode). Again, the red LED never went off. Then eventually it exited charge mode and never went back into charge mode. I looked at the 30-pin side of the cord and could see burnt out pins (I haven't counted which pins are the burnt ones, but it's about 1/16" thick burned section just right of center when you look at the plug with the pins facing you and the (---) image on the plug facing up. Before the cords died, while they still led to spotty performance when plugged into the car, if I used them connected to the Bytech plugged into a wall plug inside, everything worked fine. As I said, this happened twice in exactly the same way. So I think this pretty definitively singles out the charger port in the car. But my wife's Samsung Galaxy S4 Active plugged into the same Bytech charger plugged into my car's charger port with a standard USB to micro USB cord has never had any problems. Then I got a non-Apple third party 30-pin-to-USB cord and tried connecting my iPhone to the car charger port and it again went temporarily to not charging while plugged in and the red LED showing it still had power, but I'm done sacrificing cords while the cord I have still works. Is my car charger port spiking high voltages to which 30-pin connecters are more susceptible to breakage than micro USBs? Will Apple devices go into non charge mode when the voltage goes too high? Peter Michner (talk) 21:54, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about 3GS, but some newer iPhones have ways of detecting if they are plugged into an "official" charger, and that might be part of the issue, unless you are sure that this behavior only happens when charging in the car. See some discussion of off-brand chargers here [2], and links therein. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:55, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

June 14

Transfers between Xboxes

I have a Xbox original console (like this model) that has died on me, & I'm thinking of getting another one. But I was wondering if I did get a new one, could I transfer my save games etc from my old Xbox console to the new one ? Scotius (talk) 13:44, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When I say that my Xbox has died on me, what I meant was when I've been playing a Xbox game, a DVD or a music CD even, either at the the moment the disc is inserted into the Xbox or at some point after, during playing the disc I start getting error messages like,
"Your Xbox cannot recognize this disc. Make sure it is an Xbox game, DVD movie, or audio CD. Also checkto see if the discis dirty or damaged. Remove the disc to continue."
Also,
"There is a problem with the disc you are using. It may be dirty or damaged."
Also,
"The DVD region of your DVD Playback Kit reciever is invalid. Remove the disc to continue."
When I've gotten these messages i've checked the discs to see if they where dirty or damaged (even when it's been a new game etc). But what I can't work out or understand is that i don't get these messages every time I try to play the same discs. Scotius (talk) 12:25, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be perfectly honest, I neither have, nor have, an original xbox, this is just what I could find. That said, it looks like you can set it up so that you can transfer files from xbox to pc and back by softmodding your xbox. So, if you were to do this to both boxes, you could transfer files from one to the pc to the other. Ill be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% sure that this will/would work, nor am I sure if you can get banned from xbox live, etc. etc. etc. So, try at your own risk - just a lead for you to consider. Anyways, here's a few sites with some info (you can find way more on Google): [3], [4], [5], [6]. Hopefully this will be helpful - again, let me stress: I have no idea exactly what risk, or difficulty, is involved, so definitely research further before undertaking. Good Luck:-)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 14:00, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disk read errors are often caused by dirty or scratched lenses, though the messages always blame the discs. Have you tried giving it a shot of compressed air? Opening it up and gently swabbing it with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol? Can't vouch for the Xbox, but it saved my PS2 and PS3. Third time on the PS3, I cleaned too firmly and ruined it. The Xbox laser beam is wider than the Blu-Ray one, so it shouldn't be quite as sensitive to small defects. But still, be careful.

No clue on the transfer. Hopefully you don't need it. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:25, June 16, 2014 (UTC)

Setting hostname in Linux

I have now transferred all my files from my old Fedora 17 hard disk to my new Fedora 20 hard disk. Everything went OK. I simply used cp -a to copy my entire home and photographs directories. I told cp to overwrite the profiles.ini file in the Mozilla FireFox directory, and I didn't have to overwrite anything in the Evolution directory. Now I can access my FireFox profile just like before, and all I needed to access my e-mail was to re-enter my account password, which Evolution helpfully stored in its keyring. But the hostname is still shown as an ugly numerical IP address. I typed hostname -b teletran-1 as root, and it set the hostname to "teletran-1" in the bash prompt. But after I rebooted, the hostname became the ugly numerical IP address again. How can I make my nice custom hostname stay? JIP | Talk 15:09, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The man page for hostname(1) says "Note, that this is effective only until the next reboot. Edit /etc/hostname for permanent change." -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although that may not the the case on a Redhat-based system like Fedora (which I don't have to hand), as Redhat uses additional config files for net connections - see this for discussion about this (which was, and I guess still is, /etc/sysconfig/network). -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:29, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

June 15

Retrieve Windows product key

A relative's laptop recently died of motherboard failure. There are many other components still in good condition, including the Windows 7 installation on the still working hard disk. If I was to connect the hard drive by USB to another PC (running Windows or Linux) is it possible to use a software tool to retrieve the Windows product key? The original Certificate of Authenticity, that was on the bottom of the laptop, got destroyed/defaced by the same liquid that caused the motherboard to fail. Astronaut (talk) 10:36, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Try ProduKey.[7] It has command line options to retrieve keys from a slaved drive. -- Gadget850^talk 10:54, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the laptop came with that version of Windows (as your mentioning the certificate of authenticity would suggest) then the Windows licence will surely be an OEM one. That means the product key will be be valid only for that make and model (strictly the licence itself only applies to the specific, now deceased, machine - Microsoft say the licence isn't transferable). So if you tried to boot off that disk on a substantively different machine, it would fail the Windows Genuine Advantage check. For retail licences (where you bought Windows 7 in a box by itself and installed it on a machine) then they seem to take a somewhat more liberal stance (some upgrades to the same machine present a Ship of Theseus problem for them). -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 11:18, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

June 16

Disk-spanning/external packages on NSIS installers?

Anyone know of a good plugin for NSIS which allows me to do disk-spanning (i.e. for large installers) or extract stuff from external files? I did manage to search for stuff like ExtractDLLEx and ZipDLL, but I'm not exactly sure on how to utilise it for an installer I'm cobbling up. Blake Gripling (talk) 08:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Web slideshow or image gallery

I am tasked with displaying about 80 images on a webpage. The images are from a 19th-century book. Many but not all of the images are similar in size due to some cropping and landscape versus portrait orientation. I want the user to be able to click on an image and open another window or tab to view a higher resolution version of the image. I also want the user to be able to control the advancement of the images if they want to, for example via Next/Previous buttons. I have found some JavaScript and jQuery code for slideshows on the web, but they are not meeting my needs. The biggest problem is the variable size of the images, which makes the rest of the page jump around as the slides change. I found one that addresses that but doesn't include control buttons and positions the slideshow oddly on the page. My attempts to modify the code I've found have been unsuccessful, mostly because I don't really know JavaScript/jQuery. Any suggestions? My main goals are displaying the images in order with the ability to access a higher resolution version, and I am open to doing this in a different way instead of via a slideshow. I suppose I could just put each high resolution image on its own webpage and have users click through them in order but that seems pretty clunky. I thought of making a page of clickable thumbnail images, but it is hard to see from a thumbnail whether or not you are interested in viewing the full image. I would know how to code both of those options -- I know HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript. Thanks for your help.--Dreamahighway (talk) 16:24, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of web sites that allow you to build a gallery just like this, with no coding required. Seems far easier to me. I set one up at AOL for a wedding once. There is some concern that those images may be taken down at some point, though, when that web site goes under or just decides to delete old photos. So, be sure you make a backup copy of the web page. StuRat (talk)

Yes, I suppose that is true. But since this is for a work project, a digital exhibit about a set of rare books, ideally I'd like the image part to be embedded in the page along with the other information. Or at least to have the same look-and-feel as the rest of the project.--Dreamahighway (talk) 16:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Put the slideshow inside a DIV which to which you give a fixed size; make sure that size is bigger than the largest image. That way the rest of the page won't reflow when the slideshow resizes itself. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 17:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried this but it isn't working.--Dreamahighway (talk) 17:31, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Facebook notifications

I set up a Facebook account but don't really use it, due to privacy concerns. Now I keep getting emails telling me I have a "notification". I pick on the link in the email, but it doesn't take me to a notification, just the main page. How do I find my notifications ? StuRat (talk) 16:26, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(I'm more of a Google+ person...but....) Click on the little picture of the Earth at the top-right of the menu bar. SteveBaker (talk) 16:40, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]