The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
I think I asked a similar question about a year ago, but I believe that the answers to it change regularly. What are the current leading file-sharing sites? I think now a lot of file-sharing is cloud-based. How have things changed? Do kids share music and videos in a new way now?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:18, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
1) What is the format of those web pages ? Browsers are more likely to have HTML source editors built in than something more complicated.
2) What do you mean by "edit". A simple text editor is one thing, but an editor that will do things like test, debug, and optimize the code will be harder to come by. StuRat (talk) 14:22, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And of course, we assume that the website is yours that you are developing on your computer. You can't edit a web page that is out on the www (unless it is something like a wiki which is explicitly setup so to do). ((For my own web site, I use a plain text editor - PFE)) -- SGBailey (talk) 16:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If it's locked from going above a certain volume you can go into the settings menu and change the 'Volume Limit' (and if you want to assign a pin-code to prevent it being changed by others). Here's a little guide to the menu system on an iPod http://support.apple.com/kb/TA38528?viewlocate=en_US
Media Player Classic
I'm on a Windows 7 (Home Basic) laptop. For the past several years, I've been using Windows Media Player Classic as my preferred video player. It's been the best so far. I update it regularly. I have it installed on all of my machines - either the normal Media Player Classic version, or the one that comes in the K-Lite Media Player Pack. Whichever it is, all of these get updated regularly.
The problem that I've been facing for the past few months is this (and I'm guessing it's because the two - regular MPC and the one that comes with KLM Pack - have been updated separately by the people who roll out the updates... or somethine... basically, there happens to be discrepancies between the two): MPC (regular) has the arrow keys as a shortcut - I can use the right/left arrows to jump forward/backward in about 5 second jumps (highly useful), as well as the up arrows for volume control. When I use these shortcuts, I can see a small grey display on the upper left corner of the screen with the timestamp in case of jumps, or the volume level percentage in case of volume adjustment. However, when I use the KLM Pack version, the right/left arrow keys make the video jump only one frame at a time, frustratingly. I found a workaround for this by installing both the regular MPC and the KLM pack and then manually copy-pasting the MPC.exe file in the installation folder into that of the KLM Pack folder (and renaming it into the way the original KLM media player was named, then deleting the original .exe file in that folder). This seems to work, and I can jump in 5 second increments now, but I still can't see the timestamp/volume level display on the upper left of the screen. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Many thanks. LaAlquimista18:42, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hard to say who's behind it or what it does. This Go UFO company seems to have no offline presence and make webpages and apps for anyone. Anyone can want to do anything with any data. Generally speaking, if you don't know what something does, the answer to "Are you ready?" is "No." InedibleHulk(talk) 14:15, July 5, 2014 (UTC)
Subscribe to an RSS feed on Firefox
I have two computers. One (XP) has a news feed that I like. I would like to replicate it on the other (Win 7) PC. However I can't track down the original website that lets me subscribe to it.
I would therefore like to install a new RSS feed with manually edited Site location and Feed location. I can't do this in Properties as it shows as read only. How can I manually set up a subscription that works fine (on FF on XP)? -- SGBailey (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In the Old FF, Go to the Bookmarks toolbar, right click on the button for the feed, go to its properties, and copy the URL. In the new FF, paste this into the addressbar, it should load the feed, with a "Subscribe Now" button. Press that, and voilà!, you will be subscribed to it. CS Miller (talk) 17:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You know that checkerboard pattern that's ubiquitously used by raster image editors to indicate transparency? Is there a "technical" term for it (such as with marching ants)? Is there any documented history of its origin/usage (it seems like there would be at least some info on how it became the de facto transparency indicator)? --70.178.117.73 (talk) 17:09, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Computer Scientist who did research on Intelligent Design, can't remember his name
I'm editing the article on Knowledge based engineering there is currently a section on design problems in general that I was just going to trash because as is it really says nothing but I was thinking there was a guy I read back in the 80's and 90's who just did outstanding research on general design issues. My research area was CASE and his stuff was relevant to that but also to manufacturing product design, in fact if anything most of his examples tended to be more in that domain. He had lots of students and they did really interesting work that was, and IMO this isn't that common for computer science software research, actually practically useful as well as theoretically relevant. The thing is I can't remember the guy's name. He was scandanavian and all I can think of is Ivar Jacobsen who of course it's not, he's the OO guy, but I think the name is somewhere in the space of scandanavian names. He had a software tool, kind of like the MIT Programmer's Apprentice or the Kestral KIDS system that got re-used in many projects and for various prototypes and uses in the real world. As I'm writing this I realize I'm not leaving much to go on but I'm remembering conferences where I always so his work. I can look up some of those in my books (I always like to say that sound like Mr Giles) and refresh my memory but if anyone has any ideas please drop me a note. He tended to be in HCI conferences a lot. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:56, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
it is a pity that the mad religious folks have made this term theirs. Now any intelligent design makes you look stupid. OsmanRF34 (talk) 18:04, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Magnetic tapes do not have a well-defined bit capacity. The capacity depends on the details of the method used to store data, and the capacity that can be obtained with a particular method depends on the detailed structure of the tape. Looie496 (talk) 03:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
But they don't have a well-defined bit capacity because they are analog? And there is no thing like an "analog bit"? I'd check Units of information but the article has no reference to an analog bit type of unit. The question is more about measuring amount of analog information than about tape.OsmanRF34 (talk) 13:00, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The conceptual difference between an analog signal and discrete signal.This question cannot really be answered without further assumptions, which is why you are getting some finicky non-answers. But I can maybe help you out with some ideas of ways to compare information stored, and some links. So, maybe you're thinking about audio cassettes, which commonly held 30 minutes of music on each side, but some could hold up to 60 minutes of audio on each side. This audio is represented as an analog signal, and it is pretty much directly read by the player and sent to the speaker without much processing. In comparison, a compact disc holds about 80 minutes of audio, but since it is digitally encoded, the actual amount of audio it holds will depend on the sample rate. The point is, if we only focus on use for playing/storing audio, some tapes hold about as much as a CD. Sample rate is a key concept when converting to/from analog/digital. Increasing the sample rate makes the digital signal "closer" to the analog, but it also takes up more space.
There isn't really anything like an analog bit, bit literally means a binarydigit. If we want to encode an analog signal into a digital medium, we might end up with something like this image from discrete-time signal. Think of the smooth curve as analogous to what is contained on a tape or on a groove in a vinyl record, and the red "step" line as analogous to what is contained on a CD (NB this is only an analogy). Basically, an analog signal is conceptually continuous, while digital signals are conceptually discrete. So, if you fix specific types of analog to digital and digital to analog conversion, and tape specification, you can come up with a statement like "this tape can hold roughly X bits of data" -- but unless you specify all those things the question is ill posed.
Now, if you're really interested in how information is measured in an analog domain, one way that can be quantified is by Bandwidth_(signal_processing) (Note that though the term is commonly used for things like internet speed, it is inherently an analog concept), which measures how "wide" the signal is in the frequency domain. But beware of casually skimming topics in information theory, the Shannon's notion of information is that a recorded one-hour sample of white noise has more "information" in it than a recording (1 hr) of Principia Mathematica -- so keep in mind that information has many different definitions, and each is useful for different purposes.
Finally, if pressed to answer "how many bits are in this analog signal?", Infinite is a fairly defensible answer, because we'd (in general) need the entire infinite Fourier series to faithfully represent it digitally... Does any of that help? SemanticMantis (talk) 15:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with "infinite". First, current technology will limit how many bits can be encoded on a given analog tape and retrieved reliably. If you tried to go beyond that number, single bit errors would start cropping up, and eventually the information would so corrupt as to be useless. But, assuming we ignore technology limits, even in a theoretical sense, there would still be some limit, due to quantum randomness.
It might help to use writing on paper as an analogy. You can encode digital info that way, by using the pencil to make a dot to represent each bit (that would be a 1 and the absence of a dot there would be a 0). How small and closely together you can make the dots then becomes the limit on the number of bits that can be stored that way. Theoretically, the limit would be one carbon atom (or the lack thereof) per bit. However, practical limits may kick in far sooner, as single atoms of carbon are probably already there, and those you deposit could evaporate away. And devices which could deposit and detect a single carbon atom, while they may exist, are extremely expensive. So, encoding that much digital data just isn't realistic. StuRat (talk) 16:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was not talking about encoding bits onto tape, I'm talking about representing an an analog signal with bits. And I said "infinite" was a defensible answer, not the only correct answer. I don't care to discuss engineering issues here, but you've prompted me to give to defend the claim. Conceptually, analog signals of a given length form an infinite dimensional space. If you want to think of sound waves in the air or grooves in vinyl as discrete signals due to physics at the molecular level, that's your prerogative -- but for most purposes and applications scientists and engineers consider them to be analog and continuous. You can call it a Mathematical_model if you like, but it's a damn good one. For specific examples of infinite dimensional spaces of analog signals, L2 is a space of fairly "nice" signals that form a Hilbert space. Even if you restrict to the "nicer" class infinitely smooth analytic functions, you still have an infinite dimensional space. This is in some ways similar to the the question, "How many positions are available on a slide trombone?" The answers "seven", "many", and "infinite" are all defensible. It all depends on who's asking and why. I gave the more formal analytic approach, because it seemed closest to the OP's question about the theory of how information is quantified in the analog domain. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:02, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, good! I forgot about N-S sampling theorem. That is highly relevant here, but the math might be a bit advanced for some. Basically, the theorem says that finitely many samples can give perfect fidelity in an analog-to-digital scheme, but only if the analog part is band limited. This fits in with my comment above that "we'd (in general) need the entire infinite Fourier series to faithfully represent [the analog signal]." -- If you know certain things about the signal, then sometimes we can achieve non-lossy A-to-D conversion. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:04, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm running windows 7 with a Microsoft 2 button + wheel mouse. I am very happy with it except that when I scroll the wheel, I almost always end up clicking it and that often causes a program to start doing something (often slow continuous scrolling!).
In control panel under "mouse" you should be able to configure the buttons. But perhaps a less sensitive mouse would be good to consider sometime down the line. You may find you'll miss that middle mouse button eventually. Mingmingla (talk) 17:29, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say, try a different mouse. A quality mouse comes with a wheel that is both easy to scroll and fairly resistant to pressure(so you don't end up clicking when trying to scroll).
Some cheap mice are quite hard to scroll, which means you have to push the wheel (*click* – damn!), or don't have a constant pressure threshold (*push* – huh?) for the wheel button. The price differences are not huge, but around $10, there are very few mice without any flaws. Other bugs include weak optical logic – ball-mice used to "jam" when dirty and didn't move along one of the coordinate axes, while weak optical mice tend to wander off into any direction, or simply disappear and reappear in one of the corners.
However, there are quite decent mice around $20 (so no great deal if you don't go through mice like crazy) and in the long run, you might be better off with a different mouse. Avoid devices made in China if you have the choice. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:11, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was with you until the last sentence. That is a joke, right? Anyways, I've had plenty of mice (Warcraft III seems to wear down the cable, so they all die of contact issues in the cable). I now have a cheap optical Logitech that has held up for some years (made in China, of course - what isn't?). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:23, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I had the feeling I went through two Chinese mice for one Taiwanese. OTOH, the latest one is Chinese and not TOO shabby. It's getting harder each day to find non-Chinese hardware too; if they're catching up, they might be worth my money in a year or two. Right now, I prefer to use one $20 mouse to two $10 ones. Less getting used to different hardware on my part, and more things actually getting done. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 15:18, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is a decent mouse (Microsoft). I can't find any settings in the control panel to do this. I can do things to the left button or the right button or to the wheel scrolling size, but not to the wheel button. Anyway thanks, I'll just continue suffering. -- SGBailey (talk) 11:33, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@SGBailey: There may be third party software that provides additional options for mouse control. E.g. I use this software [3] to get more out of my touchpad on OSX. Best I windows options I could find at a short search was this [4]. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:20, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Don't assume it's a quality mouse because it says Microsoft on it. If you look at the box or label, I bet you'll find it's just cheap crap made in China. StuRat (talk) 00:14, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like Emmett Brown right now for starting the "Made in China" topic. ("I must be the electronics, Marty. Look a this, it's 'Made in Japan', no wonder it's fried.")
Maybe the savings in manufacturing actually go into some better components. There's still not much use in a superior image sensor if every other one ends up misaligned. :(
Let's say I had a lot of bad luck with China, and I know a victim (not dead or hurt, but it was quite expensive) of a PSU fire. I don't have anything WP:RS-like about mice, or why so many optical mice tend to "teleport", though. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 05:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
section numbering in latex
I m writing a thesis in latex using texstudio.But first chapter section
start numbering as 0.1,0.2,.... so on up to 0.10 but my problem is for next chapters .chapter 2 section numbering starts from 0.11,0.12,... but i want to start it as 1.1,1.2,... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.187.3.81 (talk) 19:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This can happen when the "counter" in LaTeX gets screwed up with conflicting packages and class files. You can fix this manually with the \setcounter command, and you can change the increment behavior using the variables 'thechapter' 'thesection', etc. Some similar questions and answers here [5][6][7]. You could also post your question at one of the first two links for more help. If you want more help here or there, it will be much easier if you can post a minimal working example of the .tex file. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
More typically, this happens if the wrong structuring elements for the document class are used. Book and report classes usually have "chapter" as the highest level element, then sections. If you use a \section{} without an enclosing \chapter{}, the first section is by default section 1 of chapter 0. So either use article class, or start with chapters. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
July 8
Why is Google finding an old Wikipedia article?
Maybe it's different for you, but when I Google (no quotes) "HM patient" or "HM disorder", I get the current Henry Molaison page first, with the full name highlighted as a synonym, along with the other words. When I try "HM memory", I get HM, which is currently a disambig page, but used to be Molaison's article title, and is still treated as such. The word "memory" isn't highlighted in the snippet, but "H.M." is.
Does the term "memory" have a special back-in-time function on Google? Or what else might be happening here? InedibleHulk(talk) 03:04, July 8, 2014 (UTC)
"HM 1926" also finds the old article, with "1926" highlighted, while "HM 1926 memory" finds the new one, with all terms highlighted. So I guess it isn't a special "memory" keyword doing this. InedibleHulk(talk) 03:10, July 8, 2014 (UTC)
Remember that Google locates pages not just by their content but also by the terms people use when linking to them. These are likely to be similar for both locations where the article has been, so you get both locations in the search result. In addition, different pages may stay different lengths of time in their caches, producing this sort of anomaly. --50.100.189.160 (talk) 05:24, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's a bit scary. A search for "bun" finds me blood urea nitrogen first and bun...somewhere beyond the first seven pages, probably. No Bun (hairstyle), either. I'll accept "Google is weird" as reason enough, I think. InedibleHulk(talk) 06:19, July 8, 2014 (UTC)
Google uses locale for ordering pages. If people in your IP locale do medical searches often, your results will lean towards medical terms, such as a BUN lab. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.149.115.166 (talk) 11:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the question remains how it put your WP searches together with your real name. It's not, from what I see, on your user page. Dismas|(talk)14:21, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's several sites (of course, I can't think of any right now) that prowl the web and aggregate accounts with the same username and data - for example, for me, if I had a blog that listed my Phoenixia1177 email on it, it might pool that with my wikipedia username. Once all that is aggregated, it then offers up usernames, site memberships, addresses, phone numbers, etc. indexed for searching for paying members. Essentially, they stalk people online for you - but, some of this data is given for free, like what real names correspond to Twitter/FaceBook/etc. Perhaps Google does something related; or makes the association from such sites when it scans them. --I have no sources, but I've stumbled across my own info before by searching various user names I use; it's actually a little scary (sadly, not shocking) that there are automated systems out there doing all that right now...Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:10, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Right, which is why some security-conscious internet users use different pseudonyms for each site. I myself was considering using my WP moniker on a different site. I decided against it. Then I wondered if even "franticmantis" would be close enough for cross-contamination. But now that handle is linked to this one, so I can't use that either o.O SemanticMantis (talk) 17:15, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I know exactly how my real name is linked to my user name in Google's databases. I take credit for my photography and digital restorations under my real name, and that has appeared on the MP. I'm just somewhat surprised that Google puts my Wikipedia page before other instances of my name (my Flickr feed, for instance, isn't even on the first three pages) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:04, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The suggestion by 209 can't be correct. I doubt that InedibleHulk and I are in the same IP locale yet a search for bun gets the same results as him. For the HM searches I get the same results except that the first link for "HM memory" says it is HM on Wikipedia but when clicked on goes directly to Henry Molaison. It's easy enough to put user names with real life names if, like me, you use the same user name on different sites. My real life name is in the first hit on the second page of Google results (it's on my user page sort of). CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper?00:49, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The HM thing is the same for me, too. Goes to Molaison with no redirection. Hovering over the link shows the URL is right, just the title is wrong. InedibleHulk(talk) 01:03, July 9, 2014 (UTC)
Running a different OS (Linux? Ubuntu?) on a 10 year old laptop
I have a laptop that is about 10 years old and is currently running Windows XP. It has nothing of value saved on the hard disk. I find that XP is very glitchy and would like to completely reinstall it on the laptop. However, it seems pointless installing XP on a laptop in this day and age since it is so outdated. I also do not want to buy a new version of Windows. I would quite like to just install an OpenSource operating system - the two I have heard of are Linux and Ubuntu, but I am sure there are many others available. Firstly, I have only ever used Windows. How challenging is it for someone (who is not very computer adept) to learn how to run a new OS on a computer? Secondly, will I encounter any hardware problems running a different OS on a computer that ran XP? Thirdly, will I have any problems getting software to run on the new OS? All I will really need is OpenOffice, something to play music and film, and the Open Source version of Photoshop (Gimp?). Also, do you have any other advice for me as to how I go about doing this? Hella New Thing (talk) 14:05, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ubuntu is one flavour of Linux. It's the one I would normally recommend to beginners, but newer versions don't seem to universally play well with old and slow graphic cards. You can try e.g. CentOS or Fedora instead - or try them all (they boot from USB sticks for tryout) and stick with the one you like best. All will have OpenOffice (or LibreOffice), and support for playing and manipulating most modern media. As for the difficulty: From my controlled study of 70 year old non-computer-users, the initial barrier automatically wears down in a week or two;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:18, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ubuntu is probably too much for that machine, particularly for the graphical reasons you mention. Ubuntu variant Xubuntu has lower requirements, and Lubuntu is lighter still. I'd be pretty confident of Lubuntu working well on any machine beefy enough to run XP, and Xubuntu may work okay, depending on the machine's specifications. I doubt the machine will be so puny that it can't run these; if it were, there's a lower-tier of Linux distributions with a fanatical concentration on running on old, underpowered machines - things like Puppy Linux. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk21:02, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
VLC_media_player is your go-to media player, and I might recommend Inkscape in addition to Gimp. Whatever *nix you install, make sure you get a feel for the package manager, e.g. Ubuntu uses apt-get. This will make it much easier to install new software. Many of the best open source software packages are hosted on Sourceforge, you can browse through there to find all kinds of fun free stuff. As for ease of learning, I'm not sure if e.g. apt-get has a GUI front end on the Ubuntu distributions, but a little time invested in learning a command line interface like the Bash shell will probably pay off, though this is probably not strictly necessary for normal email/web/media use. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:11, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ubuntu's current package-management GUI application is Ubuntu Software Center (which looks and works like a somewhat basic app-store); other Ubuntu variants still use Synaptic (but USC works on Xubuntu and Lubuntu, and can be installed with Synaptic or apt-get). -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk21:56, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Challenging browser problem
I want to have continuous vertical scrolling. Sometimes at Flickr or Facebook for example, when you go through a big list with hundreds or 1000 and more items (May it be images or People's lists), The window shows only a tiny bit every time you got to the end of the scroll bar. what I want to have is some kind of an automatic command that when i turn it on, The browser will automatically scroll down till the end of the items list (I don't care how much time it's gonna take)... Do you guys know any way I could achieve this goal? (I have no knowledge in Script writing). thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 23:30, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Although not a script, you can hold down the End key on the keyboard to keep jumping to the bottom of the page and loading new content. When you see all the content is loaded, you can let go and press the Home key to jump back to the top. Does this fit what you want? --Bavi H (talk) 00:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing he wants it to smoothly scroll past everything, so he can find what he's looking for quickly, while your method would jump past lots of stuff. StuRat (talk) 00:19, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Before the middle mouse button created new tabs, it usually started a continuous scroll mode. I know that IE6 did. You could click the middle mouse button and then move the mouse up or down. This should do the trick, without keeping a key or button pressed. (I didn't find that feature useful but it was there. No clue if newer browsers can do it, but it could be a compatibility setting. I wouldn't suggest IE6 for long lists (or long articles for that matter); it performs like O(N^2) with these when the competitors are closer to O(N log N).) - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 06:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
With due respect, you should not use the algorithmic complexity notation to express your frustration with a slow user interface. In actual fact, correct compliance with the HTMLdocument object model requires algorithms that are much worse than O(n2) for an HTML document with n nodes. A fairly recent archived mailing on the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS list estimates that the algorithmic complexity for constraint satisfaction of the DOM for an n-node webpage is exponential in n : O( Dn ) for D layout constraints and n document nodes. Modern web browsers use heuristics to parse the document tree, essentially violating the exact to-the-letter specifications. Arguably, older browsers are more standards-compliant than newer ones! But in reality, the performance of the user interface of your browser probably is more limited by implementation details - like choice of graphics library, or efficiency of memory-use - than by theoretical limits imposed by the algorithmic complexity of the layout engine.
Here's a recent blog, which was featured in last month's Planet Webkit front page on http://webkit.org : Automatic Grid Placement algorithms with CSS, which is written at a level that most programmers can follow (without too many confounding implementation and theory details). There is much discussion of spec-compliance, and several links to the W3's canonical DOM definitions.
Here's a more theoretical guide to constraint programming concepts, Constraint Satisfaction, focusing more on the math (and with no emphasis on its application to solving the HTML or webpage layout problem). It's a great website to help familiarize yourself with the fundamentals.
If you enjoy spending a few hours reading about layout algorithms, you might as well read The Java Swing Architecture and the extensive links from that page. Swing, its layout, look-and-feel, and abstract windowing and UI backing layers, were designed to be very algorithmically efficient, especially compared to the HTML DOM. Here's how layout management worked, with visual examples. Yet, many people will anecdotally tell you that Java user interfaces are "sluggish" - evidence again that the user experience and latency is probably more limited by practical implementation details than by actual algorithmic complexity. It is unfortunate that on many platforms, Java's windowing and UI were backed by software-emulation instead of high-performance native libraries; a very well-designed and efficient technology was in many ways lamed by its implementation-details - particularly on important operating systems like Windows.
Middle clicking on anything that's not a link in a webpage will still give the "move mouse to scroll" behaviour (at least in Chrome and IE9, which are all I have access to at work). MChesterMC (talk) 08:26, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Web page loading
I've never been happy with the way web pages load. There are several problems:
1) They don't always load from the top down. So, you can't just start reading it as the rest loads.
2) Pics don't load at their full size initially. I'd like a frame to appear at the proper size, then fill in the detail later. This would prevent the text from jumping around as pics above the text are resized.
3) They often load a limited amount, then wait for you to get to the bottom, and possibly hit a page forward button, to load the next page. This leads to a lag while you wait for the next page to load. I realize they probably can't load all the pages, but loading the next page in background, after the current page is loaded, would make sense.
4) Scrolling often doesn't work properly while it's loading a page. Either it doesn't scroll at all or scrolls in jumps and starts. They need to allocate more resources to scrolling so this doesn't happen.
5) Video often starts without me clicking a play button. This is annoying and wastes valuable resources.
I realize that much of this could be fixed by faster computers and internet connections, but that's no excuse to do things in an inefficient way. So, is there any browser which will load web pages as I've outlined above ? StuRat (talk) 16:55, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
July 9
Downloading and saving material from the internet onto a home desktop computer
I have a question about computers. I am not that computer-savvy or tech-savvy, so please keep that in mind when replying. Thanks. If I go to a website and see a photo that I like, I can download (save) that photo onto my personal home computer (desktop). So, if that photo – for whatever reason – is subsequently removed from the internet website, I still have my own personal copy of it on my computer. Now, does the same hold true for videos? If I see a video that I like – and I want to have my own copy of it before it (potentially) gets removed from the internet – how can I download (save) that to my computer? Or is that not even possible? I tried a few steps, but I could not seem to make it work (or certainly not as easy as it is with photographs). Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:21, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is usually easy.
Try dragging the image to your desktop or into a folder.
Try right-clicking the photo, then "save as..."
The command can vary, depending on browser, but usually, there is an equivalent command in the r-click menu.
However, some sites protect their images, to reduce illegal re-use of their content. It doesn't work on the WP logo either, because the logo links to the main page.
Actually, it works on the WP logo (which is not CC-BY-SA btw) if I use the left button (I'm using FF30); I tried right-button dragging. Fail. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 06:29, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It does depend a bit on the site your want to download the video from. For YouTube try doing a search for download youtube videos which will give you several different plugin and websites you can use. Probably safer to use a website as some of the plugins can be full of adds. This PC advisor article is relatively current. --Salix alba (talk): 07:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it will depend on the site, Salix's links should be helpful. I'll add that some sites take extra steps to prevent you from easily downloading their videos. But, conceptually, anything that you can play on your screen (or speakers) can be captured and saved, see e.g. screencast. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:21, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lock files to prevent deletion by anything other than my program VB.net
I want to lock down some files in a folder to prevent other users from deleting/editing them. Then if my program wants to move or delete the file, it temporarily unlocks it, moves/deletes, then relocks it (if moved) to prevent deletion again. Essentially something/someone is deleting files on a drive and I need to do everything I can to stop it. It's an ancient IT system we are stuck with so it's likely the total lack of control or housekeeping over the years has casued something to go haywire.
I've read a bit about the filestream read-only property that would stop this by tricking the system into thinking the file is under use - Can I set this property without actually setting up a stream between the program and my file? Are there any other better ways in VB.NET? It needs to prevent file deletions/moves/edits by non administrators unless done so through the program.
Ultimate goal is to bit by bit lock a number of files and folders and only allow my program to move/delete files, this would ensure that only "approved" moves are allowed (I would use filesystemwatch to monitor "unapproved moves" by comparing a database of these with a database of "approved" moves). Thanks! 195.27.53.211 (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Something like that is possible, but is there a reason you can't use file system permissions? There are plenty of little gotchas that could make a program cause strange bugs by locking files like that. If only non-administrators only have read access to the files then you won't need a program to enforce it. Katie R (talk) 12:07, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Relatively recently" meaning 1993 with NT 3.1. :-) I vaguely remember using per-user file permissions in 98 SE but I don't think the file system supported it so I'm probably wrong... Katie R (talk) 16:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, well NT wasn't exactly for average home users, was it? My reading of the the article is that Win2000 was the first mass-market WinOS to have a real persmissions system. That was long after I stopped using Windows, and I daresay "recent" in terms of OS history :-P SemanticMantis (talk) 16:59, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't a consumer OS, but it made the feature available to those who needed it. Windows 2000 was the first consumer version based on the NT kernel, although it was also mainly a corporate version. XP was the first widespread consumer version with support. I do agree that those operating systems can be described as "relatively" recent in OS terms, but your average reader may not realize just how far back it goes. 1993 is starting to get back there though - 21 years old on a list that goes back 63 years. Katie R (talk) 17:27, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Time Machine's schedule
How does Time Machine (OS X) do its thing? I'm guessing that it goes like this:
if the last complete backup was at least a week ago:
while the backup drive is too full for a complete backup:
delete the oldest backup;
do a complete backup.
else if the last daily backup was at least a day ago:
do an incremental backup relative to the last weekly backup;
delete any daily backups more than a week old.
else if the last hourly backup was at least an hour ago:
do an incremental backup relative to the last daily backup;
I'm taking notes on my computer and I want to use tone markup like ˧˩, which is composed of two unicode characters ˧ and ˩. Any fonts that work? unifont fails to join the characters, but whatever google chrome uses for its address bar (and this page although not the edit box) works. Chrome settings page claims it is using Arial/Times New Roman, but perhaps they are some special built-in versions, since they don't seem to work in xetex. How do I find fonts with support for specific ligatures or characters? --82.128.250.221 (talk) 18:03, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
