Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/C

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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.

Icon changing software:

An opensource software capable of changing all sorts of icons available in PC. Current necessity is to change the HDD icons, but desire to possess an ‘icon managing and maintaining software’ application which, say, also does more than icon managing and maintaining... 103.230.105.22 (talk) 19:45, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See themes and skins. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 20:35, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

October 26

Hotmail.com is revealing my real name

For sites such as Wikipedia where I am "John of Reading", I use a separate email address SomethingLikeJOR@hotmail.com. I've configured the name "John of Reading" in my Thunderbird email client so that emails are sent with the "From" line From: John of Reading <SomethingLikeJOR@hotmail.com>.

This worked fine until fairly recently, but something has changed: Hotmail is rewriting the "From" line, replacing "John of Reading" with the name from my Microsoft Account. Recipients are seeing From: MyRealName <SomethingLikeJOR@hotmail.com>.

Two questions: Is there a way to restore the old behaviour, so that a Hotmail message is received with the intended "From" name? Is there an alternative to Hotmail that won't reveal my real name to email recipients?

-- John of Reading (talk) 07:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For the first question I do not know. I can speculate that the change was deliberate and you cannot change it (without changing your Microsoft account name / creating a second one). Maybe hotmail got complaints of impersonation and took that measure (I am not offering an opinion on the legitimacy of the complaint or the efficiency of the change).

For the second question, you can create another email account - there are plenty of free providers like Gmail, although if it is free, you are the product - and use a false name there. For instance, I am "Abraham Lincoln" on the email address I use on every website requiring automatic registration. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 07:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can not you change the 'from' line in the setting of your hotmail account? Ruslik_Zero 20:17, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bluetooth blues

I have bought Bluetooth operated Padlock Dog & Bone™. It worked once, only once. I tried deleting and downloading again it's app (LockSmart). No success. I tried this step many a time without any success. I also tried to rebooting my smartphone (Micromax AQ5001), which is Android 5, but nothing. I contacted the manufacturer who advised me to remove the lock from Bluetooth directly and reinstall the app. But didn't help. Can anyone please tell me what may be wrong ? Please if you know something that can be fixed by making a change here or there in settings, or some other app that is known to cause this problem? I did try using someone else's phone, and it worked (though I must admit I had the chance to use that phone once only). Kindly oblige me by assisting in this problem. Jon Ascton (talk) 20:38, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have you confirmed that the phone can use bluetooth successfully for other purposes? Also probably can't hurt to upgrade to the latest OS your phone will support. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:33, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for answering, pal. My question - is it possible to upgrade ? Whenever I click "upgrade" option in settings, I am told "no upgradeable version available". Had it been possible, it would have been the first thing I had done. And yes, for other things BL BT does work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.253.144.154 (talk) 03:26, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

October 27

IP address geolocation on cellphone

When I'm using it to surf the Web, my Sprint phone has started giving me random things out of Russellville, Arkansas: for example, when I used it to Google the phrase <fajita "ghost pepper sauce" arby's>, it asked if I wanted to search for Arby's stores in Russellville, and it gave me information (including address) about one of their stores there. Going to Special:Mypage on the phone, I learnt that the phone's IP address was 68.28.147.123 right then, but WHOIS and GeoLocate both say that it's merely a generic Sprint address without anything geo-specific, and the Arkansas identification obviously isn't based on my physical location, since I'm in central Virginia. Any ideas why the phone would start focusing on a city that's 900 miles away from me? Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Geolocation services based only IP addresses are guesswork, and different services produce different guesses for the same IP. The results of these guesses are often laughably wrong, and are wildly inconsistent to boot - even for ADSL addresses, never mind mobile. Worthwhile web services use GPS/GLONAS, cell-tower information, and/or a Wi-Fi positioning system. You (or some update, or some security software) may have disabled the Google Search app's access to the location API. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:55, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why is everything so big?

The computer at the library froze and something done to unfreeze it made everything really big.

I read the solution was to use CTRL and minus but when there was a place to click to return to default, that made everything big again. Plus even when I reduce everything to what looks "normal" the URL and the web site names above it are still big, and the start button, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome logos, time and everything else at the bottom of the screen is still big.

Also, the fonts on Wikipedia look weird. I have Monobook but it still doesn't look normal.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:08, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Its likely that the machine defaulted to a lower resolution. I can't really tell you how to change it back without knowing the actual operating system but there should be an option in the Control Panel. uhhlive (talk) 21:35, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Control panel. Right. The people that work at the library would have to do that. I'll check the same computer next week to see if it's fixed.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

October 28

How do I use vi on the new macbookpro without an escape key?

175.45.116.104 (talk) 05:33, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ctrl-[ is equivalent to Esc. Assuming that Macs have a Ctrl key. LongHairedFop (talk) 09:59, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The touch bar is reconfigured by the keyboard-focus-owning application. Presumably the terminal emulator application will put an ESC key on it, in the normal place. In Apple's developer introduction to the Touch Bar API they show an app with just that. Given how heavily vi uses ESC (I can't think of any program that routinely uses it as much) it may prove to be a bit annoying for the key to lose the tactile feedback of a physical key. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 12:22, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The vim wiki has been recommending avoiding the escape key since at least 2002: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key --Guy Macon (talk) 12:57, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another solution: http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/apple-giveth-and-apple-taketh-away-escape-key-macbook-pro --Guy Macon (talk) 13:00, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I use Mac Book Pros ... quite extensively. I am also an avid vi enthusiast. For the uninitiated, the escape key is very important for users of the vi text editor; the new Mac Book Pro, announced yesterday, has removed the Escape Key and replaced it with a digital key row called "Touch Bar." Most mortals who will use Apple's new Touch Bar equipped Mac Book Pro don't need to worry - the Touch Bar's escape key will "just work," in proper Apple fashion.

Indeed, it is wise to learn about the key-chord "ctrl-[" which will escape to the vim command-line. Ctrl+[ provides an escape-sequence to the escape-key. This is useful anyway - there are conditions on any computer where you might need an alternate key sequence.

When you are using a Mac equipped with Touch Bar and you are using vim, the Escape key is always available on the Touch Bar's virtual key layout, where you would expect it to be. This was actually described in the full Apple presentation yesterday - the October 2016 event. The Touch Bar's key layout depends on the application you are using, and there is even special support for Terminal.app.

If you use gVim, you might opt to use the UI menus in certain circumstances - but if you use gVim, you aren't really a keyboard-shortcut fanatic, are you?

Nimur (talk) 16:52, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how that last bit follows. I use gvim, and hardly ever use the mouse with it. I prefer it over straight vi for what you can say are fairly trivial reasons, I suppose: I like that it spawns a new window, so that I can keep working in the window I started it from, and I like the colors better (sure, I could probably configure that in .vimrc, but why should I bother?). --Trovatore (talk) 19:11, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's fair. The real take-away is that the unique and specially-designed Touch Bar behaviors that apply in Terminal.app do not automatically occur in gVim (because gVim is not running inside Terminal.app).

The escape key, however, is available in both cases.

I am extraordinarily happy to see that developer documentation was published this morning, so all of the officially-supported behaviors are now committed to the public, by way of published API.

Nimur (talk) 21:20, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

October 29

Malfunctioning Windows 10 on HP Pavilion

I recently bought a new HP Pavilion with Windows 10 OS. I understand now why MS has been pushing Windows 10 on the public free of charge. The OS is full of ads. Some of that I have been able to remove. Then there are two major problems. A message for updates comes in from MS and I click OK. The system begins to update, proverbial white dots begin to roll around a small circle, I can see the percentage of what has been done, until it reaches 70 or 71%. Then the progress stops and after 40 minutes or so the OS begins to undo the changes after saying that update could not have been completed. It's happened 5 times already, last time this morning. It take an hour for the whole procedure. It is irritating and offensive.

The second problem is that many windows I invoke (open) get frozen on the desktop, like IE, FireFox, etc. It drives me nuts. No button will respond to any click until I invoked the Task Manager with Ctrl+Alt+Del. Today is the first time when even this drastic intervention stopped working.

So, I have two serious problems. I wonder if anybody could comment on them.

I also have a Linux Ubuntu machine. It works like a clock. Very simple and effective. MS has packed this Pavilion with bizarre features nobody needs, like Cortana. I tried to uninstall Cortana but it is irreducible. How to remove Cortana? I am about to join Microsoft hate crowd. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 17:57, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The first step should always be downloading and creating Windows 10 insallation media (See [ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ]), formatting the hard disk, and doing a new install without the stuff HP adds. Be prepared to spend some time waiting as windows installs updates.

Next you should remove the Microsoft-added bloatware. See [ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-remove-bloatware-windows-10/ ] or [ https://www.hackread.com/windows-10-is-spying-on-you/ ] to do this manually.

Finally, you might consider using Spybot Anti-Beacon. See [ https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/ ]

There are other tools that claim to do similar things:

[ https://www.whatswithtech.com/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-spying-on-you/ ]

[ http://neurogadget.net/2015/08/20/windows-10-privacy-tools/13016 ]

[ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-privacy-tools/? ]

[ https://bgr.com/2015/08/14/windows-10-spying-prevention-privacy-tools/ ]

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:46, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Hot air balloon problem"

I just came up with this problem and am wondering about its computational difficulty (as in, its worst-case runtime).

A hot air balloon pilot wants to go from point $A\in \mathbb {Q} ^{n}$ to $B\in \mathbb {Q} ^{n}$ . There is a function $\mathbf {v} (h):\mathbb {Q} \to \mathbb {Q} ^{n}$ which gives the wind vector at height h (here, "height" is not a position parameter, but instead, considered as just a parameter the pilot can increment/decrement - the height will not change if the pilot does not decide so). Because weights are a finite resource, the pilot can only move up a given number of units $K_{up}\in \mathbb {Q} ^{+}$ n times, and can only move down $K_{down}\in \mathbb {Q} ^{+}$ m times. Every minute, the pilot has three choices: go up by K_up, decrementing his n "up" movements, go down by K_down, decrementing his m "down" movements, or maintain the current height, which implies maintaining the existing velocity (for simplicity, assume v is time independent and depends only on height). Each minute, regardless of the decision, the velocity vector is added to the current position (so the vector is always in units of position per minute). Assume that height changes are fast enough such that one can ignore the effect of winds between the starting and ending heights for every height change. The decision problem then is, can the pilot make this journey? Formally, is there a sequence of height increments starting from height 0, as described above, such that the sum of all the resultant velocity vectors is the position vector from A to B?

This problem is clearly in NP because any solution could be easily verified by just walking the proposed solution sequence. But is it in P, or is it NP-intermediate or something?--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:06, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand this question correctly. Your asking about forecasting a flight path and thus being able to choose altitude/wind currents rather than using app like [1] to log your flight path/track flown. A bit like being able to fly an aerial route map.--Aspro (talk) 20:45, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Aspro: No, it should've been clear that this is a theoretical computer science problem I just came up with. It has many unrealistic assumptions that would preclude its use in practice.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:12, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

USB 3.0 Hub ports

Moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous § USB 3.0 Hub ports

– 47.138.165.200 (talk) 22:26, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

1) What do call a hub box that consist of a Micro SD card slot, memory card slot along with few USB insertion ports? An example of a design or just the name of what it is called as a whole, is sufficient.

2) This point is irrelative to the above and is as follows:

My Laptop is from the year 2012 or so. I think the USB box port[s] attached is of v2.0. I wonder if v3.0 wired products will function as it should thereafter connecting to this v2.0 box, or, do I require a USB 3.0 box in order for a v3.0 wired product(s) to function efficiently? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.230.104.22 (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand your description correctly, it's generally called a "USB memory card reader" or something along those lines. USB is designed to be forwards- and backwards-compatible. Any USB 3.0+ device should work with a USB 2.0 port of the same connector type, but speeds will be limited to 2.0 speeds. --47.138.165.200 (talk) 22:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]