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February 3

Intellinet Networks Wireless 450N Dual-Ban Wireless USB Adapter

I have followed the instructions in the manual to get this thing to work, but for some reason it isn't working at all. The software has installed, and I have the icon in my icon tray, but when I go to launch the Config Utility, it says IEEE 802.11 WLAN Not exist and does nothing, I'm clueless on what to do, any references or anything at this point would be appreciated. Thanks!! ActiveListener95|(˥ǝʇs Ɔɥɐʇ) 05:50, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What is your system configuration, OS? Have looked into device manager? Ruslik_Zero 19:26, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My OS is Windows 8.1, can you provide me instructions on how to get my system config details? Thanks!! ActiveListener95|(˥ǝʇs Ɔɥɐʇ) 21:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Intellinet Network Solutions offers a WiFi Router and an USB WLAN Adpater, type 450N each. The USB device is article numder 525275. The support page offers downloading drivers, user manuals and a quick start guide. Theres no Linux support. Chipset is Ralink RT3573. The driver for Windows comes with extra software for configuration. Amazon customers are not really satisfied about this item.[1] In my former personal experience, this manufacturer offeres a very good quality of semicondutors, but passive componets requered to be replaced over years. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 19:54, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information, I will check these links out to see if they can help me figure out what is going on. As far as the use for the adapter, I need access to my 5G network because that is where my printer is, and my 2.4ghZ network that my PC can connect to, doesn't work with my printer. If I don't find an answer as to what I need, I will definitely send another update. Thank you again! ActiveListener95|(˥ǝʇs Ɔɥɐʇ) 21:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect you meant dual-band. StuRat (talk) 20:44, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, my apologies, I was very tried while writing this. ActiveListener95|(˥ǝʇs Ɔɥɐʇ) 21:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If the printer uses other WLAN RF range than the WLAN adapter, the router needs to route the WLANs, Some routers block, some can be configured to forward or block routing the LAN into WLAN. Some printers act as an accesspoint. Chromecast does this for configuration. In this case, the USB device needs to support the WLAN standard of the printer. When only one network can be connected the same time, you need another WLAN adapter. Think to connect the printer by LAN if possible. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 00:50, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bypass cache

How do you bypass your cache/purge the page on a Chromebook. It isn't a Wikipedia page. 68.233.214.74 (talk) 22:17, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is this helpful?

There's an app for Android (operating system), also called CCleaner, but I guess it is not for Chrome OS. Emulated software or software running on a subsystem can not clean or serve the host. All browser cache can be deleted by STRG+SHIFT+DEL or the hard way by deleting the files which require to close them and delete the cold (=not accessed) file by closing all not private mode windows, but this is browser only! If you want to give the chome book to another user, backup all data and make the factory reset your Chromebook. All data and settings will be lost. It is like bought a new clean computer. But, see also data erasure#Full disk overwriting. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 00:31, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

STRG? —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:34, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's German for the CTRL (control) key. LongHairedFop (talk) 10:22, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, STRG=CTRL, sorry. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 16:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

February 4

Free software

I am an amateur software developer. I spend my weekends running a few projects, however my horizon is very limited. It is not what I do for a living. I do applications mostly in C++ and C# but I am fairly ignorant about the system. Currently I have this HP Pavilion with Win-10. I also have this C# package someone else wrote and I need to modify and use it. I used to buy MSDN membership for roughly $900.00 a year which gave me access to most of MS software, like Visual Studio, etc. That hardware I had it on installed crashed and I looked for alternatives. It turns out there is Blend for Visual Studio and it is free. I wonder, why is it free? Is it deficient in something? I found compilers for C++ and C# there is good shape. That "Blend" part confused me and I was uncertain if I should go ahead and install it, but it seems to be OK.

The C# Package I mentioned refers to three namespaces that Blend could not swallow. They are NUnit, NUnit.Core and NUnit.Framework. It seems the package was in fact developed on MonoDevelop which is another free download. It turns out that in order to have MonoDevelop I have to install GTK for the .NET. Fine, I installed it. Then I installed Xamarin Studio which is the same as MonoDevelop (?) I guess. Still it is not enough, I have to install Cygwin, it turns out. Fine, I installed it. The instructions are here[2]. If you open this web page you will see that I also need to have Microsoft Visual Studio installed but the Community Edition works fine they say. I think Blend is exactly that Community Edition, right? I have it. And then it asks me to run this mile long command: "setup-x86_64.exe -q......" That command failed with the message (in cmd prompt): "setup-x86_64.exe -q is not recognised as internal or external command." Again I want to remind that I am doing all this in Windows-10 on HP Pavilion.

Where shall I go from here? Is anybody out there who are familiar with this bounty of free software?

That's another question that's bothered me for years. Why is it so much free software out there. I mostly use Linux Ubuntu which is by Canonical Ltd. It works just fine and I wonder why do they offer a free operating system? Is there some hidden benefit for them to do it that we are not aware of? It is all very strange. It is a marvelous world out there discounting a paranoid feeling that it may all be heavily malware infested . Thanks, --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

First thought is are you using Windows 10 x86-64 or x86-32? If you're using x32 then it's not surprising setup-x86-64 isn't working and the obvious question is why you're using x32 as well as why you're trying to run the x86-64 version in x86-32. If you are using x64, the next obvious question is are you running the command in the same directory that setup-x86_64.exe is located in? If you're not and directory setup-x86_64.exe is located in isn't in the path (which it probably isn't), then I'm not sure how you expect it to work. Nil Einne (talk) 18:48, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BTW the latest Visual Studio community is available here [3] or here [4]. If the only thing you have is Blend for Visual Studio (I'm not sure if it's actually possible to get this standalone nowadays) then you don't have Visual Studio Community. To state the obvious you should obtain and install Visual Studio Community or some other variant of Visual Studio before fooling around with something that requires Visual Studio. Nil Einne (talk) 18:53, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A slap in the face :-). Just kidding. Excellent. Thanks for speedy response. Yes, it is a 64 bit Win-10. Obviously I should have mentioned. When you download Xamarin Studio it does not give you a GUI, it gives you another incarnation of cmd prompt and places an icon on desktop. When you click on it you get regular cmd with this directory:

Mono version 4.6.2 Prepending 'C:\Program Files\Mono\bin\' to PATH C:\Program Files\Mono>

So, you run this command after Mono>

OK, I will try to download the community edition. Yes, it is possible to download and install Blend charge free as I understand. I've done it myself recently. Thank you Nil. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:18, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK I just got an answer to my question. Blend for Visual Studio IS a Community Edition. The links you gave me, both of them, do not work. It asked me if I wanted to modify or repair or uninstall my Blend when I tried [5] and refused to proceed when I tried the other link[6] saying that the variant I tried to install is an earlier version of the software that is on my computer already. Microsoft is a master to obfuscate things and make your life difficult. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:35, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Blend for Visual Studio is not same as Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition but it is a part of it. I also do not understand why you decided to install MonoDevelop? Do you really need a second IDE in addition to the Visual Studio? GTK, Cygwin and other linux staff are only necessary for MonoDevelop. You only need to install NUnit as I understand. Ruslik_Zero 19:45, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, Visual Studio Express is free. It will build most projects that the paid-for VS will do. However, it won't build installers or VS plugins. LongHairedFop (talk) 20:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I decided to install MonoDevelop because I know that the software package I need to work on has been developed in MonoDevelop. Right now when I try to compile it in the Blend it gives me 44 errors because it does not have those namespaces and I could not install them so far although tried hard. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For your other question, see Free software and Free software movement. Also Open-source software and both Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds. One of the reasons the free software movement took off is that developing computer programs is very cheap except for the manpower. So if you have cheap manpower (as in volunteers or students), you can create software very cheaply - cheap enough to give away for fame and in the hope of reciprocity. That turns out to be a good model for e.g. scientific software - and computer science is so new that a lot of software started as a CS project at some university. Others found out that they can benefit from selling hardware and services with and on top of free software - both IBM and Red Hat are examples for that. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:42, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Stephan, thank you. Any comment is valuable. Probably you are right. But a lot of free software is not a flash in the pan. They require maintenance, monitoring, generating versions, making sure that updates are available, etc., etc., etc. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 01:26, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, that's not really a problem. Good free software, like Linux for example, is very well maintained. Of course there are old and "dead" versions around, but they should be avoided. If you don't like the idea, then dont' use it, but the concept of free software (with GNU or similar licenses) is definitely worth considering. Jahoe (talk) 01:55, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Who said anything about "flash in the pan"? 19 years and counting... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:05, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still fairly confused. Firstly why do you keep referring Blend? As I hinted at and RuslikZero made clear as does the articles, Blend is not the same thing as Visual Studio. It's a component of Visual Studio and it's evidentally either not possible to get Blend without the rest of Visual Studio or it is but you didn't (although did you actually try to modify and make sure you have all components tha matter). However if you need Visual Studio, you should concentrate on the whole package not just one component. In addition, unless you're actually developing user interfaces, I'm not sure why you'd want to use Blend instead of other Visual Studio components anyway.

Second, are you saying above you're trying to run "setup-x86_64.exe" from the path "C:\Program Files\Mono"? Is "setup-x86_64.exe" actually located in that directory? It seems a really weird place to put an installer. Did you put it there yourself? Are you sure that's wise? While an installer will surely need elevated permissions, it stills seems possible it will not like being located there for various reasons.

If you didn't put it there, why do you think it's located there? Your link doesn't work so I have no idea what instructions you were given but it sounds a lot like you're being asked to install cygwin. I'm not even sure if whatever you're doing that told you to install cygwin (as far as I can tell, this isn't a required part of Xamarin only Gtk# so I'm confused precisely what stage this came up) actually downloaded the cygwin installer let alone if it it put it in "C:\Program Files\Mono" or somewhere else that's in the path.

If you either don't even have the cygwin installer or you do have it but it's not located either in the path or the directory you're trying to run it from and you're not specifying the path in the commandline for the installer, I repeat what I said at the beginning, why do you expect this to work? You need to download the cygwin installer, and run it. It's likely -q is simply a quiet install option so I don't see the need to even run it like that. Just run the file (probably by double clicking) like you normally do. If there are other parts of the command line (you said it was a long command line and also included ... so it sounds to me like there should be more to the command line), perhaps these are important but more likely I expect they simply specify what parts of cygwin to install. You could manually choose these or choose to install more if you wish. Up to you, but the main point if you do wish to use the specified command, you need to do it with the installer in the path somehow. Probably by running it from the directory the installer is located in (which will probably be the download directory). Also take care with any quotation marks.

Also as with RuslikZero, I'm now confused why you're even bothering to install Xamarin or MonoDevelop. If your problem is that you have failed to install NUnit then it's fairly unlikely installing Xamarin or MonoDevelop is going to magically help you fix your lack of a proper NUnit installation since as far as I can tell NUnit is not a standard part of either, and wasn't even really developed for either (it can be used with them, sure but that's different).

Rather than trying to install stuff you may or may not need, you need to concentrate first on what you do need. And if you need to install NUnit, you should concentrate on doing that first. Once you've done so, then you can decide whether or not to continue with installing the other components that may be unneeded. It seems using the NuGet nupkg would be the simplest way to install NUnit. Have you done so? Were there any error messages?

I'm assuming you have NuGet since as far as I can tell, it's a standard part of Visual Studio, even the Community Edition. It also looks like you can install it from here [7] however since it's supposed to be a standard part of new versions of Visual Studio (since 2012), if you don't have it you should revisit my earlier question and make sure you have properly installed Visual Studio and not just the Blend component. Probably the simplest option would be to run the installer I mentioned and "modify" your installation and make sure you have all essential components of Visual Studio and not just Blend (probably just install everything unless something isn't recommended).

Nil Einne (talk) 05:48, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Answering to Nil mostly. I told everyone at the start of this OP that I have HP Pavilion. HP Pavilion is an above average computer and you cannot get 32 bit version of it. I doubt anybody makes 32 bit machines nowadays. I also told you that I have installed Blend for Visual Studio on my machine and it is the BLEND. Also I tried to download and install the Community Visual Studio from two websites you offered and in each case I got an error message saying that I already have a Community Edition.

I don't do user interfaces. I do numerical simulations. I have to run very long chains of computations taking sometimes hours. The results I get, I need to visualize and in Ubuntu I use gnuplot which is a totally independent command language. It serves me well. I create 3-D projections using it. I hope I will be able to install it here in Win-10 eventually. In the Blend I need compilers only and I do have them, that's all I need.

As I said, I got a C# package which has not been written by me but by someone else. I opened the solution in the Blend and it compiled one project, however the second project failed to compile because of the NUnit namespace which I have never heard of before. I tried to install it from somewhere, perhaps from the website you mention but it requires to go through steps and at one of the steps it asks for an ID. I don't have an ID. So, thus far I have the BLEND and a project I cannot compile.

I tried to bypass the hurdle by installing the MonoDevelop because I know that the person who wrote the package did it in MonoDevelop. I also ran into strange problems doing it. So, I have to look into it and analyze everything.

Also you seem to think that when I ran the command line installation statement (exec?) I had to do it from a particular directory. This is not correct. The exec must create a dll file and place it into either the Visual Studio or MonoDevelop directory. They are typically bin directories.

Nil, you are a prolific writer :-) I am answering a portion of you post now. I will have to get back to the rest of it in perhaps an hour. Thanks, - --AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:12, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

MINGW may perhaps be of interest if you are looking for a free GCC C/C++ compiler port which has no dependency on the MS tools or VS runtime library which can generate Windows executables and libraries. There also are cross-compiling packages of it on other operating systems, allowing to compile Windows binaries from a unix development workstation, for instance. 76.10.128.192 (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

February 5

Automatic Date & Time in After Effects

Hello, could anyone guide me how to create automatic date and time 'widget' like thing using Adobe After Effects as seen on TV channels? For example this video.--Joseph 06:29, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Try this:[8] --AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:20, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"This" turns out to be a guide to writing batch files which can make a PC display its system time in hh:mm:ss.cc format but do not generate or modify TV video. Blooteuth (talk) 00:38, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, I'm talking about After Effects.--Joseph 11:30, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a second video source that contains your date and time? If so, you just need to composite it, using transparency If you don't yet have a video source, you can synthesize one: you can create a new movie file that contains nothing except the date and time, or the logo, that you want to use. If you want that date and time to update dynamically, or even to update with the live, current time, you can use Premiere (not After Effects): you want to work with the Time Code video effect. Here's an unofficial video tutorial: How To Add Timer In Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 CS6.

Once again, if you want to use After Effects, you can composite your video with a second video file that contains nothing but your time code. That gives you more control over the look and feel of the composited result, and in principle allows you to create a clock that is as fancy as you like, using any external tool you like. You can use Premiere, or any other fancy expensive professional clock-and-logo-video software, as the tool to generate the clock video, and composite it in After Effects. The video examples our OP posted have a fancy clock: it animates, squiggles around and swipes up and down with the logo, and so on. That kind of simple-looking animated clock video-trick will require either a lot of your hours to hand-craft, or a lot of your money to buy a pre-existing turnkey software that does the fancy animation for you!

Alternately, you can just use Premiere to render the time code effect directly on to your original video; then you are constrained to the options that Premiere offers.

Nimur (talk) 17:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

3D Printer

The cost of plastic and wood curving 3D Printer. 103.230.107.29 (talk) 19:00, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you mean a CNC milling machine for carving wood or plastic. I cannot give you an idea of cost because I don't know the scale of the project you have in mind. Try google "hobby CNC milling machine". 196.213.35.146 (talk) 06:05, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As 196.213 says, there's no single answer to this question. It depends a lot on what you want to be able to do.

If you're looking for an additive 3d printer, prices range from $200 for a dirt-cheap model[9], to a couple thousand for an average model, to sky's the limit for really nice models.

If you're looking for a laser cutter, expect to spend a couple thousand dollars for a low end one. (Cheaper ones exist, but they're mostly just engravers that struggle actually cutting through anything.)

If, as 196.213 guesses, you're looking for a CNC machine, you might be able to find something that suits your needs for as low as $500[10] if all you need is to cut flat pieces, but the sky is the limit, especially if you need to be able to mill complicated 3d shapes. ApLundell (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming Files and Folders

How to rename lots of files and folder in one go? 103.230.107.29 (talk) 19:00, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is here[11] --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:38, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've used AdvancedRenamer for years. Freeware and <10MB download. What I like most is the ability to manipulate the order in which want to apply multiple changes to the filename. A few other features (such as batch editing of metadata on image/music files) make it worthwhile to learn - not that it's difficult to learn. 196.213.35.146 (talk) 12:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

February 7

I am a programming newbie --- Is it a logical problem in OOP (Js-PHP and maybe some others) ?

I've seen various OOP codepieces till now. In many I've seen I came accross synatx duplications (that were needed practically) like:

this.duration = duration

As a newbie, I do understand that with "this" we reference to the duration object, than access it with the dot accessor and then put a value inside it.

I've seen this literal duplication phenomenon vastly in some PHP codes... I really don't mean to be seen as a provocative jackass, but as a newbie it seemed in elegant to me. Something that might not have been there in the first place if the language design was different to begin with.

I do wonder if any solution dealing with literal duplication is inelegant by means of turing completness and if OOP solutions that doesn't involve duplication of any kind are even possible by means of turing completness? In other words, could we have a world with OOP as a common paradigm, without nothing needs to be duplicated? Thank you and I hope I didn't came out provocative in your eyes. No such intention. 77.180.20.27 (talk) 10:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Part of object oriented design is that objects should be designed to maintain "correct" values for all object variables. In your example, this.duration is an object variable. The variable duration is likely passed as a parameter. If done properly, you shouldn't blindly set this.duration=duration. You should vet the variable first with something like: if(duration>0 and duration<99) this.duration=duration. Then, set the variable private or protected to keep other programmers from haphazardly setting duration to an improper value. What you've likely seen is nearly proper programming. They protected the variables and used the proper getter/setter methods. They just didn't go that last step and vet the parameters for the setter methods. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you're asking about Get and Set functions? 209.149 is correct that the idea is that you could (now or at a later date) implement code that runs some logic on those variables. (As opposed to non-oop code where if you wanted to make that change you'd have to hunt down every single place in the code where that variable was changed.)

In practice it does cause a lot of redundancy, because there are a lot of variables that you really never need to run any logic on when you set them.

Newer languages like C# try to streamline this with automatic gets and sets. In C# You could declare a variable like this.

public int x { get; set; }

The language knows what a "get" function is, and you don't have to type it out. PHP is an older language, and so far as I know it doesn't have that sort of nicety. ApLundell (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Without further context, it's hard to be sure, but the example you provided looks like simple duplication of variable names in different namespaces. I would guess that there is a class definition, within that class definition there is a method and within that method is this line. The this keyword refers to the specific instance of the class which has been implemented. The first use of duration would then refer to a property of that class. The two usages of duration aren't necessarily code duplication, but rather a duplicated variable name. The second use seems to refer to a variable whose scope extends only to the method in which this code is found. I've put a possible example of this in the collapsed section, here.

Code example

using System;

namespace ExampleNameSpace                                //namespaces are used in scoping, so an ExampleClass from a different project doesn't conflict with this one
{
   class ExampleClass                                     //this is where the definition of the class is
   {
      public float duration { get; set; }                 //this is the property
      
      public DoubleDuration()                             //this is the method
      {
         private float duration = this.duration * 2;
         this.duration = duration;                        //this would then be the line of code you quoted
      }
   }
}

If that is the case, and there are no specific reasons for using the same word to refer to a variable within a method as to a property of the class that contains that method, then this is (mildly) bad practice. It might have been better to call it period or to use an even more descriptive name, such as tempDuration or something similar.

One thing jumps out at me: The period (.) at the end. Was that something you put there to indicate the end of the line of code, or was there code after it? If the latter, then this might be a case of using a constuctor method to copy one instance to another, such as:

this.duration = duration.duplicate();   //in this case, the "this" being referred to is another class that has a duration object as one of its properties

or perhaps an example of casting:

this.duration = duration.ToFloat();   //this would be the case where the same sort of information is tracked in different ways, perhaps one tracking it in milliseconds, using an integer and the other tracking it in seconds, using a floating-point number

ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank all of you! Indeed, I added the dot in the end of the example by mistake --- Removed it now. 77.180.20.27 (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@77.180.20.27: No problem. I've added some comments to the code blocks above to help clarify in case anything wasn't obvious. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How can computers represent real-world knowledge?

In its more primitive form, how can computers represent a human concept? I can imagine that they use Venn diagrams, or represent it as a node in a network. What are other alternatives? --Llaanngg (talk) 18:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Well, on the most basic level, they represent it as a series of ones and zeros, known as bits. By grouping them together in groups of eight (known as a byte), they can represent numbers between 0 and 255. By grouping bytes together, they can represent larger and more complex numbers.

Then, they can take this huge selection of numbers and start using those numbers to represent things. For instance, a digital image is made of a grid of colored squares, known as pixels. Each pixel can represent a color with three bytes; one representing an amount of red light, one representing an amount of green light, and one representing an amount of blue light.

Simple text is easy to represent, too. You can fit all the letters in the English alphabet, all the numeric digits and punctuation marks we use, and quite few more into a single byte, by mapping each possible value of that byte to a different letter or punctuation mark. So in this way, a long string of numbers can become simply formatted text, with punctuation, spaces, line breaks and more.

There's a lot more to it than that, but you get the idea. You can represent almost anything with numbers, and you can represent numbers with electricity and switches. You might try the following articles for more information:

ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(Not a big deal, but when you get an edit conflict, please post your comments below those that were saved while you were editing, so that chronological order of top-level comments is preserved, in accordance with WP:INDENT. Your response is very good, btw, thanks! I only happened to shoot higher because I remembered previous questions/discussions with OP, so I had a little more context. Cheers, SemanticMantis (talk) 22:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC) )[reply]

Cluster_analysis may be of interest. Also perhaps decision tree and Attribute-value_system. We have a general article on Knowledge_representation_and_reasoning, also information organization touches on this, as does ontology, and Ontology_(information_science). I can perhaps give you more directed refs if you clarify, but it looks like you're just looking for a survey of topics, so I just gave the first handful that came to mind. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If SemanticMantis answer is more of what you're looking for, then I apologize for what might seem like condescension in mine. Without anything more specific than "human concepts" to describe, I assumed the question was about the fundamentals, not about more complex data structures. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to look at relational database, but that article is heavy going. The relational model article describes, in plainer terms, how relation databases store the data. LongHairedFop (talk) 19:16, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was more like SemanticMantis than like MjolnirPants, but it's ok. I expressed myself poorly I suppose.

Is there any way a computer could use some kind of 'universe' to analyze the meaning of a text (in a human language)? That is, can it recreate the universe of discourse, some real-world representation, and add new information to it as it get more of it? Something like Second Life, but used by computers?Llaanngg (talk) 19:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on processing time, storage requirements, and the programming. For example, you can program a computer to analyze specific metrics about music. Then, you can program the computer to randomly create music that has similar metrics to the analyzed music. The randomly created music should be a new song that doesn't already exist, but should sound somewhat similar to the universe of music previously analyzed by the program. This technique has been done in many areas. Chatbots is one area that has expanded into writing entire thesis papers that read very much like a real thesis, but are actually nonsense. For more about current research in having computers generate music and art, see EvoMusArt 209.149.113.5 (talk) 19:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on what you mean by "meaning", but going with the usual meaning (pun intended, thank you) what we're talking about is Natural language parsing. In theory, of course it's possible for a computer to account for all of the contextual information that makes up human speech and writing and for it to draw a conclusion similar to a human from this input. But the number of variables involved in even a small amount of banter can be overwhelming to modern hardware. The machine would need to be able to first compare the text to all known idiomatic expressions, because human communication is often less than literal. But it couldn't assume that all idiomatic expressions were idiomatic (for example, if a text contained the phrase "jumped the gun" that probably means the subject started too soon, but it might mean that someone literally leaped over a gun, or perhaps they jumped over something known as "the gun"), so it would have to hold this in memory as it continued analyzing.

Next, it would have to parse the text for key words and phrase, then organize those by paragraph and sentence. Then it would need to compare any unknown words to a database of known proper names, acronyms and other non-dictionary words.

Then, it would need to do the same thing, but using a different method so as to compare the results. This is because there are metaphors and similes and analogies which we humans use all the time but computers don't get. So it would need to be certain that a certain statement didn't belong before it could then conclude that was some sort of metaphor.

Then, it would be time to start parsing metaphors. This would require an incredibly vast database of facts and descriptions of numerous events, objects, people, fictional characters, etc, etc.

Then, it could start comparing those possible idioms to what it's figured out already, checking to see if they now make literal sense within the context. They also need to be checked to make sure they make sense in their idiomatic meaning.

Of course, all of that parsing requires tons of processing. Some of the results (in the form of "Sentence N has meaning X") will be wrong, and will need to be changed by comparison to other results until a meaning is found for all sentences that is contextually fitting. And what is contextually fitting? Well, that itself would take a huge database of examples and information. I hope this helps, ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:26, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Artificial intelligence often uses probabilities rather than TRUE or FALSE, for any given concept. For example, in diagnosis of a disease, it's rare that you can say symptom X means with 100% certainty that the patient has condition Y. More often, you arrive at probabilities for a range of conditions, based on a range of symptoms. StuRat (talk) 22:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

February 8

Transposing letters on Twitter

I'm an irregular user of Twitter, still struggling to come to terms with its mores but one thing I keep encountering is really baffling me. I regularly see tweets that consist solely of a person's name but with the first letter or group of letters swapped around, so for instance it might read Wimmy Jales. From what I can determine it usually appears when the person does something of which the Twitterer disapproves but I may be interpreting it wrongly. So am I right and if so is this a widespread thing or specific to one of the niche groups that seem to inhabit the website? Any ideas where the practice arose from? I've tried Google but I struggled to articulate it there and I don't know any of the users of the device well enough to ask them what it means. Keresaspa (talk) 02:53, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]