Computing desk
< December 26	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 28 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 27

What percentage of the WP database is devoted to articles and what to all the rest? And has this percentage changed over the years?

Would I be wide of the mark in estimating about 1%? When I think of all the talk pages for the articles, the massive history sections which store every edit ever made to every piece of text, the User Talk pages, all the archives, and these research desks and other stuff, I start to wonder how many bytes of data are being stored, and where. Is it possible that WP can keep this up indefinitely, or will there be a cull some time, and maybe restrictions imposed on how much non-article material you can post? Myles325a (talk) 00:33, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should post at WP:HD. And also see WP:Modelling Wikipedia's growth. flaming lawye r^c 00:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have 61,905,113 pages, and only 6,915,715 articles. That means only 11.171476255927% of pages are articles. However, this won't correspond to the amount of the database used, as that depends on page length and other such things. And yes, it will change - originally we were probably nearly all project-space, then we got way more articles. As our number of users increased, we got more user pages and more talk pages, as well as more articles, but the article number again dropped below the non-article number. Now we have 48,315,677 users, so we have far too many userpages and non-articles. We really need to cut down on all this stuff. (If this interested you, there's more statistics at User:Dendodge#Wikipedia statistics). Dendodge Talk^Contribs 15:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia copy

What is with all those sites that copy Wikipedia? 60.230.124.64 (talk) 02:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know why they're doing it, but I do know that if I was doing it, I would be doing it to preserve the endless caches of information available on this site. flaming lawye r^c 02:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They see Wikipedia as an endless source of free "content" with which they can try to lure Googlers and thus increase ad revenue. It's sort of sad that the #1 "re-usage" of Wikipedia is for things like this, but it's not unexpected. They are not always within the constraints of the GFDL so they aren't necessarily within the letter of the law but there's nothing inherently wrong with Wikipedia content being used in this way. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:20, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Check out Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. [ cycle~ ] (talk), 03:50, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One or two seek to be 'the new wikipedia' by eliminating one or more of wikipedia's perceived faults (eg they might eliminate the notability requirement for new articles) - or by adding some new capability (eg only presenting articles that have been 'approved' in some manner). But the vast majority are simply seeking to get ad revenue from people visiting their site using our content. These sites are actually legal - under the GFDL - providing they acknowledge Wikipedia. SteveBaker (talk) 16:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How Many US Businesses currently have a website

<moved to WP:RD/M#How Many US Businesses currently have a website> flaming lawye r^c 03:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Convert DVD video to AVI (or mpeg)

Okay, I know I'm going to come off sounding lazy ... and you're right, I am. Anyway, I'm wondering what is currently the best (preferably free) program to use to rip the video from a DVD to an .avi file. I've already looked at wikiHow's way to go about it, but it really didn't want to work on my computer. And in case you're wondering, I'm wanting to rip The Dark Knight to my computer to put in on my Zune... I know I can just .torrent it, but I'd like to save some time rather than downloading it then converting it to mpeg. – LATICS talk 07:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no way to answer what is the 'best' program since it depends what you mean by best. There are so many programs and combination of programs that IMHO it doesn't matter that much anyway. Personally I would recommend either Mplayer, VLC or Megui Nil Einne (talk) 09:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of good programs, as Nil Einne says, and you'll often need to use several combinations of programs to get good results. Some of the best in my experience are AutoGK, HandBrake and MediaCoder. For a simple way, you first need to decrypt the DVD, use either AnyDVD or DVD Shrink for this. Then use an encoding program to convert the .vob to avi, AutoGK is an easy to use tool but isn't being developed much anymore. HandBrake is another good tool and has many more options that AutoGK. Remember to set the right codec and output container for Zune as Handbrake defaults to x264 mkv which might not be compatible. There are lots of in depth guides and more programs over at the doom9 forums. SN0WKITT3N 13:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help. And by "best", I meant easiest. Ha. Anyway ... thanks. ;) – LATICS talk 20:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

HandBrake is super-duper easy. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it would be if it could de-CSS the disk, which it can't. — neuro^(talk) 11:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Motherboard recognition

I want to know which motherboard i have in my computer without having to open the cpu casing. I also dont have the motherboard box. Finding out the motherboard model will help me in buying a new graphics card. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.62.6 (talk) 10:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your operating system might be able to tell you something about the motherboard. However, you are going to have to open the case to install your a graphics card, so why not open it now and be sure you identify the motherboard correctly. Astronaut (talk) 12:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Check out CPU-Z. flaming lawye r^c 15:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be this useful app called Aida32 (assuming here that you use Windows) that could help you. Development stopped a few years ago, but it's still downloadable from many sites. --Ouro (blah blah) 10:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You may also be able to tell from the boot up screen. Nil Einne (talk) 11:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DVD audio

Whenever i put in a dvd movie in my computer, all the media players play only the video but not the audio, i.e. i can watch it but there is no audio. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.62.6 (talk) 10:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried the PowerDVD player ? It seems the best, in my opinion. For other players, they may be on a secondary audio channel that, for the DVDs you tried, is blank. You may be able to manually select the audio channel. Also, check your PC's volume settings. Make sure none of your volume settings are at zero and none of the mute boxes are selected. StuRat (talk) 11:15, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You should try and play it with VLC. It's famous for being able to play stuff other players fail at. Also, is the DVDs the only thing that's muted? You can play mp3s fine? 83.188.207.188 (talk) 13:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Simple and accurate way of retrieving the size (in bytes) of a dynamic array in Delphi

I have defined an record type, containing a number of dynamic arrays (of strings, integers and another record containing simple values (strings, integers and boolean values)), and then I have defined a new type as a dynamic array of this record. Thus, I got

type
  StringArray = array of string;
  IntegerArray = array of integer;
  
  TMySmallStruct = record
    A: integer;
    B: string;
    C: boolean;
  end;

  TMySmallStructArray = array of TMySmallStruct;

  TMyStruct = record
    Alpha: IntegerArray;
    Beta: StringArray;
    Gamma: TMySmallStructArray;
  end;

  TMyDataType = array of TMyStruct;

Now I need to find the size (in bytes) of an particular instance of TMyDataType. Thus, I have

var
  FMyData: TMyDataType;

and I want to find the memory (in bytes) occupied by FMyData. I cannot simply use

MySize := SizeOf(FMyData)

because FMyData is an dynamic array, and thus of type pointer, so that MySize = 4 for all instances of TMyDataType. Of course I could iterate over all items of type TMyStruct, and add all sizes, and to obtain the size of one particular instance of TMyStruct, I can add the sizes of the members, which for each can be obtained as the size of all items in the array, but this is a very lengthy approach. Is there not simple way to obtain the size of a TMyDataType instance? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SizeOf(TMyDataType) or SizeOf(TMyStruct)? Sorry if it doesn't work, as I don't know Pascal/Delphi. [1] --wj32 ^t/c 21:17, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, that does not work. The size of a particular FMyData variable is in general not equal to the size of another variable of the same type. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what you're saying. I'm assuming TMyDataType is some sort of typedef, and FMyData is a dynamic array with elements of type TMyStruct. Couldn't you just find the size of TMyStruct and multiply it by the length/number of elements of the array? --wj32 ^t/c 23:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or... do you mean the size of TMyStruct, counting the dynamic arrays it contains as their actual size as opposed to the size of the pointers? I'm pretty sure there's no (easy) way to do that, and I can't imagine why you would want to do that either. --wj32 ^t/c 23:08, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think you've got it right. Actually, FMyData contains my text editor's undo memory, and as a TMyDataType it is an array of "snapshots" of the file, each snapshot corresponding to a TMyStruct variable. A TMyStruct contains all lines in the file (at that point) as a dynamic array of strings and other data associated with each line (e.g. font). I simply want to tell the user how much memory is freed when the undo memory is cleared. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:33, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really no simple way to get this size? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates and GPRS

Hello. I would like to ask if the following numbers are some kind of valid coordinates, and if they are, in what system? The sequence is 21.94.55.79 - 67/33/57/19, I'm not sure about the dots and slashes though. Maybe it is related to GPRS data communications? Thank you in advance. --Rev L. Snowfox (talk) 17:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The first part looks like an IP address. StuRat (talk) 18:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the first group is an IP address then it's at the US Department of Defense somewhere (all 21.x.x.x numbers are DoD). That first set can't be a latitude/longitude because the second number is more than 59. SteveBaker (talk) 04:47, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

playing .avi files in powerpoint

I have a bunch of .avi files that I need to play in a powerpoint presentation on someone else's computer. Is this possible? Will powerpoint play these files (windows media player won't)? Is there something i cn download to help sort this out? Thanks 92.12.37.96 (talk) 20:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You need to get codecs for the video; try downloading Combined Community Codec Pack [2]. It's great for playing videos in general. --wj32 ^t/c 21:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, get K-Lite. CCCP I have found to be buggy, unstable and frankly appalling on occasions, whereas I cannot say the same for K-Lite. — neuro^(talk) 10:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RCA to Digital Media Port

I have an older CD player (Kenwood CD233) which I used to connect to stereo system in the house. We have since acquired a DVD Home Theatre System (Sony HDX-900W) which controls the TV sound and plays the DVD's. The CD player holds 200 CD's, which is quite handy - but I can not locate any corresponding input jacks on the HTS to plug it into. The CD player only has the older RCA (left/right) output jacks and the DVD player seems to only have Digital Media Ports available. Is there some sort of adapter I could obtain to connect RCA to Digital Media?142.68.221.163 (talk) 21:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find any Digital Media Port adapters that work that way, however the manual (via the Sony Support Canada site) indicates that there is an input on the front panel that will take a stereo mini-plug. You should easily be able to find an adapter that has two RCA jacks on one side and a mini-plug on the other. It should be a very low-cost item, as opposed to the DMP adapters. Alternately, it looks like you could use audio jacks of the SAT/CABLE input on the back, unless you've already got something else connected there. --LarryMac | Talk 14:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One handed Dvorak keyboard and Mac OSX

Is there a working single handed Dvorak Keyboard [3] for Mac Leopard? It is not included by default, and the available solutions aren't the simplest of things to use , eg. [4] or [5]. It is available on XP, and I have used it before on VMware Fusion [6].78.148.77.131 (talk) 23:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]