Computing desk
< July 5	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 7 >

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

July 6[edit]

That Touch of Mink[edit]

I'm wondering if anyone knows how to find the scenes just prior to where Doris Day caused absolute chaos in her new job, and what is supposed to be happening. It appears there is a logical process going on when things work as they should, but the writers might have just made something up that looked good. Somehow, different colors of cards are being printed and sorted into categories, and this process took place long before my days of learning about computers. We didn't do anything like this. In my classes we had two types of output: a sheet that was printed, or information on our screen. No cards as output. My only hints as to what the company was doing were Day's character's comment about having to learn codes, and the boss saying someone got a bill for $128,000 for a very small purchase after Day made a mess.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:29, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a Hollerith card 41.165.67.114 (talk) 06:17, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the scene staring around 1:16 the sign on the wall says UNIVAC but the machines are Remington Rand Hollerith card sorters (Holerith was IBM. Univac used a different kind of card.) Colored cards were common. The studio probably just bought a bunch of different colors because it looked better.

The Master Control panel Doris Day hits appears to be some sort of control for a paper tape reader/puncher. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:45, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Punch cards certainly were used as output, in situations where they would later become inputs again. I dimly remember (into the 1970s) receiving bills from one or other utility company that were on punch cards, which would show my account number and the amount owing -- presumably when I returned them with my payment, someone would put the card back into a keypunch machine, punch onto the card (at some specific position) the amount of my check, and then the card would go back into the computer as an input. I also once wrote COBOL programs for a compiler that produced a deck of binary punch cards containing the executable code, which was then fed into a smaller computer that did not have a compiler of its own.

As I recall, Remington and UNIVAC punch cards were the same size as IBM cards, but used a different data format, with round holes... right, that's covered in the article already linked. --174.89.49.204 (talk) 23:02, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It was actually quite easy to mess up. Some cards were used often and they would become "floppy" and get mangled in the feeder. You would then take a blank card and manually reconstruct the hole pattern with a special punch. $12.80 could easily come $128,000.00. Even new cards could cause problems if the initial punch did not eject the cutout piece correctly. There was a very real reason for "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate." Staples were a nightmare. 41.165.67.114 (talk) 09:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Old laptop - can barely hear volume, even when the volume level is 100[edit]

I have an old laptop, laying around. In good condition. Never used it all that much. Right now, I need it for a very limited purpose only ... to log onto You Tube and play You Tube videos. Here and there, occasionally. That's it. So, I did not want to go out and buy a new laptop, nor do I want to pour a lot of money into this old laptop. Here's the problem and my question. Even when I put the volume on the highest level (100), I can still barely hear it. I went to some website that says "increase volume by downloading this app". Here: [1]. I tried that. It increased the volume ever so slightly ... but basically it's difficult to hear the You Tube video playing. What can I do? What should I do? Any comments, thoughts, suggestions, ideas? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It may be the speakers failing with age. I'd recommend trying a pair of cheap external speakers, bluetooth if your laptop supports it, externally powered ones run off a line to the headphone jack if it doesn't. (On many laptops the headphone jack and the internal speaker share the same amp, so if that's the culprit you might have problems with unpowered headphones too.) 100.2.177.152 (talk) 18:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1) You can use a Youtube downloader and play it back in a program like VLC which supports >100% volume. 2) Check that both your system volume and the volume on the YouTube interface are up to 100%. 3) Your speakers could've become filled with fluff and dust over time. I suppose that could affect the sound too, I don't know. 93.136.52.139 (talk) 22:08, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:15, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lambda expressions for JavaFX event handler[edit]

The following code can be used to create a javafx.scene.control.Button that reacts to the user clicking it in JavaFX.

   Button b = new Button();
   b.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
       @Override
       public void handle(ActionEvent actionEvent) {
           // Code to execute goes here        
       }
   });

However, I have seen it simplified as this:

   b.setOnAction(actionEvent -> /*Code to execute goes here*/);

Why does the second option work? The source code for the setOnAction() method looks like this:

   public final void setOnAction(EventHandler<ActionEvent> var1) {
       this.onActionProperty().set(var1);
   }

The method clearly takes an EventHandler<> as a method, not a Consumer, which is what that lambda expression appears to be. --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 22:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

EventHandler is annotated as a functional interface, which is explained a bit better here. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 12:59, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]