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March 19

Thin x86 tablet

Do there exist any x86 tablets that are as thin as any of the Android tablets already out on the market? I ask because pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down some how and I would rather have one that isn't, which is where x86 comes in. --Melab±1 ☎ 00:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22intel%20tablet%22, though I'm sure you can find ARM tablets that aren't "locked down" if that's truly your only concern. ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I would also note that if it were true that all ARM tablets are locked down (which I agree with Reisio is questionable) then it's resonable to assume many x86 ones are as well. Nil Einne (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Most of the good ARM tablets are locked down. There are no x86 tablets that I know of that are marketed like a Samsung Galaxy Tab or an Asus Eee Pad Transformer, so I would think most x86 tablets are not locked down. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:17, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like what you're saying is any good ARM tablet is marketed in a certain way and therefore is locked down and while there are plenty of tablets which aren't marketed in that way and aren't locked down, you only want them if they are x86. In which case I'm confused (as I expect is Reisio) why you want a 'good ARM tablet', but will settle for any old x86 tablet.

It may help if you would better explain your requirement, from your previous comments, it does appear you often have an inaccurate understanding of the market which may partially be why you're asking for an x86 tablet when a more logical question would be to ask about good (as you define it when asking) unlocked tablet.

It will probably also help if you define what exactly you want 'unlocked'. A very large number of people including those making custom ROMs and doing weird stuff like installing Ubuntu [1] (and possibly in the future Windows 8) are able to get by with what's out there even from the name brand vendors such as tablets with bootloaders unlocked either via official methods [2] or by taking advantage of exploits [3] [4]. (Since you apparently want to develop stuff on the tablet and have no qualms about weird stuff like trying to physically modify the chips, I presume you have no fear about taking advantage of well documented exploits of the various tablets out there as so many people who can't program for squat do.)

It's apparent you're not satisfied with these options but why isn't clear. If you actually want an x86 tablet for whatever reason or you have a philosophical opposition to anything that is locked even if official methods are available to unlock it (such as with the Transformer Primer) let alone where you have to take advantage of exploits (ala tivoization) or you want more then the bootloader to be unlocked I think you need to specify this. (This also applies to phones.)

In any case 'Most of the good ARM tablets are locked down' is quite different from 'pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down'.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

When I said "pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down" I meant to say that almost all of the good ARM tablets (i.e., Samsung Galaxy Tab, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Sony Tablet S, HTC Flyer, Acer Iconia, etc.) are pretty well locked down. While some have unlockable bootloaders, those same bootloaders are signature checked by the hardware and I want to use a tablet whose boot ROM does not perform signature checks. I want to experiment with bootloaders and features I could play around with like. I do not expect an x86 tablet to be locked down because, so far, few Intel devices have ever come with hardware-based signature checks. --Melab±1 ☎ 21:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Internet Explorer cannot ...

I’m using two computers, both with Windows XP Professional and Internet Explorer. On one, I frequently get a red error box message “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site ____. Operation aborted. OK?”

Which, takes me to, “Internet Explorer cannot display the web page.”

The site easily loaded in the past, and still does on one computer but not the other. I tried clearing the cache, but no luck. Is there some other simple change (aside from updating the software; I’m not the admin) that will deal with this problem? DOR (HK) (talk) 08:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable or have the admin update them, there's no good excuse for using software that old. ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:14, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I've gotten that message in IE8 (which, for XP, is not old) before (though it was a year and a half or so ago and an update probably fixed it). - Purplewowies (talk) 16:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

OP, I did a search for your problem and found a support article from Microsoft here. There are several workarounds to the problem further down that page, "Workaround 2" looks like the best option, assuming you are using IE 6 82.45.62.107 (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for a really useful answer. "Workaround 2" works long enough to get off the front page, which is better but still irritating.DOR (HK) (talk) 01:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Just having a quick look, microsoft say that the site is trying to change the parent container. If you don't have the rights to modify on this computer, but you do in the other, this could be the reason. Can you give us a little more information about the setup? Are the computers on a domain? Are they standard build or has the people who build the operating system made some changes to the build? Group policies. Things like that could help us determine a more perminant fix for you. Mrlittleirish 16:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Victor adding- listing model 110 year 1921-1925

Hello my name is Jim. I, cannot seem to find any pictures, more info about this model..they stated only 100,000 made? However, did they make the same model longer than that? I have seen 2 different model 110. I have a different or modified version. However, once again I cannot locate any others68.117.208.225 (talk) 11:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC) thanks Jim 11:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I've just adjusted the formatting of your question slightly in order to make it easier to read. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

In case anyone doesn't understand, this question is about the Victor Adding Machine. Here are some pics: [5]. StuRat (talk) 19:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

What happened to this website?

File:Jay Timo.jpg is marked with a cc-by-sa-1.0 tag and sourced from http://www.vriendenvantuvalu.nl/index.php. Since most websites don't release images under any CC licenses, I wanted to go to the page and see if they really did have a license statement — however, when I go to the page, it keeps automatically refreshing: after about half a second of displaying the URL in the tab, it switches to "Connecting", and then half a second later back to the URL, and it keeps repeating indefinitely. Any idea what's wrong with it? Please note that the URL at the bottom of the {{information}} template redirects to the same page and thus has the same problem. Nyttend (talk) 13:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't have that problem. See here for a screen-shot of the license page. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 13:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it's my browser. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I had this happen a couple times when my computer's time was screwed up (would jump to the UTC time, then the time would sync to EST over the internet). Posts on a forum I visited were erroneously marked as unread, and whenever I would click into a thread I had previously read, it would do what you describe. I don't know if this was due to my computer's time problem or something else entirely (though the only thing I can think is an ad of some sort), but I felt it was worth mentioning. I'm not having that problem with the site, either (on IE8). - Purplewowies (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

something that falls betwween twitter notifier and goole alert

It would be really useful! You set some topics/hashtags and it makes notification appear on your desktop: maybe a feed reader? thanx! Ulisse0 (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I think TweetDeck does what you want. There's a Chrome webapp and an Adobe Air desktop app. Either should allow you to set up a column with a hashtag or plain text search, and enable desktop notifications on it. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Finding index of substring in less than square time?

Is it possible to find a starting index of a substring in a string in less than $O(n^{2})$ time, assuming comparing a single character against another takes $O(1)$ time? The way I see it, a naïve but sure implementation would be:

• For each character n in the main string:
  • For each character m in the substring, compare character m in the substring against character m+n in the main string.
    • If they don't match, start over from the next character from the main string.
    • If all of the characters do match, an index has been found.
  • If no match has been found for any character n in the main string, there is no index.

But this takes $O(n^{2})$ time in the worst case. For example, assume we want to find the index of the substring aab in the main string aaab. With this algorithm, we have to go through the entire substring at the first character in the main string, only to find that it doesn't match. But we can only advance one character in the main string, because right at the second character, they do match. Is there any way to make this more efficient? JIP | Talk 20:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

See Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm, which has time complexity of O(k+n) (where k is is the length of the query and n is the lengths of the string), and String searching algorithm, which has a table with different algorithms. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

If you were going to do many substring searches within a given string, it might be worthwhile to create sorted lists. In your example, the list of all possible 3 letters words in "aaab", sorted, would be "aaa" and "aab", while the list of all possible 2 letter words, sorted, would be "aa" and "ab" (if it's important to find all matches, then it would be "aa", "aa", "ab"). If the location of each match is important, then the index for each subword would also need to be stored. A binary search or hash search could then be done within this list. This would make for far more work up-front, but, if enough searches were done, it would pay off in the end. This is especially true if the set-up work can be done when the system load is low, and the substring search is done when the load is high. StuRat (talk) 20:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually the original method you give is not that bad in practice. It is O(mn), where n is the length of the whole string and m is the length of the string you are searching for. It is possible for m to be O(n), but usually m<<n, and is usually bound by a small constant. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

March 20

Android on Playbook 2.0

Dear Wikipedians:

Just got my Playbook 2.0 today. Heard it supports Android. So how does Android work on Playbook 2.0? I did not see any Android Market or Google Play icons, and a search for those two on RIM's own AppWorld didn't turn up exact hits either.

Thanks very much for all your help,

70.31.158.164 (talk) 01:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Even if Android supports the Playbook hardware, the device probably only comes with the BlackBerry OS on it, so you'd have to do a full OS install to use Android. ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

From what I can tell, Playbook 2.0 can run Android apps. They can be installed from "Appworld" (RIM's appstore I assume), according to some of the articles I found, such as this one [6]. RudolfRed (talk) 04:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's my understanding that the App's developers have to make the app available in the Blackberry's app store.

The goal was to entice developers to publish apps in the Blackberry app store by allowing them to use the apps they'd already prepared for a more popular platform.

APL (talk) 12:05, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you may be able to install apps manually [7]. From what I read, you do need to convert the APKs to BARs or obtains BARs in some other way. If you're converting, it may be trouble free but if the app uses the Android NDKs (i.e. uses native code) you're probably SOL. (Blackberry has its own NDK but doesn't support Android apps using the NDK for whatever reason. The Playbook does use ARM and some suggest it did work at one time [8].) But APL is right, RIM's intention was for developers to sell their apps on the Blackberry store, but it perhaps hasn't been that successful despite offers of free Playbooks [9] [10]. Nil Einne (talk) 16:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Which Wikipedia uses disclaimers the most?

Here in English Wikipedia, disclaimers are strictly prohibited on articles since they are considered redundant to our disclaimers at the bottom of the page. However, as of the end of 2011, only two other Wikipedias (Wikipediae?) also have this policy: the Russian Wikipedia and the Chinese Wikipedia. Recently, the Arabic and Japanese Wikipedias created their own versions of NODISCLAIM, but I'm not sure if they have implemented it yet. I'm not sure about the Arabic Wikipedia, but the Japanese Wikipedia still makes extensive use of spoiler warnings. Anyway, at least the last time I checked, the Japanese Wikipedia had plenty of disclaimers on fiction articles (but maybe they were maintenance templates; I don't know, I can't understand Japanese), but they seem to have been removed, or weren't that common in the first place (In one article, there were about three disclaimers, including the spoiler warning). So among the Wikipedias that use disclaimers, which of them has the most number of disclaimer templates? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually the guideline you linked to says that a very small number of what could be considered disclaimers are allowed (and suggests one of the reasons there's no hard policy forbidding all disclaimers is to avoid confusion and excessive disagreement due to these exceptions). If you want a 'disclaimer' count, you're going to have to define what sort of disclaimers you're interested in. Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Engine game s2 or s3

What is the name of the engine they use to create Sonic 2 and where could I get it?---74.178.186.35 (talk) 16:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's proprietary engine, meaning it's both not publicly available and never had a publicized name. Though not technically legal, many people make romhacks from files using various tools, which may be the jist of what you intend to do. 162.111.235.14 (talk) 20:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Raspberry pi

Hello, I'd like to know what makes the raspberry pi computer more powerful than similar sized devices. What is innovative about it ? 41.141.142.89 (talk) 18:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It is not really that much more powerful than the innards of existing consumer routers or media players. The innovative thing is that they took something like that and designed it in such a way that it is a practical general purpose computer. It runs pretty much standard desktop operating systems, boots from an SD-card and has all the essential interfaces. At the some time they managed to keep the price below that of Pico-ITX or similar boards that fill a comparable niche. KarlLohmann (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Rather than use the word 'powerful' it might be better to say that its advantage is that is it very plastic, flexible and transparent in it operation. A user has almost all, if not complete control, over everything it can do. There are no black boxes that remain as mystery to anyone taking the effort to discover how it works. If one wants to use the word powerful, then it promises to be a powerful teaching tool and price-wise it comparatively powerful for its cost.--Aspro (talk) 21:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

As the Raspberry Pi article notes, Broadcom has not released documentation for the GPU and its associated media accelerator engine. Raspberry Pi ships with binary blobs for the video driver's modesetting, for its OGL driver, and for its video codec acceleration. To my mind these are very large black boxes. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not more powerful that similarly sized devices; there have been very small footprint industrial PCs for years, with really scary prices. What's remarkable about Raspberry Pi is that it's spectacularly cheap. There are other SoC-based devices like it in the offing, but Raspberry Pi's real success is that they delivered, and in industrial quantities - and seem to have set up manufacturing deals which will (eventually) meet the demand for the thing. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:09, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Uhmm... A good point. Leaving that aside, I wonder what benefit these would have in being open. The raison d'etre of Raspberry Pi is to enable people to learn 'how' computers work at a fundamental level. Not to immediately launch them straight into the stratosphere. Is the GPU chip even programable?--Aspro (talk) 23:37, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Sure, there's all kinds of fun one could have if one had access to a proper description of the hardware registers. Firstly one could construct media codecs other than the few that ship in the black box - both for additional decode formats, and to allow more flexible encoding (imagine a Raspberry Pi on a student-built high-altitude balloon, encoding a webcam picture and sending that home via UMTS). Secondly there's using (misusing, perhaps) for something equivalent to CUDA. Of course most Rπs are going to do little fancier than run a web browser, but all it takes is one person to write a computer vision library for it and, with a Gertboard and some motors, hundreds of schools can whip up a little robot that can drive around and (mostly) not bump into things. Compared with the horrific "lets set this text to bold" IT curriculum that still pertains in UK schools, the more of that kind of magic the better. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that the Raspberry Pi team themselves recognise that they'd be better off if they could release all the docs and software for the thing (mostly for all the stuff that they, you, and I can't imagine someone will invent with the thing). They've already done sterling work coaxing Broadcom to release very good docs for the rest of the device, and I believe they're getting the mega-bulk price from Broadcom although their volumes don't match HTC's or the like (heck, if they could fulfil the demand, I'm not sure they're such a small player at all). I guess Broadcom are reticent to release all that stuff (it's not like nVidia or ATI do for their equivalents) lest some Chinese manufacturer clone that and undercut them. There are some boards that aim to be entirely open, and cheaper than Raspberry Pi (darned if I can Google them up on demand though...). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Not to be redundant, but technologically speaking, is there a breakthrough that made it possible to manufacture such a computer with cheap components? I'm still confused about that. 41.143.2.219 (talk) 23:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

No, that's a very good question. Largely it's a single-die system on chip - stuff that decades ago was dozens of chips, that's now down to three or four on a desktop PC, is one on a SoC device (like a Raspberry Pi or an iPod). You take an embedded SoC controller like Broadcom's (or one from their competitors, for the same market) and add RAM and flash, and you have a basic working computer. Add a touchscreen, a battery and a GPRS modem and you have a smartphone. All of this comes from the economy of scale - Broadcom et al can afford to invest a huge sum putting the logic for essentially a whole computer on a single silicon chip because they anticipate selling tens or hundreds of millions into the smartphone market as a result. Stuff like Raspberry Pi is a just a by product. That said, I still don't understand how Raspberry Pi is so cheap (the Raspberry Pi Foundation must be getting the Broadcom SoC for something like £15) - prices I've seen quoted for the bill of materials for modern smartphones are something like £200+, for which I'd anticipated a large proportion would be the central SoC. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The assembled component price does not have to included payment for the hundreds/thousands of software/hardware/firmware patents that other device manufactures have to pay. [[11]]. It is just a basic machine. Look at Tom Tom, they even ended up paying royalties for a public domain file system. --Aspro (talk) 23:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

That's an astute point. One can't underestimate the effectiveness of the Raspberry Pi's charitable status ("oh please don't sue us mister, we're but an iddle bittle chawity"). I wonder if the folks thinking they're going to build a commercial business model off Raspberry Pis turned to specific functions (like media centres) are in for some patent-lawyer fun. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

If Raspberry Pi dose not contain any patentable technology, it is not liable to pay any royalties. Thus, it does not have to plead, using its chartable status as mitigation... and remember, any lawyer (solicitor) will tell you not to bother suing a man of straw. --Aspro (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm wondering if Finlay McWalter might not be a secret sales representative for Raspberry Pi  ;-) as I'm now itching to get my sweaty little mitts on one – or two - or three even.--Aspro (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

If that were so, I'd have more to show for it than a bunch of empty promises from Farnell. I have to wonder if, when people actually get one, they aren't going to be a bit disappointed that it's slow and small, there's no fun stuff for it, and (I think) there's no Flash support. How depressingly educational it may turn out to be. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:22, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Kids love to discover how stuff works. Pre- seventeen's can learn to fly gliders and single engine aircraft with competence. Can you imagine little Veruca Salt saying “No it don't what to fly one of those, I want to fly an Airbusbus 380 or I'm-going-to-scream-and scream-and-scream.” Kids accept what opportunities first come their way – (only after that, do they scream and scream that they want more but that's another matter). By which time Daddy can afford to buy them Raspberry Pi MK II – which might include the game of Pong. That will keep them amused for a few hours.--Aspro (talk) 01:31, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, Farnell. There was a time when their catalogue never left my side – even when I went fishing – sad I know. My recollection however was that they always kept their promises, they always delivered (eventually) except when they where out of stock ( which was frequent ). That reminds my I'm still waiting for them to deliver some BC 107's. --Aspro (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

You have been able to get cheap tablets from China shipped for around US$80-100 for a while now. And these include a usually 7" LCD touchscreen (yes a cheap and not particularly good one), a small amount of flash memory and a lithium ion (probably polymer) battery. But I'm pretty sure these have no subsidies and they're also retail units from commercial sellers (who want to make their normal profit even if being random Chinese sellers the amount is probably not so high) without any charity being involved (I believe the profit RS and Farnell is making from these is lower then they would normally expect since they don't want to come off as the 'badguy'). The GPU on the Raspberry PI device might be better, in particularly I'm not sure that they can normally handle 1080P30 although I don't think it's actually that hard for the dedicated silicon to support that, it's just that they haven't usually bothered for reasons like perceived usefulness and power usage. But otherwise I don't believe the hardware on the Raspberry PI is better, it obviously has features suitable for its use which don't cost much to add like ethernet, HDMI and component video. (I know some cheap tablets do support these although I'm not entirely sure if it's the US$80-100 ones.)

So the absence of a resonably priced nettops or just SFF boards has always been a bit of a surprise. Sure there has been the Atom based nettops but they cost more and have higher power usage (but generally a bit more powerful). There's also been stuff like Via based ones or those using Geode (processor) [12] or fit-PC but again more expensive and with higher power usage and possibly not any faster (and the GPU on Geode ones at least are generally very weak although not really a big issue considering the target market). Also other odd stuff like the Lemote and the Efika and SheevaPlug (and the other plugs [13]) which have filled various market niches but again these have generally been more expensive (and possibly more power hungry). Then there's been much weaker stuff suitable for an NAS and perhaps a small number of torrents like [14] which have been cheap. There has been an increasing proliferation of these ARM based devices, e.g. PandaBoard, Cotton Candy (single-board computer) and CuBox which fill the higher end (although these are crossing in to Atom price range territory, the Atom may not be more powerful so if you have no need for x86, why not?)

But anyway back to my earlier point, I don't see the price as that surprising. I guess no one thought there was sufficient interest. It's a little lower then I expected, I was thinking more on the lines of US$50-60 or so but AFAIK nothing like that has existed despite the fact given the tablets it looked to me like it should have been possible. The only real option has been buying second hand PCs. (I believe Broadcom are subsiding the Raspberry Pi [15]) so the lower price then what I expected doesn't really surprise me either.) I'm more surprised that it took so long. (I believe some Arduino and similar people are moving to ARM based devices although they were unlikely to have the market influence to get even the $50 range without subsidies and of course are approaching it from a different area.)

BTW your BOM for smartphone seems rather expensive to me, it sounds like you're talking about something with a more powerful CPU and GPU (and probably more RAM) then the Raspberry PI or the many cheaper smart phones out there. (I don't tend to follow BOMs that much but at a guess, it sounds like Galaxy S II BOM or probably something even better. From a quick search the Iphone 4S BOM seems to be under £200.) Here in NZ which isn't generally the cheapest place for electronic gadgets you can get a decent low-mid smartphones like LG P500 (which I received in July last year when it was about $100 more) for under NZ$200 including 15% GST. I don't think they're losing money on these (unlike in some other countries mobile phones here are rarely subsidised unless you receive them as part of a plan, locking is very rare and controversial here) so it's quite unlikely they BOM comes anything close to £200+.

P.S. More recently there's also tablets like the Ubislate 7+ which are even cheaper although I never quite understood if there was any subisidies (not counting the development and purchasing power from the non-commercial one) to the commercial version, I presume no but I'm not sure.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:35, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

March 21

Javascript crashing weird

Alright, I was learning some javascript recently, I was learning to use the "for" command. I understood it was something like (start,end,steps). so when there's a javascript snippet like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var a=0;
for (a=0;a<=15;a++)
{
document.write(a);
document.write("<br />");
}
</script>

it will display a list of numbers from 0 to 15 right, so I supposed this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var a=0;
for (a=0;a<=15;a+3)
{
document.write(a);
document.write("<br />");
}
</script>

Would give me a list of numbers from 0 to 15 in steps of 3.. But instead it crashes all browsers... (strangely did not crashed internet explorer) soo, can you explain me why all browsers crash?? And how I should do it?190.84.182.165 (talk) 05:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

You probably want a+=3 instead of a+3. http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=colombiyuh&channels=##javascript ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:30, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Worked..... lol Thanks 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:19, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Wait... How you do negative steps? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

a-=3      -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:27, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

And then note that you have to reverse the polarity of your ending condition, for example for (a=0;a>=-15;a-=3). Otherwise you might find that your loop either completes as soon as it starts, or never completes. JIP | Talk 21:06, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

computer turning itself off

Hello, what does it mean when your computer keeps turning itself off, it happens now and again, and then I can turn it back on again and it is fine. It is a PC and about 5 years old. Thank you. Anthony J Pintglass (talk) 14:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

If this is just an apparently random turning off, with no message or BSoD displayed, I think it is likely to be something environmental - most likely overheating. Check that the PC's cooling fans are operating and the internals of your PC are free from dust. Astronaut (talk) 14:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

One of the computers at my dad's house had this problem. There was an issue with the power supply (there was also a major problem with the fans, but the power supply is what did it in for us). It's likely your fans, though, since we also had that problem before it ended up being the power supply. - Purplewowies (talk) 20:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

By default, windows will automatically restart the computer after a crash. If this is happening regularly and you want to see the BSoD, you have to change a setting. Right click "My Computer"> properties >Advanced Tab > startup and recovery settings > untick "automatically restart" under "system failure". Vespine (talk) 21:50, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Getting URL of video

At http://www.ias.umn.edu/media/GranTorino.php

I'm trying to get the URLs of the videos posted on this page. How do I do this?

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 14:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

They seem to have a flash variable. 190.84.182.165 (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

http://downloadhelper.net/ ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for the tip, Reisio! I'll see if I can get the extension installed WhisperToMe (talk) 01:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

computer restarts

my computer restarts when i play video games and sometimes when i watch movies it keeps restarting untill i turn it off for some time. and this error comes

fixed disk 0 : pm-hotachi hds721616pla380 (ultra dma mode atia/66) atapi cd-rom 4m-hl-dt-st dvdram g-s-a h42n

multiple bios post attempt have failed memory timing have been reset to atomatic setting press f4 to run setup — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.249.240.95 (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Your computer might be overheating. Make sure the fans are working and not obstructed by built-up dust. RudolfRed (talk) 19:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you ever tried to overclock it or mess with the RAM settings in the BIOS? If it starts working after being turned off for a while, it sounds like it's overheating. I'm guessing you didn't build the computer? Have you ever opened it up to check the components? It might just be full of dust and not cooling properly, that's a very common problem when computers get a few years old, it might just need a good dust out. If its easy to open, just give it a bit of a gentle vacuuming, while it is off, of course. Or you possibly might have a faulty ram module. Vespine (talk) 21:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Grabbing a frame from a video

Does anyone know of a good program that will allow me to grab a single frame from an MPEG video which can be saved as a JPEG image? I am looking for a free-to-use software so I can print a photo from a family home video. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xduty (talk • contribs) 18:08, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

VLC media player video->snapshot -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll give it a try :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xduty (talk • contribs) 18:32, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

GOM Player also has this (control panel->screen capture) with additional features like burst capture, enabling you to take screenshots of consecutive frames at a given interval. Useful for creating animated GIFs from movies.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 18:35, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Media Player Classic is another one. File -> Save image for screenshots. 82.45.62.107 (talk) 20:50, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Getting formatted output from a web page

I maintain a website, and also edit a monthly printed newsletter. The website contiains a list of future events (generated by Drupal). I want to grab the output from the website and put it straight into the newsletter (created using Microsoft Publisher) keeping the formatting, and avoiding the need to re-enter the data and possibly introduce errors. The only way I've found to do this so far is to display the web page on the screen, get a screen dump using the Windows Snipping Tool, and copy this as a graphic into the newsletter. Is there a better way to do this, which would avoid the fuzziness that arises when treating a screendump as a graphic and posting it into a different application, probably at a different resolution? --rossb (talk) 22:25, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't used Publisher much, but Googling around has led me to believe you can import either HTML files or PDF files directly into Publisher. So that means you can either save the output from the webpage as an HTML file, or use a PDF virtual printer to turn it into a PDF file, and then import that into Publisher. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

How do you save the output of a web page as HTML, as opposed to the source, with all those ugly HTML tags in it ? StuRat (talk) 23:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The source and the html are one and the same. It's simply a matter of whether the program you're opening it with can properly interpret the tags.

I agree with with Mr.98, I haven't used Publisher in ages, but I suspect that you could open the html file in publisher (or perhaps word?) and copy/paste it from there, including the formatting data. APL (talk) 23:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Some suggestions for improving screen grabs:

1) Increase the screen res to max.

2) Enlarge the text to fill as much of the screen as possible.

3) Where possible, display the text as monochrome, with a large contrast between the foreground and background colors.

4) Save it in a format with lossless compression.

5) Paste it at the same size as the screen grab. This will probably be too large to add it as a pic in the middle of the text, so add it as an appendix instead. StuRat (talk) 23:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

That's still going to look weird. Print resolution is significantly higher than screen resolution. The sudden change to a lower resolution font will be noticeable. APL (talk) 23:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

But that contrast can be good, as a way to distinguish text typed in versus program output,

SIMILAR TO THIS.

Of course, if the output is unreadable, then that's no good. StuRat (talk) 04:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

March 22

500 Internal Server Error

A website I go to all of the time is now displaying the following error. Is there anything in the messages it's delivering which can help to explain what the problem is?

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@xxxxxx.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

69.62.243.48 (talk) 03:47, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Nothing you can do at your end, no, it sounds like they need to look into it at their end. You might want to email them, as they suggest, in case nobody is at the switch. StuRat (talk) 04:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Specifically what it means is that the custom software running on the server(like databases, custom scripts, or even primitive web servers that have bugs) are failing in an operation in a way that makes the script unable to continue. By FAR the most common cause of this on websites is database connection errors, but the nature of a 500 error obscures what actually went wrong(in an attempt to keep malicious users from exploiting the error). 162.111.235.14 (talk) 20:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Rogue antivirus... how to remove it fast?

Resolved

My computer is Windows XP running through Boot Camp on a Macbook Pro. I just had "Security Shield" install itself on my computer, and I'm currently trying to remove it the "slow" way of scanning my computer with an anti-malware program that is known to find it, then using that to remove it. However, it's the middle of the night here, and I can't move my laptop (the computer it's on) because unplugging it will cause a BSOD due to something wrong with the display driver. I also don't feel comfortable shutting it down with the malware still on it. My laptop is on my bed, and I'd like to go to sleep sometime tonight! Is there a faster way? Help! - Purplewowies (talk) 05:12, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

A lot of Windows badware has known locations and filenames, quite frequently somewhere in the ordinarily hidden directories around here: C:\Users\foo\someDirHere\. You can probably get it faster by limiting your search to those directories. If you're worried about it running, you can reboot to something like http://sysresccd.org/ and find it and delete it from there. You shouldn't worry about shutting it down with the badware still on it, though: when the computer is powered off nothing is going to be going on. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I found out the filename about five seconds or so after the rogue started "scanning." My real antivirus told me it didn't know the threat risk for the file, and that's how I got its name. It took forever to find it, but I managed to find it like two seconds after I decided to turn on the trial on the real anti-malware I had downloaded. Then about 30 seconds later the antimalware detected the rogue trying to open, and I watched it disappear forever. :) Thanks for the help you provided, even though I really didn't end up using any of it. - Purplewowies (talk) 17:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Are there implementations of C++ without system headers as text files?

The language standard for C++ defines that the use of #include <...> to include a system header in the source has the effect to make available a certain set of classes, functions, and objects, and the standards define which system header has to be used for which features. However, the language standard appears to be carefully worded to allow for implementations where the system headers do not have to exist in the form of source files. (See for example this question on Stack Overflow.) Do such implementations really exist? (I think the situation is the same for C, but I am not sure.) —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 10:29, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft Visual C++ allows precompiled headers, which are supposed to be functionally-identical to the situation if the .h files were read (that is, it's an optimisation). On every C compiler I've ever used, the difference between <> inclusion and "" inclusion has been wrt the INCLUDE_PATH (or the like) if at all; in plenty of compilers they both work the same. It sounds as if the C++ standard is leaving the difference between the two, if any, as compiler-dependent as it is in C. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not just system headers. The standard in general speaks in terms of translation units rather than actual files. From C++2003 chapter 2.1:

Note: Source files, translation units and translated translation units need not necessarily be stored as files, nor need there be any one-to-one correspondence between these entities and any external representation. The description is conceptual only, and does not specify any particular implementation.

--Sean 13:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't actually think of a practical case where a translation unit hasn't been a file - which is kind of a shame, as it forces things that could quite naturally be (e.g.) databases into being file-based. For example, it'd be handy to be able to say gcc -o foo -arch x86 git://git.sourceforge.com/15027957951b64cf874c3557a0f3547bd83b3ff6/targets/main and have the compiler pull sources directly from git itself. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:40, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

One candidate might be (might have been?) IBM VisualAge. I think it used to keep the sources in a database, but I am not sure. And even if it did, I am more looking for implementations that use "compiler magic" instead of physical include files (if you understand what I mean). —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 15:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

No, I really don't know what you mean. The nearest to magic I can think of is the precompiled headers, above; it's my understanding that MSVC++ chews .h files and emits what amounts to its internal parse tree (with lexemes and stored #defines etc.) serialised to a special file format. But for that to be valid the precompiled set has to be self-contained, and it can't be preceded by anything that might change it. As just about any #define can change or mangle subsequent #included text, that's a major limit on what kind of cleverness a compiler can hope to do and still be able to handle all the evil things people do with the preprocessor. I don't think there's any suggestion that header material isn't still going to be text; whether a compiler chooses to do some magical caching (like precompiled headers) should be operationally invisible. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:12, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that such implementations do exist, though I don't have any examples. You don't have to do anything fancy with internal code representations. Just storing the headers as text resources inside the compiler executable would be enough to qualify.

To the people talking about translation units, note that a translation unit is a source file and all the headers it includes, directly and indirectly. In other words, it's the code that gets compiled into a single object file in a separate-compilation environment, hence the name. It's not just a politically correct term for "source file". -- BenRG (talk) 16:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Keeping URL with an image

In Windows 7, when I download an image, the "Downloads folder" tells me the file name and the URL which the image came from. But looking in the folder where I stored the image, I can't find the URL. Is there a convenient way to keep the URL info as a property of the image? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 14:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

You could store it yourself, manually, in the EXIF metadata - right-click on the image file, and in the details tab there are all kinds of fields. You could, for example, chose to paste the URL into the comments field. But I don't know of a browser (or the like) that does this itself, so doing this isn't very convenient. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:06, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be rather difficult to do what you ask. However, here is a different approach. Using the Firefox extension Shelve, you can set up your browser to download images to a separate folder for each website. So, for instance, you would have a folder named 'Flickr', another 'Facebook' and so on. This site has a regexp you can use for this effect. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Listing all non-subpages using regex

Resolved

Hello, what regex do I have to enter here in order to list all pages of the Main namespace that do not contain the character '/'? Tried with [^/]+ but does not work --LoStrangolatore (talk) 16:42, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Found! The unwanted page titles are returned because the regex matches a substring instead of the whole string; ^[^/]+$ works --LoStrangolatore (talk) 19:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

clearing hard drive before i take it to the dump

I want to remove everything on my hard drive before i take it to the electronic waste disposal at the dump. I understand that formatting does not do this because it leaves the files just makes them not visible. I understand that I need to overwrite all the old files. Can I take a huge directory on my computer of files I don't care whether anyone sees or not and copy that directory over and over again until my hard drive is filled to it's max limit with these neutral files? Then I'd be overwriting the 1's and 0's from all of my important files thereby making them completely unrecoverable from anyone who gets a hold of my computer after i drop it off at the e-waste disposal? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.127.151.101 (talk) 20:04, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

DBAN: [16]--Aspro (talk) 20:23, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Instead I'd recommend Hammer: [17]. It's much faster than DBAN (which has to write to the entire disk surface in series) and is more fun to use. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:44, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, DBAN does take time (although one could spend the time waiting to catch up on the Flinstones) but if you too, are direct a descendant of Bamm-Bamm Rubble, then I agree, it is much more in keeping with your nature to use a club-like wiping device – but then no one can salvage and recycle it – so this solution is not green (bad). Doing what feels good does not always mean its good for this planet.--Aspro (talk) 21:04, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why busting the thing up should make it any harder to recycle. Of course it makes it impossible to reuse, but that's different, and only marginally plausible. Who uses old HDDs? --Trovatore (talk) 21:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

? Jet travel is cheap to-day, is it not? In no time at all one can find oneself in a country where Computer recycling is the only means that gives people the opportunity to join the rest of of the civilized world – especially if their uncle has half a billion dollars that they need to get out the their despot-of-a-country. With a computer and internet connection they can then request our bank account details to effect a transfer and save themselves from a life of cruelling and desperate poverty. You sound like an affluent individual – may I pass your details on to some of them?--Aspro (talk) 22:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

For those that have never left what ever continent you live on and think that 'everything' ends up in some landfill some where, then this might come as a surprise to you: B.C. students buy sensitive U.S. defence data for $40 in Africa, Dumped computers exploited by crims--Aspro (talk) 22:46, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Most people would be perfectly fine with an older hard drive. It's not like they're ever going to fill it. If the market in used hard drives is small, it's probably only because people are afraid of leaking their data because they don't know about tools like DBAN. -- BenRG (talk) 16:02, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

"I understand that formatting does not do this because it leaves the files just makes them not visible."

Actually an ordinary ("full") format will overwrite the data, usually only what is called a "quick" format will not. With a new disk you should almost always do a quick format because a full format is likely to be a waste of time. With an old disk it's up to you whether you should do a full one to overwrite the old data. Regardless of how exactly you wipe it all, though, keep in mind that to date there is virtually no proof that more than one pass is worth your time (and that certain less common media may require further concern). ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that a full format writes the whole disk surface. I think it only reads the whole disk surface (to look for bad sectors). A low-level format is another matter, but that requires a drive-specific magic command and I'm not sure most drives even support it these days. -- BenRG (talk) 16:02, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

The major vendors' diagnostic tools have a "write zeros" feature (for example, Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools and Seagate's SeaTools for DOS). You could use this instead of DBAN. As already mentioned, writing zeros is enough to securely erase the drive. -- BenRG (talk) 16:02, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Another option is to encrypt the drive with TrueCrypt using a long, unguessable passphrase, then forget the passphrase. This is somewhat slower, but has the advantage that your computer is still usable during the wiping process. -- BenRG (talk) 16:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

All the talk about recycling and hammers aside, the problem with writing a huge directory of stuff you don't care about is due to slack space... that is files are split up into chunks of varying size (fat 32 historically has 32k chunks I think). If you have a file that's 31 k long, then remaining 1 k won't be overwritten. Or a file that's 1 k will have 31 k unwritten at the end. And different file-system parameters may have different numbers. Moreover, files, like swap space (pagefile in Windows) and temp files, your browser cache, and other areas you might not think of, may have sensitive things, like passwords or social security numbers, bank accounts, etc.... That's why the safest way is to overwrite the disc completely with software as others have suggested. Shadowjams (talk) 02:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

One of these machines will do the trick, but most households don't have one just sitting around in the corner of the loungeroom. HiLo48 (talk) 03:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Relationships in Visio

When modeling a database in Visio, is there a way to make the relationship/arrow start and end at the appropriate entity/table attribute/row? Currently it just goes from any point on one table to any point on the other --178.208.209.16 (talk) 21:07, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying Visio goes from any point you select to any other, which allows you to do what you need, but you would prefer to have it automatically snap to the proper place ? If so, this might be difficult because the matching entity in another table isn't always named the same. If not, then the relationship must be first defined elsewhere.

Or are you saying it just randomly picks a point in the selected table ? If so, that's bad. Can you move the table or arrow afterwards to make the arrow go to the right location ? StuRat (talk) 04:58, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

March 23

How do find a website on Alexa?

I need to find Op7 on Alexa.--UserWOLfan112 Talk 17:11, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Are proxy servers legal in the UK?

Every time I ask these question I get a very confused answer. Please try to give a detailed answer with lots of references to UK law?

We cannot offer legal advice. Please see the legal disclaimer. Contact a lawyer. RudolfRed (talk) 20:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

This question isn't asking for advice though, it's asking for information in a general sense. That is perfectly acceptable, although if you feel that it is not you can bring the issue up on the talk page 82.45.62.107 (talk) 20:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I assume you mean Open proxy. Cyberlaw is still in a state of ever changing flux so I don't think I can add anything different to the fist answer. Richard O'Dwyer has found that just having a proxy in Sweden with a dot com address turned out to be sufficient to get United States extradition papers served on him. So, its no good asking here – I don't know of any authority, other than to point you in the direction of a lawyer. --Aspro (talk) 21:11, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

One of the reason you get a very confused answer is because as explained in previous answers, the question itself is rather confused. Your question is not that different from 'are web servers legal in the UK' or 'is the internet legal in the UK' or even 'are banks legal in the UK'. In fact, as these examples illustrate, even the very basic 'legal in the UK' is rather confusing given the fact the UK has 3 different legal jurisdictions in a number of matters so the answer could depend on what jurisdiction you're referring to. Nil Einne (talk) 15:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

How do I get a dynamic IP address

How do I get a dynamic IP address? And how does wikipedia deal with dynamic ip vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WOLfan112 (talk • contribs) 17:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Whether you have a fixed or dynamic IP address depends on your internet service provider and the contract you have with them. Most large ISP's catering to home users offer both, with a fixed IP coming at a somewhat higher price and a dynamic IP for a smaller price. There is a pretty good chance that you have a dynamic IP address already if you connect to the Internet through a home service that you purchase yourself. If you connect through a business (such as your employer) or a city-provided service you may have a fixed address. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 21:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

As for dynamic IPs, it bans them all, or in some extreme cases ban IP ranges. In the end, it has little effect on Wikipedia, but can interfere with the editing of other IP users on the same network. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:55, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Browsing history

Hello, I have quite the problem. My elderly relatives, who I've taught to use the computer, have me check their user accounts periodically for a variety of issues. Completely by chance, I noticed the title of a website one of the relatives had viewed. The content it contained (based on the title, I certainly did not look) would have been quite explicit. My relatives would be horrified, and I am absolutely certain, beyond a doubt, that they never viewed these sites. I don't even think they would know how to find them, as they have difficulty even accessing Yahoo. A further inspection found several more of these websites on the computer browsing history. Please explain how these could have gotten here... 208.87.126.63 (talk) 21:46, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

One more thing– the search engine history results show no explicit searches, merely the handful of perfectly bland searches that they may have made this month. 208.87.126.63 (talk) 21:55, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Some possibilities:

• It could be someone else using the computer. (Another relative or friend?)
• It could be malware of some sort opening up links to other sites.
• It could be that your relatives do more than you think online. ("Porn finds a way.")

I'm suspecting that the second in the list is potentially the culprit. Do they have anti-virus and anti-malware software that is up to date? It's worth a check. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:11, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

No one has had access to the computer except us. I am a regular here at Wikipedia (I don't feel comfortable revealing my username) and am now a bit concerned about my account's security, as I've accessed it occasionally from this account. I'm considering deleting the relative's computer user account and doing damage control. Thanks, 208.87.126.63 (talk) 22:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Run anti-virus and anti-malware software. Check any plugins that may be installed for the browser. I've known several non-tech savvy people who have seen the ads and pop ups that say "Your computer is infected with a virus!! Click here to clean it now!!" and they do exactly that. And that's when the havoc starts. Dismas|^(talk) 03:18, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

How is it you know search history? Just from the browser history? It's quite possible that they got the computer virused/malwared somehow...it's also possible that whatever method you're using to login to this computer (I assume remotely?) was compromised.

My suggestion would be to try to find out which computers were compromised (use antivirus programs for this), and then to reinstall that computer from the original discs. Then when you set them up new again, put on both anti-virus and also maybe an extension like NoScript (configure it for their usual sites so it won't cause confusion). Shadowjams (talk) 02:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

March 24

Google Voice Recovery Issue

I have an issue with my new Google Voice account.

I know my password and my google voice number. I also have a cell phone attached to the account which i of course know the number to. I dont, however, know the exact username i created. I know it pretty closely and this is one of those things where i am one letter or number off and that is causing me to not be able to log in.

I know Google voice has a recovery thing in which you can send your Google voice number to them and they send a recovery email, but since that email is a google email, i am back to square one because i dont know the username to access that (Gmail and google voice are linked to the same account)

I also am aware of the option to email to a backup account, but since i created this just yesterday, that option is not set up.

Since i know alot of info about the account, it SHOULD be that i could recover this. Is it possible? Does anyone know a solution please?

Thanks!

137.81.118.126 (talk) 01:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit: I solved the issue by hours of guessing :( The issue is resolved but i hope google voice can still offer more options for those who recently created an account. I hope noone else ever has to deal with what i just went through!

137.81.118.126 (talk) 06:06, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Strategies for buying computers

Hi, I'm trying to figure out the best way to buy a desktop computer. I'm looking for a gaming computer that can run Starcraft II (and its future expensions) on the highest settings. As far as price for the same thing goes, would it go:

• buy all the parts and pieces yourself and assemble it together (cheapest)
• buy a computer premade from a brick store (middle)
• buy a computer online choosing all the individual parts and pieces (highest)
• upgrade current computer (not feasible, my desktop computer is from a decade ago)

I know very little about computer hardware, so the first option seems unattainable. My biggest concern is that I'll put it all together and the thing won't turn on, or give an error. Or is it easier than I imagine it to be?

The second option has the advantage of being immediately ready as soon as the purchase is made. But the disadvantage I foresee is that the pre-made computers may have a bunch of bells and whistles that I don't need, like 2 DVD drives or a big enough hard drive to mirror the pirate bay.

The third option seems to be the best way to get exactly what I want, but could possibly be overpriced. The other disadvantage is waiting for shipping. But how much of a price difference would it be between buying it from the store?

As far as price goes, I'm looking for a long-term (10+ years) investment.

As an aside, what sort of specifications and price tags do the computers that professional Starcraft II players have? That could help with deciding what to buy.

Thanks very much.--99.179.20.157 (talk) 03:06, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Can one be a professional Starcraft II player ? I'd say check out the brick-and-mortar stores, price the computer closest to your needs, then check to see if online build-it yourself computers can beat it, shipping included. Considering that a stray spark from your hand can destroy the motherboard, it seems foolish to attempt to build your own computer unless you're an electronics expert. StuRat (talk) 03:20, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Thanks for the advice, that does seem like the best bet.--99.179.20.157 (talk) 03:38, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

From what I've seen, it doesn't make sense to buy the parts to build one yourself these days (years ago that was a viable option). In recent years I've mostly got my computers from local retail stores. However, for my current one I went to an online retailer. The reason is that it is so difficult to move to a new computer on a Windows system that I want to delay that as long as possible, so get a powerful computer that I can use for a long time. The ones in local retail stores are low-end or middle tier machines. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that it still can make a lot of sense to build your own computer, depending on what you want to go in it. It's really not difficult to assemble a computer - think of a LEGO set with about twelve parts. There exist lots of handy video guides for it too [18] [19] [20] (those videos take about 2 hours to watch - if you think you might want to assemble your own computer, or even know more about what goes into a computer, it would be good to watch them). Especially for higher end machines, it can be advantageous to pick your own components so you don't end up paying a bunch for something you don't need, and then still having to buy a better graphics card (for example). Tom's Hardware has a lot (perhaps confusingly so) of data on how different components perform, and such. For example, it has lists of graphics cards - a $150 says that it will play most games at moderate resolution on high settings. You might also want to check out their quarterly system builder marathons - check out maybe the last 3 or 4 (older than that, and the components are different) and see what they put into gaming computers at different prices. The $1000 computers should have no problem playing Starcraft II at good resolutions and high settings. No computer is going to be able to play new games at high settings in ten years, but pretty much any computer you buy today will probably be able to do basic tasks (web browsing, e-mail, word-processing) in ten years. Buddy431 (talk) 17:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I would argue that 10 years is an incredibly long time in computer-land. Moore's Law tells us to expect that the power of cheaply available processors would go up by between 32 and 128 times in 10 years. Computer games tend to be written for the available hardware, therefore you should expect to have to upgrade your computer at some point if you want to keep up with releases. There are two ways to do this - either to buy a new computer, or to upgrade the components one at a time. Obviously, by doing the former, you would have to lay out a hefty chunk of cash each time you upgrade, whereas with the latter you could upgrade one component each time you have funds available. My own recommendation would be to go down the gradual upgrade path. If you want to do that, I would recommend building your computer yourself. That way, you will know it (literally) inside out, and be able to easily identify the best parts to upgrade each time. Don't be scared of DIY computing - there are many many good teaching resources out there, and the best way of learning about how computers work is to get your hands dirty. Whilst it is more than likely that the first time you power your PC on you will get some sort of horrible, confusing error message, you can Google the message and find that someone else has had exactly the same problem, and has left instructions on how to fix it. Then you will know how to fix it next time. Buddy's links above will give you a great start, but let me recommend my own favourite resource - http://lifehacker.com/5828747/how-to-build-a-computer-from-scratch-the-complete-guide. You can search around on that site for more helpful guides to computer building. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

draw something

Does anyone know how i can get this draw something program onto my phone? I cant get the apple or android version on my silly £10 phone so i was told to look on favebook but after signing in there i found nothing but a few pictures frim it. Anyone able to provide me with a better link? Also the mobile version of this page doesnt work, the adk question button is inaccesable. Someone should fix that 82.132.138.157 (talk) 17:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

What sort of phone do you have (make/model)? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Umm... Samsung? Thats all it says. Its from tesco if that helps. 82.132.138.157 (talk) 18:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Unfortunately your phone is not compatible with Draw Something, which requires either the Android or iOS operating system. Some (in fact, quite a lot) of Samsung phones run Android, but some of the cheaper and/or older models run Samsung's own operating system. I would hazard a guess that it's also your phone's internet browser which is causing your problems with this page, too. It works fine on my (Android) phone. Sorry to bring you the bad news. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:18, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok. I can still get it to work on the desktop version of this page hence how i can ask this. Any chance i can get the program to run on my proper computer, didnt i hear somewhere that android stuff is compatable with windows? 82.132.138.157 (talk) 18:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The answer is pretty much 'no'. Draw Something is designed to be used on a phone, so it won't really work on a desktop machine. Having said that, there is an Android Emulator, which basically gets an imitation phone running in a window on your computer. However, it's aimed at people developing apps for Android phones, and the instructions are a little technical. If you feel like giving it a try, go to http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html - but don't expect it to run Draw Something well, or indeed at all. That's not what it's designed for - as I say, it's aimed at programmers developing new apps. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:27, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, it seems I must apologise. There is a PC version, found here. Although it's called Draw My Thing, it's the same game, developed by the same people. It's not clear to me whether you can play against someone using the phone-based Draw Something version with this, but at least you can play it. Sorry for not spotting it sooner. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:44, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The Entry On Microsoft Dynamics Is Unclear-- Can Someone Fix It?

I don't need an answer back this is just to let you know of the problem in one of your entries. I use Wikipedia often in my work to get a better understanding of topics with which I am not completely familiar. When I looked up your entry on Microsoft Dynamics to see if it was a cloud based service I got a very confusing description of the technology that never answered my question. As I said, I don't need an answer back, I've already had to look elsewhere as my question was time sensitive, I just thought you should know so someone could fix it. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.28.153.202 (talk) 18:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. One of the beauties of Wikipedia is that you can add any missing information yourself. If you have the time, simply go to the article and click the edit button. You don't need to sign up for an account, or log in. However, I understand the time pressures on you, so maybe you could just leave a link here to the information you found to answer your question and I'm sure someone will be able to add it to the article if it's found to be useful. Thanks for helping us improve Wikipedia. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

PHP - getting data across pages without forms

In PHP how can I get data across pages without using forms? For example, I've got a page which accesses a MySQL database and prints out a table of all the employees and now what I want is to have each employees name to be a hyperlink to, say, EmployeePage.php where you will be able to see certain information about that particular employee. So how can I get data (in this case the employeeID) to the page. --TuringMachine17 (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The easiest way to do what you want in this example is to modify the URL variables. E.g. instead of just linking to EmployeePage.php, you link to EmployeePage.php?employeeId=4040 or something like that. Any information after the question mark is known a URL variable and can be accessed as if it were sent via the GET form method (e.g. $_GET["employeeID"] would equal 4040 in this example). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

You could store the value in a cookie, and then the other page could read the cookie to get the value. RudolfRed (talk) 21:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

That would require both javascript and a page load, so it's highly discouraged. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 21:53, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

And it's just overly complicated for the situation. I don't think the task here is to shower the OP with every technical hack they could use to get this done when there's an incredibly straightforward and standard way to do this that they just don't happen to know about, because they're a new programmer. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:40, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay using the URL and $_GET method from above is sort of what I was thinking of. I do know about $_POST and $_GET it's just that I've only ever learned to used them in HTML forms where you explicitly use post or get and compared to that typing in the URL with the variable myself seems like a bit of a hack --TuringMachine17 (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not a hack; it's completely standard. Nearly every site on the web uses something like this, including Wikipedia, Google, you name it. Aside from being the de facto way to send data to other pages without using forms, it also means you can create linkable database queries like this. Note that in that URL, everything after the question mark is parsed as GET data by the server. (The syntax is ?var1=val1&var2=val2 and so on — the first one uses a question mark, every one afterwards uses ampersands.) --Mr.98 (talk) 14:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

As Mr.98 says it's fairly common to do it this way. (For one it doesn't rely on cookies that might have been turned off in the browser.) One thing to note however. If there should actually be any employees that "unwanted" people should not be able to see information about, you would have to take this into account in the EmployeePage.php. Reason is of course, (which is much more visible when doing it this way) is that anyone can modify the URL variable in their browser (or script or whatever) and enter/type in an employeeid you never gave a direct link to on your original page. But (simple) security issues like this might be out of scope for your original question :) -Laniala (talk) 14:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Though, technically one can spoof POST requests too, without too much difficulty. So the security issue is a general one, not specific to GET requests, though they are exceptionally easy to modify. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:02, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

March 25

External hard drive problem

I've been struggling with a problem with an external hard drive for nearly three weeks. It is a 6TB drive with USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. It is my first eSata drive, I have only one computer with an eSATA port, and I have only one eSATA cable. It is by a major manufacturer and I got it from a reputable dealer. I use it (at least try to) on eSATA (USB 2 is too slow for 6TB).

The first one had problems - it would get to about 2.19TB and then slow to a crawl. At first it would transfer at 80-120MB/sec, but then it would drop down to under 4MB/sec. I ran their diagnostics and it locked up at about 77%. I got a replacement. It had the same problem, except that this time the diagnostics locked up at about 74%.

I got a third one, and it has problems. It passed the diagnostics 100%. But it drops down to under 3MB/sec for a while and then speed up. It did that a few times, then it dropped the speed down, and did not speed back up. This occurred a lot earlier than the 2.19TB where the problem occurred on the other two.

I've tried copying from a different disk to this one and writing to it from memory only - same problem either way.

I don't have another computer with an eSATA port or cable to test those.

I hooked it up to USB 2.0, and it is slow, but at least consistent. But USB 2 won't give the performance needed for the application.

One thing about the problem at 2.19TB - it has 512-byte clusters and 2^32 clusters is 2.199TB, so I have wondered if there is a design flaw with the eSATA interface when it gets to 2^32 clusters.

The seller will not take back computer equipment that has been opened. The maker thinks it is a "system problem".

So, where is this problem likely to be:

1. my eSATA port
2. the eSATA cable
3. the HD (eSATA interface)
4. Other Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:11, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Do you use Windows XP? This article explains that Windows XP will not handle disks over 2.19TB. Newer operating systems can use the disk, although it may not be used to boot from - only for storage. The article also says 'your system's SATA controller must also be designed to recognize 4KB blocks', but I'm afraid someone else will need to explain that - I'm not really sure what it could mean. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The bottom post on this page (the one by 'tfontaine') seems to offer a step-by-step solution. I can't verify if it will solve the problem or not, but you may wish to try it. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:52, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm using Windows 7. I had done the things there - the dick is partitioned to 6TB and formatted. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Accessing a web page

On List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Norte, the fifth reference there is a problem accessing; when I open the page it gives me a 505 error. Is there any way I can gain access to the page? The URL is at [21]. Albacore (talk) 16:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

ftp://geoftp.ibge.gov.br/organizacao_territorial/divisao_territorial/2008/dtb_2008.zip -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

gif breaking

They say that gifs only can have 256 colors... but I've seen images that have broke that law... they've cheated, so my question is. How there are images (animated gifs) that have 16,777,216 colors (Maybe they can have alpha channel??) and how do I make one?? 190.84.182.165 (talk) 17:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)