Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

October 1

copyright infringe of newspapers

Hi.. there are many apps available which fetches news articles from newspaper websites. for example 360news, news hunt, pulse etc. I want to know are these apps not infringing copyright of newspaper websites? I am also interested in developing a kind of these app, what legal aspect should I consider? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.196.80.4 (talk) 02:37, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

These kind of apps may be relying on fair use, in a way that Google News does. But see that article for some challenges Google News has had. Wikipedia can't give you legal advice about how much use you can make, if any, and still have that be "fair". -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:39, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Web page irregularity

At http://www.polishpod101.com/polish-word-lists/?page=4, the audio file for "X-ray of a chest" in number 87 says "The boss is blaming the worker". Is that a sign that the website has been hacked? Is the security of visitors at risk?
—Wavelength (talk) 02:57, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It's more likely a bad joke of someone working on the site who isn't pleased with their boss (!) or it could just be a mistake. But in any case, as long as you don't download anything from the site or enter in sensitive information, you're fine (if it is hacked, which I personally don't think so.) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:37, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It's even more likely that the person who set up the page simply linked to the wrong audio file. Probably in one of the more advanced examples there is a cartoon of a boss blaming a worker. Looie496 (talk) 05:42, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Feedback sent to wordlist(at)innovativelanguage.com --CiaPan (talk) 08:00, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Excel function or formula to total items

Say that I have an Excel spreadsheet that looks something like this below.

Name	Average	Grade
John Smith	67	D
Jane Doe	91	A
Mary Jones	53	F
Carl Swanson	77	C
Ed Robinson	84	B
Lisa Adams	61	D
Frank Martin	98	A
Cheryl Graham	74	C
Steven Granger	52	F
Pamela Drake	88	B

Is there any easy function or formula in Excel that would count how many A's, how many B's, how many C's, etc.? Say that I want a chart that looks like the chart below. Is there a function or formula that I can put into the second column below that will total up the grades correctly?

Grade Range	Number of Students
Total Number of A's
Total Number of B's
Total Number of C's
Total Number of D's
Total Number of F's

Note that this would be a dynamic (not a static) spreadsheet, as the grades are constantly changing throughout the semester. So, I cannot simply "sort" the grade column and do a "count" function of the appropriate cell ranges. Nor do I want to constantly have to do a manual count and manually enter the totals.

Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you want to use countif. So, e.g. the count of Bs is =COUNTIF(C2:C200, "=B"), depending on what range the actual letter grades occupy. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:40, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Finlay is absolutely correct; just a couple of points: the equal sign by 'B' is not needed (though harmless) - the formula =COUNTIF(C2:C200, "B") would give the same result; secondly, the 2nd parameter could be replaced by a cell reference or formula giving the grade in question, so for example if 'Total Number of A's' is in cell A2, then to avoid hard-coding the grades you could put =COUNTIF($C$2:$C$200, MID(A1,17,1)) in B2 and copy it down (dollar signs on the source range to stop it being change by the copy). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. I will try this and see what happens. To AndrewWTaylor: I understood half of your above reply; the other half went completely over my head. (I should add that I am no Excel expert, by the way. I just know the basics of Excel.) Can you please clarify what you meant? I fully followed this part of your reply: "Finlay is absolutely correct; just a couple of points: the equal sign by 'B' is not needed (though harmless) - the formula =COUNTIF(C2:C200, "B") would give the same result;". Everything after that was completely lost on me. Can you please explain it in another way? I understand the use of dollar signs and the difference between absolute references versus relative references. I have no idea what you meant by "hard-coding the grades". And when you used the function "MID", I had no idea what that was all about. Please let me know. Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

For ease of this discussion, let's say that my first chart above is Columns A, B, C, with Rows 1 through 11. My second chart above is Columns D and E, with Rows 1 through 6. In other words, on my spreadsheet, the second chart would be immediately to the right of the first chart. Thank you! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Andrew is using the MID function to parse strings like Total Number of A's, extracting the 17th letter - the A - doing things like this makes sense if you had to handle lots of different grade letters (not just the usual five) and if you promised to never change the wording of the Total Number of A's cells. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:53, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Yes, that makes sense. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to all. This worked out perfectly for me. And it was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:36, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

A much more flexible way of dealing with tabular information is by using Pivot tables. If you select all 3 columns, then in Excel chose the "Insert...Pivot table" menu option and clicked okay, it would bring up a new sheet containing a highlighted area and some boxes in the margin you can drag and drop (the boxes will be "Name", "Average" and "Grade"). If you drag and drop the "Grade" box into the "Row labels" as well as into the "Values" section (this might be slightly different depending on your version of Excel), then it will immediately pop up a count of the grades for you. Pivot tables are IMMENSELY powerful, just by dragging and dropping, you can obtain splits and sub-splits of data in almost any configuration. Also, as you update the file, you only have to hit the refresh button to update the pivot table with the new analysis. It doesn't only do counts of occurrences, it can do sums, averages etc. Cheers Zunaid 09:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I never heard of that. I will have to try it out. Thanks for the info! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:48, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Find out which online application is sending spam tweets from my account?

Hi all, I hardly ever use Twitter, but was recently informed that in the past couple days, my account has been retweeting spammy tweets. I believe it's unlikely that anyone has compromised my account (my long password is still the same, though I just changed it to be sure), but think that it's quite likely that one of the "applications" that has read-write privileges on my account has done this. The word "application" here seems to be a Twitter-jargon use of the word -- I'm referring here to sites such as Slate.com, which, if you choose to log in with your Twitter account, grant themselves read-write privileges, presumably so you can tweet from Slate about how great they are.

I can certainly revoke all privileges from all applications (they are only a handful, and they mostly seem benign, like Slate and Pintrest), but is there any way to know which one sent the tweet? I can't seem to find any metadata associated with the tweets that say this. Surely Twitter must know?

Thanks, — Sam 63.138.152.139 (talk) 16:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

They used to tell this to you, but they took that out of their official clients. The only way I've been able to figure this out is pretty complicated. Hopefully someone has a simpler way.

• Go to the Twitter API Console,
• Set "Service" dropdown to "Tweets/Statuses/show{id}.json"
• Set the auth dropdown to auth.
• Click on the template tab and input the id number of the bad tweet. (You can find it at the end of the URL of that particular tweet.)
• Click the "Send" button.
• In the results panel, the "Source" field will tell you the app used.

For example, by putting in tweet id 385090824079290368, I learn that this tweet was made using TweetDeck.

There must be an easier way. APL (talk) 17:44, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Huh, the spammy tweets were retweets, and I can't seem to get the id of *my* retweet. Getting the message details only shows the id of the original tweet, which doesn't help. Hmmmm... Thanks anyway. — Sam 63.138.152.139 (talk) 16:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

csrss.exe?

When I google "csrss.exe" I find this page, which says

csrss.exe is a process which is registered as a trojan. This Trojan allows attackers to access your computer from remote locations, stealing passwords, Internet banking and personal data. This process is a security risk and should be removed from your system. We strongly recommend that you run a FREE registry scan to identify csrss.exe related errors.

I also find this page, which says:

This is the user-mode portion of the Win32 subsystem (with Win32.sys being the kernel-mode portion). Csrss stands forclient/server run-time subsystem and is an essential subsystem that must be running at all times. Csrss is responsible for console windows, creating and/or deleting threads, and some parts of the 16-bit virtual MS-DOS environment.

and this page and this page, which says:

This is the user-mode portion of the Win32 subsystem; Win32.sys is the kernel-mode portion. Csrss stands for Client/Server Run-Time Subsystem, and is an essential subsystem that must be running at all times.

The first page seems to say csrss.exe is malware; the others say it's essential. Can someone resolve the seeming conflict? Is the first page a fraud? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It's an essential part of Windows. As Client/Server Runtime Subsystem says "some virus hoax emails claim that csrss.exe is a virus". But you also get cases where a file with the same name (but different location) as an import system file really is some kind of malware. I know nothing about the first page you cite, but note that there are some dodgy websites which claim to do scans for malware which in fact do the opposite, infecting you with even more. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

For more on what Finlay mentioned about those sketchy sites which claim to be "helping you get rid of malware" (and similar tactics), see Rogue security software and Scareware. These things are nasty. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 02:52, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

The text on the first web page is boilerplate with "csrss.exe" placed in the blanks. There are thousands of other autogenerated pages on that site with the same text. They're just trying to hijack web searches and get you to download their software. -- BenRG (talk) 20:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

By a strange coincidence, I had a telephone call just this afternoon from a scammer in India who showed me the copy of csrss.exe on my computer that lacked the Microsoft label and so (according to him) it was malware. He also directed me to a different website that explained about the "csrss malware". He then wanted me to give him access to my computer so that he could help me remove this malware. I strung him along for a while (because I wasn't busy and I wanted to know how the scam worked), but he wasn't giving anything away except his location, and he wasn't very pleased when I refused to give him access. He wanted me to go to www.ammyy.com which is a (possibly genuine) remote access website, though if they are a genuine company, I wonder why they paid Namecheap.com to hide their details when they registered the domain name. Unfortunately, I don't have a virtual machine, and I didn't want to risk my computer by allowing remote access, so I couldn't find his IP address. In the past, I've been puzzled to see several copies of csrss running. How do I find out which software called each one? Dbfirs 18:51, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... I remember I was reading a lot about RATs and such here last year, and IIRC there was a page that mentioned this exact scam, all the way down to getting people to install Ammyy. Odd because that article is a redirect to Comparison of remote desktop software, yet there is no information to be found on it at that page. I'm positive it was on there around this time last year, however I could not locate the edit which removed it. Strange. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:03, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2

Google changed?

Until a few minutes ago, when I went to Google it showed me a bar across the top with Images, Maps, YouTube, etc. It was very convenient. Now you have to click on a 3x3 image of dots to get to some of those things, and you have to scroll to get to some of them. Also, Google Images is not on the list. Is there a way to get Google back to the old way? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

and News - that was the one I used the most. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

To the left of the 3x3 grid I see the word "images", and clicking that brings me to image search. Under "settings" at the bottom, I don't see a way to restore the old behavior, but maybe there is if you sign in. Also, under the settings list is a feedback link. RudolfRed (talk) 02:23, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

To the left of the 3x3 dots on mine (Firefox and IE), it shows my login name. As you suggested, I found "feedback" and sent some. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

For me (not logged in) it shows the old way in IE9 but this weird new way in FF24 (just updated from 23 a second ago, when I clicked on it to test this.) So I assume it only happens if your browser is up to date... --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 02:55, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

IE10 shows it the new way for me. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:55, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

A related question came up her on 21 September 'Chrome Apps'. Your version is probably now '29.0.1547.76 m' or '30.0.1599.66 m' (literally just updated, again!) (prior Ver. '29.0.1547.66'). But you're not using Chrome are you.
• It does what you say 'Bubba' when you select a new tab (whether signed in or not), however if I select Google.com.au from my shortcut bar (Or type it into the address bar) the black 'nav bar' re-appears. In .au guise it now 'also' includes a 'Grey Bar' right across the bottom. (Google.au still has the 'old' more 3d looking logo too, but the 'new tab' version has the 'flat' logo??).
• More general info from googlesystem.blogspot.com.au here and here . Official Google blog here--220 of ^Borg 12:05, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Side note: As of right now (22:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)), IE9 has now switched to the new google. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 22:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

How do I log out of Google now ?

Under this new setup, it's not obvious how. StuRat (talk) 14:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Click on the image in the very top right corner. You should see a "Sign Out" button in the dialogue that appears. Rojomoke (talk) 15:03, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I assume by "image" you mean my Google user name. Yes, clicking on that seems to work now, but it didn't yesterday. That was the first thing I tried. I guess they just fixed it. Thanks. StuRat (talk) 15:44, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I've got my picture there. I wasn't sure what would appear if you didn't have an image associated with your acvcount. Rojomoke (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. StuRat (talk) 19:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Is there a stereotype that programmers are addicted to Mountain Dew?

If so, why?

Not really a stereotype literally, but there are jokes saying programmers are devices which convert caffeine to code. Mountain Dew has more caffeine than Coke or Pepsi. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a ripoff of Paul Erdős's line about a mathematician converting coffee into theorems. ("Coffee" was a euphemism, by the way.) --Trovatore (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

And he was right ;-) Ssscienccce (talk) 20:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I think of Mountain Dew more for gamers, who don't have time to stop for food or they will lose the game. Programmers can usually take a break for food. StuRat (talk) 18:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm a programmer of 35 years standing and I once tried a Mountain Dew and it made me very ill. I'll stick to my regular latte thanks! --TrogWoolley (talk) 19:19, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd agree with Stu that Mountain Dew is seen as more of a gamer thing, and add that Jolt Cola is the choice of programmers as depicted in the wonderful documentary Hackers, starring Angelina Jolie. Recury (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

To the question in the header (note the question was over the existence of the stereotype not the accuracy of the stereotype), yes [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] all found with a simple search. Nil Einne (talk) 19:35, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I haven't seen Jolt cola in probably over 15 years.... is it still around? I remember it tasting like distilled pepsi. Shadowjams (talk) 20:12, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Mountain Dew and Kit Kats? It's a wonder all programmers aren't assumed to be fat nerds scared of sunlight...It was revealed recently that Google programmers and coders snack on Kit Kats when working late on Android. That's the publicised story of why the next Android version will be called Kit Kat anyhow. Not completely off topic...Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 20:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

One stereotype I'm familiar with is caffeine pills for gamers. I guess this could also apply to programmers on a tight schedule, having to work late at night to meet a deadline. Personally I have never heard the Mountain Dew one... though then again I'm only an amateur programmer, and a retro gamer! ;) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 22:52, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Have you ever tried caffeine pills? I would not like to try and code on caffeine pills (only an amateur coder myself btw). The two times I took caffeine pills I would not have considered myself competent to cross the road safely, let alone do anything which requires intense thought. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 22:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I can't say that I have; and after hearing your anecdote, the prospect is even less appealing to me than ever before! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 02:51, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I had the misfortune of trying caffeine gum, which apparently was made by mixing in raw coffee grounds, and tasted like it. It had the effect of keeping my eyes open, but I was in a stupor, not good for much of anything (and the first wise-ass who says "So how's that any different from normal ?" gets a black eye). StuRat (talk) 15:30, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know about stereotypes, but Diet Coke is the most popular drink among the programmers I've known. It has the caffeine but not the sugar. Looie496 (talk) 15:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

October 3

Facebook

Hey! I have a huge doubt. Probably it is the dumbest question ever made but... If registration in Facebook is free, how is that the company earn money? Yes, like I said, the dumbest question ever made by someone here at the Ref Desk. Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 14:14, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

One word: Advertising. Facebook allows companies to take out adverts on their platform. They charge the companies advertising fees. Companies want to advertise on Facebook because they feel they have access to Facebook's 1 billion members through a number of mechanisms. For example, if you "like" something from a company they can paste a comment - I mean advert - on your wall with the idea that you liked the product so might go out and buy it and so might your friends (I'm not a Facebook member, so maybe someone else can confirm that part). For a company, it is a cheap way of getting their advert in front of millions of people, and each time Facebook rakes it in. Astronaut (talk) 14:52, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Astronaut :D Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 15:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The same thing is true of other sites as well, notably Google. Advertising is a huge portion of their business. Dismas|^(talk) 21:42, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is an adage here which applies rather neatly: "If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold". I would also add that the particular attraction of Facebook and Google to advertisers is that they know so much about their users - advertisers can target their ads quite specifically, ensuring maximum efficiency (i.e. sales per ad) e.g. they are not restricted to "people who watch a particular TV program", they can go for stuff as specific as "female extreme sports enthusiasts aged 30-35" etc. etc. See targetted advertising for detailsEquisetum (talk | contributions) 22:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Some companies (I think one of them was Instagram), do not offer ads, nor charge their users, but live with the hope of selling the company to someone who could monetize the company. OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

And for those annoyed with ads, there is always Adblock. However it is good practice IMHO to disable it on sites which you support. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 02:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Dimensions of central screw arrangement of monitor mounting plate

Hello,

I realize this is rather a long shot, but does anyone happen to know where I might find the dimensions of the central screw hole arrangement of this type of monitor mounting plate (i.e., the spacing of the four screw holes in a cross arrangement around the central hole)? This type of plate is used to attach monitors to stands by several different monitor manufacturers, so I suspect it's based on a standard (perhaps the VESA standard that defines the family of VESA mounts includes this plate as well).

I should mention that I've already tried contacting the manufacturer of a specific monitor I have that makes use of this type of mounting plate. As you might guess, that attempt has yet to yield useful information.

Any help would be appreciated! 142.20.133.199 (talk) 15:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

MIDI files

Is there any program/software on earth which could be used for converting mp3 files to MIDI? I really need it to convert a song to use it on Guitar Pro. Thanks! Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 20:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

In general, a skilled person is needed to reverse-engineer an MP3-formatted song and create a MIDI cover of it. There exist low-quality automatic converters, such as Dream MP3 to MIDI Converter, that you could try. --Mark viking (talk) 20:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

This has been brought up many times before, see this thread and the many other ref desk links that were provided in that old conversation (the last reply.) It's really too bad that there isn't a reliable and effective way to convert MP3 to MIDI. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 02:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Going with the above, there is nothing that's going to do it and do a good job of it- it'd, most likely, be easier to write the midi yourself than fix the output of anything claiming to do mp32midi. However, for many songs, a midi version is likely to exist and be freely available online; I'm not sure if there's a copyright issue lurking in that, so if you have concerns about such, I have no idea.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:16, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. And also, instrumental songs probably would yield a slightly better output MIDI; as vocals just further complicate things. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 22:19, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem is, MIDI is like a player piano roll, while MP3 is like a phonographic record. This "conversion" is somewhat like playing a song for a computer, then having it make a musical score. While some audio digital signal processing can be used to make computerized guesses, this problem still requires a human to do solve it well. Mentioned above, this is basically a problem of reverse engineering. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:08, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

'git' on a command line

I downloaded the Pywikibot, and used the command prompt to run login.py. While it successfully logs in, it complains that "'git' is not recognized as an internal or external command..." Is 'git' a valid command or not? -- Ypnypn (talk) 23:10, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Not on Windows. Maybe on another operating system. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:40, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

See Git (software). A command line git client is probably called "git" or "git.exe" depending on how your operating system specifies executable extensions. You need to install such a client.-gadfium 01:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

October 4

Car charger needed

I have a gasoline-powered car I don't drive in winter, stored in the garage. The battery is a problem, though. It apparently has stuff running all the time which drains the battery in a couple weeks. Now, I could disconnect the battery, but that causes it's own problems, with the alarm going off when I reconnect, the clock and other computer stuff all resetting, etc. Or I can be sure to run it once a week to charge it, but that wastes gasoline and is a pain. What I'd really like is a charger I can plug in, say to the cigarette lighter, all winter, which will provide minimal charging, just enough to keep it from going dead. Unfortunately, the chargers I've found are for quick charging, and will cook the battery if left on full-time. So, does the type of charger I want exist ? StuRat (talk) 15:21, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

This is called trickle charging or float charging. There exist such chargers, Deltran makes one, but I couldn't give a recommendation for a particular brand. --Mark viking (talk) 15:51, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, I will Google "trickle car charger" and hope I don't find one with Dick Trickle's face plastered on it. :-) StuRat (talk) 15:56, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

UPDATE: The ones I found all seem to have too high of a max voltage. I'm looking for something like 12.7 V max, but haven't had any luck finding it. The trickle chargers I've found are for charging overnight, whereas I need one that will charge (or rather counter the natural discharge) over a couple weeks. StuRat (talk) 18:41, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

You could just try a regulated 12Vdc power supply (eg a old phone charger or something) and put a 100 ohm resistor and a diode in series (Kathode to the battery +ve terminal). The diode would prevent anything happening until the battery went below 11.3V and prevent a charged battery damaging the chasrger. Below 11.3V a maximum of 113mA would be available into a 0V battery and into, say, an 11V battery you would get 3mA which may be enough to keep everything alive. -- SGBailey (talk) 19:16, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'd prefer an off-the-shelf solution. How about this: [10] ? It's 6 watt solar panel designed specifically for charging car batteries, etc. I'm thinking at 6 watts there's no way it could fry the battery. How does that relate to the voltage, and how long would it take to charge a 12-volt car battery at that rate ? (I'm looking for a couple weeks.) StuRat (talk) 19:26, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Float charger or storage charger are good keywords for what you want. Katie R (talk) 19:29, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

For some reason, these seem less easy to find in the US than in the UK. Amazon in the UK do these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/tag/battery%20conditioner/products. That should give you something to look for. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:10, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Windows card dragging program

Does there exist a windows (XP) program that will show 52 cards and allow you to manually drag them around the screen? Ideally with a double click to "turn them over" between face and back?

I haven't found anything with google.

I presumably could do it with 52 paint windows on the desktop, or maybe better with 52 images embedded into an excel worksheet. The latter sounds the most promising, especially if I can make them auto-align to the cell grid. Could VBE do the face/back thing somehow?

Any suggestions for a low effort solution? (An alternative is a pack of cards and bluetak on a wall...)

-- SGBailey (talk) 19:07, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

What are you trying to do ? Is this the first step in writing a card game program ? StuRat (talk) 19:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Use it as a teaching aid for a bridge course. -- SGBailey (talk) 21:40, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if Microsoft PowerPoint can be set up to do this. Pretty sure it can actually. Not sure about the 'dragging around the window' bit. However 52 sequential cards (or Powerpoint 'slides') and 'backs' would be easy, assuming you know how to use the program? I think a 'master slide' with 52 images linked to 52 'cards' (as you were thinking for Excel) is also possible.

Seems you are intending to use this directly for teaching, but as a 'handout' too? Powerpoint would allow you to print it easily in multiple formats, and as an executable file to give to students if wanted. --220 of ^Borg 01:13, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

List of flashcard software may give some help. (Found by Googling "windows flash card program free" by the way) --220 of ^Borg 08:12, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

October 5

My Annoying Keyboard Problem...

This happens to me from time to time, and over the years I am suprised I never discovered how this occurs and how to fix it. Basically what happens is: I hit some sort of button combination, and then (among other things) my keyboard's layout changes. Instead of typing " when I hit '+shift, I get ``, and several other annoyances. Also I just noticed now that it appears to be local to the browser. It is happening to me right now in FF24 in another window, but I am typing this on IE9 and it is not effected... so my question is: how do I change it back (without closing everything down, which I already know works), and how do I prevent it from happening again? Thanks! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you've changed the input language of the keyboard. I do this occasionally too. I don't know of a permanent fix, but the short term one is jsut to change it back. If you are using a windows computer, it should be a little keyboard icon near the clock on the task bar at the bottom. Clicking it would give you a handful of language options. Mingmingla (talk) 03:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah! That was what it was - it was switched from US to Canadian French (those are the only ones displayed besides "Canadian Multiligual Standard".) And now I'll know for the next time it happens. Thanks! :) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:47, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

The default keyboard shortcut to switch keyboards is left shift+alt, so you're probably accidentally hitting it. You can change the shortcut by right-clicking the tray icon and picking "Settings...", then going to "Advanced Key Settings". Effovex (talk) 04:44, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Àh! Thàt`s vèry nèàt! Ànd thàt's cèrtàinly whàt wàs hàppèning! Thànks! :) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Updating Ghost Recon Future Soldier PC

(edit conflict) I have been trying to get this newly installed game working. Won't go into all the gory details yet but I have used at least 1.8 Gb on downloading patches & 'updates' that haven't worked. (from a quick look at the forums it sounds like a common problem that is not going to be fixed! )
The website here says:

"To ensure the best multiplayer experience, please make sure to download and install the following patches for GRFS PC. You won’t be able to play the game without them. " — With links to 6 patches.

• Can anyone tell me what the total file size of all these patches is? (they don't say anything about size on the web page. Typical! ) Or suggest an easy way to find out?
• I'm not at this moment planning to play multilayer anyway, so are these patches required for off-line too?
• Would I be better off asking at the Entertainment desk? --220 of ^Borg 04:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

This FF addon: here might be of some help, though I haven't tested it (edit: and now looking at it further, it might only be useful to determine the size of a web page, not what you are downloading off the page...) If you don't get any useful answers in a few days then you could re-ask or transfer the question to /E, but due to the technical nature of the question I don't know if you'd get any better answers there (unless you find a gamer who's been through the same thing.) Sorry I couldn't be more helpful! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Gadgets Problem

ACTUALLY I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MY GADGETS i.e I USE TO CLICK ON THE GADGET I NEED TO GET ON MY LAPTOP DESKTOP BUT IT DO NOT OCCUR COMPLETELY ON MY PC .

• FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN I CLICK ON THE GADGET "CLOCK" ONLY THE CLOCK POINTERS WILL APPEAR ON MY PC,EVEN I COULD NOT FIND THE NUMBERS IN IT .
• WHEN I CLICK ON "CALENDER" IT WILL DOESN'T APPEAR ON MY PC ,but the "CLOSE" BOX AND THE "DRAG GADGET" BOX WILL APPEAR .
• ALSO, IF I CLICK ON "CPU METER" GADGET ONLY A BOX, WHICH DOESN'T SHOW ANY METER INDICATIONS WILL APPEAR.

ACTUALLY ALL THESE GADGETS USED TO WORK PERFECTLY AT THE BEGINNING WHEN I PURCHASED THE PC BUT LATER, ON SOME DAY THE PROBLEM HAS ARRIVED .PLEASE GIVE THE SOLUTION. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.66.146.88 (talk) 05:53, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
♦ Bullets added for clarity 220 of ^Borg

I don't have the answer, but please don't use all caps, it's internet for screaming- and hard on the eyes.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)With the small amount of information given, my best suggestion is to turn the PC off, and then on again and see if that helps.
Regards -ƒ-220 of ^Borg 06:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Concur with the above; and also in my experience, gadgets can be pretty finnicky, some of mine dissapeared randomly after four years a few months back... among other anomalies. I'd outright get rid of the toolbar if I wasn't set on getting a replacement for my old laptop by the end of the year! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:22, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

What just happened?

Today, I log in into my account on my laptop and it was saying preparing the desktop. BTW, I have Windows Vista Home Premium. After that, I check that I have my word processor, spreadsheet and powerpoint programs and Mozilla Firefox. When I check my downloads folder, all my files, whether PDF, music or other files that I downloaded were all gone. I even check my document files, whether spreadsheets, word documents or other fils were also gone and the links that I bookmarked or visited in the history on Mozilla Firefox were all gone. then, a bubble pop up saying about this was temporary account. What just happened? I don't get it. is there website that explains it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.40.105 (talk) 15:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

For some reason (that Microsoft struggle to adequately explain) Windows very occasionally fails to locate your own profile (your account settings, My documents, etc.) and manufacturers an empty default profile instead. First turn the computer off and try to log in again. If you still get the temporary profile (bizarrely, Windows sometimes decides that this useless profile should be your new one forever) try following their suggestions at this note and this one. It may discourage you to know that this foolishness continues through Windows 7 and into Windows 8 too. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Long ago (even before XP) this happened to me, and the old profile, along with some important files, got deleted. This shouldn't happen, of course, and the files from the old profile should still be there for you to copy. Let us know if you can't find them. Because of this (fortunately rare) glitch, I always ignore profile locations and create new user folders on a data drive separate from the Windows installation drive, and make these my default save locations. Some people think I'm paranoid to do this, but it does mean that my files are safe from any Windows foolishness, including reinstallation of the operating system. Dbfirs 18:00, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Slightly confused but if you're setting Windows to use a user profile in a different location, isn't there a fair chance Windows will still replace the extant profile in this location when this unknown bug happens? Or when you say "user folder", do you mean this isn't your actual user folder/directory but simply a directory you store stuff in for that user (i.e. as far as Windows is concerned your user profile is still located in the default drive, you simple save data to this new location manually by default). Of course either way this highlights the importance of regular backups (actual backups not simply redundancy or RAID) as storing a single copy in a different drive is still not going to protect you from data loss due to the probably more common points of failure including hard disk deaths (RAID will protect against most but not all death scenarios), malware attacks, partition problems arising from Windows or other programs doing strange stuff and simple user error overwriting important files. Nil Einne (talk) 06:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, I meant that I completely ignore Windows user directories and set my own default save folders in each piece of software. And, of course, I have Word & Excel etc set to do automatic backups every ten minutes, and I also back up my folders to a DVD data drive, to a different computer, and to two different external hard drives. (You see why I suspect myself of paranoia!) Dbfirs 07:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

October 6

Graphics cards: Wattage and comparison

My friend and I have been Googling this for 20 minutes but apparently we're not allowed to know the exact wattage of my graphics card. While searching, we did some across some information, so we're just going to make some assumptions and got from there:

My card is a GT430 (one of them...apparently there's more than one version...). It plugs directly into the motherboard and doesn't have a dedicated power socket. So based on things I've seen online, that means it can only draw a limited amount of power. The assumption I want to make here is that any other card which also doesn't plug into power directly will also draw the same amount of power, so any such card would be a compatible switch-out for my current card (barring other compatibility issues, which we think we've got covered - this is the only sticking point).

Is this safe to assume? 86.181.64.123 (talk) 08:22, 6 October 2013 (UTC)