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September 6

Reordering the context menu

A lot of programs I have installed add items to the right-click context menu in Windows 7. Is there a (preferably easy) way to rearrange such items? For example, I'd like all my on-demand scanners grouped together, not separated by WinRAR commands. I'm comfortable mucking in the registry if I really have to go that route, but I was hoping for more a software alternative. Any ideas? Thanks a bunch, 66.36.156.94 (talk) 04:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can get tools from LopeSoft[1] (see e.g. CNet) or NirSoft[2][3]. It's not clear if they support Windows 7. If you want to poke around in the Registry this link may help. I'm using XP, and as far as I can see, entries are arranged in the context menu according to the alphabetical order of the registry key - maybe you could rename the keys to reorder them, but please backup your registry first. --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:36, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 6 freezes

Is it just me, or has firefox 6 been freezing a lot lately? I've been updating it regularly and clearing the cache and cookies when need be but for some reason it tends to freeze often for the past week or so. --Thebackofmymind (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've had no problems whatsoever with Firefox. Maybe it's an extension that you have installed? Dismas|^(talk) 06:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a edge-cutting guy I prefer Nightly Builds... According to 6.0.1 release notes, only a revoke of a root certificate occurred. In fact I think it is nasty for the Mozilla to held such a version contest with Internet Explorer. The rapid growing of numbers only broke up the compatibility tag of Add-ons, eliminated the benefit of auto-update, and passed dozens of bugs (See known issues of the Release Note ) onto the new version. But anyway, I still prefer it. --LunarShaddowღIvy (talk) 08:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! For this problem, try to disable most of the extensions in the Add-on manager, only leaving out these well-known ones such as Adblock Plus etc., and have a further test. Good Luck! --LunarShaddowღIvy (talk) 08:22, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Little buggier than it had been in my opinion, yes. ¦ Reisio (talk) 10:06, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Has eBay gotten any better for their users since summer 2007?

Is it any easier to use and make money from now?

If not, how come, and what other auctioneering sites would you recommend us to sell from? Thanks, --70.179.163.168 (talk) 11:14, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the C programming language called a middle level language?

Why is the C programming language called a middle level language? Why isn't it a purely high level programming language? --LijoJames (talk) 14:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of C which deals directly with the hardware. A purely high-level language would be completely hardware independent. -- kainaw ™ 14:50, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, like Java for example. Also C lacks support for object-oriented programming, as opposed to C++ or C#. Looie496 (talk) 14:56, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(After edit-conflict)... Right off the bat, I jumped up shouting "because of pointers!" (I usually characterize C as a "purely low-level language," though that's more my perception than actual fact - it is, properly, a "general purpose" language). After my initial excitement wore off, and I had another gulp of much-needed coffee, I had time to clarify my thoughts and consult a reference-book. Most programmers, especially today in 2011, consider C to be the very lowest level of programming language - except those very few of us who still write hardware drivers and occassionally slip into assembly, HDL, or talk to non-programmable computers. C exposes the device as it actually exists - direct access to native data types that are processed on the machine (... for most types of computer). Other programming languages do not necessarily contain native, first-class language structures to represent primitive data types or memory; they rely on an operating system and a runtime library to do a lot of conversion work for them.

In the canonical reference book, "The C Programming Language," Brian Kernighan describes C as a general purpose language, and expounds that it is

“

a relatively "low level" language. This characterization is not pejorative; it simply means that C deals with the same sort of objects that most computers do, namely characters, numbers, and addresses. These may be combined and moved about with the arithmetic and logical operators implemented by real machines. ... C provides no operations to deal directly with composite objects such as character strings, sets, lists, or arrays.

”

If anyone ought to know, it's the inventor of the language! Unlike Perl, FORTRAN, or even C++, in C, the language itself only represents very primitive, elementary types of data; and it allows direct control of the hardware representations of data - with bit operators, pointer arithmetic, and arithmetic that closely match true hardware circuits. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Though, according to our article, Prof. Kernighan denies any complicity it the invention of the language... Nimur (talk) 15:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Related to this topic, when I teach introduction to C/C++, I regularly answer questions with the characterization of Dennis Ritchie as a minimalist and Bjarne Stroustrup as an inclusionist. I feel it helps students grasp how C is a small language with a lot of power while C++ is an expansive language with really not much more power than C (then the OOP rangers rush in and expound on the power of objects and the whole class is lost in a sea of confusion). -- kainaw ™ 15:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Object-oriented programming is not really about "power", per se. It's about maintainability and reusability. You may be able to write something faster in C and have it work just as well. But if you need to change it a little bit, you may have to almost rewrite the C program, whereas if you've used C++ cleverly, it may be just a small tweak to the C++ program. --Trovatore (talk) 20:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Compare the respective textbooks: K&R C's front cover is a clean, simple minimalist "C" -- Bjarne Stroustrop's C++ textbook cover is some sort of ... maelstrom, or tornado, or something. Nimur (talk) 16:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC) [reply]

I would advise reading the books instead of judging them by their covers. Stroustrup's book is very good. Just the existence of the string and vector types in C++ makes it a far better language than C for beginners, even if you never teach them to define their own classes. -- BenRG (talk) 19:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've read (and own) both K&R and Stroustrup, and the former is much simpler to read and learn the language from that the latter (even allowing for the fact that C++ is much more complex). One can - and I did - learn C by reading K&R. I still have trouble following Stroustrup, even after several years of writing C++. (I actually learnt C++ from C++ for Dummies, and highly recommend it!) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that C's operators correspond closely to hardware operations is very problematic. The C standard leaves a lot of behavior undefined, which makes it easier for compilers to use the available machine instructions, but also means that you can't rely on them to do so. For example, the standard leaves the behavior of signed integer overflow undefined, which means the compiler can use the CPU's addition instruction without any fixup code. But it also means the compiler can assume x+1 > x when that's useful for optimization. Compare this with Java, where addition of ints is defined to behave like the x86 ADD instruction. Java is actually a better high-level assembler than C in this case. See this article (and parts 2 and 3) for more examples. -- BenRG (talk) 19:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you mean ...the compiler cannot assume...; is that what you meant? It confused me on first reading. --Trovatore (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, the compiler is allowed to assume that x+1>x, if it can use that in an optimization. It is allowed to make this assumption because signed integer overflow, according to the C standard, results in undefined behavior. If the program fails to behave as the programmer expected because of this assumption by the compiler, it's because x overflowed, resulting in undefined behavior; so really the programmer should not have had any expectations about the program's behavior in this case. The reason the C standard is written this way is so that compilers can make optimizations that assume things like x+1>x are true, without having to perform a bunch of run-time checks to make sure overflow didn't occur. See What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior for a good explanation of and rationale for this design decision. —Bkell (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

… Oh, that's the same article BenRG posted. —Bkell (talk) 18:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's also the same article I posted several weeks ago... incredible how it keeps coming up! Nimur (talk) 23:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Yeah, I knew I the link had earlier been posted here on a reference desk somewhere, because that's where I first read it, but I couldn't remember where it was. Fortunately it's the first Google result for "C undefined behavior optimization." —Bkell (talk) 02:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because since its invention languages have only gotten higher, causing C to be categorized comparatively as lower. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no. C postdates LISP and Simula, among many others. -- BenRG (talk) 19:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But LISP and Simula are comparatively low level languages when compared to Haskell, Python, OCaml or Java. So while there were higher-level languages at the time C was created, the overall landscape has moved up a lot. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Snow Leopard Virtual Machine on OS X Lion?

Just curious if it's possible to create and run a Snow Leopard 10.6 (or Leopard 10.5) virtual machine using Mac OS X Parallels or VMWare Fusion? I'm running Lion 10.7 now, but I have a need to occasionally run some old apps with Rosetta. --24.249.59.89 (talk) 16:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Answer here: VMware Fusion ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google bombing?

I encountered the term "President Ray Gun", which I'd never before heard, so I put it into Google. The first hit is our article on the Strategic Defense Initiative, a project proposed by US President Ronald Reagan. The phrase for which I searched isn't in the article or in Google's cache thereof; is this an example of Google bombing? Nyttend backup (talk) 16:49, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. Our article is not full of links designed to get it placed at the top of search engines. -- kainaw ™ 17:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But Bush's official White House biography was not full of links to get it placed at the top of search engines for "miserable failure" — I was wondering if people had used the same strategy here, although for whatever reason I don't understand. Nyttend backup (talk) 17:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google has (or used to have) a note on some cached page displays saying "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: (your search term here)". --LarryMac | Talk 17:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"President Ray Gun" returns very few results, so Google automatically changed your query into searching for the 3 words separately (without telling you evidently). Since the SDI article indeed contains all 3 keywords (this can be confirmed by googling President Ray Gun without the quotes), and is the only Wikipedia article to do so, Google's pagerank algorithm correctly selected it as the top result. Anonymous.translator (talk) 17:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The other nine entries in the first page of results feature those three words in sequence, so I'm not sure why you believe that it automatically removed the quotes. Nyttend backup (talk) 17:51, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you click on the "Cached" link for the other nine entries (also applies to all other 719 entries), you will find the phrase "president ray gun" highlight in yellow, as well as a bar at the top informing you that "These search terms are highlighted: president ray gun". If you click on the SDI link, no such highlighting occurs, which implies the first search result was obtained differently than all other 719 results. This blogger confirms my theory.

As an aside, lately I noticed that Google has been adding a lot of these "silent auto-corrections" in their front end. They even go as far as to automatically search based on synonyms, which I found extremely helpful. Anonymous.translator (talk) 00:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Er the blogger is discussion something else i.e. Google suggesting you search without the quotes when the quotes return no results which they've been doing for a long time (the blog itself was from 2008) as they do with other no results. And I'm pretty sure Google has been automatically searching based on synonyms for a very long time, it's one of the many reasons counting Google results to determine stuff for wikipedia is usually a flawed idea. Nil Einne (talk) 02:02, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google does not explain how it produces search result pages. The algorithm is proprietary and unavailable for inspection. That means that there is no way we can know why Google decided to return those results. It could be an algorithmic result; it could be a joke special-cased in to the search-engine by a programmer as an easter egg - we just can't know, because Google's search-engine implementation isn't public. Nimur (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a nickname I have heard from Reagan critics referencing the SDI.--92.251.204.141 (talk) 01:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Programming an EEPROM

Can it be possible for an EEPROM to exist that can be programmed without communicating with an OTP area? I ask this because some flash chips are usually programmed by communicating with some type of ROM or microcontroller. --Melab±1 ☎ 18:40, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! How do you think the controller on the flash module does it? The trick is that you need hardware support to write to memory of any particular type. The on-chip controller has hardware to write data to the nonvolatile flash memory, unlike your computer. The flash controller is not all that different from your computer, except it is small and has been pre-loaded with its single-use program; if it even operates via software! If it does, its operating system probably consists of nothing more than a few hard-coded register-accesses and a giant memcpy loop. The storage controller has memory-mapped I/O that corresponds to the write control (address and data) for the nonvolatile storage area, in whatever addressing scheme it uses. A storage controller also contains hardware or software to decode commands received on a higher-level protocol like I2C or SPI. Your computer can probably speak that - because it doesn't have memory-mapped I/O that can directly control the voltages on the nonvolatile storage. So, your CPU delegates your data to the controller, who does directly control voltages for the storage elements.

Unless you are a manufacturer of silicon, it is very unlikely that you can build a computer with the types of low-level access you want to customize; that's why you must use the existing protocols to talk to pre-built flash-controllers. If you are inclined to design your own hardware and route your own pinouts, you should investigate a programmable logic-array or gate array: I recommend the DE2 development board, now on sale at academic rates. You will be interested to know that even the FPGA, which could directly configure its GPIOs to write to flash, typically delegates to a flash controller over I2C (saving precious GPIO pins for other, more important uses). Nimur (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, do flash modules exist where the controller relies on pattern matching (ZISC) or is so simple that it cannot be considered a program (lacking microcode, if I have that concept right)? --Melab±1 ☎ 20:17, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That isn't the terminology I would use to describe it; but sure - this is a very common operation mode. I randomly selected an 8MB Flash NOR from Digikey, the STMicro M50FLW080A/B. Look at the Address/Address mode: just specify the address you want, in row/column mode; specify the write-enable as desired; and you have data in or out of the nonvolatile storage. The exact characteristics of the signal (voltages, timing, rise-times, etc.) are specified in the datasheet. Nimur (talk) 22:02, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What I mean is, can a flash module be read and written without a complex facility that performs the functions? I got a reinforcement of this idea after this discussion, where Finlay McWalter responded by saying that a voltage can be applied to certain types of flash memory to lock or unlock their sectors. I assumed it was a simple mechanism that did not use any kind of computing facility within the flash module itself (i.e., separate OTP read-only memory). I am designing (not intensively) a hypothetical smartphone architecture where most, if not all, of the processes execute on the application processor—the goal being to consolidate microcontroller code into software stored on a single NAND chip. --Melab±1 ☎ 00:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think you are describing the direct addressing mode ("A/A" mode, in the part I linked above). That sort of means that you simply apply a voltage (+V_DD or 0, for logical 1 or 0) to each pin; the pin-outs are specified on a datasheet; and you just "dial in" the address and data, and either read or write the data at that memory-location. I don't know if you consider this "complex" or "not complex." I think that entirely depends on what you're trying to connect on the other side! If your microcontroller supports I2C, but has limited GPIO pins, the direct-addressing mode is more effort than the serial data stream. On the other hand, if you have plenty of GPIO, but for some reason, you lack I2C, direct addressing may be your best bet. Nimur (talk) 01:48, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia article on Google Maps

Hi!

How can I add a wikipedia article on google earth at certain location?. And how can i relocate an incorrectly located wikipedia article in google earth?.--Inramji (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google appears to harvest wikipedias (of various languages) on timescales I don't entirely understand. The best you can do is to ensure that relevant articles have the right coordinate in them. Then wait. See also {{coord}} --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you name the articles, we can do more to help you; but see WP:GEO. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 7

apt-get

What happens if I run apt-get (in Ubuntu) with certain listed packages and stop it using CTRL-C while it's downloading? Is there a command I should run to perform some clean up tasks?

In particular, say I've run three apt-get install commands each with one ore more listed packages? How do I get back to how the system was before running them all. NOTE: Not all the commands may have been fully executed. For example, I stopped one while downloading, in another I mistyped one of the packages so i don't know if any of them installed. --178.208.209.155 (talk) 00:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you do it while it's downloading then no problems will be caused. Package files are stored for later continuation of the apt-get process in '/var/cache/apt'. If the download process does not complete, then no installation will occur. If the configuration/install part of apt-get began, then some weird things can happen, but running 'apt-get -f install' as the command tells you to in such a case should fix it. 'dpkg -r' or 'dpkg --purge' will let you remove individual packages. 'cat ~/.bash_history|grep apt-get' will show you what you tried to/did install, provided you put in the commands fairly recently. Nevard (talk) 05:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FTP Server

I set up an FTP server at home, so I can retrieve forgotten homework from school. However, at school, it cannot connect. It does work in other places, both on the same router and not. How is it being blocked (traffic analysis or just port number?), and how could I bypass this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.180.172.142 (talk • contribs) 01:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's most likely done by port number, I would guess. I would try changing it to run on Ports 80 or 443. (HTTP /S) They generally can't block those ports without blocking every website on the Internet. (I used a trick like this at an old workplace with "content filtering" garbage.) ^Avic _ennasis @ 02:47, 8 Elul 5771 / 02:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the consequences of using the http port? Could I access websites from server or client while a connection is going? 69.180.172.142 (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I'm having trouble understanding file permissions. What are "Append", "List", and "+ Subdirs"? 69.180.172.142 (talk) 04:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Making your FTP server use the HTTP port should have no effect on your ability to access websites. All it means is that your own server is running on port 80; requests to other servers are unaffected.

You'll have to consult your FTP software documentation for precise information on permissions, but as a guess, "append" means the right to upload a file. "List" means the right to see the files in the directory, and "subdirs" means whether users can access subdirectories. --99.237.252.228 (talk) 09:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What about the whole "one program, one port" rule? Is that for something different? 69.180.172.142 (talk) 23:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FTP requires a control port and a file transfer port. I would really recommend that if you're using Windows, use something that's meant to bypass firewalls easily, like LogMeIn. If you're using Linux or MacOS X, setting up a bog-standard HTTP server which lets you download files, with if necessary a random CGI script off the net to upload files, is probably gonna be easier. Nevard (talk) 23:53, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why does it take so long for this page to start to scroll?

This page takes a long time from the time it comes up until it will scroll. Why is it so slow? (The embeded videos?) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your computer is too slow? It loads quickly and scrolls nearly immediately for me. Dismas|^(talk) 05:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought my computer was about the best I could get when I bought it a few months ago, and yet that page not only took a long time to load, it refused to close and almost stopped everything else from working as well. So, a little advice, be cautious when following that link or you might have to turn everything off and start again. 85.210.126.207 (talk) 09:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The page loaded slowly for me too. I tried it with flash disabled and it loaded normally, so the embedded videos do seem to be the problem. AvrillirvA (talk) 11:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It might be nothing to do with your computer but rather your internet connection speed. The page was very slow to scroll while it was downloading objects but fast to scroll when it stopped loading. Sandman30s (talk) 11:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have a fast connection, 6Mb/sec I think. It takes so long for it to allow scrolling once the page comes up. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just did a test on DSLReports, and my d/l speed is 6.2 Mb/s. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter what your download speed is if the server isn't serving the page at that speed. -- kainaw ™ 17:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So is the reason it is so slow the server, or did they put too many videos on the page? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, it isn't a single server. You have the web server and the video server. Any (or all) of them could be slow depending on current use. Cramming a lot of multimedia on a page does make it take a long time to load, regardless. -- kainaw ™ 20:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few reasons I believe. One thing is that there are alot of images and embed stuff in it, which can make it slower. Another reason is that your browser is taking time to show the content. Another probable reason is that it's downloading slowly. IN MY OPINION, to solve the first thing, I suggest that you try getting a better computer or get a more efficient browser. For 2, I suggest perhaps a better internet connection. And for 3, why not try out Firefox or Google Chrome? It may solve you're problem. And I reiterate-I may be wrong. General Rommel (talk) 22:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My computer is about 4 months old and has a quad i7. My download speed is 6.2 Mb/s. I used Firefox until a few days ago and quit using it because recent versions are so buggy. But Firefox does quickly allow you to start scrolling. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Odd. I use up-to-date firefox versions; haven't noticed any bug problems with any version for as long as I can remember, and haven't had any slow scrolling problems with this page. Additional options for causes of problems might be crappy AV software or some sort of operating system issue? --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:05, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox is fast on the page in question (as opposed to IE), but starting a few days ago, Firefox won't display my Facebook page correctly (plus other problems I don't remember right now.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:31, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

free video editing

Is there anywhere online a free to download program that I can use to make a few simple edits to films from my camera? Just to for example cut the last minute off the end or to trim the edges in a little throughout?

85.210.126.207 (talk) 09:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Avidemux [4] AvrillirvA (talk) 09:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Windows Movie Maker or Windows Live Movie Maker depending on your version of Windows is free and should be able to handle simple tasks like this. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not free, but very cheap, is QuickTime Pro. It's my go-to app for small, simple edits to movies, like the ones you are describing, and unlike a lot of programs, it easily imports and exports to a range of different formats, and has a pretty straightforward interface. I've found the world of free video editing to usually be less than totally wonderful; QTP was definitely worth the price for me in terms of time and frustration saved over the years. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Getting a profile into search results

I have a fair amount of intellectual property (photographs) on the 'Internet' which are credited to my full name (first, middle, last). When doing a google search on my full name, people will find a lot of my photographs in the first few pages and also two facebook profiles for people who are not associated with me, and do not even have the same surnames now. I believe they come up in the search results because their maiden names are the same as mine (I am female).

Obviously I can't stop their names from being hits, but I would at least like my facebook profile to also come up. I don't use my middle name for my facebook though. Is there a reliable way (apart from changing my facebook account name) to get my FB profile as a hit when searching on my full name? I wondered if I could sneak my full name in somewhere on my profile: would it then be indexed for the full name search? Is there some external way to get the profile page linked to that search?

Even if the answer is no, I would appreciate some explanation as to why (just to learn!).

Thanks in advance. 195.27.52.146 (talk) 11:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Search engine companies decide how they want to index pages. If they want to index Facebook *only* by the name on the account, they can. If they want to search the profile for other names, they can. If they want to charge everyone on Facebook $5 to get your profile listed on the search engine, they can. Further, they can change their mind anything they like - so whatever may work today, may not work tomorrow. -- kainaw ™ 17:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a field known as SEO(Search engine optimization) and also Search engine marketing.Smallman12q (talk) 17:46, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are DOIs temporary?

I was just about to comment on a Refdesk question, and found that a DOI reference I'd read before no longer works: http://dx.doi.org/10.1001%2Fjama.1946.02870380008004 cited from Alkylating antineoplastic agent, also cited by two other sites online: [5] Are DOIs something temporary dependent on subscriptions or something? Should we discourage their use as URLs in our articles? Wnt (talk) 12:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They are supposed to be permanent, but probably only as permanent as the company operating them. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Digital object identifier. That particularly DOI appears to be correct as confirmed by the source [6]. No idea why it doesn't work, probably "the DOI does not resolve due to a system problem". From a few quick tests JAMA DOIs 1998 onwards (after the backfiles) work but those in the backfiles don't seem to. I have reported the problem. Nil Einne (talk) 14:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wireless

Can a wireless router such as this be used to connect to an wireless ad hoc network instead of using a something like this? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 15:00, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The adapter allows the computer to connect to the router. The router is not used to connect to another router (or whatever you feel like calling the receiver on the network). -- kainaw ™ 17:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In theory, you could design such a device; in practice, a Linksys WRT54G is not configured (read: it does not have the software or firmware support) for the radio modes that use 802.11 as an ad-hoc protocol. The WRT54G, like most home-use routers, is designed to serve as a router, residential gateway, NAT and firewall, DHCP server, and wireless access point all in one box. Ad-hoc and other advanced 802.11 features aren't available. Nimur (talk) 23:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're pointing to an image of a WRT54G, which is about the most open bit of wireless router hardware out there. I'm using an older version of the DD-WRT firmware on just such a router. DD-WRT allows connections to adhoc networks, as would most non-standard firmware. I doubt that any of the firmware on your typical recent computer routers will let you do that. Really- you should avoid wireless wherever possible- if you can't run ethernet cabling, powerline networking works best, then phone line networking. The WRT54G is the established least bad wireless router out there, though some people think that they are lacking because you can't get the wireless N speeds that only work if the wireless devices are about a meter of cheap ethernet cabling apart. If you absolutely must, for whatever reason, connect to not just a wireless network but an adhoc wireless network (and you must use a wireless router rather than a $10 direct import Chinese home market wireless stick), make sure you either make a pretty cheap buy from a consumer electronics dealer which will let you return the thing if it doesn't work, or buy cheap and used off ebay. Check available manuals for the model first. Nevard (talk) 23:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nota bene: as a sidenote, I'd be careful of powerline networking, if you're really worried about security - I have a friend that live in an apartment, and by using one of those adapters, he can sniff packets from other tenants' powerline networks. Not sure if houses would be any different (obviously not wired directly together, but still attached to the gird.) ^Avic _ennasis @ 04:03, 9 Elul 5771 / 04:03, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is true. Power circuits tend not to reach out very far beyond a house- though power line communication has been set up over wide areas. For phone line communication circuits these things tend not to reach too much further than the breakout box at a property boundary. Nevard (talk) 05:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User space article drafts

Hi!

I have some user space pages that I used to prepare articles that are now empty. What do I do to delete them? Ditto for one I miss titled.

Thanks in advance for any helpful info you can provide. Marshallsumter (talk) 17:11, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can edit each page to place {{db-u1}} at the top and it will be deleted by an admin under WP:Criteria for speedy deletion#U1. A good place for this sort of question is WP:Help desk. Thincat (talk) 20:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hitwise data collection

How does hitwise get their data from ISPs?Smallman12q (talk) 17:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The ISPs install a program on their own servers that provides reports for the ISP. It is like a data analysis tool. The tool also sends "anonymous" data to Hitwise that they use to aggregate general Internet usage. Not all ISPs use Hitwise's tools, so not all ISPs report to Hitwise. -- kainaw ™ 20:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

phone

If I picked up a phone which was connected to a line being used by a computer for dial-up internet and recorded the computer sounds being heard on a tape recorder, could that be converted back into text and images? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Organize this text file (talk • contribs) 18:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you had the ENTIRE communication, then yes. It could. You just need to turn the signal back into 1's and 0's and then turn all that back into the original messages (likely PPP packets). Because you are working with a single computer, all the messages should be coming from the computer or destined to the computer. That makes it much easier. -- kainaw ™ 20:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some data might be sent using an secure, properly-encrypted protocol; so you would not be able to reconstruct that data. Wiretapping the telephone-line would be a form of man-in-the-middle attack, which is exactly the sort of thing that proper cryptography is designed to prevent. You could collect and record 100% of the data that was sent and received, but it would be infeasible to reconstruct it into useful, human-readable data.

Note that most computer users do not properly safeguard their internet transactions with secure protocols - so on many systems, you could use a telephone wire-tap to collect a large amount of unprotected data.

Also, a tape-recorder's fidelity, signal-to-noise-ratio, and sampling rate may all be unsuitable for recording a 128kbps ISDN digital data stream; you might need better recording equipment; but this is an "implementation detail." Nimur (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 8

How can you help me find my lost phone: A black-cased Sony Ericsson Xperia Play under Verizon's service?

Hi, first of all, I may have to switch to another service provider because Verizon says they do NOT have the capability to track/ping my phone's location through its GPS feature.

I have since found various tracking apps and remotely authorized the downloads from the Android market site on my laptop. However, they tell me there is no way to install them remotely; they should have been done BEFORE the phone was lost. However, a store employee with Verizon told me face-to-face that getting a remote-install to happen anyway "would take hacking skills far beyond my own abilities."

1. (So would anyone know of a tutorial to get it done that way?)

He also suggested that I file a police report (on the grounds of possible theft) so that a subpoena can happen that would enable the phone to get location-pinged by law enforcement. I suppose that the law has their own forensic equipment to get it done this way. However, when I filed it at the local substation, he told me that with all the subpoenas Riley County has to process, mine could take a month to get done. (I have yet to know of any phone battery that can keep powering for a month.)

2. So whenever the phone can start getting pinged, in the event that the battery is already run down, can the phone's ping history also be found? (Therefore, the last 50 pings originating from one location would indicate that the phone likely is still there?)

3. Do you have any other suggestions? Any tricks up any of your sleeves that could lead me to reuniting with my phone again? Thanks, --70.179.163.168 (talk) 06:14, 8 September 2011

This blogger apparently had success remote installing LookOut's Plan B after the handset was already lost. This exact scenario does seem to be what Plan B was designed for, so you might have some luck. Serrio (talk) 10:13, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I still haven't received the email from Plan B. Any other apps like it? Any other suggestions?

Turns out, my insurance only covers damaged and defective phones, not lost & stolen. --129.130.98.203 (talk) 18:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Office Professional Plus 2010

What's the licensing on Office Professional Plus 2010 - I'm sure I read somewhere that I can install it on upto three machines but can't confirm this - anyone able to help? --Cameron Scott (talk) 08:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This chart and attached notes may help: Office 2010#Comparison. Note 1 says "Home and Student ... can be installed on three PCs in the same household.." Note 4 says "Home and Business boxed product can be installed on two PCs."

• Note: "Office Professional Plus 2010 is available through Volume Licensing only." see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-plus/. So apparently it can be installed on multiple machines, but you need to buy the appropriate number of licenses.

• "If you purchase a Traditional Disc retail license of Office Home and Business 2010 or Office Professional 2010, the retail license terms allow you to install, activate, and use Office Home and Business 2010 or Office Professional 2010 on your primary PC and your portable device such as your laptop. See Office 2010 FAQ (Pricing and licensing) № 9

• You could also ask Microsoft directly on the Microsoft Office Forum, here - 220.101.30.184 (talk) 11:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Financial news formatted to be read by computers

In the article algorithmic trading, it says that "Financial market news is now being formatted by firms such as Need To Know News, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones, and Bloomberg, to be read and traded on via algorithms." I've tried to find some examples and explanations of how these news are formatted and how the reading works, but I have not been successful. Could anyone point me to a site where this is explained in more detail? Thanks, /Marxmax (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's done using text analysis software and expert systems. See this article and this NYT article.Smallman12q (talk) 13:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How programming languages work

Sorry if the title isn't really a good description of what I am going to ask but here are a few things that I want to wrap my head around.

In a language like C for example, you have the printf function which in the command line will print a string. But how does the shell know how to print this? If it is told to print "Hello" at what point in the system is it told how to actually "draw" a character? I'm thinking it just has to be defined at some point but where.
A language like C can be used to make command line applications, GUI applications or even an OS or driver software. Theres something about this that seems strange to me. If you look at printf, it makes sense to print something to the command line assuming its defined somewhere how to do this (as mentioned in my previous question). But how could printf ever compile to something meaningful at such a low level as when developing a kernel or driver? --178.208.209.155 (talk) 09:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1) When you compile your program it's linked with one or several libraries. For C, the C standard library contains printf. printf is really quite a complex function (with all kinds of formatted printing options) which eventually generates a single string. The library code then has to emit that which it does with a system call (usually to the write system call). Write takes as one if its arguments a file descriptor, and it's the same call that's used to write to a terminal (which is what you're talking about), to a pipe, or a file, or all kinds of other things (at least on unix, where almost everything has a file-like interface). On receiving that, the kernel has to route the write to whatever device will handle it. It knows how to do so by looking up the file descriptor in a table it already has, and with that it calls the appropriate code. A simple example is the (now very old fashioned case) where you had a serial terminal (a teletype machine plugged into a serial port) - the kernel would know that your process was attached to the teletype on /dev/tty2 which corresponded with a given serial port, and it would just squirt the string out that port. It's a bit more complex now when the terminal isn't really a little machine, but it's a window on your screen. In that case the terminal is usually a pseudo terminal, which means its implemented by another program. The kernel doesn't care (and mostly doesn't know) about the difference, so it just squirts the data at that program in the same way. The program (say it's xterm) receives that string and has to display it on its window using graphical calls, just like a little graphics program. That uses the system's graphics library (e.g. X, Cairo, GDI+) just like a word processor or a game uses. -- Finlay M^cWalterჷTalk 10:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2) Yes, strictly printf is an application library call, intended by ordinary user mode applications, which works by the mechanism I've described above. The same printf usually isn't available in kernel code (or other supervisor mode code, like device drivers) because they don't run in an application context (with a controlling terminal and a process id and so forth). When a kernel is complied, it's not complied against the C standard library, but (at least with larger, mature kernels) there's a basic library that provides common kernel functions that kernel code and device drivers and file system code and stuff will want. That's mostly stuff like managing semaphores and queues and manipulating the various memory structures that kernel code uses to store and transmit its own data, but it frequently contains a printf (usually a lighter-weight one, with fewer features). It's up to the kernel's authors what happens when that's called - it might emit data over a network socket, to a log file, to an in-memory circular buffer, to the console driver (i.e. the basic text screen), over a serial port, or it might just drop it. All of these require some degree of an implementation and most require at least a basic device driver. You do run into a kind of chicken-and-egg case, where the device that's implementing your kernel printf has to be working first, so there's often some code in the early part of the kernel run that can't print anything. -- Finlay M^cWalterჷTalk 10:19, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to add to the comprehensive answer above. The OP could also be curious about how the H in Hello is actually generated. When you press the H key, a keyboard interrupt is fired and your BIOS or OS reads one byte from the keyboard buffer, which in the case of H is ASCII character 72. If you're in the BIOS or text mode (or DOS in the old days) then a table is read which defines how to draw the character on the screen (by sending it to the video buffer and when your monitor refreshes vertically then you see the update). If you're in a GUI OS (operating system) like Windows then a similar sort of thing happens with the interrupt, but eventually a font file is read which defines how to draw the character graphically. BTW this brings back good but nerdy memories of Ralf Brown's interrupt list! Sandman30s (talk) 12:11, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is no way of really really understanding what is going on without understanding the concept of machine language, and that any program written in C gets compiled into an array of thousands or millions of machine language commands. Looie496 (talk) 14:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the most useful simple answer to question (1) is "no particular place". Any useful computer system is built out of layers upon layers of abstraction. So, at some point, there's a function to paint arbitrary dots on a screen (well, it's probably more complicated than that, but this will serve for now). Some other function uses it to draw curves. Some function uses curves to draw letterforms, like those used in TrueType fonts. Some function assembles lines of text. Some function uses that to handle textboxes, with line-wrapping. Somewhere in the terminal emulator, standard input and standard output are hooked up to the textbox functionality. For whatever definition of "drawing" you have, there exists a stage that draws that "H". There are a lot of different definitions of "drawing", so there are a lot of stages. This deeply-layered approach is the only way that anything ever gets done in software ... and this kind of touches on an answer to (2): software is only computation. A piece of functionality is said to be "high-level" simply if there are a lot of layers sitting beneath it. Any of these layers may be written in any language (though some are sometimes more suitable than others). Another way of looking at it is this: writing a (simple) compiler is easy, because all it has to do is take a description of computation (with a well-defined meaning, hopefully!) in one language, and turn them into a (presumably longer and uglier) description of computation in another (hopefully well-defined) language. Paul (Stansifer) 18:15, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd press "Like" to the answer of Looie496. Down below it's really electronics. On top of that you have a chip that's smart enough to read instructions from memory. These instructions are still just numbers, but they mean things like "Get a value from the memory at position X and put it in register Y". "See if register Y now only has zeros in it, if so, skip 5 instructions". In for example the Apple II this is enough to "print" something to the screen. The video card shared some of the memory and if there was a value 0100000 it would light up 1 bit and be dark for the zeros. Programming by typing in numbers is not very efficient so that's why "they" came up with assembly. Now you had another program helping you make your own program. It enabled you to write MOVY X instead of the numerical version of it. On top of that came other languages like C that abstracted things even more. Still, you had to explain that if you wanted a variable to go from 1 to 10 it needed to add 1 to the variable each loop. Because of lazy creators of compilers the variable NumberOfPlayers meant something completely different than NumberofPlayers. On top of C came Basic, where you didn't have to explain what a loop was because it knew and it guessed right about the number of players variable. Then came a few improvements. Splitting a program into sections ("procedures") to do one task was a nice step. The next huge step was to invent objects. After that smaller, but brilliant steps were made like the introduction of Lambda expressions. That's where were now. In 5000 years people will hardly believe it, but case sensitivity and having to explain a loop to your compiler is nowadays considered "smart". But I'm diverting. Joepnl (talk) 23:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to use a 'Combo box' value as a 'Colmumn name' in a query?

Hi all,

I am using Access 2007. Am a beginner.

I want to use the option selected in a combo box as a colum name in a select query. Following are the details.

Table name: Table_1
Column names: C_1, C_2, C_3, C_4
Form name: Form1
Text box name: Tb_1
Combo box name: Cb_1

The user enters a phrase to be searched for in 'Tb_1'. The user selects the column name (say 'C_2') from the combo box (Cb_1 in this case). Hence value of Cb_1 is C_2 now. A wildcard search (that is a select query) is to be performed on the selected column ('C_2' in this case) for the phrase entered.

I am using the following query:
Select Table_1.*
from
Table_1
where
Table_1.[Forms]![Form1]![Cb_1] Like "*"& [Forms]![Form1]![Tb_1] &"*"
;

But, I am not getting desired results.

As soon as I run the query, I get a box asking for value of Table_1.[Forms]![Form1]![Cb_1]
And even after entering a correct column name in the box, it returns ZERO results.

In short, I want to use the option selected in the combo box as a column name in a select query.

Can somebody please help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.111.249.152 (talk) 10:14, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that I don't think Access can do something like Table_1.[Forms]![Form1]![Cb_1]. It's getting confused, because it doesn't understand that what you want it to to do is resolve the combobox value and then get the column of the table from it. It's not obvious to me how to make this work in the context of the code as you likely have it (there are lots of other ways to make it work by using VBA). Later this morning I'll give Access a twirl though and see if I can't do something that won't require much modification from your current approach. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked at Access again and I'm convinced you can't do it the way you are trying to do it. You're trying to make the Query builder do too much -- you'll need to create the query in VBA and resolve the column string data yourself.

Example: I imagine you have a button or something on the form that opens up the Query in question. What you're going to do is use your own code instead of its generic code. Now I'm assuming you need this to build a Query object for some reason, so we'll just do that manually using DAO:

If Cb_1.Value = "" Or Cb_1.ListIndex = -1 Then
   MsgBox "You need to select a column."
   Exit Sub
End If

Dim qSql As String
qSql = "SELECT * FROM Table_1 WHERE Table_1." & Cb_1.Value & " LIKE ""*" & Tb_1.Value & "*"""

Dim qdef As DAO.QueryDef
'Check to see if the QueryDef already exists, and if so, clear it out
For Each qdef In CurrentDb.QueryDefs
   If qdef.Name = "myQuery" Then CurrentDb.QueryDefs.Delete "myQuery": Exit For
Next

'Create the new query
Set qdef = CurrentDb.CreateQueryDef("myQuery", qSql)

This will create the new query automatically. It works on my machine. Note that depending on what you're trying to do, creating a querydef might not be the most straightforward approach. But using VBA to create your SQL query is the way to go on this one. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a ton Mr. 98. But I am facing one more problem. You are right, I do have a button which will be used to fire a query. This is exactly what I have put in the code:

Private Sub Command8_Click()

If Combo34.Value = "" Or Combo34.ListIndex = -1 Then
    MsgBox "You must select a Table and a corresponding Column before performing search."
    Exit Sub
End If


Dim qSql As String
qSql = "Select * From Table2 Where Table2." & Combo34.Value & " Like ""*" & Tb_1.Value & "*"""

Dim qdef As DAO.QueryDef
For Each qdef In CurrentDb.QueryDefs
    If qdef.Name = "myquery" Then CurrentDb.QueryDefs.Delete "myquery": Exit For
Next

Set qdef = CurrentDb.CreateQueryDef("myQuery", qSql)


End Sub

But when I run it, it says 'Run time error 424. Object required'. And when I click on 'Debug', it highlights the line qSql = "Select...".

Can you please help. Am a beginner, hence so many issues for getting it resolved. Thank you for your patience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.111.249.152 (talk) 10:15, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Two thoughts: 1. Check that the names of the Combo box and the text box are correct. 2. Check that DAO is loaded (Tools/References, make sure Microsoft DAO Object Library is checked). --Mr.98 (talk) 12:33, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you use Access to do real programming? Assuming you are not working on a project that has major legacy problems, you can do anything with databases and much, much more using VB.Net Express which is free and has a bright future (and Access doesn't). Joepnl (talk) 22:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, Combo34.Value must be ok so I guess Tb_1 has a problem (do you even have a Tb_1?). This is the kind of error that would be found by the compiler a long time before you'd hit F5 using a professional environment. Joepnl (talk) 22:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

S/MIME with ECC

Is there any implementations of S/MIME, which can use ECC (ECDSA and ECDH) for signing and encrypting data (such as email or files)? There is rfc5753, which specifies standard for doing so, but is there any real program, which would implement this standard? -Yyy (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um.. maybe a Mozilla Thunderbird nightly build and Outlook? Looks a bit bleeding edge, and the Outlook implementation's probably non-standard. Nevard (talk) 22:44, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -Yyy (talk) 15:29, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This mainboard

Thoughts on this mainboard: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/H67MA-E45--B3-.html. It would be alongside a Intel Core i5 processor, and about 4 GB of RAM.

Main reason I ask is because I I want to do audio stuff, FL Studio, Pro Tools, etc, and also be able to record guitar/bass, and have a midi keyboard/controller attached.

Urgent!

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.153.144.23 (talk) 17:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you're proposing to connect a guitar or bass to the LINE or MIC inputs on a normal computer motherboard, you'll get poor results. Those ports don't have the high impedance needed to match the guitar, and the analog components on an off the shelf sound card (or on the sound section of an integrated motherboard) have been cost-optimised for typical uses (games, Skype), giving you less than ideal performance for imaging music clearly. To properly record guitar and bass you're much better off using a dedicated adapter, such as Alesis' Guitarlink, Behringer's UGC102, or one of several devices made by Line 6. -- Finlay M^cWalterჷTalk 18:50, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I would use an external unit. Which I guess would be best anyway for guitar input, as I don't know if soundcards have guitar jack inputs. Different question, for midi input (midi controller), would an external unit just be as good as built into th sound card? Thanks!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.153.144.23 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you're comparing the worst possible no-brand midi-usb converter available to a great soundcard, yes. Nevard (talk) 22:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On top of that, if you want to be a proper rockist, you have to record with a microphone the sounds produced by your guitar coming out of an amp. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:43, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 6.02 message

I'm getting a message from my antivirus program that Firefox "tried to act as an Internet server". Is this okay? Clarityfiend (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. If you care why, here goes: Firefox runs as a single process, even when you invoke it multiple times. It can be invoked from other programs (which use the operating system's "open as a web page" function) or from the command line (when you say firefox http://foo.com). The first execution attempt looks for other firefox instances, fails, and so decides to be the "boss" instance. Subsequent calls look for other firefox instances and succeed (they find that boss instance); they send the boss a "please open this page" request, and immediately exit. How the "find others" and "send request" stuff is implemented varies by platform. On Linux and (as far as I'm aware other unix-like platforms like Solaris and OS-X) it uses a unix-domain socket. On Windows it uses a IP socket. It's the listen call for that which sets off security programs like Zonealarm. See this bugzilla report for discussion. hmm, I have that eerie feeling I've answered much this question before - I'll go check the archives-- Finlay M^cWalterჷTalk 20:24, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent answer, though, Finley, whether or not you've been here before. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:28, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:34, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Three tower problems

I'm battling with three towers that will not work.The first one is working reasonably well,but it goes quite slowly and is extremely loud-it whirrs away like a turbo fan.

The second one appears to have several-problems downloading-Flash will not load with anything.When I click the download I get an error message.I am unable to run anything immediately-when I try there is a box coming up asking me which programme I want to run it with.Most of the time,this ends up getting stuck in a loop of What programme do you want to run this with?Do you want to run this file?What programme do you want to run this with?Control Panel appears to be screwed too-clicking on any of the features there just brings up an error message so I can't change any settings

The third one I can't get to work at all.I switched it on as usual after a week's holiday and it now asks for a name and password to log on to Windows-since I have never had a password for this,I am totally stuck.I can't even get into Windows to try altering any settings.The only thing that has remotely worked is by leaving everything blank and clicking it...it then comes with 'Loading personal settings' but it immediately comes up 'Logging out'.There is no way to get this to work at all without a oassword which I do not have.

Any ideas gratefully received Lemon martini (talk) 21:11, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This all looks like software problems to me - the first may have a bad fan, but it may also be so busy running malware that it runs hot and has few resources for user programs. If you don't have any important data and programs directly on the machines, a clean reinstall might be the easiest and safest way to them back to working condition - either with your original OS media, or with e.g. a recent release of Ubuntu Linux. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The title made me think this was about the Towers of Hanoi, and boy was I lost when I read the questions :-) --LarryMac | Talk 12:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removing mark-up in Linux

When I have text file with <>word</> and I want to remove the <> and </>s. How can that be accomplished? 88.9.108.128 (talk) 22:01, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have exactly those characters, <> and </>, or do you have something like an XML file or HTML file, with <tag> and </tag>? If you want an exact-character match to <> and </>, you can use "find and replace" in most text editors. If you want to remove tags with arbitrary contents, you need a little more effort; a regular expression processor tool like sed can do that. Nimur (talk) 22:19, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No I have tags with text between them. I'll take a look at sed. At the first look, I have a basic structure: sed 's/string1/string2/' file1 > out and where string1 should be a regular expression that means <tag> or </tag> and string2 should be 'empty space.' 88.9.108.128 (talk) 22:46, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try any odd program called html2txt, if you just want it done now. Nevard (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd like to use sed. I'll need a regex for matching any <tag> or </tag> (but not what's inside them).88.9.108.128 (talk) 23:04, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' foo.html >foo.txt should do it. Note that <something/> is included in <something>, so one RE is enough. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It works, thanks.88.9.108.128 (talk) 23:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really understand your follow-up question, but in any case, it is greedy. — Kudu ^~I/O~ 23:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, it was a confusion of mine, I even deleted that before you posted. 88.9.108.128 (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify it for others: Regular expression matching in sed is greedy, i.e. it will give you the longest possible match. However, the RE I gave matches the starting '<', then any number of characters except for '>', then a single '>'. Thus, the arbitrary length middle part cannot include a '>'. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Free online (no downloading anything) test to see how good one's graphics card is

What is a site that isn't a spammy no-good garbage site and that really is legitimate and tests to see how good one's graphics card is without downloading anything? 69.243.220.115 (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't you just check your graphics card's specifications in your operating system configuration utility?

If you must use a web-based GPU benchmark, have a read at Tom's Hardware WebGL and Web Performance benchmark article. There are a lot of confounding factors you need to worry about.

But, if you really want to do this in a browser, here are some fun WebGL toys:

And of course, for good measure, have a read at Khronos Group's WebGL Standards page. These guys are involved in standardizing the WebGL platform and API. Naturally, they have an extensive listing of user-contributed WebGL examples. Nimur (talk) 02:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 9

did will wright design sim city on his own?

I was reading about Will Wright's Sim City, and the article made it seem like he designed and programmed it on his own, not least because it appears he had no backing for the game. Is this true, and how long did he take? Are there any books or articles describing how he did it, and what obstacles he faced? It's been emotional (talk) 02:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to look into this book, which I found on a Google books search for '"Will Wright" Simcity'. Nevard (talk) 03:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, in fact I did some more googling, and came across this: [7], which answers the question. If others are interested, yes, he basically did it all himself over 2 years, although it mentions a team of helpers, external to the programming and design, whose contribution is not made clear. It's been emotional (talk) 03:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aglets - Installation

Aglets is the new technology of Mobile Agents...but it's installation is quite a bit complex, can anyone specify the installation procedure of aglets?Rajesh Voleti (talk) 03:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No updates to Aglets in ten years means you probably shouldn't bother with it. Heck, Java Web Start's had more recent updates and noone uses that, despite the fact that it's actually pretty useful. Nevard (talk) 05:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HTML Code cleanup

Please suggest a program to do HTML code cleanup. The code I need to work with is very simple HTML but it is highly redundant. E.g., there are numerous <FONT....> and </FONT> codes cancelling each other. This makes it very hard to read & edit. Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 06:56, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a web based version of the HTML Tidy utility originally developed by W3C Fellow Dave Raggett available here. Nevard (talk) 07:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HTML Tidy rarely removes redundancy. It fixes missing end tags. There was talk a while back to add redundancy reduction to it. I believe the consensus was to make it an add-on option. That wasn't good enough for me, so I wrote my own script to remove redundancy - which isn't very user friendly, but I thought someone may want it so I put it here. -- kainaw ™ 12:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

VirtualBox

I'm trying to run the latest version of VirtualBox via Remote Desktop Connection on a Windows 7 64-bit computer, controlled from a Windows 7 32-bit computer. VirtualBox has no operating system on it yet but I am trying to install Windows XP. Whenever I start VirtualBox it either crashes or freezes. This problem didn't happen in the last version of VirtualBox. I have 4GB of ram with no other programs running. What could be causing the problem? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 12:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use the last version. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't really answer the question. I'd like to use the new version if possible 82.43.90.142 (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What happened when you tried launching VirtualBox while sitting at the 64-bit machine instead of using Remove Desktop Connection? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:36, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox/Gmail log-in oddness

On most log-in pages, Firefox will autocomplete the username and password when I type the first character of the username. On Gmail, though, it has always filled them in just in reaction to visiting the page. Why is that - does Firefox treat Gmail differently?
Today, I had to fill them in again because Firefox had apparently forgotten, after months or years of remembering them for me. Why is that - does its memory of passwords expire after a while, or did something else happen? Update: now after I entered my username and password, it's remembering them again, despite my having told Firefox "not now" when it asked whether to remember or not. I always have cookies set to delete when I close the browser. Is this something to do with zombie cookies perhaps? Card Zero (talk) 12:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is speculation, but it may not be Firefox that's entering the username and password on the GMail site. It may be GMail doing it with JavaScript based on a GMail cookie that's unique to your system but which doesn't actually contain the username and password. But I am guessing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:51, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since then, I've had one more occasion where the details didn't appear automatically, and now they're appearing again. I think you must be right, it must be Google tinkering with their log-in page in some way. I wonder what form the cookie takes, since it can't be a proper one. Card Zero (talk) 17:01, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

MemoriesOnTV

Hi, I live in the UK and hope you can help me. Back in January of 2004 I purchased the above Online Software that quite simply allowed me to create a "video" of still digital pics on my computer and add different photo effects and music, that once completed to my satisfaction could be archived on my PC and/or copied onto a DVD for future use either in a DVD Drive or DVD Player. So far so good. But yesterday when I went to play one of my movies on my PC for a friend, it would not play. Instead, I am being "offered" a new download for around $59 plus an optional Clipshow for a further $19. I am no lawyer but I feel angry that the product I thought I had purchased now lived on my PC and would always be available for my personal use, unless I should wish to purchase any future upgrades in which case the upgrade charge would be reasonable. But clearly that is not what is happening here. I am being denied access to material I have created using software I purchased in good faith. Or am I missing something here? Maybe someone here can clarify what has happened or even, suggest a free site that allows the same facility. Many thanks in anticipation. 94.172.117.205 (talk) 17:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that there does seem to be a steady erosion from the idea of "buying" digital programs and media more to the idea that you are "renting" it. What's even worse, the period of the rental seems to be at the discretion of the company, and not mentioned at time of purchase. Some examples:

1) If you bought a music CD, they don't seem to feel you have the right to move the same piece of music into other digital forms, say for use on your MP3 player. So, in this case, the CD "expires" once CD players pass out of use. I suppose the same was true of vinyl records, but they lasted a century, while CDs only seem to have a few decades. MP3s, for all we know, may only last a few years. Note that this philosophy gives the manufacturers an incentive to constantly change the formats, so everyone will need to re-purchase the same songs (or movies) again and again.

2) Windows operating systems are only supported for few years. After that, you will no longer get new drivers or fixes or anti-virus patches. So, you use it at your own risk, or do as Microsoft suggests and shell out money for the upgrade to the new version. Again, this provides them with an incentive to develop new operating systems solely to cause people to repurchase essentially the same product.

Also notice that if you were promised a "modest upgrade fee", that is meaningless, legally. About the only legally enforceable part of that is that the upgrade be less than a new purchase, but I suppose 1 cent less would qualify.

As for the solution to your problem, you need to avoid using a proprietary format. When you do so, the company basically owns anything you create, and can do as they please with it, including denying you access unless you pay regularly. Perhaps others can recommend a good open format for your videos. StuRat (talk) 17:50, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Is expected to change soon in the UK as a result of the Hargreaves review, which supports the freedom of format shifting. (The article seems to say it is already allowed under EU law? I didn't know that.) Card Zero (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is an online forum for this product at http://motvforum.com/forum/ -- your best chance at resolving the problem would probably be to ask about it there. Looie496 (talk) 18:10, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Turning T9 off on a Nokia 1800

How do I turn T9 texting off on a Nokia 1800? --147.32.97.252 (talk) 23:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use your favourite search engine to search for "nokia 1800 user manual". Here's one I found, that says (top of page 7) "Deactivate predictive text input: Select Options > Dictionary > Dictionary off.". Mitch Ames (talk) 07:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I found out the dictionary was set to a different language than the phone. Solved.--147.32.97.252 (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 10

Game Programmed in Ruby Over the Internet/Network

Hi, I'm making a game in Ruby (kind of like chess meets a scaled down final fantasy tactics, nothing to fancy) that I want to play with my friends, each having their own game running on their own computer. Unfortunately, I am an absolute idiot with networking. Essentially, I was thinking that one computer would host the game and that the other computers would connect into this one. More specifically, somebody would take their turn, their comp would send data describing their turn to the host, the host would update the game, then send the data out to all the players comps that would be needed to update the board and other such. The problem is, I don't know how to do this part. Thus, would this basic setup work? How would you go about setting it up (really, if somebody could give a good explanation of how to send info of any type between computers in Ruby, I could do the rest.)? And, is there any difference in doing this over the internet -vs- a home network? Thank you for any and all help, I apologize if this is poorly explained, I can give any extra details. Thanks again 209.252.235.206 (talk) 07:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't use Ruby, but here's a suggestion: You might search for something like Ruby chat server client to find examples of a simple chat server and chat client programs. You could use the same ideas in your game, where the "chat" is actually the game data being sent back and forth.

When you host a server on your computer, you'll have to set up your computer's firewall to allow incoming connections to your server program. If the client programs are on the internet, you'll also have to set up your router to send incoming internet connections for the port you choose to your computer (port forwarding). --Bavi H (talk) 16:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ram-backed ssd

hi, is there a ram-backed ssd option to be even faster than flash (though much smaller)? I'm thinking like 32-gb "drive", all ram adn when power is pulled it uses an onboard battery to quickly dump to ssd.... thanks... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Faster in what way? I believe a number of flash based SSDS can saturate a 300mbps SATA link so unless you have a better interface you're not going to get higher transfer speed. You may get better access/seek times/latency but I'm not sure that will be much of a benefit over a SATA link as I mentioned in a answer you can find in the archives. In any case, IIRC last time I looked (for the answer I referred to), modern RAM based SSDs only seemed to be made in the very expensive, very high speed, and far larger then 32GB devices Nil Einne (talk) 13:59, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What you are describing is a hardware RAM disk (though that article is 95% about virtual RAM disks) with an option to write its contents to an SSD. Here is a cool looking hardware RAM disk ... though I don't know of any RAM disk that has the option you describe. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A 'hardware RAM disk' is an SSD so are discussed in that article as the headers in both articles note. I didn't mentioned above, but there are some older lower capacity (often not even 32GB) DRAM based SSD which may still be available e.g. I came across [8] (which is 4GB and has flash storage but I'm not sure it has a battery backup or expects the user to provide power via a UPS) while looking at our SSD article. I didn't mention these because even if they are still available, I'm not sure their performance is still then better something solely based on flash nowadays. Even then, most of them don't use SATA. Also most of them aren't exactly designed for the kind of people who would have to ask about them on the RD (except perhaps RocketShipOrion). Nil Einne (talk) 16:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a similar question from the archives with some answers you may find useful AvrillirvA (talk) 20:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

exposed financial information

I did a very dumb thing: I sent by e-mail a list of my assets, including account numbers of financial holdings, my social security number and even my home address. Worse, the message was entitled, "assets." Am I doomed? Will thieves likely intercept the e-mail? What can I do? Thanks, --Halcatalyst (talk) 16:28, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you are someone of great importance and wealth who is being actively spied upon or you sent it to someone highly malicious, odds are you're perfectly fine. It's very unlikely that anyone would single you out, a much bigger threat is accidentally logging into a spoofed version of a legitimate site or logging into your bank online and spyware snatching your password. In short, I wouldn't really worry.Phoenix1177 (talk) 17:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At first I read this question as I sent to an email list a list of my assets, including account numbers...social security number and even home address. Wow, just wow. As it stands, if you didn't send it to a list, but only a single recipient, you should be fine! 82.234.207.120 (talk) 17:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

finding a blog post

Resolved

I am looking for a blog post that is marked "about a month ago" in the Date, it begins by __link__ing to his other blog post about replacing his desktop computer recently; then he goes on to say that what he wants to replace his laptop as well, and what he is looking for is one that is "the macbook air but not the macbook air": i.e. being as similar to it as possible in every way but without being it; then he introduces Intel's push toward what Intel calls "ultrabook", noting that Intel would like 40% of laptop's to be "ultrabooks" within a certain amount of time; it also details the author's quest for a notebook "like" the macbook air in all these ways (ssd, metal case for inductive cooling, etc etc) noting that in all these things his requirement is like a macbok air. He does note that he would like an ultrabook that boots in 7 seconds, which Macbook Air can do "in a pinch".

And that's as far as I got. I would really like the article - I probably (but this might be a red herring) got to it via hacker news or slashdot or reddit or something. please help me find it so I can finish reading it. My usual bookmark manager, Google, is not working for some reason. Thank you. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 17:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Was it this? (Found using Google's blog search.) Looie496 (talk) 18:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

that seemed to be like the text, but it did not start with a link to the other blog post. So I googled a part of the text you provided "(Oh, and they should boot in 7 seconds or less (which at a pinch, the MacBook Air can probably pull off, too)" and got to what I was actually looking for: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2011/09/ultrabook-intels-300-million-plan-to-beat-apple-at-its-own-game.ars linking to http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/what-processor-should-i-buy-intels-crazy-pricing-makes-my-head-hurt.ars (which is what had the "one month ago" date). Thanks for the help! This was driving me crazy... (And with good reason, ars technica is excellent writing). I've marked this resolved now... --82.234.207.120 (talk) 19:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to add that this was driving me crazy, I remembered so much of the article I got to (but not verbatim, e.g. I tried to search "in a pinch" with other terms, but the article actually used "at a pinch", etc)... grrr... thanks again! 19:48, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Problem with Gateway LX6810-01 Desktop PC and tuner card

Hello, i have a Gateway LX6810-01 Desktop. It recently crashed so i had to format the drives and ive installed Win 7 x64 ultimate. (it used to be some version of vista) .... all is working fine except i dont have drivers for my TV tuner card. I looked on the gateway website:

http://support.gateway.com/us/en/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=2308

and they have nothing about my card or what type it is. Im hoping my drivers are here somewhere?:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Browse.aspx?type=Hardware&category=TV%20Devices&subcategory=TV%20Tuners

but theres no way to know what i even have. Any ideas? Thanks.

137.81.118.126 (talk) 19:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You did allow Windows to search for drivers for the card right? This may sound like a dumb question but a search for 'Gateway LX6810-01 tuner' found [9] suggesting it may be an M791-B tuner. The model sounded familiar as a possible Avermedia device to me and sure enough the picture shows an AverMedia label printed on the metal enclosure of the silicon? tuner. Anyway a search for Avermedia M791-B finds [10] where one respondent said drivers automatically downloaded on both Windows 7 x64 and x32. If you didn't allow Windows to try to download drivers, note you should always do so, particularly on Windows Vista and 7 where Windows update drivers seem more common. Even if you want to search for other drivers, it at least may help you to identify the card. Nil Einne (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, if Windows really doesn't find drivers for your card, you could try [11]. There's a fair chance they won't work, according to [12] they are probably related but binary drivers released by the manufacturer often don't work on customised OEM products, often on purpose. Also I came across [13] which again suggests there should be Windows update drivers although it also suggests they may be problematic and you should use the Gateway ones which you unfortunately couldn't find. Fortunately a quick search for M791 on the Gateway website finds [14] which has drivers for Vista x32 (which probably work on Windows 7 x32 but not Windows 7 x64) although I do hope they aren't for the ATI 550 as the site suggests since the evidence suggests your card doesn't have that ATI chip (and that chip only supported analog anyway). You might want to ask Gateway why their Hardware Vendor Detection Utility didn't find your card and also why they don't link to drivers for the card in the support page for your computer. (I'm presuming you did run the 'Hardware Vendor Detection Utility' the Gateway page you linked to recommends.) Nil Einne (talk) 19:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry guys, my bad. Windows update did fix it. Thanks for the help!

137.81.118.126 (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 11

HTML Scrubbed

I wrote a note to a private posting board and when it was posted it was not printed but had a note saying an HTML attachment was "scrubbed". When I clicked on the link provided my note was there but in the HTML format and very difficult to read. Why is this done and what does "scrubbed" mean? FCVCO — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.67.241.116 (talk) 00:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible that you tried to post an attachment, and that it was "scrubbed" (i.e., discarded) and replaced with HTML, because the board didn't accept attachments? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:44, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for writing....I didn't attach anything to my email - I just sent it written directly on the email page. All of the info in my email I sent is there, its just in the HTML format with all of the editing symbols which I don't understand. One sentence requires scrolling over and over to the right and with all the ></...\[] etc. its just very difficult to read my post! Why would something be scrubbed/discareded anyway? (fcvco) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.67.241.116 (talk) 00:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Whirled website

I tried to go onto the website known as Whirled (http://www.whirled.com/), but when i did, there was no playing screen. Logging out then logging back in didn't work, refreshing several times didn't work, and updating my Flash player didn't work either.What is wrong and how can I fix the problem? I am using a Windows 7 for this. Strangely though, the playing screen successfully loadad on my Windows XP, but i don't want to use XP because it runs too slowly. 72.235.221.120 (talk) 04:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]