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February 14

Computer clock drift

Why is it that computer clocks drift so quickly? Why aren't there (or are there?) quartz clocks to keep, or synchronize computer times? I notice drift on the order of 3 seconds per 24 hours on one of my machines... which seems extreme. This isn't a practical issue because I just synchronize to a time server, but why is it so dramatic in the first place? Shadowjams (talk) 00:20, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Because the NMOS RTC is cheap crap and the CPU, which clocked very fast, isn't intended as an accurate timekeeper and these days is downright narcoleptic. Last time I had a Sun workstation (which was a decade ago) it kept time, even when off for weeks, like a Swiss watch - because its battery-operated TOD clock wasn't cheap crap. The very few PC users that really need accurate time (e.g. for stock trading or astronomy) install accurate clock cards (or radio-time cards). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

For a (to my mind rather fascinating) discussion about the problems of fixing clock drift with a naive NTP sync, and the more sophisticated steps that need to be taken to ease the adjustment in slowly, see this documentation about the Dovecot mail server. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

And I'd say the reason why so many PCs come with such crap clocks is because the clock accuracy isn't listed along with the essential stats (RAM, HD size, MHz, etc.). If it was, people would complain that they don't want to spend so much for a computer with such an inaccurate clock. StuRat (talk) 05:10, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

This seems strange when accurate clocks can be manufactured for a very few dollars. Do computers use rejects from the watch industry? Even the cheapest watches these days seem to achieve accuracy within 3 seconds per month. Three seconds in 24 hours seems extreme inaccuracy, or do they just not bother to regulate the oscillator? Dbfirs 09:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

They use the same 32.768Khz crystal as every quartz watch, but they feed this into a 32 bit counter which has to read values for over 100 years. So they downsample the oscillator to 1Hz and feed that into the counter (I'm looking at the datasheet for a Dallas DS1602, but they're much the same). If they had a 64 bit counter they could feed it clocks at 1024Hz, and you'd get great timing. But the clock chip wire line protocol is the same as it was on a PC-AT, and that's a 32 bit value covering ~125 years. Of course it would be trivial for them to implment a 64 bit, or bigger, counter (with very modest implications for power consumption off the battery) but they'd have to change the wire protocol, and so all the software downstream of it would need to change to. StuRat hits upon the reason they haven't bothered (because they've changed everything else in the decades since this was designed) - no-one is asking them to (even if they probably should be). 87.113.204.4 (talk) 11:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

So it's not so much "cheap crap" as "antiquated crap" 87.113.204.4 (talk) 11:47, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all, especially 87.113's answer, which is exactly the kind of information I was curious about. I know that there's the "when off" clock, but the drift I see is on my servers, which are almost always on. So whatever drift I'm getting is happening from the system clock. Is the issue you're talking about 87.113 just for the offline clock, or does it relate to the internal OS timekeeping too? (I assume it's just the offline, but correct me if I'm wrong). Shadowjams (talk) 20:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe they use the same clock for everything. It's true that when online, they could get time off the Internet, and, when plugged into an A/C socket, they could use the 60 Hz signal (US) for time-keeping. However, I don't believe they do (the second option would require that the clock plug directly into A/C, not just get D/C from the power supply). Regular (non-computer) clocks often use A/C timing, and, when power goes out and they run on the battery backup, they seem even more inaccurate than computer clocks. StuRat (talk) 00:29, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

While there are clocks that can use the A/C for timekeeping (there's a patent on it, I believe), it's pretty rare. It's more common for clocks to receive the NIST broadcast. There are some other factors that affect drift. When a clock is not on A/C, the battery voltage is likely lower (look into simple battery backup circuits if you're interested). That alone could cause it to drift more. In a computer, there's also ~3000 rpm fans adding to the vibrations (albeit a small factor). And probably the biggest contribution to drift in the computer is... the temperature. It's only supposed to be accurate at like 25C. If your computer runs at 50C, it's going to add a lot of drift. These "cheap" circuits and crystals can probably easily match the drift of cheap watches with the same conditions. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

See this page. This isn't actually a very good test, but according to their results, 25C more, and the crystal will drift 1.7s more a day. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

This problem sounds familiar (temperature too high inside the main body). Biologically, the answer is testicles. Perhaps we need a computer equivalent ? A clock card could be mounted outside the main case, similar to other peripherals like the mouse and keyboard, and connected with a USB port. You could even put it right in something like a USB stick drive. This would also make it far easier to replace the battery or entire thing. StuRat (talk) 18:04, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Can I somehow "repartition" and burn a Blu-ray disk (BD-RE) to behave like two or more DVDs?

Why I need this: When borrowing a series of films on DVD at my local library (for instance the eight Harry Potter films), I would like to view them in the correct order but there is a 7 day time limit on each loan, and not all films are available at the same time.
Thus I would like to make a temporary copy, on BD-RE, util I have them all (and can see them chronologically).
My question: How can I copy two or more DVDs onto a single BD-RE, including everything from the DVD (menues, extra material, various subtitle languages etc.) in such a way that I in the end may view them by VLC media player almost as if I still had each single DVD at hand ?
(I have a limited budget and therefore will have to rely on free software or standard features in Windows7 or maybe Ubuntu).
Is it possible?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 00:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

You're looking for a program like DVDFab, which can do a lot of things like what you're asking (I think it has a free trial version). However, it seems like you're going to more work than necessary. If you're just trying to be able to play back DVDs later, from your computer, you don't need to put them on a Blu-ray disc - you can put them your hard drive using a DVD decryption software (such as the free version of DVDFab, or something like DVD Decrypter, which is free, but no longer supported). If you just want to store the movie data on a Blu-ray disc so it doesn't take up space on your hard drive, you would decrypt the DVD (probably saving to your hard drive), and then use your Blu-ray burner to just burn the files to the Blu-ray disc, and delete them from your hard drive. If you want to be able to put your Blu-ray discs in a standard Blu-ray player (i.e. not one attached to your computer with VLC on it) and have them play, you'll need to be a bit more careful about it (using a program like DVDFab that's designed to do it would probably be best), and I'm not sure that you're going to be able to put multiple DVDs on one disc (but I might be wrong).

We don't give legal advice here, but in some jurisdictions, it may be illegal to circumvent technical copy restrictions on electronic media, including the Content Scramble System that is almost certainly used on the DVD's you are interested in. Buddy431 (talk) 04:23, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Buddy is correct - circumventing copy restrictions is against the law, and the loan conditions with the library probably have something more to say about copying. Really, Buddy should not be detailing exactly how to do that. Why not simply borrow them in the correct order? If the next one is out on loan, I'm sure the library has a reservation precess so you can reserve it the next time it comes in (it wouldn't be any more than 7 days anyway). You then wouldn't have to copy them anywhere. Astronaut (talk) 12:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

A few years ago I asked the librarian about the legality of listening to music from CDs from the library. Most people today do not have any CD-Walkman (Discman), therefore one has to put the music on a MP3-player to get to listen to it, so are we all criminals then?
The answer was: "Yes! Technically, but it is what one is supposed to do, and as long as you erase the recording after you have listened to it for a while, then no one will mind".
@Astronaut : Of course there is a reservation procedure, which works great for "stand-alone DVDs", but when there is a group of DVDs that I need to see within a 4-5 day time frame, to make sense of them, and combined with inter library loan delay and multiple waiting lists then it seldom works out. ;-(
Because BD-REs are "criminally expensive" I will probably never have more than 3 anyway, so they will be erased after I have seen through them. Therefore I believe the same applies to DVDs, as to the above mentioned CDs, and I guess the DVD vendors will be happy about it because a DVD does not last for more than a handfull of loans from the library before it is worn out and has to be replaced (and the library do buy new copies of popular worn out DVDs!).
The pirates do not make formal registered loans at the library. Do they? (They just copy the whole thing off the internet, where no one has paid anything for it).
--Seren-dipper (talk) 19:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Exploit:JS/Blacole.BV

If my antivirus says it was successful at removing it, should I believe it or can this virus find a way to hide itself into the system that would require manual removal? 70.52.77.66 (talk) 05:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Depends on the virus. However chances are if there was a known way to "manually" remove the virus your antivirus software would have incorporated it already. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 14:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

JAR files confusion

I'm not a Java developer, but I'm searching for some equations in a .JAR file.

I've renamed .JAR to .ZIP and unzipped it. This creates a bunch of .class files. Good going so far. But when I open the .class files in XCode, they are basically empty. They contain variable and function/method definitions, but the definitions themselves are empty — there's no code in there.

When I open the .class file in a text editor, I can tell that there are all sorts of text and options I'm missing.

Why is this? Is the file compiled in some way that keeps me from seeing the actual code? Any way around this? Again, I'm not a Java developer, but I've used other programming languages before. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind! I figured it out. I needed a Java decompiler. Done and done. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec)The Java programming language is typically compiled into java bytecode by the java compiler (javac) which generates .class files (which are then in turn jar-ed up into JAR archives). .class files are binary archives that are only intended to be read by a java runtime system; they're not human readable, and they don't contain source code. So in this regard (as in many others) Java is quite unlike Javascript, for example. There are java de-compilers (which turn out to be a bit more successful than their counterparts for other compiled languages like C, because the .class file format provides quite a lot of rich information). I don't know anything XCode or what one should expect it to report about a .class file it's given - recovering the names of classes, interfaces, methods, and fields should be straightforward for tools in general to do, without resorting to actually reversing the bytecode itself. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, anyway, I used JD-GUI and all of the equations were revealed to me. That's all I was really after. I can follow the equations. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

File sizes between OpenOffice and Microsoft Word

I wrote a 15-page document in OpenOffice, and the overall size of the file was less than the number of characters. Yet, when I saved the document in Microsoft Word format, the file size increased to over four times the size. Why is this? Does OpenOffice's own format employ some sort of compression algorithm? JIP | Talk 19:28, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

OpenOffice documents are (now) OpenDocument format ZIP files; rename one to .zip and you can open it with a normal archive program. As with other zips, they can be (and usually are) compressed. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

This, for example, is a great way to extract images (if someone has unhelpfully sent you a bunch of photos embedded in a word document). You open it with OpenOffice/LibreOffice, save as an .odt, rename that to .zip, open it with winzip or file-roller, and there's a folder in there with all the images. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:47, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the same is true of the new Microsoft .docx format. -- Q Chris (talk) 20:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Compression for an XML format seems like a very good idea, in general, given its propensity to verbosity. Here (pretty printed) is a single cell entry from the content.xml of an OpenOffice .ods file I just examined:

  <table:table-cell table:formula="of:=[.E79]-[.E72]" office:value-type="float" office:value="-0.285714285714278">
    <text:p>-0.3</text:p>
  </table:table-cell>

which is quite a mouthful. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

USB 3.0 external hard drive

This isn't really a question, but a follow-up to a question I asked Feb 10.

I put a two-port USB 3.0 card in my computer and added a USB 3.0 external hard drive (3 TB). I put my USB 2.0 external hard drive (1 TB) on the other port and compared the read speeds of those two drives and my two internal drives (2 TB each) on a file that is a little less than 2GB.

• C drive: 8.8 seconds
• Second internal: 8.3 seconds
• USB 2.0 ext: 28.6 seconds
• USB 3.0 ext: 7.3 seconds

So the USB 3.0 is nearly 4 times as fast as the 2.0, but what surprised me is that it is faster than my internal drives. Of course, the new external is almost clean and the others are not, and times are affected by fragmentation and where on the disc it is. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a write test with a filesystem may be an imperfect comparison, when what you're interested in is the data rates of the connection rather than of the disks. If you were willing to boot into a Linux live cd, the following command does a non-destructive read-speed test of the physical disk surface (ignoring the filesystem layer altogether):

    sudo time  dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null  count=2097152

(where sda, sdb, sdc etc. are the disks). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I tested this with a typical file that I will be reading many times. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:15, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a bit unclear to me. Do you mean you read it many times (i.e. a duplication of results)? If so, did you ensure caching wasn't an issue? (If you didn't do duplication I would suggest you results are basically a bit useless, particularly for such small differences.) In any case, I wouldn't consider a test running 7-9 seconds even with duplication to be that great. As you say there is also the issue of fragmentation and location (if you have a lot of stuff on your C drive, do remember that HDs are fastest at the beginning and slow down over the disk). Nil Einne (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I rebooted each time to clear out the cache, otherwise it reads the file (from cache) in under 0.1 seconds. Over their lifetime, these files will be read many times, but they usually won't be in the cache. The computer I tested on has 16GB of RAM, so it can keep a moderately big file in cache, but some of the computers the program will be running on have only 4GB. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

That shouldn't necessarily be a surprise. USB 3 is rated faster than certain implementations of SATA. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but my computer is pretty new (about 8 months old) so I thought it would have a good SATA, but maybe it doesn't. Also, the USB 3.0 card I installed is a PCIe x1, which I don't think is as fast as USB 3.0. (Looks like they would make SATA to be as fast as the HD.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I think this is going off the main point. Last time I checked (and it's been a while) I don't believe even the fastest 7200RPM hard drives are capable of saturating a SATA150 link. (SSDs sure.) So it doesn't really matter if USB3 is faster then some varieties of SATA if neither are capable of saturating the link. (Although as I've mentioned before, historically USB has been significantly slower then their theoretical maximum.) More importantly, beyond the points raised above, you are comparing different disks. While they all sound fairly new (except possibly for the USB2.0) based on capacity, the speed may still vary.

For example, is it possible the SATA disks are the 'green' variety which tend to spin at a slower speed (and therefore have a slower sequential read speed as well as seek times). I don't know whether they put green or performance/7200RPM hard disks in USB3.0 externals, I would guess it depends on the HD. Besides, even if they are both green, IIRC 500GB platter 2TB hard disks were fairly common. And someone (WD? Hitachi?) did produce a 5 platter 2TB. Even if the 3TB is a 5 platter (which seems to be the maximum they use in 3.5" HDs) it's still 600GB per platter. And Seagate evidentally are producing 1TB platters [1].

While platter density isn't perfectly correlated with transfer speed, there usually is some correlation for obvious reasons. In other words, there's a good chance all this test is saying is your new 3TB USB 3.0 HD faster then the older 2TB one. And perhaps the USB 3.0 interface isn't limiting it.

If you really wanted to test this however, what you'd need to do is to disassemble the external disk since it almost definitely has a SATA drive inside and compare it. However this would almost definitely void the warranty. Of course if the external disk has ESATA you could test that.

You may also want to use a tool like the freeware CrystalDiskMark [2], HDDScan [3] or something on *nix to better test you disk.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

HDDScan didn't seem to have speed tests. I downloaded Crystal, but I couldn't find any speed tests in it either. It did tell me:

• both internal HDs: SATA/600, 7200 RPM
• old usb 2.0 external HD: SATA/300, RPM unknown
• new USB 3.0 external HD: SATA/600, 7200 RPM. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:30, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Did you download the wrong thing? CrystalDiskMark is not the same as CrystalDiskInfo but is offered at the same download page so it's easy to get the wrong thing. CrystalDiskMark speed tests should be fairly obvious since that's what the main interface is about. I've never actually used HDDScan but it's something recommend as another tool and the page on the tool showed a page with benchmarking details. I have also used HD Tune but it's not freeware. There was also HD Tach but it's getting a little bit long in the tooth and isn't even officially supported any more [4]. Nil Einne (talk) 11:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

February 15

XBOX 360 - Sign-in Problem

I'm trying to play BF3 online, but every time I click the 'Multiplayer' option, it says, 'You need to be signed in to play online'. Then it gives me the option to say 'Yes'. Then nothing. How do I even sign in on this thing? I have an account (three months subscription came with the box), and it's all set up. How do I sign in? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Press the Guide button (the Xbox logo button in the middle of your controller, between 'Back' and 'Start'). This will bring up the Guide Menu. The sign in option should be visible straight away.

If you are the only person who uses your 360, you can enable Auto Sign-in by going to the dashboard (exit your current game by ejecting the disc or pressing 'Y' whilst the Guide menu is open), going to Settings -> Profile -> Sign-in Preferences. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 03:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit: Just noticed a shortcut to the console settings menu through the Guide. Serves me right for not looking around a bit more. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 03:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

VBA code for a form field in Microsoft Access

I haven't got my VBA books to hand and I need to do something now - hoping you can help me.

I have a textbox field on a form in an Access database. The field contents can only be one of a limited number of options. I want the data in the field to be red and in bold any time the data is not one specific option.

For instance; the contents might say "monthly" or "60 days" or "Proforma". I want the text to be bold and red whenever it is NOT "monthly".

I know I have to put some VBA code in there somewhere but I don't know where and I don't know how to code it.

Help please???

Thanks, Gurumaister (talk) 15:41, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

There are two ways to do this. One is to have a little VBA run on every Change event for the Textbox that checks its contents and changes the color if necessary. This is just some messy If Then or Select Case statements plus changing the Textbox's ForeColor property. A perhaps easier way (no coding involved) is to use the interface to set up Conditional Formatting. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Mr.98 - you are an absolute star!!! And it is so simple (I really haven't explored the ribbon in Access. Grateful thanks. Gurumaister (talk) 16:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

need website monitoring software

I need software to automatically look for changes to websites I specify. It should check the website for changes periodically and then (1) notify me that there has been a change and let me click on a button to go to the website, and (2) store a copy of the page if it has changed.

I used to use a free program called WebMon that did #1. I bought a commercial program Right Web Monitor that used to do #1 and #2. But it quit doing #1 properly - it would notify me of changes, but the button to go to the webpage is gone. I emailed their tech support months ago and they said that it would be fixed in the next version. Since then I've sent two more inquiries about when it would be fixed, but I didn't get a reply to either of them.

So I'm looking for a different program (for Windows) and I don't mind paying $50 or so. Is there such a program? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

If you use an RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader) then http://page2rss.com/ will do what you're asking for. It's free. Be warned, though, that I have occasionally noticed that it takes quite a long time for the notification to come through on RSS - sometimes a day or 2 after the page has changed. But I use it to monitor the 'current vacancies' pages of companies I'm interested in working for and it works perfectly for that. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't use an RSS reader. These pages are not blogs or anything like that. They are possibly updated each day (certainly need to be checked at least daily), but more typically it is weeks between changes. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:29, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

In that case, I give you 10 free ways to keep track of changes to any website, without an RSS reader. A couple of these are obviously going to be unsuitable (and one is the aforementioned Page2RSS), but you might find something useful. I haven't used any of the services, so I'm afraid I can't give a recommendation. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 23:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

None of those say that they will save a copy of the HTML. So maybe I should use a dual approach - Right Web Monitor to save the HTML and WebMon to notify me, although it is a duplication of effort. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:18, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Try Googling. Shadowjams (talk) 19:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't find anything that said that it would save a copy of the website to my computer.

So let me ask about something a little different: is there a way to automatically save a copy of a website (the HTML) to my hard drive, once a day? (It doesn't have to notify me of changes or even check for changes). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:06, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

HTTrack, and assuming you're using Windows, set it up as a scheduled event? Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

It downloaded nearly 500 pages from the website and I only want the main page. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to schedule it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

rsync's "non-regular files"

I have now regularly backed up my Linux PC's hard disk with rsync for several years, but I have become to wonder. rsync claims it is "skipping non-regular files". I would imagine these files include such things as device files, symlinks, files in the proc filesystem and sockets, but rsync also seems to consider libraries and even C source code files "non-regular files". What logic is there to what rsync considers "non-regular files", and is it somehow configurable? JIP | Talk 19:57, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

This is spoken out of ignorance of the actual answer, but one useful sanity check would be to do a full restore on a new hard disk and then compare all the files. I know we're all supposed to do this, but must admit that I, like 99% of us, lack the discipline to do such a thing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:05, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you certain those libraries and source files aren't symlinks? You can use rsync with the verbose flags (you may require double verbosity, "-v -v", depending on your rsync); it will tell you which files it is skipping and why it's skipping them. Use man rsync to verify options specific to the version on your system; rsync may be platform-specific. There are too many configurable options to list all of them here. Nimur (talk) 23:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

It appears that these libraries and source code files indeed are symlinks. The library files I can quite understand (the library files in /lib and /usr/lib also have symlinks in the same directory pointing to them), but why anyone would make an open source project where one C source file is actually a symlink to another C source file I don't understand. JIP | Talk 06:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

For an example from my projects, I like to keep corresponding .h and .c files together in the same directory , but I symlink all .h files into a project-central include directory, so that gcc can find them with just one -I option. Another reason might be that the application offers several different implementations of a functionality (with different speed/memory trade-offs, different levels of debug information, or different licenses), and at configuration time it creates a symlink to the version the user prefers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Browser page load order

I'm rather disappointed in the order my browser (Firefox 10.0.1) loads a web page. I'd expect something like this:

1) Place text and blank frames for pictures, LATEX renderings, etc., first, so the size of the the page is accurately represented.

2) Activate basic page controls, like the scroll bar.

3) Activate links inside the page.

4) Render static pictures inside the frames.

5) Render animations inside the frames.

But what I seem to get is no usable scroll bar until it's finished rendering all the animations, which may take a very long time. Is there a way to fix Firefox to do a better job ? Does another browser do this better ? StuRat (talk) 20:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

That shouldn't be happening if the page was designed in a sane way. Do you have an example where the effect is noticable? (One thing that can cause problems is that a page that doesn't specify the sizes of its images needs to be reflowed when the images actually load.) Paul (Stansifer) 21:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The page where it's most often a problem is the Pogo Mini Snapshot page: [5]. I can't use the up arrow and down arrow at the ends of the vertical scroll bar until all the animations are fully loaded, if even then. StuRat (talk) 22:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hm, it seems to work alright for me (Firefox 10.0.0). I don't know what to say. Paul (Stansifer) 02:22, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for trying. StuRat (talk) 22:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

February 16

pc software

mailmerge112.110.181.108 (talk) 03:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Is this a question, or an expletive? Having tried to get it to work, I suspect the latter ;-) AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

We have a mail merge article, if that helps. If it doesn't, please do come back and ask. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

How do I get my ISP to get me IPv6?

I was out of my apartment for 14 hours with the modem disconnected. I came back and reconnected; the IP remains the same. I would prefer to have some woodlander stop staying on my tail for whatever dope reason when he and I have better priorities elsewhere, and a good way to do so is to have IPv6. (The long alpha-numeric sequence would be harder to remember than the IPv4's numeric sequence anyways.)

Do I need different hardware? Do I need to do favors for Cox Communications? What does it take to switch to IPv6? Thanks. --70.179.174.101 (talk) 07:21, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

As was told to you last time you asked this question, this is unlikely to help with whatever you're trying to 'solve'. I suggest you read our articles on IPv6 and IPv4 and then preferably read some more in firther articles and hopefully don't come back as these should tell you why your idea is pointless. Note that in particularly that it won't help on wikipedia. The servers don't currently support IPv6 for anything (it was turned on for reading for testing once but never for editing AFAIK). And in any case, changing your IP doesn't help you when everyone recognises your style (as people here do since the 4 or so years you've been around). Edit: I see we never really told you it won't help Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 October 22#How do I change IPs under Cox Communications?. I got confused because I was thinking of saying it but ultimately did not bother. I see I also didn't mention this although perhaps you've been told at some other stage (seemingly not here Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 May 8#How to quickly change IP addresses) that if you find you need to keep changing IP to 'access various resources online' again, this likely suggests you're doing something you shouldn't be to cause you to lose access to said resources. Nil Einne (talk) 11:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

First please don't add a {{fact}} to a signed comment as it is confusing. Instead add it below the comment and sign your post. As for your request well since you asked, I was thinking of Special:Contributions/70.179.165.170 who was obviously you although it seems it was only ~1.5 years ago. However it looks to me like Special:Contributions/70.179.176.30 is you so that means you've definitely been here 2 years. And actually I get a nagging feeling that Special:Contributions/70.179.170.119, Special:Contributions/70.179.170.133, Special:Contributions/70.179.175.240 is you as well so it seems likely you have been here at least 4 years.Nil Einne (talk) 02:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused - you want to switch to IPv6 just because the address would be harder to remember? I can't imagine that would pose much of a problem to anyone interested in tracking your online activities (presumably, they would have a computer capable of storing your IP address). Wouldn't it make more sense to use a public network, or a proxy? 130.88.73.65 (talk) 16:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Why doesn't Facebook have a 1-5 star rating system for apps anymore?

They don't appear to have a tech support to speak of. No toll-free phone #, no live chat, not even an email form that I can easily find (may as well be buried under Pike Peak.)

Also, their Facebook Questions (or simply "Questions") app seems to be moribund; no responses whatsoever. (However, in the first two months of releasing that app, there were responses aplenty for the questions I asked back then. Why isn't it so active now anyway?)

Without someone reliable to ask, here was the next best place. When apps do no good or are even suspicious, why can't we rate them like we used to? (It was better to have apps remain rateable.) --70.179.174.101 (talk) 07:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

All that Facebook has done and you're still asking? They do what gets them money. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

How about a referenced answer instead of a snide cheap shot? This article seems to answer the "why" question. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Facebook is a for-profit business, like many others. Cheap shots aren't a factor. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

For reasons I won't go in to, I have a lot of Facebook 'friends' (over 1000 I believe). So I checked out Facebook questions. I see a fair amound of activity, several answers a day (including for junky promotional questions from businesses) mostly from different people (well enough variety that it's not completely one or two oddballs keeping it alive) until about February 3rd when activity drops off completely. So I wouldn't exactly describe it as moribund. It's extremely unlikely the whole world (well my 1000 friends a significant number of which are in the US) suddenly stopped doing stuff with Facebook questions on February 3rd. What it does seem to be is 'broken' at least in terms of showing recent activity. To check, I just answered 2 less junky questions. Although my answers seem to be registered, neither show up under 'Your activity'.

The fact activity dropped off a lot since it was first started doesn't take a genuis to figure out. I consider it a fairly dumb feature, I already have. Even so, I started 1 question and participated in a few in the early days just for fun. I doubt I'm the only one like that. In fact there are almost definitely a lot of people who gave it a try or just used it because it was new and briefly fun and gave up on it when they found it boring. Sure, perhaps I could have been wrong and it would be the next big thing, but it seems this hasn't panned out. Some people are still using it, whether it's working well enough for FB to keep it I can't say.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

app

It's my birthday in five days and i was looking for a neat app to do something cool on my facebook. A pal of mine had an app whereby he was able to edit the local newspaper and place his name as the headline and it appeared as if his birthday was actually national news. Anyway hope someone out there gets me. Just any neat app to announce my birthday please gimme a link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.24.111.254 (talk) 14:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC) "Neat" is just too subjective. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Moving School Emails

Hello. At home, I move messages in my school email address from my inbox with an IMAP connection via Windows Live Mail. When I arrive at school next day and check my email on the Outlook Web Access interface, the messages are marked as read but not moved from my inbox. Is it possible to fix? There are solutions on Google but I find them incomprehensible. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 18:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

To be clear, you want emails you have read in Windows Live Mail to be re/moved from Outlook Web Access' listing? ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:23, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much --Mayfare (talk) 20:15, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Probably looking for this preference pane: http://images.google.com/images?q=%22windows+live+mail%22+leave+copy&btnG=Search&sout=1 ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I do not have the Delivery section of the pane. --Mayfare (talk) 03:11, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Google advanced search

Google seems to have abolished "advanced search" again. It used to be that on google.com, I could click on "advanced search". A few months ago, that disappeared, and I had to come here to this reference desk to find out that I could click on a funny icon with no label to get a menu from which I could choose "advanced search". As of today, that's gone. What are people supposed to do? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I can still get to it at http://www.google.com/advanced_search - I have that page set as my default browser page. (you could also put a link to it in a desktop shortcut.)Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Bubba. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Apparently although "advanced search" still exists, the main Google page doesn't link to it. Was there a decision to avoid advertising its existence? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe they want to discontinue this service, so, they don't advertise it. Anyway, I wish Google had some sort of wildcard character to truncate words, but you cannot have it all. 188.76.228.174 (talk) 14:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I also wanted google to go beyond the 1000 result limit. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

blog quiz

Hello, a few years ago I had a blog on blogspot.com which had lots of entries. I have not update it for a good long time now. I have also forgot the pasword and got a new email address. However I would quite like to hang on to the content of the blog. Is there a way to download the whole thing (that is quicker than just copy & pasting each post individually)? Thank you. Anthony J Pintglass (talk) 20:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

HTTrack ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

What is the photo representing a video and can you block it?

I believe you're referring to this kind of thing. Comet Tuttle (talk)

If you want to watch a video, you might have a photo of something in that video, or something related to the video, with an arrow you can click on in the center to play the video.

On one site I go to, people put up videos. I asked their support people if there was a way for me not to see the photo that appears (with the arrow to play the video) without avoiding the site entirely, because I really like the site. It's just that some people put up offensive videos that don't actually violate that site's terms. The support person suggested having the browser block this. The site has an option to block actual photos (in most cases), which is good because those are offensive too sometimes.

I looked on Wikipedia for the correct terminology but didn't see it.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There are so many implementations, it would be rough. A lot of players have a playlist feature, in which you provide the path to a photo and to a video - you could fairly simply rewrite the page onload/etc. to remove the photo from the playlist. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

What is the term for what I am trying to remove?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you're referring to the video thumbnail, or it could be called a preview frame, like the picture I just pasted off to the right. Many video players on the web have the arrow in the middle of the video thumbnail rather than below it as shown. I think the website you contacted is talking about using a Web browser extension like Adblock Plus to block the thumbnails you dislike. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing in the thumbnail article about this. I'll leave it to someone who knows what they are talking about to add it. Thanks, and I'll pass this information on to the appropriate people. The most offensive video did get removed for violating the site's standards, and so far the recent new additions seem tamer.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Here is a sample of what produces what I am talking about:

(this appears in a box like what I am typing right now)[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li63vdLVkPI[/youtube] The result is here.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:46, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I went back to the most offensive page to post a great quote about censorship I found on Wikipedia and found white space where all the thumbnails were. Then my Internet got very, very slow. Then the thumbnails appeared, finally. I thought something had been done, but I can now see a justification for blocking thumbnails.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

If these are youtube videos or similar, disabling the Adobe Flash Player plugin will remove the preview pictures, but will also make the videos unplayable as well. 82.45.62.107 (talk) 21:03, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no interest in these anyway. Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Bash commands in Linux

How do you:

1-numerate a list? For example, you type dir and then you want to remove some specific element with rn <number of file>

2-make a backup from dir a to dir b? Verifying what was deleted in the source directory to delete it in the target too.

3-make pages for showing a long list (in windows it was the option dir /p). Ib30 (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I 100% understand what you're asking, but here's some things:

First, not all of these commands are truly bash commands. cp and ls are separate commands for example. cd is built into bash. But practically speaking, it's fine to think of them as the same for now.

To do a directory listing you use the ls command. It has various options you can read by typing man ls. If you want to filter which lines are displayed you can use grep to do that.

To copy a directory you'll usually want to use cp and probably the -R or -a flags. Read the man page there with man cp.

3: use -l flag with ls, so ls -l. Let me know if this answer your questions. Shadowjams (talk) 23:01, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't ls -l in Linux work the opposite way of dir /p in Windows? Linux lists files in short form, in pages, by default, whereas Windows lists them in long form, one file per line, by default. JIP | Talk 23:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I just checked again. /p will pause it on each page. There's no equivalent flag with ls that I know, but you can use ls -l | less to do more or less (pun!) the same. Shadowjams (talk) 23:18, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Notes about 2: I don't want to copy files. I want to backup them, which is different, since it implies deleting files from the source directory and not copying files that are already there. Ib30 (talk) 23:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Since when does backing up files imply deleting them from the source directory? JIP | Talk 23:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

What JIP said. If you want to move them use mv. You probably should read the man pages on all of these because you can screw stuff up if you're not careful. Shadowjams (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. I meant verify deleted in the source directory and then delete in the target as well. This is different from copying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ib30 (talk • contribs) 23:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Shadowjams (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Backups are not just copies of the source directory. They also update the target directory. Imagine directory a with files 1,2,3 and directory b with files 1,2,3. After a while a/1 gets deleted. A command "backup a b" should delete file 1 in directory b. The commands cd and mv do not do that. Ib30 (talk) 23:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I interpret the OP as meaning that the backup should be an updated version of the source, including deleting files from the backup that were deleted in the source directory. Since this is Linux, rsync is a must-read. Does this answer your question, Ib30? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 23:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is. Thanxs.

Regarding the list of files. Imagine that after ls you get a huge list of files like 76947487593754first.pdf and so. You want to refer to one of this, without typing the whole name, which is the better approach? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ib30 (talk • contribs) 23:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Type in 769 and then press [TAB], bash will complete to the first different character in the filenames in the current directory, for example, if there was a 76947487593753first.pdf file, it would complete to 7694748759375 . CS Miller (talk) 07:11, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

For number 1 you can make a numbered listing with ls|cat -n

Then you can select your number with grep " number " (that's a tab after the number), then you can change the number ast the front to a delete command and execute. I have also used the sort options on ls, and then tail or head the list to get a range, or the tail of a head to get one entry. eg ls | head -59|tail -1 gets the 59th file name. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

ls | head -59|tail -1 gets you the 58th file name, not the 59th. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.66.12 (talk) 11:56, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

How to remove TI-Nspire CAS Student Software completely

I installed a trial version of the TI-Nspire CAS Student Software on my Mac last month and it has now expired. How can I remove all files that were installed by the trial software (i.e., license files, serial number, etc.)? I want it completely off of my computer. --Melab±1 ☎ 22:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

February 17

Vector Spaces over Finite Vector Spaces

I was wondering if anybody here knows of a good reference like a textbook perhaps to study finite fields and vector spaces over those finite fields. I thought maybe these topics are relevant to computer science (like cryptography and error detection/correction codes) so there may be a well known text or something. Every time I search anywhere I keep getting "finite DIMENSIONAL vector spaces". I can imagine most of the theory is the same as real/complex vector spaces but there are some subtle differences which I want to explore. Thanks! - Looking for Wisdom and Insight! (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You would probably do better to ask this in the Maths section. Rojomoke (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I can't make a recommendation based on personal experience, but maybe I can help you find what you're looking for. I recalled that a common example in computer science is to use vector spaces over F_2, the field of two elements. Googling /binary vector space/ returned this nice webpage of lecture notes, full of content and exercises [6]. For more general search terms /vector space "finite field"/ returned this book [7] which is probably not quite what you're looking for, but does have a chapter on vector spaces over finite fields. If you have access to a good library, these, terms, plus maybe "encoding" or "computer science" should get you going. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree about asking at the math desk. These vector spaces up in in coding theory and Galois theory and other places too, but I hadn't thought of them as a subject in their own right. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Finding extensions

Sometimes you have files that you want to open them but you don't know the extension! How would you open them? for example some tmp files or someone who Gziped a file, but didn't added the extension... or if someone used binhex on it and you extract the hqx file but don't know what to do with the file.. How would you find the extension? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 18:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to find the file's type and then change the extension to match, so it automatically opers with the appropriate program? On Mac OS-X and Linux you can use the file command. 46.208.44.141 (talk) 18:31, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You can grab a win32 build of file from gnuwin32.sf.net. It is a command line application, though, so to get the most use out of it, you'll want to add the directory of executables it creates (by default %programfiles%\GnuWin32\bin [or %programfiles(x86)%\GnuWin32\bin for a 64-bit system, since it's a 32-bit binary]) to your path. Then to utilize it, at least in recent versions of Windows, you can SHIFT+right_mouse_click on a directory to get a convenient 'Open command window here', and run file nameOfFile. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Try opening the file using Notepad or a hex editor. The first few characters of the file are usually the name of the program that created it.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 19:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Unless it is some really obscure format, just trying different programs until you find one that works is usually good enough. 7zip will open most archive formats, Irfanview will open most picture formats, VLC will open most media formats, and open office will open many document formats. If none of those work, it's probably an .exe 82.45.62.107 (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Windows has an option to hide file types, which I absolutely hate. The assumption is that the computer will know what to do with the file, so you don't need to know the type. That assumption often fails in the real world, though. Besides, just knowing how to open it isn't all the file type tells you. Different graphics formats are used for different purposes, for example, some with lossy compression, some with lossless, some with no compression at all. StuRat (talk) 17:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I had thought about giving this answer but decided the original poster wasn't suffering from this "feature". In case I was wrong, the place to turn it off is Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View, and there's an option called "Hide extensions for known file types". Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:56, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No, no no.. I don't need to know what is the extension of the file, becuase the file itself has .001 extension. and neither wnrar, vlc, notepad obviously opens it, it says some text. and beyond that it's binary. it's a strange format... meh.. I'll try to use that build that finds file types.. though. 190.158.184.192 (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

February 18

Find Upon Opening Word

Hello. How does one program a specific Word 2007 file upon opening to run a Find window? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 03:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Open the document and press ALT + F11. Then, double-click on ThisDocument in the Project pane on the left. Then, add this code to the pane on the right:

Private Sub Document_Open()
    Word.Application.Dialogs(wdDialogEditFind).Display (9999999)
End Sub

Then, save your work both in the code window and the main application window. You may also need to lower your macro security: [8].—Best Dog Ever (talk) 08:42, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Relail DVRs

Hello. I'm in the market for a HDD based DVR in the US - one that does not require a subscription and is not a cable company rental. My other requirements is having a built-in tuner (both NTSC and ATSC), and the ability to record in HD. A this time I just have basic cable service with a full analog lineup, plus local channel HD broadcasts available in digital Clear QAM (all the major networks). CableCARD support would be a plus, but not a requirement, since 90% of my recording is off the major networks. Price is of course a factor - I'd like to stay in the $200-$300 ballpark.

The set-top boxes offered through the cable companies, such as those my Motorola and Cisco, do not appear to be offered for retail [9][10]. I see some used boxes available on ebay and similar, but I'm suspicious of these.

The only retail DVRs I have found so far are the MDR-513H and MDR-515H from Magnavox [11]. However, although both of their boxes have a digital tuner, support HDD recording, and have a HDMI output, they don't record in HD. The user guide[12] states: "This unit cannot record images as aspect ratio of 16:9. The 16:9 images will be recorded as 4:3" and "All high definition pictures will be down converted to the standard definition pictures when they are recorded on this unit". I can understand why the DVD recording side doesn't support HD, but I don't understand why this feature wouldn't be available for HDD recording and playback. It would seem to me that recording an playing back the digital broadcast stream would be a simple matter.

Are there any technical or regulatory reasons that such devices are not available to the consumer? Why can't I find what I'm logging for? Is this a conspiracy to force consumers into overpriced rental agreements? Any help or clarification would be appreciated. Thank you. 24.254.222.77 (talk) 20:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

If you have an existing Windows PC that's up to the job, have you considered using it for Windows Media Center? I use it for Freeview (the UK's terrestrial digital TV) and it's very nice (all it took was a couple of inexpensive USB DTV decoder dongles to turn a games PC into a nice media center). I don't know about cable at all, but this article suggests there are WMC-friendly cable decoders which will take a CableCARD. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm looking for a more traditional style self-contained black-box as a VCR replacement that the whole family can use. We have two laptops and a mid-tower, but they all are used regularly, so they are not available for re-purposing. 24.254.222.77 (talk) 21:04, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Internet Explorer Popups on Toshiba Computer

I got a Toshiba Windows 7 laptop computer for Christmas and for a while now Internet Explorer has been popping up at a website with news and trending searches similar to Yahoo but it was a Toshiba website. I deleted everything Internet Explorer related but it still pops up even though I cleared everything from the recycling bin. I want to know why this is happening and how I could stop it. P.S. If this may help it was bought at OfficeMax, I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.206.236 (talk) 21:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like Toshiba installed some malware on your computer. That's rather unpleasant of them. Are you sure this laptop wasn't sold at a discount, with the provision that you display such ads ? If so, you might be out of luck. Here are some things you could try:

1) Try blocking all pop-ups (note that some are wanted).

2) Download and install another browser, like Firefox, Opera, or Google Chrome. They are free.

3) Uninstall, download, and reinstall Internet Explorer. (You won't be able to easily do a download after you uninstall your last browser, so you should download and install another browser, in step 2, before uninstalling IE.)

If you need more help with any of these steps, let us know. StuRat (talk) 22:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you meant 'I deleted everything Internet Explorer related'. But anyway did you try disabling all addons for Internet Explorer. Also did you look in the add/remove programs for anything Toshiba related that you don't want? Also what do you mean 'popping up'? Are you simply referring to the IE default page (i.e. the page that may start when you start IE or open a new tab/window)? If so, just change it. Or do you mean the IE default search provider (i.e. if you search with the search tool bar in IE without changing the search provider) is something Toshiba related? Again, if so just change it. Nil Einne (talk) 16:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

February 19

Home mail server with multiple (external) POP3 accounts

I'm trying to set up some sort of home server for my dad. It needs to provide network storage for files from two laptops, but he also wants to be able to read and send emails from either computer. He does consultancy work for a number of companies, each of which has provided him with a mail account, and most of the accounts support only POP3 access (apparently it's still 1995 in their IT departments). At the moment he uses Outlook to download the mails, then files them offline in a pst file. I know that Outlook dislikes working on a network other than an Exchange server, so I'm trying to find a solution that would allow him to see all his emails, move emails between folders and archive them from either laptop. So far, the solutions I have come up with are either using Windows Home Server (expensive, and I'm not sure if it has this ability), or getting him to use Eudora instead of Outlook (ok for him, but my mum has a dislike of unusual software), or some horrendously complicated implementation of fetchmail, postfix and/or dovecot. Is there another way of doing this I haven't thought of? Most of my Google searches on mail server setups are targeted at those with their own domain. Any help appreciated. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:05, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I use getmail rather than fetchmail, as I found it much easier to use. For a while I didn't use a standalone MDA at all - I just had getmail drop stuff into a Maildir folder structure. Dovecot contains its own MDA, which will read that Maildir and serve it. Latterly I wrote my own MDA in Python (because I couldn't be bothered learning procmail's filter language) which drops the mails into subdirectories in the Maildir. The Maildir is then watched by Dovecot which serves them to clients over IMAP. Dovecot-IMAP literally requires no configuration (it just looks in a user's ~/Maildir by default), getmail needs a trivial config file (it's less than 10 lines long), and a simple procmail setup (to sort mail by recipient account) should be almost trivial. I do all this on Linux; it should all work on Windows, but I've not tried it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple search queries on a web-page

If I have a file with a list of search terms and I want to got to page x (imagine it's like google, even if it's not the case) and perform a search, which is the easiest way to do that in Linux? The perfect result would be Firefox with several tabs showing the results. The list is rather small, not more than 100 or a little bit longer. 188.76.228.174 (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding precisely what it is you are trying to do. What are you searching? What do you mean by going to 'page x' (do you mean opening the first x pages of search results for each term?)? Probably the easiest way to do this kind of thing is with some kind of scripting language. Python has good support for reading data from files and controlling web browsers - for example, you can do

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open_new_tab('http://wikipedia.org')

to open the Wikipedia home page in a new tab of your default browser. Depending on what resource you are accessing, you might be able to encode the search term in the URL. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 16:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Computers predicting the economy

I know there are some projects attempting to do this, but...

Will silicon based computers ever be able to accurately predict macro-, micro-, and regional economies? If they have real-time economic data, artificial intelligence, social media mining, data mining, and so many other models integrated with their computing, will they still ever be able to produce accurate models? Is it already being done (albeit not that great) (or for just one stock)?

Or will we have to wait for quantum computers?--Prowress (talk) 16:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Trading houses use computer modelling to try to predict the values of stock markets, but mostly to try to do short-term arbitrage. Economies are very complex and subject to measurement uncertainties, so even if a perfect model existed, it'd surely be a nonlinear dynamical system, which would make any kind of long-term predictions very unreliable. Quantum computers are not a magical solution. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:51, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Whether a system is linear isn't really relevant to whether long-term predictions are feasible (perhaps you meant chaotic system, but depending on what aspect of the behaviour you want to predict, for how long, and how chaotic the system is, that isn't necessarily a barrier, either). To Prowress: you mentioned data and computing power, but to predict a system, you also need a good understanding of how it works (for example, even if social media mining and other tools could tell you very precisely about, say, economic confidence, that information is useless unless you understand how it is likely to influence people's behaviour). Basically, nobody knows the answer to your question (but presumably most economists hope the answer is yes), but I suspect that we will have useful quantum computers (we already have simple quantum computers, by the way) long before we have useful models of macrosopic economies. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 17:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Disabled wireless

I have an HP G56 notebook running Windows 7, which cannot access the Internet. I also have a desktop computer that can access the Internet. It should be as simple as removing the Ethernet cable from one computer to the other, but that doesn't work. It won't let me connect, and the diagnostics won't solve the problem. Furthermore, in an attempt to reset my wireless connection settings I disabled wireless and now I can't turn it back on no matter how hard I try. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 17:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Some laptops have little external (physical) slider buttons than enable and disable WiFi and/or Bluetooth. If you've turned the WiFi off this way, it may not be possible to re-enable it in software, but instead you'd need to slide the switch again. On my Acer the switches have a wifi icon and a little LED beside them. 87.114.249.141 (talk) 18:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Do the computers connect to a cable modem directly, or to a router? If the computer is connected directly to a cable modem, the modem may have locked onto the mac address of the desktop computers network card and is ignoring any requests coming from a different mac address (the notebook). So, assuming this is the problem, the solution is to power down / unplug the cable modem and wait a while, then when you turn it back on make sure it is connected to the computer you want the internet to work on. It will lock onto the new mac address and accept connections from it. You will need to do this every time you switch the cable from one computer to another AvrillirvA (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried what you said, twice. How long am I supposed to wait? The connection doesn't work and the laptop tells me to unplug the modem, wait 10 seconds, and plug it back in. After I do that it troubleshoots some more and says the problem is "Local Area Connection doesn't have a valid IP configuration". And also it wasn't an external switch. As I recall I went to some sort of "properties" menu and clicked "disable". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 20:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

30 seconds is normally ample. When you plug the ethernet cable into your laptop, do you see this icon in the systray (by the clock)? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:03, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but there's either a red x or a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark on top of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Desktop Shortcuts Disappear

I am using Windows 7 64 bit and I have desktop shortcuts to a few of the Windows games - minesweeper, etc. Every now and then the shortcuts disappear. It is easy enough to make new ones, but why are they disappearing and is there anything I can do about it?

Any hints please? Gurumaister (talk) 18:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Downloading a flash function

Hello, I would like to download the Execution 101: How an Equity Order Becomes a Trade on http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/education.asp. When you click on the link to view it, this Flash feature pops up in the middle of your screen without any change to the URL. Is there any way to download their Execution 101 presentation? Thanks.--Prowress (talk) 18:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Go to http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/trade_execution-2.swf old chap - then use the "Save As" dialog in your browser to save the file locally. You can then open or drag and drop the file with/into a browser to view it. However, please be aware of their T&Cs at [13], specifically "Except as otherwise explicitly agreed by Knight in writing, the Content may only be downloaded, displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal, non-commercial use." Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 20:03, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! For future downloads of flash content, how would I find the URL to go directly to that flash content (like the one you listed) so I could do the same?--Prowress (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Creating machine code computer games in the 1980s

When I think of all the computer games developed for the Commodore 64 from the middle 1980s to the early 1990s, I have to just wonder. Did people really program all these by hand, in 6510 assembly language code? I mean, I program computers for a living, and I know 6510 assembly language code, but for me, these two aren't compatible. I write code in C, Java, and C#, which are far more human-readable than assembly language, and let the compiler do all the assembly language work for me. What little I have done directly in assembly language code is short example programs. My most ambitious project was a BASIC expansion adding a couple of commands, but I couldn't get passing parameters to work right. In the days of the Commodore 64, people didn't have graphics and sound cards with in-built drivers, they had to control the chips directly. Did people just painstakingly add instruction after instruction to their assembly language code, hoping symbolic addresses (to be later resolved by the assembler) and hand-written comments would be enough to keep them sane when debugging their code? JIP | Talk 20:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I never programmed for the 6502, but I wrote a couple of programs for the Z80 (Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC464), including Magic Brush, a fairly full-featured graphics editor. Yes, we really wrote these programs directly in assembly language, and directly on the target machine. It taught me the value of structured programming. Symbolic labels for subroutines and variables made things reasonably readable, and, after a while, one acquired a set of patterns for standard situations. The debug cycle was somewhat horrible, since any bug would most likely crash the computer. It was a big step forward to move from cassette tape to disk drive. More professional studios had a (UNIXy) minicomputer and a cross-development environment, but still would write directly in assembly language. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow that's a pro. 190.158.184.192 (talk) 21:02, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

floppy disk removal

having extracted the head of a floppy disk (the plastic part protecting it) from a floppy drive, could i have accidentally damaged the reading head and corrupt media i'd like to recover using this drive? How do I test this? Thankis. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 20:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Wiring a Small Office with CAT6 Ethernet?

• The small office has 8 computers. Each computer is located in a separate room.
• All the computers need to be able to connect to a File Server where they store their data. There is a room at the back for the File Server.
• All the computer need to be able to connect to the Internet, offered via a single Cable Modem.
• So I am thinking you connect the Cable Internet to the File Server, and since all the other 8 computers are connected to the file server, which will give them all access to the internet as well as locally stored files.
• Where to where is the CAT6 cable ethernet wiring supposed to connect to?
• Will each computer need a dedicated CAT6 wire to the File Server, or can they be merged into 1 CAT6 wire that goes all the way to the File Server?

Thanks. --33rogers (talk) 21:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Mystery Font

Hello,

I came upon this font today in a magazine and found it very beautiful. How can I identify which font it is?

Sample Image

Best, --Cacofonie (talk) 21:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)