Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/C

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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

November 27

To hire a programmer for a job

Hi there,

I am wondering if it is the right place to ask such a question or if such questions are allowed here. So I will try. A month ago I got a patent from USPTO office. It concerns a special mode of visual processing. It is a device, however I have never implemented it in practice. What I need is to prove (or disprove) that it can work in real time. The device should employ either a laptop (better) or a desktop with sufficient computer power. The modeling should involve some graphics, rather simple, and considerable amount of numerical integration. The first step will be computation of special functions. No high math will be needed since the computations will be based on well known recurrence formulas. They are elementary. Quite many iteration will be required and this is one of the major problems.

I do have considerable experience with programming in C# and about two years ago I tried to crack the problem. What I ran into was that the functions, I calculated, were missing some roots predicted by the theory. Also many years ago I tried to do similar calculation in Fortran IV with double precision on an ancient mainframe and I got good harmonics after many iterations. Unfortunately I had to abandon the project (of calculating everything myself) and now I want to hire a programmer to do the job.

I will have to try to estimate the time needed for the project more carefully but it seems to me 20 hours might be sufficient. I do not want to use MathLab for that. I want the functions calculated from scratch. The graphics I mentioned are for visualization and displaying intermediate results.

I live on Mountain Time. My first question is: what would be an hourly rate a competent person, perhaps a graduate student will charge me to do the job or, alternatively, how much should I offer? The second question is: how difficult is it to find such a person? One acquaintance scared me with his assertion that it would be extremely difficult. Sure my first thrust will be to find such individual locally.

Any suggestions will be welcome.

Thanks, 174.52.14.15 (talk) 00:43, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts:

1) Fortran is still available, and not a bad choice for the math engine. I've used it myself recently for this purpose. You might want to separate the graphics from the math engine, using different languages and maybe programmers for each. Although Fortran can do graphics, too. See the bottom of my home page for some examples of animations I created using Fortran.

2) 20 hours seems absurdly low, to me, as it will probably take that long just to nail down the specs.

3) You will probably have to offer a high rate for such a short project. StuRat (talk) 01:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the suggestions. It is already something. Could you give me your estimate in terms of the hours and the rate? Just rough ideas. Wow, I just checked your web page. It is very impressive.174.52.14.15 (talk) 01:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Given the obscurity of the description, anybody sensible will estimate a 90% probability that your task is hopeless, and require $1000 up front to invest any time in it at all. You might be able to interest a grad student with good numerical analysis skills for $50/hr, but without any specific knowledge of the math you want it's completely impossible to say how many hours would be needed. Looie496 (talk) 01:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Full specs are needed to develop an estimate. Also, you might offer a portion of any future profits instead of cash, if money is tight right now. StuRat (talk) 01:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can pay for the job, it is not a problem. $50.00 an hour is what I expected. I am learning as we go. Now is the question: how to write a spec. Well, it is numerical integration. One of the problems will be that the computations themselves might take an eternity, or at least hours and hours. I hope I won't be charged for that. What I would need is the time spent on specific tasks. Then somehow I will have to figure out if there exist faster computers that might accelerate the integration.

I can describe the whole project broken down in specific tasks. But first I would like to try to make a spec. Any references for me to see a few samples?

As I said I tried to crack the problem myself. What I did: I created a form (it is elementary in C#). It took me, I don't remember exactly how long but definitely not more than 8 hours, perhaps much less. Sure there were a bunch of buttons with some small windows for initial parameters, like indices L & M. Then a window for the argument. The program was rather short. Tomorrow I will open my source and will be able to tell exactly the number of lines. My goal was to calculate the special functions used in integration. I got weird function values. Apparently computational errors accumulated. I was tired at that time and just dropped it. I was discouraged. Lately I recalled my Fortran experience and thought that it was the way to go. The thing is, it is not what I do for a living. It is all rather complicated to explain. Also I want some independent mind with much broader computer experience to take a look at the problem. Even now with the hints you are dropping I am learning a lot. Thanks174.52.14.15 (talk) 02:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The specs don't have to be very formal, just list what the program is supposed to do, as detailed as you can, and include any formulas you have developed. Does your patent application include any of that, or is it just for the hardware ? As far as not paying for the programmer's time while a long batch job runs, yes, that could be a term of your contract. However, you said you hope to get it to run real time, and this confuses me. Do you mean it will initially take hours, but you hope to get it down to seconds ? In that case, you need to do lots of benchmarking and code optimization, which is a different type of coding. I've done some of that, too, and it takes many iterations, tweaking one thing at a time, then running your test cases again, to see if that tweak improves the speed. StuRat (talk) 03:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A patent is supposed to provide enough information to make a working example. You should have got your idea working in C# or Basic or anything first even if very slowly using an inefficient method. If you can't get it working slowly there is no point talking about doing it fast. A programmer might be able to get it going fast using a better algorithm once you get it working satisfactorily but they're not going to do your work in devising a method in the first place. Dmcq (talk) 08:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand the OP correctly, the problem seems to be error stackup, which is caused by using too low of a precision in the calculations. If so, there are solutions to that. Some languages support arbitrary-precision arithmetic calculations, for example. Or, perhaps 32-bit or 64-bit precision would be enough.

However, you do have a point that the algorithm may not work. With this in mind, the contract should not specify that the programmer must provide working code, but only that they must implement the algorithm defined in the specs correctly. Whether the formulae work or not is beyond their responsibility.

I once had a robotics professor derive the formulae for linear movement of robotics arms, without consulting any notes, in class, over several weeks. He then asked us to implement those formulae in code, and, no surprise, they didn't work. So, it happens. Even very smart people sometimes make mistakes. Let's hope this is not one of those cases. StuRat (talk) 09:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is more likely to be caused by discretization, which especially comes into play in numerical integration. But when the OP starts talking about numerical integration and then suddenly is talking about roots, it's really impossible to figure out what sort of mathematics is involved here. Looie496 (talk) 16:36, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for all contributions. I have to go to work now and will be back in about 12 hours. It is a very interesting discussion for me. Thanks, -Alex

Well, this is the scoop (partial though). Let's assume I have it under control. I will use masculine for simplicity. I've found a man who would agree to follow the script, we have a contract, etc. So, he writes software, he then runs the "program" and determines that the execution took let's say N minutes. What will follow is not a clear vision because I have so little experience in it, it is sort of granular. I will look into multiprocessor hardware. The task itself is highly linear and it is amenable to breaking up in much smaller and manageable parts. I will describe it later in the spec. Multiprocessing is mentioned in the patent. Dell manufactures a server with 96 processors. Perhaps that will be the answer. I can afford to buy it if needed. The further vision is to get a computer with perhaps 4096 processors. I've read somewhere that there is an experimental machine available with that many. But I need to run the task one single time to calculate roughly how many processors will be needed. Then another option still down the road is: provided everything points to it and financing is available I may approach Dell and ask them to make a computer with so many processors, perhaps 256 or whatnot, unencumbered with any I/O junk, pure calculator that will run the integrations I need. Sure some I/O will be needed but stripped down. And how about creating specialized hardware for at least part of the task, sort of special processors like video cards. Perhaps some of the subtasks could be hard wired solid, who knows.

Someone mentioned a possible optimization which I've also had in mind. One thing I expect to find out from the execution is to learn which part requires the largest effort and consumes most of the time. If it is calculations of the special functions (harmonics) then perhaps it would make sense to create a table (library) of needed values and take what you need every time. That will require a three-dimensional matrix though because you change two indices and an argument (angle). Hopefully it will cut down on execution time. Perhaps it can be kept in RAM. Then it will be super fast, or in case of ordering a new machine from Dell, a cash memory might be construed for that.

Another idea is to try to calculate those special functions only at key points and then use linear or quadratic interpolation to fill the gaps. In some areas they look like sine/cosine and perhaps those could be used instead. The only thing that will be needed is the table of all roots. The ideas here are plentiful. Thanks2601:7:7680:626:86D:846D:AD0B:96BD (talk) 01:44, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some more thoughts:

A) You mean cache memory, not cash.

B) "Highly linear" to me means sequential processing, where each step depends on the previous step. In this case, parallel processors won't help.

C) Having a custom computer architecture designed for you will cost a huge amount of money. If there's any way to use an off-the-shelf model instead, I recommend that.

D) A lookup table in memory will require more time up-front to load it into memory. Just reading the entries off the hard disk, as needed, will take longer per look-up. Assuming they are properly indexed, though, that might still be quicker, if the number of items you need to look up per run is only a small portion of the total. You might also consider a relational database for storing a large look-up table, as they offer several indexing options, which you can optimize for your situation. (In your case a hierarchical database would also work, but relational databases have had a lot more work done on them to optimize efficiency, in recent years.) StuRat (talk) 06:08, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat, thank you for the correction. Somehow I got carried away with the cache. Sorry, you are wrong about the linearity. You can read an article in Wikipedia "Linearity" which explains additivity of linear processes. It has nothing to do with being sequential. The process I try to describe is highly additive. In short instead of taking a surface integral over the whole area, partial integrals over smaller areas may be taken and the results then added. It will be the same. Unfortunately now I am not ready to write the spec. It is a bit complicated and I have to think it over, I was caught off guard with it. In order to write a spec I need to learn how to print formulas here in Wikipedia.org. I will need about 8 of them overall. I really appreciate your comments, though.

I promised to count the number of source code lines in the program I wrote in C# two or three years ago which calculated the harmonics but they were skewed. It was 1,800 which included comments, empty lines, etc. I don't recall how much time I spent but it was not more than 20, I guess.

You say that loading the table will take time, yes I agree but it can be done only once. Can it be hard-wired in RAM though? This is something I mentioned. Sure disk reading will defeat the whole thing. I am bit shaky on relational databases although I sure used then and still do in Sql Server.

I will definitely be back. Thank you very much. 2601:7:7680:626:86D:846D:AD0B:96BD (talk) 16:25, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Alex[reply]

This would be a very simple database implementation, just one table and one query. As far as "hard-wired into RAM", I think what you need is ROM. See Read-only_memory#Use_for_storing_data and Read-only_memory#Reading. Based on those discussions, it looks like storing the look-up table on ROM, then loading it into RAM, at the start of the program, might be the way to go, to avoid any need for slow hard disk reads. StuRat (talk) 12:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All of this discussion of implementation details is a waste of time if we don't have any information about the actual problem that needs to be solved. Looie496 (talk) 17:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Set Mac OS X Leopard to wake up every two hours

Is there a way for me to make it such that my iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.8 wakes up every X hours? The system that is found in the "Energy Saver" panel is insufficient for this task. — Melab±1 ☎ 06:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't used it, but this program says it can do scheduled wakeup calls [1]. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is your iMac a PowerPC-based system? That could change subtle details about how power events get triggered.

Either way, you can use pmset to set and modify advanced schedules for power management events. For example:

     pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 12:00:00  wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 14:00:00 wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 16:00:00

... will wake (or power on) the system every day, at 12:00, 2 PM, 4 PM, and so on, repeating forever.

Nimur (talk) 04:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How Do I edit wikipedia using javascript on monobook.js

I want to make a javascript (user script) that automatically edits a page (without needing to press any buttons). This will be very helpful for tagging. I one day wish to make something similar to twinkle. But I need to start somewhere...Finally An Account (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC) How do I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_scripts/Guide to work.Finally An Account (talk) 18:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disabling resizable text areas on Firefox

There are certain pages that I use that Firefox will automatically shrink the text areas and then put a resizing button in the corner. Is there any way to suppress or disable that? All my searches just turn up help for website developers to suppress it on their site only, instead of a solution for the user. —Akrabbim^talk 19:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well if you can change it, it's probably in about:config (see this list of about:config entries). You're sure it's not caused by javascript on the page itself? Can you try visiting the page with javascript turned off, or give us a link to an example page? Card Zero (talk) 20:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tested the page in another browser for comparison? I believe Firefox adds the resizing handle to all textareas (unless the page code says not to), but the textarea's starting size is specified by the page itself. So if you're annoyed that the textarea starts out too small, I believe that's caused by the way the page was coded and not caused by Firefox. The resizing handle lets you override the size if the page's default size is too small.

Firefox has a user style sheet that lets you modify every page you visit. This can be used to remove the resize handle, or change other aspects of webpages to your liking. Here's how to find it:

Go to the Help menu and choose Troubleshooting Information.
Find the line Profile Folder and click Show Folder.
Open the chrome folder.
Using a text editor, edit userContent.css or create it if it doesn't exist.

You can add the following line to disable the textarea resize handle:

textarea { resize: none !important; }

Restart Firefox to see the change.

If you want to use styles that other people have made, you may be able to find add-ons that make the process easier. For example, I found userstyles.org recommends an add-on called Stylish, but I don't have any experience with that site or add-on.
If you want to make your own style rules, you can read up about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the language used.

--Bavi H (talk) 06:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

DVD drive keeps on spinning

It just does it for no reason. I'm running Windows XP. Is there a command to stop it? Thanks for any help you can offer. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:05, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming there's no disk in it, which is just weird. Even so, there are some good suggestions here: if "power options" in the control panel is set to put hard drives to sleep, try turning that off; if you can locate a firmware update from the DVD drive's manufacturer's site, install that; do a thorough malware scan; then try turning off any anti-virus program to establish whether that's trying to access optical disks. Card Zero (talk) 00:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm so sorry. I neglected to say that it spins when a disk is in but not in use. The superuser site seems to be blocked here in China. I'll try the things you recommend. Many thanks. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:47, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

November 28

Size of electronics

These days, all our electronics are getting thinner and lighter but at what cost are manufacturers doing this? Is it performance? I dont think its cost as the high end professional electronic items still tend to be larger and chunkier, as well as more expensive. 82.40.46.182 (talk) 00:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually performance tends to go up as size goes down, since the electrons don't have as far to travel, so get there sooner. Reliability can be a problem, though. NASA tends to use older, bulkier electronics, so a stray particle won't destroy them. Here on Earth, we have the atmosphere to protect us from that, but still subtle things like temperature and humidity changes could cause problems. StuRat (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that batteries are the things that suffer the most. Making super-thin, lightweight batteries is problematic - and all of the advances that could be used to extend the life of the battery are instead going to making them thinner and more lightweight. SteveBaker (talk) 14:40, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At the cost of the poor designers' hair is the main thing. Smaller is in general better but there's all sorts of problems, the wavelength of the light is far larger than some features, cosmic rays and radioactivity can cause problems, and the things don't work the same if you just halve the sizes. For instance if you halve all the dimensions of a wire, its diameter as well as its length, the resistance doubles which means you generate double the heat in an eighth the volume. Its not as bad as that luckily!, the voltage required can goes down, one can thicken the metal and the heat spreads around easier and the surface is two dimensional and there always seems to be some amazing new property of matter turning up that can be exploited to make things smaller again. Dmcq (talk) 16:14, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For more information see our article on Moore's law. Looie496 (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Connect a laptop to a HDTV

Thinking of getting a flatscreen HDTV to hook up to my laptop, mostly so I can watch streaming Netflix movies on a bigger screen. I have a Toshiba Tecra A-7 (bought 2006 or 2007). I checked the archives but couldn't find anything that would apply to my case. My laptop doesn't has a HDMI port as far as I can tell but an S-video outlet. Do I need some extra hardware, is there a cable that would do the trick or is the solution, if there is one, completely different? Appreciated for any helpful input. thank you.71.101.136.168 (talk) 02:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You will need a converter : http://www.ebay.com/bhp/s-video-to-hdmi-adapter

S video? Do your laptop even have VGA output? 140.0.229.39 (talk) 02:56, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mmh, yes, of course it has a VGA output too. Is there a way to connect it to a TV through that or do I still need the converter mentioned above?71.101.136.168 (talk) 03:07, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also as a side note: With that converter i won't get HD I guess, unlike on my laptop? Unless Netflix (silver light) tricks me into thinking I have HD. Hard to see a difference on such a small screen thus I don't know for sure what I get.71.101.136.168 (talk) 04:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The best resolution from that laptop was 1280 x 800 (WXGA) so it will display "720p" at the low end of "HD". Dbfirs 13:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I'd splurge the $35 to get a "Chromecast" contraption from Google. It plugs into the HDMI port on your TV and lets you transmit any browser window to your TV - or have it play movies for you directly after you launch from the laptop. Because it connects directly to the TV, your laptop's resolution becomes irrelevant. SteveBaker (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for all answers. Very helpful. Chromecast sounds great but I checked and XP is not supported. Bummer. I'll have to go with one of those converters.71.101.136.168 (talk) 18:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Just ordered a HDTV with VGA and S-video input [2]. Guess that'll do the trick ;) . Thanks again for your help.71.101.136.168 (talk) 23:57, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dual Monitor Setup with Different Size Monitors

I have a dual monitor setup with two different size monitors. The issue I am having is when I use remote desktop to connect to my server, on the left monitor (the larger one), when I maximize, I don't have to scroll right/left and up/down. Then when I move it over to the right monitor, I have to scroll right/left and up/down to display everything on the screen. Is this because I am using two different monitors of different resolutions? Are there are software fixes for the issue? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:5FC0:1E:15CB:3E18:656C:8F1E (talk) 03:23, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice question. I too am wondering about that setup. Using several PC's on one screen,keyboard and mouse is easy done but what the other way around?71.101.136.168 (talk) 03:42, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is because you are using two different resolutions. The only fix I can imagine is to use the same res on both. StuRat (talk) 05:50, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shuffle a deck of cards in Java

If I'm working with a deck of cards that is held in an array, can I use Collections.shuffle to shuffle the deck? It says that it's used on lists but I have an array. Dismas|^(talk) 06:29, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might just implement shuffling routine yourself as a method for the array. Algorithm is described in the doc you linked:

This implementation traverses the list backwards, from the last element up to the second, repeatedly swapping a randomly selected element into the "current position". Elements are randomly selected from the portion of the list that runs from the first element to the current position, inclusive.

that is, going with pos from N–1 downto 0 make random number r such that 0 ≤ r ≤ pos and swap array elements at pos and r. Done.

You might also use Arrays.AsList which gives a List-like interface to an array. :) --CiaPan (talk) 06:51, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dismas, you can convert your array into an ArrayList, using Arrays.asList. Now you have a Collection object that you can safely pass to the Collections shuffle function. Nimur (talk) 10:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if this is obvious but how do I get my ArrayList back into an Array then? I'm new to this if you hadn't figured that out yet. Dismas|^(talk) 12:51, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You don't. You don't need to. It is still there as an array, just use it. Assuming 'tab' is your array, do
Collections.shuffle( Arrays.AsList( tab))
then access 'tab[]' items as before. --CiaPan (talk) 14:15, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Method AsList does NOT convert your array into a list, as Nimur says. It only adds a list–like interface to the array, but the array itself is not transformed into any new data structure. --CiaPan (talk) 14:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very good point, CiaPan: in recent Java incarnations like Java 6 and Java 7, the AsList method is a efficient (cheap-to-call) method that bridges the Collections framework, while still using the original array to back the data structure. When I first began programming in Java 1.2, our code pre-dated the Java Collections framework, so my memory of the implementation details is rusty. A lot changed in Java 1.4; and it's been fairly stable since then. You should definitely verify with the documentation that corresponds to your current Java JDK. Nimur (talk) 16:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh good grief! Just write the shuffle code for an array - it's an utterly trivial algorithm and it generates a "perfect" shuffle (my Java is a little rusty...but I think this is right):

  Random rand ;
  for ( int i = 0 ; i < 52 ; i++ )  // For every card in the deck
  {
    int pos = rand.nextInt(52);  // Pick a place for this card to go.
    Card tmp = cards[i] ; cards[i] = cards[pos] ; cards[pos] = tmp ;  // Swap the i'th card with the one in some random place. 
  }

By the time you've figured out how to convert one data structure into another (and back again) ...you could have written this is a trivial piece of code ten times over! Then consider the wasted CPU time to convert back and forth and that shuffling a list is inherently more code than shuffling an array.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's the broken "permute-with-all" variation of the Knuth shuffle. (There is a reason to use the standard libraries!) --Tardis (talk) 15:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How is it 'broken'? AndyTheGrump (talk)

There is an explanation in Knuth shuffle - but for 52 cards, the deviation from statistical perfection is utterly trivial - there is essentially no conceivable application of card shuffling where the difference matters. But yeah, it's a little bit off. However, the lack of "true" randomness in the underlying random number generator by far exceeds the error from using the above code. SteveBaker (talk) 03:15, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that would depend on what you want it for, I suppose. If I've understood the explanation in the article, the problem with this algo is that the permutation it gives you is always a cycle of all the cards, which is true for only 1 in 52 of the possible permutations. That's not what I would call a small error. To me, a small error would be, say, one that gave some permutations with probability of 1.01 times the theoretical value, and some others with 0.99 times the theoretical value. But this one gives 52x for some permutations, and 0x for others.

Now, it might be true that, for most games, you won't really notice whether the permutation is a cycle or not, because it doesn't much affect your chance of getting a royal flush or a 2NT opener. But I can imagine that, say, there might be solitaires where it would be key, where, I don't know, you can win if the permutation decomposes into cycles of odd length, and not otherwise. ---Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're lookin at the wrong implelmentation error. The relevant part is the second paragraph of the "implementation errors", not the first. Steve is right that the difference is not huge, and every combination is possible. MChesterMC (talk) 11:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, my bad. Didn't think about it all that carefully. --Trovatore (talk) 21:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It does bring up an interesting question, though. Just how far off is this algo? The argument that it can't be perfect, simply because n! does not divide nⁿ, is easy to follow, but is there any equally clear way to say something about what the errors are? For example, is the identity permutation more likely or less likely to show up than its theoretical value? --Trovatore (talk) 01:19, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Steve, but I'm not as concerned with being able to write the for loop as I am in building experience with various libraries and the API. And the CPU cycles don't bother me. I'm aware of the trade offs between the two methods. Thanks again for your suggestion but it's just not the direction I wanted to go.

Thanks to CiaPan for helping to explain the implementation of the commands. Dismas|^(talk) 00:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I have a little something to report on the question of how far off the "broken" implementation is. I wrote a little program that tries all nⁿ possibilities and keeps track of how many times each possible permutation gets hit.

Of course I couldn't go up to n=52. The program took more than an hour for n=8, and that was several hundred times what it took for n=7, so while there's no doubt some serious low-hanging fruit in terms of making it run faster, we're not going to get past 9 or 10 with this approach.

Still, the results are intriguing, and if they generalize (and aren't just an artifact of some bug in my code), then the implementation actually seems to be rather badly broken:

n	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Mean hits	2.000	4.500	10.67	26.04	64.80	163.4	416.1	1067.6	2755.7
Std dev	0.000	0.500	1.841	5.803	17.25	49.83	141.5	397.98	1111.3
C.o.v	0.000	0.111	0.173	0.223	0.266	0.305	0.340	0.373	0.403

So subject to the above caveats, it kind of looks like the ratio of the standard deviation (note: s.d., not variance) to the mean is, if anything, going up, not down, as n gets larger. Presumably it will level off somewhere (WAG: e⁻¹), but this suggests that a substantial fraction of permutations may have probabilities differing by at least a factor of 1.3 from their theoretical values. That's pretty bad, at that level of analysis.

It still might be true that Steve is right that it doesn't make much practical difference for actual games; I don't know. (Or, it could be that I have a bug.) --Trovatore (talk) 04:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Turned out it's hugely faster to work a little harder on figuring out a code for a permutation rather than just dumping them into unordered_map (though, to be fair, I was using a really dumb hash function, so STL might be more competitive if I worked harder on that). With that change, I was able to get n=9 without too much pain. I've added the extra column above. (My WAG was wrong.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New update: Added column for n=10. That was painful — my laptop kept threatening to get to 96 Celsius and shut down. I had to nursemaid it by hitting Ctrl-Z every now and then to let the fans catch up. Any further work at higher n along this lines, at least on my computer, will have to be Monte-Carlo, which complicates interpretation. But anyway it looks pretty clear that it's a bad way of doing a random shuffle. (Again, unless I have a bug, and I concede that I don't know whether there's any actual game for which this shuffle would be a problem.) --Trovatore (talk) 09:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's a more serious issue here. When you do a deck shuffle with this code, the final state of the deck is determined by the original random seed. (Remember, each seed is used to generate the next seed.) That random seed is 32bits, or possibly 64bits.

A deck of card contains 226bits of data.

Believe it or not. The majority of deck configurations can never be generated by the code that Steve posted.

You'll need more than 226bits of true entropy to properly shuffle a deck. APL (talk) 19:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, of course, it's discussed here in the article : Fisher–Yates_shuffle#Pseudorandom_generators:_problems_involving_state_space.2C_seeding.2C_and_usage

APL (talk) 19:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about the Java Random class; it may be that it only has a 32-bit or 64-bit state, but that would be pretty silly. That made sense a long time ago, when 32K was a lot of RAM (maybe all you had), but not now. I was assuming that it was a modern stateful RNG and treating that as a black box. I really think that's a less serious issue, not more serious. --Trovatore (talk) 20:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really about the internal state, It's about the starting condition, which is defined by the seed.

Java rand is seeded by a Long. (64bits.)

Worse, C's rand is seeded by an Int, which can be 32bits on many systems!

APL (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, these are details of the RNG implementation; I've written RNGs myself and dealt with that sort of thing, but I'm not interested in it here. You can certainly set up the system to get lots of true-random bits for the seed, if you're interested in doing that. Look into RNGs with a fat state, like Tausworthe or the Mersenne Twister, and consider seeding them from an entropy pool. But this is pretty much orthogonal to the issue at hand, which is how bad this version of the Knuth shuffle is intrinsically.

As a practical matter, I'm pretty confident that, even if the supply of seeds is small, any decent RNG will give a decent statistical sample of the space for most purposes. For example, I would be shocked if it systematically preferred even permutations over odd (or vice versa), when using the correct implementation. For the errors caused by this permute-with-everything implementation, I'm not confident of that at all. The statistics make me think that some property of certain permutations is systematically preferred by that implementation, and I would conjecture that it's a property that has some conceptual understandability beyond the bare statement that it is preferred by the implementation. That's just intuition for now; I haven't found out what the property is. --Trovatore (talk) 21:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent) There are clearly two very separate issues here:

Is the random number generator sufficiently random?
Is the algorithm introducing some kind of statistical anomaly.

The first is all about the quality of that Random class in Java. I suspect it's probably very good...but the algorithm doesn't depend on a particular random number generator - if you need a better one, you can write one and use it. That's really not the question here.

The second issue is the critical one. And I agree that the algorithm that I presented isn't as perfect as I first thought. (It is, however, plenty good for practical card-shuffling purposes because no matter how bad it is, it's not remotely as bad as a human doing the job with a real deck of cards!)

To understand *WHY* it's flawed is a bit subtle. Our article points out that the number of possible permutations of cards (52! or 52 factorial)

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000

...does not divide exactly into 52⁵²

252,480,111,352,266,526,589,168,512,857,250,850,253,488,701,621,266,216,973,895,038,073,875,801,560,933,776,490,496

...which is the number of possible ways that the algorithm can have moved the cards around. If the algorithm was perfect, then each pattern of cards would come about in exactly 52⁵²/(52!) different ways through the software. That number is:

3,130,248,245,973,452,170.5993100879

And what's significant about that number is that it's not an integer. Which means that some patterns MUST come up more frequently than others - which is the final proof that the algorithm is statistically imperfect even if the random generator that drives it is perfect.

Unfortunately, that tells us nothing about HOW imperfect it is. The best-case scenario would be if one card pattern showed up about 0.00000000000000001% more often than any of the others...which would be entirely irrelevant for any reasonable purpose and way less bad than the statistical flaws inherent in any known software random number generator. But it might be worse than that...maybe MUCH worse.

The tricky part is understanding just how bad that statistical unfairness really is...particularly in the context of a particular kind of card game. For example, in the game of Contract Bridge, it doesn't matter what order each player gets their cards in - only which cards end up which which people. In the childs game of "SNAP" - it doesn't matter what suits the cards are.

However, our OP's question wasn't about finding a halfway decent shuffling algorithm - but actually about moving one data structure into another (and back again) in Java. So I guess we've already gone much deeper than is needed to answer that.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, OK, but you don't seem to have taken into account that I have done a good deal of work into characterizing how imperfect it is. Granted, I didn't get anywhere close to n=52, but there are clear trends, and they are definitely not in the direction of the permutations being distributed as-evenly-as-possible given that 52! doesn't divide 52⁵². --Trovatore (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, the algorithm used in Java Collections.shuffle differs only slightly from mine:

 Random rand ;
 for ( int i = 51 ; i > 0 ; i-- )  // For every card in the deck except the first
 {
   int pos = rand.nextInt(i+1);  // Pick a place for this card to go.
   Card tmp = cards[i] ; cards[i] = cards[pos] ; cards[pos] = tmp ;  // Swap the i'th card with the one in some random place. 
 }

That tiny change results in only 52! possible shuffles - and so long as we believe that every possible card ordering is reachable, it is perfect (assuming the random number generator is also perfect). SteveBaker (talk) 15:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, no comment on the statistics, then? Really I thought they were fairly surprising. They show not merely that the permutations are not distributed as evenly as possible; they aren't even distributed "randomly", so to speak. That is, if you threw an n!-sided die nⁿ times, and kept track of the permutation coded by one throw of the die (that's why it has n! faces), then you would get a MUCH more even distribution than this one.

That's why I think it's likely to be some property that we can find. I have the data (I'll share them with you, Steve, if you like, or anyone else who asks) for n=2 through 10, and it should be possible to analyze them to see (for example) whether the position of 0 in the permutation is, on the average, where we expect it to be. Or whether there's an inordinate fraction of odd permutations. Or lots of other possibilities. --Trovatore (talk) 19:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Trovatore, I would be interested to follow up on your investigation, as I have frequent needs for cryptographically secure, alias-free shuffling algorithms (both for practical and non-practical purposes). It is always good to get a refresher on pathological ways that random sequence generators can alias. Maybe later this week you can share your method and data. In the meantime, I'll spend some time thinking about the problem, and ways to safely and sanely experiment with larger n.

In practice, I usually use the Mersenne twister, or an srand-like function that gets seeded with hardware entropy; but I'm sure my random numbers are only as good as the weakest post-processing that I perform on them. I don't frequently shuffle cards, but I do schedule tasks, allocate resources, and so on - so this might be a fun experiment. Nimur (talk) 04:30, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, here's the link to my code. I've never tried to share code this way before; I don't know if you can just copy/paste without getting rid of some screwy characters or something, but it's short enough that even completely retyping it wouldn't be too bad.

I've done a little analysis — it looks like the number that winds up in the 0 position is not at all evenly distributed. For n=10, there's exactly a 10% chance that 0 winds up there, which is exactly right, but the chance that 1 winds up there is almost 13%. Then it drops off steadily, with 4 having a 10.44% chance and 5 a 9.78% chance, and winding up with 9 having a 7.75% chance. I thought about this a bit and it kind of makes sense to me; I'll post the explanation later unless someone anticipates me.

So it looks like part of the "favored property" is just having certain cards wind up in the first (perhaps early in general?) position(s). --Trovatore (talk) 10:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"It compiles and runs," ($ c++ -o out.exe main.cpp permutation.cpp ). I will spend some more time reading code and investigating results. If this question ends up archived... I know how to find your talk-page; I don't expect I can spend a lot of time on "fun programming" today, but I'll report back whenever something neat comes up. Nimur (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and uploaded the data for n=10 (the only one that doesn't run in seconds) to the same folder -- look for out10new.bz2. The format is the same as the output from the program you have. --Trovatore (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

TrueCrypt Pre-Boot Authentication - can it be temporarily disabled?

Hi, I'm looking for a way to temporarily disable the built-in Pre-Boot Authentication feature of TrueCrypt, so that security updates / software installations that require a reboot don't require physical presence of somebody to type in the password. Does anybody know how that could be accomplished, preferably purely in software or with the use of a regular USB storage medium (no special "Token generator")? I'm looking for a way that would either have it bypass the authentication "just once" or a pre-defined, selectable number of reboot cycles, or as long as the USB storage medium is plugged in.

Kind Regards, 149.172.200.27 (talk) 12:44, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I'm sure you know, the password is required to actually derive the key that the system then uses to decrypt/encrypt your data on the fly. I guess it might be possible to modify the preboot code to read your passphrase/key from somewhere, and then boot as normal, but I don't know of anyone who's done that, and it has the problem of storing your passphrase. It might be possible too to use a secure token / smartcard, but I don't know if that works with preboot/system encryption. It should be obvious that there's no simple "don't require a password this time" option because unlike your windows password, which provides software controlled access control, full disk encryption requires the key and never stores it (hopefully) on the disk, because doing so would defeat the entire purpose. Shadowjams (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't defeat the purpose if it is done temporarily for the reason given above, would it? AFAIK, commercial encryption software vendors offer such a feature, I was just hoping it is available with a free and open-source solution like TrueCrypt, too. -- 188.105.122.86 (talk) 23:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you ever write the key (or what can derive it) to the disk, you've given up on every major advantage that full disk encryption offers. I would be very interseted in how the commercial vendors offer this feature. Shadowjams (talk) 05:06, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I should point out that you imply "temporary" storage to the disk. That has all sorts of caveats with it, and SSD drives make that even more complicated. Short version is, if it ever gets written to the disk, it's no good. If this is the kind of security you require then basic access control security from the OS should be enough. Shadowjams (talk) 05:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How does SQL JOIN work with WHERE clause in the background to make query more efficient

I know how using a WHERE clause works in the end product. But, recently at work I ran some query and it ran out of spool space. I was eventually able to get it to run by deleting out a couple tables that were joined. I want to know more about writing efficient queries. I know the basic process of writing queries in general. I have several specific questions on this topic. I would love a webpage on the subject if you know of one. I have googled for such a webpage many times and been unsuccessful. I may not know enough to use the right words.

I have heard that when you do a JOIN it creates the Cartesian product of the tables. If I write a query of the form SELECT stuff FROM somewhere WHERE conditions, do the WHERE conditions make the Cartesian product smaller? That is, are the filters applied to the various tables before the Cartesian product is performed? Or, does it create the Cartesian product first and then go through and limit the rows? This would be a huge difference in how much computing power is needed and I can't find the answer any where. If it does create the Cartesian product first, is there a way to make it more efficient?

I once read that if you move the WHERE conditions into the JOIN state it can make it more efficient. Is that true? For example, I'm saying that instead of putting WHERE a.number > 50000 in a WHERE clause, you should put that same condition in the join, i.e., a JOIN b ON (a.ID = b.ID and a.number > 50000). Is this true? Does this make it more efficient?

Also, if you do a bunch of JOINs in one query, does it create a huge Cartesian product of all tables all at once? Or does it do the first two, then limit, then the result with the next table, then that result with the next table, etc.?

Any references or answers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. I would love references more than anything probably so I can learn more and more.

StatisticsMan (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to know how a specific complex query of your own is actually evaluated, most DB engines have a mode where they show the basic operations they do to satisfy a query. In MySQL and I think Postgress it's called EXPLAIN; db2 has an explain utility, and Microsoft SQL has SHOWPLAN. Some suites also have a tool that helps you design queries better by looking at actual queries on representative data - db2 has Design Adviser, for example. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How a query is evaluated can also depend on statistics gathered about the tables, for instance how many records there are in each table and whether a field has only a few values or mostly unique values. The same query may be evaluated in quite different ways as the database changes. It is even possible that a small trial is done to evaluate some statistics before settling on the final scheme. I see in fact Wikipedia has an article Query optimization about all this. Dmcq (talk) 15:53, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) has groups/forums on Sql Server. You can post there because as far as I remember anyone can post even without being a subscriber. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/home?category=sqlserver&filter=alltypes&sort=lastpostdesc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:7680:626:86D:846D:AD0B:96BD (talk) 00:45, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How do I mount my SD card's 2nd partition on my Samsung Galaxy Victory? (TWRP doesn't let me select "Mount SD Card.")

I can't use Link2SD to transfer movable apps to the SD card unless I "mount" the 2nd partition.

TWRP won't let me select the option "Mount SD Card," so I figure TWRP isn't the right app to mount the 2nd partition from. **What will let me?**

Once I successfully mount the 2nd partition, I'll next get 4 choices: ext2, ext3, ext4, FAT32 / FAT16. I'm trending toward ext4, so ext4 is correct?

I've been wanting to transfer many movable apps to the SD card because I have anemic internal storage space (<5 GB.) That's why I partitioned my 32 GB SD card. I still have yet to figure out how to "mount" said partition and what file system to choose, before I move the apps. Thanks. --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 17:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unwanted pop-ups II

I posted recently on the subject of my having these unnerving popups. They still bother me. This is what I did this morning. When they started I opened "the "Task manager" and looked at processes running. One of them caught my attention: FlashUtil64_11_9_900_152_ActiveX.exe. I noticed that when I close the browser (Internet Explorer) with the popups on it, the process disappears in the Task Manager. I then traced it to this directory: Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash. This subdirectory has a dll, an exe and a log file with numerous downloads. I don't even remember if I ever allowed so many downloads.

Can I delete the whole directory? Is it the one that is the troublemaker?

Thanks, 2601:7:7680:626:BD56:6784:7D52:E377 (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Alex[reply]

Well, Flash animation is used on lots of internet games and such, so you probably want to keep that. But, you could uninstall it and reinstall it, to hopefully leave out the malware. StuRat (talk) 11:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I just checked. This flash thing is NOT in "Uninstall Programs." What can I do? I don't play any video games. Can I just delete the whole directory perhaps? Thanks2601:7:7680:626:D430:E4A9:403A:140 (talk) 01:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It turned out it was Adobe Flash Player. I uninstalled it and it seems those nasty popups are gone now.2601:7:7680:626:D430:E4A9:403A:140 (talk) 02:26, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, but you might soon run into something that says it needs to install the Flash player to run. At that point you can reinstall it or just skip running that particular application. (Note that Flash itself isn't the problem, just some malware that inserted itself into the Flash directory.) StuRat (talk) 06:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure you are correct. I wonder how do they do it and if there is a law to bring them to justice? I hope it is not Adobe themselves that do it but some people who are familiar with the application, perhaps former employees who have the source code.2601:7:7680:626:3542:4C7:B0A6:21C0 (talk) 17:08, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It probably isn't either: the Adobe Flash Player has many security holes that clever programmers can exploit. This is primarily because the Flash Player needs to be able to execute code on your system to work: Windows does not have very good access control, so with programs like Flash, there's a conflict between granting enough access to be useful and preventing others from exploiting this access to do things they shouldn't. OldTimeNESter (talk) 18:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My rule of thumb is, if it tells you that "Flash is required", it's not worth looking into, anyway. Flash is highly unsafe and as video formats go, not any better than competing formats like MP4. Adobe are not exactly trying to cut down on the obfuscation – they keep pushing new features before last year's features are debugged, and web developers who know this but still use Flash are, IMO, best avoided.

If you can live without the interactive features of Flash, you can try the same. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 13:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

November 29

Sorting in Excel

In Excel (2010), is it possible to do a sort of columns? Or can Excel only sort the rows? Also – a somewhat related question – is there some method or function in Excel (2010) that can simply transpose the rows and columns (i.e., turn the rows into columns and turn the columns into rows)? For example, say that I create a spreadsheet and enter a lot of data. After this is done, I realize that it would have been better off if I had made the rows as columns and made the columns as rows. Do I have to start the entire spreadsheet over from scratch, and enter all that data in again? Or is there a quick way to transpose the rows with the columns? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:50, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In Excel 2007, the options dropdown has an Options dialog that lets you select "sort left to right" or "sort top to bottom". To transpose, you can copy the data to the clipboard, select the destination cell, then in the Paste dropdown on the Home tab select Transpose. The source & destination areas can't overlap, but you can then cut/paste it back to the original position. Rojomoke (talk) 06:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect on both counts! Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:57, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unsolved problems

Which of the following would problems about God etc. go under?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems Applies to the whole world. 78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophy, probably. But take note of the first paragraph in List of unsolved problems in philosophy, about vague categories. Rojomoke (talk) 10:26, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also neuroscience for questions like why do people need a God. This question would probably have been better on the humanities or miscellaneous desk. Dmcq (talk) 17:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would these questions apply to the whole world, or just me?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#CCHR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Entertainment#Rival_Ball Applies to the whole world, I think. 78.156.109.166 (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Looie496 (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please use appropriate reference desks for your queries. Do not use the Computing desk for questions which do not relate to computing. This is the second question you put here in a row that has nothing to do with this desk. Dmcq (talk) 21:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, I don't know, and wonder if anyone else knows, what you mean by "Applies to the whole world". You use that frequently, but it doesn't make any sense and may make it difficult for you to get answers. Mingmingla (talk) 01:55, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Tell us what part of the world your question applies to." 78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, and it could be just me, that still doesn't make sense. It think you are quoting the part of the guidelines that asks you to state your location if it is relevant to the question. Your phrasing is not common, so it can be confusing. You would be better served to either state your approximate location, either the country or continent, than to say it they way you do now; or, if your question does indeed "apply to the whole world", you don't need to say so at all. Mingmingla (talk) 16:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Tell us what part of the world your question applies to" is a quote from Wikipedia:Reference desk/header/howtoask which is displayed at top of all reference desks. Only tell it if it's relevant to the question. For example, "How do I bypass Internet censorship?" would depend on your location. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that meant not what location you're in, but where the information from the question ought to be applied (which part of the world). I'm in Denmark. Well it says to get a question answered, make sure you do the following: ... ... ... "Tell us what part of the world your question applies to" ... ... ... ...

So. That means you SHOULD/HAVE TO tell this info to get your question answered. It is how to ask. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.156.109.166 (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't have to be your own location. "How is the president elected?" could be about any country you are interested in, but when people don't specific the country it's usually their own (and usually USA). Brief instructions give a better chance of people reading them (many posters clearly fail that). I don't think it's necessary to add "when relevant", and some people are poor at judging that, for example because they assume things are similar in other places. By the way, I'm also in Denmark. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Jackson. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.156.109.166 (talk) 15:38, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

November 30

listening to wiki

I am visually impaired and I want to know if there is anything I can use that would read wiki pages to me? perhaps you offer that already? or you can point me in the direction of something to read webpages to me?

I would much appreciate any response.

Thank you

JPM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.241.217.194 (talk) 03:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a screen reader ? If so, I believe that should work for Wikipedia, as well as many other sites, although certain things, like text inside an illustration, might not be read. What operating system are you using ? Many include screen readers or at least magnifiers, to help the visually impaired. And, obviously, a large screen helps, too. StuRat (talk) 06:32, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat's suggestion of a screen reader is your best option for most articles. Just to add that some articles have spoken versions contributed by users too. The spoken versions won't be completely up-to-date but they are read by real people and so hopefully much better than anything a machine could produce. The list of articles that have been recorded is at Wikipedia:Spoken articles —Noiratsi (talk) 22:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dictionary software for mobile phone

I have a Motorola wx260 mobile phone and want to install a English-English dictionary software with pronunciation facility. Is it possible? and How? Thank you.175.157.126.249 (talk) 09:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it running Android? If so, you can just go to the Google Play store and download one. Dismas|^(talk) 04:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How can I make such as this file?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.238.225.116 (talk) 11:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are hundreds of free software and commercial software packages that can produce animated graphs such as this image. The image is both an animated GIF and a mathematical plot. You can learn how to use animation by following GNU Image Manipulation Program's simple animations tutorial. You can learn how to use MATLAB's imwrite command for animated GIFs. You can learn how to plot using polar coordinates using matplotlib's polar plot demo code. You can also ask the author of the image you found: he contributes to Wikipedia as User:LucasVB and has already created a tutorial for some of his more advanced animations: Frequently Asked Questions: How do you make these? Nimur (talk) 16:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Emergency Website Building

So it turns out the 'website builder' service offered by my hosting provider can't do half the things I need for the site, and as a result, I need to abandon it and create a whole new site from scratch myself, including having access to the code so I can edit and insert certain details. And we're due to go live tomorrow, so I have less than 24 hours to do this.

Anyone know somewhere I can download a rough template for a website where I can just fill a few pages with text and pictures and set up a simple shop interface on one page? I have all the FTP software and information on what the site has to include and so on, I just need the actual outline code to put it online, something I doubt I could learn to write myself in a few hours.

Thank you,

213.104.128.16 (talk) 23:19, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking Elance, guru.com? Wnt (talk) 23:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 1

Setting up a website

I posted here recently (Hiring a programmer for a job, etc.). After some discussion I realized that more information that just colloquial description is needed, in particular a clear display of formulas. I also want to set up my own website and put there the stuff regarding my patent and underlying math. I was very much impressed by the StuRat website. How does one go about setting something like that up? Thanks2601:7:7680:626:55A8:CF63:583E:F202 (talk) 02:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what site Stu referred you to but you can easily set up a WordPress site in a short amount of time. Dismas|^(talk) 04:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Setting up a website requires (at a barest minimum) three things:

A computer that's always on, and has a "static" IP address. Either your own computer - or one that you lease time on that's owned by some kind of service provider.
A copy of an "HTTP daemon" running on the computer (you can download "Apache" for free - which is an excellent example of such a tool).
A file called "index.html" in a directory known to the HTTP daemon that contains some information in the HTML language.

Actually, there is a fourth thing - which is that with the above, people would have to access your site as something like: http://208.80.154.225 rather than the more memorable: http://wikipedia.org - and for that, you need to go to a "domain name registrar" and pay some small amount of money to register your ownership of the name and to cause computers around the world to associate "http://joes_plumbing.com" with the IP address of your computer. You can go to places like "GoDaddy" who'll generally charge you $10 per year or so - depending on how "valuable" the name is.

That's the theory.

In practice, as a small business or an individual you're likely to find it hard to get your own 'static' IP address from most providers. That means that you more or less have to go to a web site service provider (I use 'Dreamhost.com') who'll charge you maybe $10 per month to provide you with a slice of one of their many computers that already has a static IP address with Apache already configured nicely. They'll probably do the domain registry thing for you too. So for about $10 down and $10/month, all you need to provide is the HTML file(s) for the website itself.

This brings us to the next complication. Whilst it's easily possible to write and maintain a simple web site using just HTML commands - you'll probably out-grow that after a while and start to want more sophisticated stuff like style sheets, fonts, images, JavaScript software, client-server stuff in PHP or C++ or something, SQL, web apps, canvas and WebGL graphics...who knows what?!. This puts you on a learning curve that can grow to encompass an entire career path. Another approach is to install some kind of infrastructure on top of the basic system I described above - and that could be WordPress or MediaWiki or any of a couple of dozen other possibilities. You might want to add blogging and forums, storefront software and advertising platforms...again, another career-spanning range of options there too.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you create an account here on Wikipedia, you can create your own specs sheet right on your home page or as a subpage. That is free and accessible whenever Wikipedia is running, which is pretty much always. I recommend this as a first step. Later on you can copy it all to your own web site. StuRat (talk) 10:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, while I slept good people posted a wealth of information for me. Thank you for that. Actually at one point, perhaps 3-4 years ago I did have a static IP address from Comcast, I believe, and also had a registered domain name. Then I moved out of that area, my plans changed, I got tired of software and gave it all up. I got a static IP because somebody told me that with a static IP it would be difficult or impossible for someone to highjack my computed and transmit their junk. Indeed at one point before that while I still had to get dynamic IP addresses every few days or so, exactly that happened and my machine was quarantined I believe. Somehow I had that unlocked and I think that I resolved the issue by acquiring a static IP.

I also had a server installed on one of my machines but never got it off the ground. I guess my question is: do I have to get a server (hardware plus software or software alone) to set it up? It looks from your post that I can get by without it, correct? I will probably start with a Wikipedia.org page as StuRat recommends. Well, I have my work cut out for me for sure!

I just reread SteveBaker's paragraphs and decided that I need to clarify my objective. The whole thing of course acquired its shape after a few posts here and the criticism I met. Provided I will be able to find a programmer to verify that my patent will work in real time, I am planning to approach potential investors and show them the result. The result and the background to it should be handily displayed on a web page. That will be the easiest and most convincing way to argue about implementation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.52.14.15 (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks,2601:7:7680:626:55A8:CF63:583E:F202 (talk) 16:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, how can I register here?2601:7:7680:626:55A8:CF63:583E:F202 (talk) 17:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's a "create account" link at the top-right of the screen. CS Miller (talk) 20:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, you don't need a static IP address. As long as your ADSL router/cable modem offers support for services like dynDNS, you can get a dyndns address, and your modem will inform them when your IP address changes. CS Miller (talk) 20:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I appreciate it. How come the Wikipedia says "do not display personal information" but you, Miller, give your own name it seems.2601:7:7680:626:1021:96A7:A1F0:3245 (talk) 04:45, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I use my real name and provide my actual email address for anyone who cares. I have (on occasion) had problems with some of the more evil people who frequent this place because of that - but on balance, I think it's better to be open than not. Wikipedia is merely advising you not to presume privacy for *ANYTHING* you post here because everything is out in the open. SteveBaker (talk) 17:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also this question. In planning for my own website as has been recommended here by you I believe, I consider the following option and would like you to confirm that it's doable. All the formulas I will need can be easily found here in Wikipedia. I would just copy them with right click on my mouse and then paste them on the web page. I believe that pretty circle with radians above has been made this way. Do you think it will work? Correct? Thank you 2601:7:7680:626:D31:C668:489F:577F (talk) 22:34, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No! Certainly not! Formulae that you just copy/paste into an HTML file on a web page remain just that...formulae. If you want to convert them into a graph or some other kind of diagram then you need some other software to do that...maybe a spreadsheet program or something like Mathematica. Then you need to take a copy of the resulting image and upload that to your server. With the right skills, you could perhaps write Javascript code to convert a formula into a graph or something - but the mere fact that you're asking this question means that you're not going to be able to do that. IMHO, you need six months or more of learning how web pages work, how HTML is involved and a myriad of other subjects before you're ready to do what you need. SteveBaker (talk) 00:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Steve, I did not expect it from you. Please read my question. Where in the world did I imply that I expect the formulas to be converted into a visual presentation? NEVER. In fact your first sentence seems to answer my question that I can copy and paste formulas in Wikipedia. This is all I wanted to know. The circle with radians was brought as an example because I suspect that it was done exactly this way, by copying and pasting.2601:7:7680:626:56:2051:F86A:547E (talk) 00:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:7680:626:56:2051:F86A:547E (talk) 00:23, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox settings

I had a minor problem with McAfee. The support technician, among other things, deleted cookies and other stuff from IE, but now when I go into Wikipedia from Firefox, the format has changed. For one thing, I have to scroll down toward the bottom to get the search box. How can I get my old format back (search box on the left)? Now that I try other sites, the format's screwed up there as well. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your Wikipedia "skin" may have changed from Monobook to Vector. See here for information on how to change it back. -- 140.202.10.134 (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't it, but thanks. In the end, I just reset and crossed my fingers. Eventually, I got everything back the way I had it. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop touchpad location

Is there a reason that laptop touchpads (mousing interface) are located below the keyboard and not above the keyboard? If they were above the keyboard, accidentally mousing (correct verb?) whilst typing would not be an issue and it would not be necessary to enable/disable the touchpad as needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.5.255 (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If the touchpad were placed above the keyboard, there would be the problem of accidentally pressing keys whilst "mousing" on the touchpad. With care, of course, neither should be a problem. My touchpad on this ancient laptop is slightly recessed, so I've never experienced accidental "mousing". Is it an issue for many people? Dbfirs 17:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a common and irritating issue on older systems but most new computers have software functions that detect the difference between a deliberate finger and an accidental palm or brush-past, and ignore the latter. Often you can enable these functions by downloading updated software for your trackpad (Synaptics drivers, or other as appropriate). I suspect that would be much more difficult to achieve if the keyboard and trackpad were switched--how would the keyboard detect whether your keypresses were deliberate or not? —Noiratsi (talk) 18:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's this acer device.

I think I'd probably like it, but maybe it's a grass-is-always-greener thing and it would annoy me just as much. Hard to tell without trying it. APL (talk) 21:34, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 2

Can TrueCrypt volumes be identified?

TrueCrypt#Identifying_TrueCrypt_volumes TrueCrypt volumes can't be identified, but some of those claim are not cited.--58.251.146.130 (talk) 06:45, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way to distinguish the contents of a TrueCrypt container file from random bits unless you have a decryption key. The best source I can find for this is a footnote in the official documentation ("These parameters are kept secret [...] primarily to make TrueCrypt volumes unidentifiable (indistinguishable from random data) [...]", on page 135 of TrueCrypt User Guide.pdf). They're likely to be "identifiable" in other ways, though. -- BenRG (talk) 08:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In jurisdictions with a key disclosure law, where the authorities can force someone to provide them access to encrypted data, the presence of a large file containing highly random data is likely to be taken as prima facie evidence that it is an encrypted container of some sort (particularly if the person in question has TrueCrypt installed). A large random file is evidently not a program, media file, or user document, all of which are non-random and readily identifiable. An unfortunate corollary of this is that if one really did have a large file of random data, one might be faced with the vexing task of proving the negative, as there's no way to show that random data isn't a TruecCrypt volume. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:45, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In fact a properly set-up TrueCrypt volume can be completely undetectable and plausibly deniable. In short, by encrypting volumes within volumes you can make data appear to represent blank space on one encrypted volume when in fact it is part of another encrypted volume that, without the proper password, cannot be detected or proved to exist. —Noiratsi (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What will they do if I just can't or don't decrypt the information? Will they assume me as guilty, or hyptonize me or put me on a Polygraph?--58.251.146.130 (talk) 01:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That largely depends on your country, see Key disclosure law. Few countries use polygraphs in criminal investigations and none use hypnosis, to my knowledge. See Rubber-hose cryptanalysis for a discussion of key extraction methods. —Noiratsi (talk) 08:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Website Pages

I own a domain name on which I am hosting a website, which effectively is a group of different items gathered together for convenience, or at least that is the plan once they are all up and running.

Within the site [domainname].co.uk I host a particular project on [subdomain].[domainname].co.uk, however, I would like to add more information on related items, creating a homepage for them at [subdomain].[domainname].co.uk with links to projects hosted at, for example, [subdomain].[domainname].co.uk/[project]

so far I have been able to upload pre-made templates and other code to [subdomain].[domainname].co.uk, but I am not sure how to move anything to /[project] or upload to that location. Would I need to create the homepage code, and then include a folder called [project] within which I could post the code information for that project? All I want is a basic Wordpress style site, with a banner at the top, a series of blog posts and a few pages with other information, could I download such a thing and post it to [subdomain].[domainname].co.uk/[project], and how would I go about doing this? Or is there some way I can configure my FTP to upload directly to that page?

Thank you,

Kitutal (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which FTP program do you use? /project is often treated as a folder called project. My FTP program can display folders at the target site and has an option to create a new folder when right clicking in an existing folder. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Currently using FileZilla, is that ok? Kitutal (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I also use FileZilla. Don't you have the described right-click option when you view files on the target server? I don't know whether it can depend on the server. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have another look, see if I can make it work. The other thing is whether it would be possible to download a sample wordpress template for me to use, or would I have to write that all myself? Kitutal (talk) 17:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the answer - but I have to say that if you're doing any kind of serious web development work, FTP is a horrible way to go. You should try to find out whether you can have a "shell account" on the machine that hosts the site so that you can easily log into it to maintain it. Failing that, consider using something like rsync or (my personal favorite) Unison that let you set up the files on your local computer and "sync" them with the files on the server so that whatever arrangement you set up on your local machine gets transferred to the server whenever you decide to do so. This is also good because it allows you to more easily maintain a proper backup of the file system on the server for easy restoration in case of problems. If your service provider doesn't allow you to do such things - then I strongly recommend switching to one who does. SteveBaker (talk) 17:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Think FileZilla is a good way to go. The only disadvantage I found, was that there was very little documentation, that could find, at the time, to tell me how to make it sing and dance (but it worked). I did some of the things that your asking about (and I'm no expert) but now can't remember clearly enough to help. Hopefully some editors here can provides links to the sources that can help you. So stick with it. Thanks, for reminding me about FileZilla. Now that winter's coming on and the nights are drawing in, I think I'll rent another virtual server and have some fun. I've been thinking of creating a family 'virtual private network', where we can just let each other know what were up to (– save for perhaps the teenagers that what to keep that sort of thing under the bedcovers). The emails on it, will also automatically have higher priority, because it is family business and so can't be over looked or get spam filtered... --Aspro (talk) 22:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

JPG to PNG conversion

When one converts JPG to PNG, does any damage/generation loss/etc result from the process of MIME format conversion? Someone uploaded File:Pbalson 20060527 IMG 3701.JPG to Commons as File:Pbalson 20060527 IMG 3701.png (see the "author" line; the Commons image is definitely taken from here, not vice versa), and I'm wondering if we might want to upload the original JPG to Commons. Nyttend (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The JPG is 628 KB and the PNG is 3.46 MB. That seems reason to prefer the JPG whether or not the PNG lost something. commons:Special:Contributions/Spriggy.mcgee shows this and the similar conversion of File:Pbalson 20060527 IMG 3702.JPG to commons:File:Pbalson 20060527 IMG 3702.png were the only edits of the user who created the account 7 minutes earlier. I have no idea why the user converted the images but it probably wasn't for a good reason. I say transwiki the JPG's but with meaningful names, and consider nominating the PNG's for deletion. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No information is lost in converting from JPG to PNG, except possibly EXIF metadata that is not part of the visible image. So file size is really the only issue. Looie496 (talk) 23:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

commons:Help:JPEG#JPEG versus other formats says: However, if the original file is in JPEG, it makes no sense to convert it to PNG: converting a lossy compression into a "lossless" format doesn't buy you anything since the "loss" already occurred in the original, and doing so will only increase the file size. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PNG is a lossless file format. When you create a PNG from a JPG, every single pixel that you saw in the JPG file will be there in the PNG, perfect in every regard. However, the reverse is most definitely NOT the case. When a PNG (or any other file format for that matter) is converted into JPG, the "lossy" compression scheme that's behind the JPG file format throws away information that is deemed relatively unimportant to human perception. That's how it manages to compress the file to take up less space/bandwidth. JPG compression is usually fairly good - but it does rely on some assumptions about the viewer that may not be true. For example, it assumes that the image will be presented at a screen resolution of around 50 to 100 pixels per inch, at a reasonable brightness, and is viewed square-on to the eye in the center of the person's field of view. When those viewing conditions are violated, (or if you set the compression level too high) then you'll see artifacts due to the fact that JPG threw away some information that actually matters. This often takes the form of ghostly outlines around objects with sharp color transitions, and in the form of weird colored pixels showing up when you zoom into the image.

So if you're seeing artifacts in a PNG image that was *ever* at some time in the past a JPG image - then the odds are good that the artifacts were introduced in the original conversion in to JPG, not in the subsequent conversion into PNG.

Sadly, you can't "repair" an image that's been stored as a JPG because (fundamentally) some information was thrown away and cannot ever be recovered without going back to a version of the image that has never been converted to JPG.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I've uploaded the JPGs to Commons, deleted the local images under criterion F8 (identical image on Commons), and filed deletion requests for the PNGs. Nyttend (talk) 03:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - that's the right thing to do. The person who uploaded those files probably heard that PNG is a higher quality file format than JPG - which is undoubtedly true. However, if all you have is a JPG, converting it to PNG is just a waste of disk space because the damage has already been done and all you're doing is preserving the exact same ugly artifacts in a more expensive way! But if there is some more original file (like a ".RAW" file taken from the camera or a higher resolution JPG or something) then there is definitely great benefit to making a PNG from that source and replacing the existing JPG file with it. SteveBaker (talk) 03:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 3

Mobo Hunt

I am searching for a motherboard which can accomodate: · two Intel Xeon E5-2695 v2 2.4GHz Processors · two Dual-Width x16 PCIe 3.0 Graphics Cards, and · four Single-Width x8 PCIe 2.0 Cards

Does anybody here have any ideas where to look, or know a suitable mobo? 13:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Sure... how about SuperMicro's Xeon Socket2011 selection? There are certain rack mount systems that have such preposterously immense PCIe capabilities: for example, X9DRG supports: " 4 x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots, 1 x8 PCI-E 3.0 (in x16), & 1 x4 PCI-E 2.0 (in x8) slot." Realistically, at this price point, you can phone up the manufacturer (you have a rep, right?) and request that they re-socket the PCIe lanes in the configuration you are seeking, and run a small volume manufacture for you. Nimur (talk) 16:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or, a little more friendly for the small-business supercomputer: the X9DRW-3LN4F provides one 48x PCIe riser slot. You can build your own rack-mount chassis above, using any combination of PCIe risers to break that into the lane allocations as you see fit. You might also need some custom device software to make this do what you expect... this is documented in the Core i7 manual under PCIe port bifurcation. Nimur (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes! I don't know anything about building a rackmount chassis or PCIe port bifurcation. I was hoping for an EATX mobo that would fit in a Supermicro CSE-747TQ-R1400 tower chassis. 119.56.117.57 (talk) 10:38, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

...You might want to learn, before you commit to spending upwards of $5000 per system on CPUs alone. Are you sure you need what you are asking for? Are you willing to shell out five- and six-figure US-dollar quantities for technical features that you aren't using? Nimur (talk) 19:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those PCIe requirements are extreme for anything remotely consumer-grade. You're asking not only for 64 lanes, which is going to be tough to find (the one linked above only has 48), but for those lanes to be in a specific configuration as well. If you don't mind sharing, you could let us know what you're trying to accomplish that has those requirements - maybe we can help with alternative solutions? Katie R (talk) 19:19, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Asus makes the Z9PE-D8 that has 7 x16 slots, so it could work, but unless I'm picturing it wrong, you're going to be one slot short because of the double-width requirement. Is this a personal project, or is this something you're building for a business? I could get you contact information for the vendor we use for this sort of request, but they won't do much for you if this one motherboard is the only sale they'll ever get through you. Katie R (talk) 20:29, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's a mismatch between the motherboard and the CPU's published capabilities. Somebody is making up hardware specs, and I'm betting it isn't Intel: Intel only supports 40 lanes per chip: which you can confirm by reading Intel's E5-2695 quick technical overview. So, if there are two CPUs each providing 40 lanes, and the motherboard has "7 x16 slots", where are these PCIe devices going? Some of those are "phony" x16 slots. At best, you can configure which lanes are going to each socket. But even that is dubious; because the Asus motherboard uses the 602 PCH, for a total of 8 PCIe lanes per PCH (...or, 16 total PCIe lanes on the board - far short of the implied "7 x16" - by a factor of seven times!) (Actually, the clarification is provided in the fine-print of the logic board's specifications, so Asus is not totally misrepresenting its capability).

You can put as many connector-sockets as you desire on a motherboard, but they aren't 16-lanes wide unless all sixteen lanes are connected to the PCIe root. This Asus board is either a fantastic piece of engineering marvel (perhaps it was designed for a custom use-case); or it is an addled and under-performing platform that was produced a very confused novice computer engineer. Nimur (talk) 21:31, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The two dual-width x16 PCIe 3.0 cards are an Nvidia Quadro K5000 Graphics Card and an Nvidia Tesla K20X GPU Compute Card, for an Nvidia Maximus configuration.

This new workstation (for which the budget is US$30K) is for running Autodesk 3D Studio Max in a small-business context, also involving the use of MotionBuilder and Mudbox.

It is to replace the current workstation, which is built on a Tyan S7025WAGM2NR mobo in a Supermicro CSE-747TQ-R1400 chassis, with 2x X5690's, 48GB RAM, a Quadro 6000, and a Tesla C2075. It's already been upgraded once, from W5580's to X5690's, and I was hoping to re-use the chassis, as it's still in nearly pristine condition after four years.

I've already bought the two Intel Xeon E5-2695 v2 2.4GHz processors (which cost US$2,247 each, with taxes) and the two Nvidia cards (which together cost US$5,885 - also with taxes).

I actually intend to install only three x8 PCIe 2.0 cards, but would prefer to have a fourth slot for future expansion. The Asus Z9PE-D8 might do (as the Tesla will overhang the edge of the mobo, not cover one of the PCIe slots), but I'll have to research its quality and reliability first.

119.56.116.39 (talk) 07:49, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(This is a response to Nimur's concerns as well) From the basic specs, it sounds like some slots are x8 slots that duplicate the lanes of adjacent x16 slots - so you can use one double-width x16 card or 2 x8 cards. This shouldn't be an issue for your application, but I would find the manual online and double-check that the right number of lanes make it to the slots you'll need to use. It says it supports 4 Teslas, which implies that the bottom slot must be x16, and they expect the last card to hang over the edge like you describe. Katie R (talk) 13:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reals in Jython

I'm just researching some information on JES programming for my introduction to Information Technology at Melbourne's RMIT. I have unsuccessfully tried to source the answer elsewhere, if anybody can help me I would be much obliged, David Smith.

Why in Jython, (JES) do we get the output 3.9000000000000004 from 1.3 * 3?

and

Why do we get the output in Jython 0.3333333333333333 when we print 1.0 / 3?

Thank you.

David Smith. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thesmithster (talk • contribs) 21:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Jython but computers and programs usually store real numbers as binary floating point. 1.3 and 1/3 have no finite exact representation in binary so rounding occurs. For example, 1.3 may be rounded to a binary number close to 1.3000000000000001. Multiply by 3 and the result when written in decimal may be rounded to 3.9000000000000004. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:48, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is technically rounding, but I find it more helpful to realize that every (finite) floating point number is a dyadic rational. In decimal, all these that are not integers end in "5": 1/2=0.5, 1/4=0.25, 3/4=0.75, 3/8=0.325, etc. Of course, for more negative powers of 2, the decimals are longer: 1/1024=0.0009765625. Those are your choices, so when you want to approximate 1.3, your closest IEEE 754 double choice is 1.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125 (5854679515581645/2⁵²); the next lower choice 5854679515581644/2⁵²=1.29999999999999982236431605997495353221893310546875. The exact triple of this quantity is of course 3.9000000000000001332267629550187848508358001708984375, to which the closest double is 3.9000000000000003552713678800500929355621337890625. This is the result you obtained (so the rounding error in the multiplication was as small as possible); the choice to represent it as 3.9000000000000004 (rather than, say, 3.90000000000000036, which is in a technical sense more precise) is a subtle one: rounding to 17 significant figures happens to be necessary and sufficient to avoid having any two double values collide. The unfortunate rounding is actually in representing 1.3; the error in it, multiplied by 3, causes the difference between the observed value and the closest double to 3.9 (3.899999999999999911182158029987476766109466552734375, which we know displays as "3.9" or "3.9000" or so because of another subtle argument about decimals with less than 16 significant digits). --Tardis (talk) 01:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See also: [3] →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 06:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, if you wish to have your arithmetic behave in a more "intuitive" way you can represent decimals with the decimal module in Jython. I haven't looked into the implementation details, but I imagine there is a significant performance penalty as the floating-point unit can't be utilised directly. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 11:28, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If Jython's decimal is a wrapper over Java's java.math.BigDecimal (which I think it will be), a 2009 benchmark shows a two order of magnitude slowdown, compared with Java's IEEE double type - about what I'd expect. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

By the way - why do programming languages still use floating point representation for rational numbers? With all the processing power we have, I'd think they'd have a numeric type "rational" with a specific representation of the repeating digits, and reserve floating point only for irrational numbers at most. Wnt (talk) 14:44, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many languages do support a rational data type, either in the native language or in a library extension. See rational data type for examples. Gandalf61 (talk)

Interesting page. Come to think of it, I suppose there is a reason: with some languages like C, I think you can pretty much count on ordinary instructions to run in fairly constant time; but handling ratios means reducing ratios means integer factorization, for which any polynomial time is still elusive. Thinking about it, I suppose the problem isn't that it's much slower but that it could be slower to an unlimited degree. Wnt (talk) 00:18, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of integer factorization, dividing by the least common divisor can be used, and that can be found much faster than factoring. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:53, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"I think you can pretty much count on ordinary instructions to run in fairly constant time..." If only! Between cache misses, super-scalar out of order execution, and dynamic frequency scaling, constant cycles-per-execution is about the last thing you can rely on, with modern computers! Intel doesn't even put ballpark values for clock-cycles per machine-instruction in its reference manuals anymore. In real, big CPUs, you can't know how long one instruction will take until you execute it. What this means in practice is that the only really really real real time operating systems are the ones that run on very primitive microcontrollers, without DRAM and without any caches and without any buffers and without any interrupt-driven I/O, and generally without any of the computer architecture features that have been standard since the 1950s.

WP:OR: I've even managed to make a single instruction (a pointer dereference, something pretty much equivalent to movl) to require macroscopic amounts of time - thousands of seconds - to complete its execution. It wasn't easy, and I'm not even really sure how I did it, but nobody was happy when I made that happen, least of all myself.

Anyway, the C language specification doesn't imply or encourage machine implementations to have specific execution times for any operations. This kind of assumption isn't built into the language specification in any way whatsoever; nor is it implied by most implementations. A great counter-example is software floating-point emulation. For example, if you use gcc, the compiler can accept -msoft-float - and the exact same C code - for example, x*2.0 or " (a + ib) / (c + id))", can either compile into "primitive data operations" that execute as single machine-instructions; or elaborate software functions implementing algorithms with a priori unknown runtimes. Nimur (talk) 01:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 4

Date and Time in 'Pages'

Can anyone tell me how to set up automatic updating of 'date & time' on AppleMac's 'Pages' please?85.211.141.203 (talk) 06:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "automatic" updates? If you are using the new Pages 5.0, you can insert a Date and Time field, which can be updated throughout the entire document by clicking "Update." More details are in the Help section on Add the page number, page count, or date. Nimur (talk) 16:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this. What I mean by 'automatic' is simply that when ever I open a letter template for example, the date shown is automatically the current date not the previous one when ever the template had been opened. I cannot find "Update" anywhere, and the Apple help page does not provide and answer to my question.85.211.134.214 (talk) 09:04, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that Pages (or any other well-designed word-processing software) will do that: essentially, you want the software to automatically modify and save the document every time it is opened. That precludes the user from choosing not to save the document; it prevents a "read only" use-case. Most users do not want software that forces them to save the document every time it is viewed.

You might find that the file system provides the data you are looking for, though. You can query the file's last access-time - even if the access was a read-only access. On a Mac, you can use the Finder to determine the last time the file was opened by pressing ⌘I. Nimur (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for this, but it is interesting to note that my Mac 'Numbers' pages does automatically show the correct date every day that I open it, trouble is I can't remember how I set it up !! 85.211.207.34 (talk) 06:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Best Practices for Converting Text Data Field to Numeric

I have inherited an MS Access 2007 database. In this database, the CustomerType field is a string with values such as "University", "Government", and so on. I would like to replace these values with numbers and have a lookup table containing the decode text, since this helps ensure data integrity. However, there are dozens of queries, forms, and reports that may or may not reference this field, as well as quite a bit of VBA code. Are there best practices for doing this type of conversion? In particular, is there any way (short of reviewing every database object and line of code) to minimize the probability that the conversion will make part of the database non-functional, or lead to data errors down the line? Thanks! OldTimeNESter (talk) 17:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If possible I would advise creating a new field to contain the numeric value, and leaving the old field in place. Otherwise there is no way to verify that your old code will work other than testing it. Looie496 (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What size flash drive to make disc image?

My father has a laptop running Windows 8 that he wants to upgrade to 8.1. I want to make a disk image of it on an external flash drive first. I already have a 1.5T drive myself, but when you go to create the image it says all files on the external drive will be lost.

When I simply backed up all his files manually, it used about 47 G. When I look at his C drive it says he's using just under 80g total.

What size flash drive would I need to make sure it would be large enough to hold the file, but no more expansive than necessary? Walmart says they have a 64 G hard drive for $45. I am wondering if that's reasonable and sufficient, or will he need a bigger one?

Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 19:55, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't have to lose the contents on the destination if you're just making an image file - restoring an image file to a disc will wipe it. A tool like imagex creates a single file from a disc, and it can be stored on your 1.5TB drive. [4] Katie R (talk) 20:08, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I am using whatever tool exists in Windows 8.0, and it specifically warns that all data on the target drive for the backup image will be lost, not the reinstalling that image will overwrite the laptop hard drive. Perhaps you are saying that imagex works differently form the built-in windows tool? In any case, I would rather have this on his own separate flash drive so he has 24 hour access, which he would not to my 1.5T drive. Worse comes to worst I will simply have hime return the 64M drive as too small, but I am trying to avoid the need for that, assuming I can figure out how much sapce the disk image will take ahead of time. μηδείς (talk) 20:47, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In order to create the disk image I first had to partition his hard drive and burn the image there. It was only 20G, so I simply tried clicking and dragging to to my 1.5T drive as you said, and this seems to have worked fine without any warning flags. Thanks! μηδείς (talk) 22:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad it worked for you - I didn't realize 8 had imaging support built in! It probably uses imagex internally, it's the command-line tool that's shipped with Windows for several generations now. Glad it worked out for you - hopefully he won't need the image file at all in the end. :-) My 8 -> 8.1 upgrade ran no problem, although it involved far too many vague progress bars. Katie R (talk) 18:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Open-ended game classification

How would you exactly classify the gameplay of Utopia: The Creation of a Nation? It is in a way open-ended, meaning that there is no final ending condition that must be reached, the only way the game forcibly ends is when the player loses, when the entire colony is destroyed. But still:

It's not a "sandbox" game, because it provides a challenge, the player is not free to do whatever he/she pleases, ignoring the current state of the game.
It's not a "non-linear storyline" game, as there isn't actually a "storyline". It's a city-building game, not an adventure game that follows a plot.
It's not a "free roaming" game, as the player has a colony to maintain, and must keep the colonists safe and happy. Also there is an alien race that threatens the colony, but destroying the alien race is not the aim of the game, it only makes the game much easier if the player manages to do so.

Having an exact classification would help to better improve the article, particularly the bit where it links to open-ended (gameplay) (redirecting to nonlinear gameplay. JIP | Talk 20:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the problem is with open-ended (gameplay) redirecting to nonlinear gameplay; they aren't synonymous terms. Open ended could mean linear, but without fixed victory conditions. Other simulation games like Simcity are similarly open-ended. There is a kind of nonlinearity in that you choose what to build and when. In that sense there are multiple paths to success, or to at least avoid failure. --Mark viking (talk) 22:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 5

p2p

how does peer-to-peer softwere find other peers? thank you, 70.114.242.17 (talk) 10:00, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See here: Peer-to-peer#Routing_and_resource_discovery 196.214.78.114 (talk) 12:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good Game development software

I want good game development software that is free, not too difficult to learn (but NOT drag and drop), has high potential and allows you to monetize games that you make.GameDeveloper15678 (talk) 19:13, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Simple DirectMedia Layer? Java OpenGL? Xcode? OpenRPG? You have not specified what you mean by "free software;" you have not specified what you mean by "development;" and you have not specified what you mean by "game." There are too many possible permutations to list everything. Are you an experienced software developer? Do you have a target platform, target audience, target price and budget? You need to lay out those details first, and we can help direct you towards a more suitable resource. From the open-endedness of your question, I infer you are a bit of a novice - which is okay - so probably the best place to start is with an introductory book. Many others can recommend good game-specific books, but I recommend you learn the fundamental elements of software-development, e.g. by following The Java Tutorials, so that you can learn how to implement real software. It will be difficult, it will be arduous; it may be many months before you get anything that even resembles a modern graphical game software; but learning how software really works is the best way to empower yourself to design and create and synthesize new and fun games. Nimur (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's List of game engines (the columns Notable games and License may be of interest) and, on the other hand, Slow programming. Card Zero (talk) 00:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As a game developer myself, I'd strongly recommend Unity. The free version is very powerful - and you can cheaply upgrade to the paid version should you decide to make money from your game in the future. It's sufficiently drag-and-drop to help you get a project running quickly - but everything is wide open to programmers, artists and developers who need to go deeper. SteveBaker (talk) 06:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Audacity's file size .aup

Audacity's own file .aup for digital audio seems to me to be saved using a lot less memory than say a .flac or a .WAV, or a .Ogg Vorbis. What is the reason for this? Is this due to file compression, quantization or sample rate or is it merely the way the file is stored? I saved the same file in all these various formats with Audacity being able to do it the cheapest. Anybody have an answer?

Thank you. David Smith. Friday 10:50am, 6/12/2013 122.151.121.84 (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The .aup file is just a text-based information file. The actual audio data is stored in a folder with a _data suffix. See Audacity Reference - File Formats. It looks like the audio is uncompressed. When I imported a 6.2 megabyte MP3 file and saved it, the total project data took 55 megabytes. --Bavi H (talk) 02:57, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

December 6

Computers without CD drives?

I've just learned that I need to buy a new computer, so I'm looking around at different websites and in different stores. To my surprise, Best Buy has lots of laptops (link, though it may not be persistent) marked "Note: DVD/CD drive not included", including some with higher-than-average prices. Why would anyone make a computer without a CD drive today? These definitely aren't used 1990s laptops. Nyttend backup (talk) 02:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Laptops can be thinner and lighter without an optical drive, and many can get by without the drive. See for example the Google search laptop without optical drive. You can connect an external optical drive to a USB port when you need it, or you may be able to use an internal optical drive on another computer and copy what you need to the laptop, for example via a USB flash drive. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:16, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Most, if not all, PC software is available as a download. I still buy retail games and software, so I prefer the drive, but I certainly don't need one since everything I want is available elsewhere. Mingmingla (talk) 03:27, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with PrimeHunter and Mingmingla. I can't remember the last time I used an optical drive on my laptop. Games I get from Steam. As far as I can tell, having a CD drive is like having a floppy drive, or a brick in your rucksack. Dja1979 (talk) 05:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The options are wide open these days: You can download movies and software from the Internet. You can use a USB memory stick. You can buy an external DVD drive that plugs into the USB port. All of those things are cheap and easy these days - so the DVD drive is heading the way of the floppy drive. Omitting it saves money, makes the laptop lighter and thinner, improves reliability, makes it more splash-resistant. An external USB writeable DVD drive can be purchased for $26 (eg here) and this one costs $30 and has BluRay support too! So it's hardly a big deal to add an optical drive afterwards if you need it. Better still, your external USB drive will still be useful into the distant future. SteveBaker (talk) 06:47, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In this frightening modern world, how is an OS usually installed? If I bought Windows 8, would I get a disk, or what? Card Zero (talk) 11:42, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The standard procedure for new computers is for the operating system to be cloned as an image onto the hard drive, along with all the necessary drivers. This is done with permission (usually) from Microsoft (I don't know Apple's procedures) with a unique identifier if the computer is to be sold, and "cab" files are sometimes included (for additional drivers etc) if the computer is unlikely to have internet access. Updates and extra drivers are usually downloaded by the purchaser from Microsoft's website or Apple etc). If you buy an operating system, you still usually get a CD, though you might just get a unique identifier to activate a download over the internet. The CD is not essential. For a computer with a wiped hard drive, it is possible to boot an OS from a flash drive (see Windows Preinstallation Environment), and download a better or updated OS over the internet. I remember (in the old days) installing Windows from floppies (and later from CDs) on a series of computers, but it was a very time-consuming process. Not something that modern retailers want to be bothered with. Dbfirs 12:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For Windows, the best advice would probably be to buy that $26 external USB DVD drive and boot from that. For Linux, you make a bootable USB memory stick with a simple version of Linux on it - boot from that, then it pulls in the rest of the OS over the web and installs it onto the hard drive. Easy! Most laptops have a hidden disk partition with a backed up version of Windows on it to restore from in the event of catastrophic problems. SteveBaker (talk) 16:36, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Given an ISO file of the install media (which Microsoft offers as a download if you buy Windows online), you can use this Microsoft tool [5] to make a bootable DVD disc or USB drive. Katie R (talk) 20:44, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

declare a dynamic array of characters n of size 100 [in C]

what the hell does that mean? i did

char n[ 100 ];

but this was wrong, obviously. this was a question on a test on C programming. i dont know the correct answer, do i need to malloc something? or do:

#define SIZE 100
char n[ SIZE ];

???Pop8888888 (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's not dynamic. Here's how to declare a dynamic array:

char *n = malloc (100 *sizeof (char));

"sizeof (char)" could be omitted since it is equal to 1, but I include it because it's good practice. Looie496 (talk) 02:21, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

thank you! Pop8888888 (talk) 02:37, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Creating decks in a game of War in Java

I have a Card class and a Deck class. Each card has a suit and a rank. Now I'm trying to make the game of War play out on my computer. I'm rather new to Java and I have a few lines of code that are each different but Eclipse isn't throwing up a warning or error on any of the lines. They're all slightly different and I'm not sure what I'm doing right/wrong with each. Could you explain, please? The lines are:

Deck playerTwo = Deck;

Deck playerOneDiscard = new Deck[52];

Deck[] playerTwoDiscard = new Deck[52];

Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 08:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In the first line, you are using the class name itself as an expression. That's a syntax error. In the second line, you are assigning an expression of type Deck[] to a variable of type Deck, which is incompatible. The third line is OK. The variable playerTwoDiscard now refers to an array of 52 Deck object references, all of which are so far null. To actually create the Deck objects, you need to call the class's constructor, like so: Deck myDeck = new Deck();, or call a constructor with parameters if you have one. JIP | Talk 10:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Any idea why Eclipse isn't showing any warnings or errors for the first two? Dismas|^(talk) 11:12, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Old timey" audio filter

What filter is likely used for the Wright Brothers' parts in this video? 75.75.42.89 (talk) 09:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The voices sound tinny because they have been band-pass filtered with a narrow spectrum. The exact parameters and type of filter are nearly impossible to guess, but it might be common to use 300Hz to 3000Hz with soft roll-off. Other "old timey" effects include adding noise: white noise, popcorn noise (to simulate record scratches), and periodic hums and clicks to simulate a phonograph turntable. To be honest, I didn't watch the video long enough to hear any of those effects. Nimur (talk) 15:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PC Power supply unit problem.

Some pc here was not turning on and the fan of Power supply unit (Lets call is PSU1) and it was not working.

So I decided to get a working Power supply unit that is being used on another pc (lets call PSU2) and put on this new one to test, to see if the problem was the PSU1. The working Power supply unit didnt worked on this new pc.

I decided to get the PSU1 and test it on another pc, to see if it would work there and it didnt worked (so there IS a problem with PSU1).

Anyway what can be the problem with pc1, the working PSU2 dont work there, dont even turn on the fans.

201.78.196.29 (talk) 12:34, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that when PSU1 failed it produced a power surge that damaged things inside the computer. If that happened, there's a good chance that your computer is now a worthless piece of junk. But I wouldn't rule out other possibilities. Looie496 (talk) 16:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to add that when I connect PSU2, and conect the network cable, the network lights start to blink.201.78.196.29 (talk) 17:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

can any programming languages brute-force code?

Let's say you don't know what expression you want, you just know what asserts it should pass, i.e. you know how you want your expression to behave logically, but don't know how to write it. For simple boolean expressions and the like (no loops and such) couldn't a programming language just brute-force the suitable expression? Do any do this?

Example.

// given integers a return its absolute value

toreturn = ? // compiler or language will brute-force an expression to put here based on the following.

assert (toreturn == a or toreturn == a * -1) and toreturn >= 0

And that's it. This is a childish example of where someone might have a brainfart and have no idea how to calculate the absolute value of an integer, they just know what it looks like: it's positive, and either the original integer or its opposite. (Obviously the answer is simple: ~~you have to multiply by -1 if the input < 0~~).

Brute-forcing the expression that makes the assert true for all integers is simple - there just aren't that many combinations of expresions, and the IDE/language/compiler should be able to discover the "expression" that makes the given asserts true, at least if it's a dual or quad-core 3 ghz computer also with a GPU, that can try billions of variations quite quickly.

Do any languages or IDE's do this? 212.96.61.236 (talk) 16:00, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not at that level. There are declarative programming languages in which a program is basically a set of assertions about the result, but as far as I know none of them can handle the example you give. Looie496 (talk) 16:11, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that unless you're very careful with your "assert", there could easily be an infinite number of ways to do what you ask. Perhaps in your specific case, it's fairly obvious what you want - but in most cases, your "assert" is likely to be under-constrained. I think that a language like Prolog comes closest to what you want...but I don't think it does exactly that.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is a complete definition of the Digital World? (the one we live and experience through our computers and devices)

I am looking for a definition for what the Digital World is. Not the Information Age nor the Digital Revolution and certainly not the Digital World that refers to the one on Digimon animated series. How can someone define the Digital World? Azwvn (talk) 17:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is just one of those phrases that journalists use when they mean "computers and networks and stuff". It doesn't mean anything much really, and you're as qualified as anyone to define it yourself. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

how to recover lost contacts and photos in your android smartphone

you can recover your photos and contacts in android phone by going to this link [to recover lost contacts and photos in android smartphone] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.151.235 (talk) 18:09, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Explorer 11

Well, I just allowed my Windows 7 to install IE 11. A popup came in, I clicked OK and here we are. I went into "Turn Windows Features On or Off" and verified that the IE definitely is version 11. The darn thing is my desktop gadgets disappeared and nothing I have tried to do helped to restore them so far. There is a subsection: Control Panel==>Programs==>Desktop Gadgets. None of those links works in fact, like: "Restore Desktop Gadgets Installed with Windows, etc"

Any thoughts? I want my clock and temperature displayed.

Thanks, AboutFace_222601:7:7680:626:292D:653A:79EF:947C (talk) 19:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Intel retail package

Hi!!!!

a fast q and please feel free to DON’T send me to do a Google search

I need to know if this cpu option comes with the water cooler included

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116939

thanks!!! Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 21:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]