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October 20

i386 Windows application compatibility across platforms

Can Windows versions for other platforms, such as arm (CE/RT), axp64 (NT4), ia64 (XP/2003*/2008*), mips (CE/NT4), powerpc (CE/NT4) and superh (CE), run native i386 DOS, 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.1) and 32-bit Windows (e.g. Windows 9x/Me/2000) applications? For amd64 (XP+), I know it can't run DOS nor 16-bit Windows applications but it can run 32-bit Windows applications. 125.163.230.152 (talk) 01:45, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This page makes me think that Windows for Itanium/IA-64 has bundled support for 32-bit x86 executables. As far as I know Microsoft never supported x86 emulation for other architectures, but I have no source for that. Of course, any version of Windows can run anything with third-party emulation. -- BenRG (talk) 02:57, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information. 125.163.230.152 (talk) 04:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Upon further research, I conclude that the ability to run programs for different platforms is handled by Windows "subsystems." The subsystem for running DOS and Win16 programs is called NTVDM. According to the article, it exists in all i386 Windows and all platforms (i386, axp64, mips and powerpc) of Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0. The subsystem for running Win32 programs is called WOW64. According to the article, it exists in all amd64 and ia64 Windows though the performance is vastly inferior in ia64 platform due to emulation overhead. There are also other subsystems for running other kinds of programs in Windows. I've read things like OS/2 and UNIX (Interix/SFU/SUA) subsystems but they are not enabled or installed by default. Moreover, the WOW64 subsystem is not installed (or enabled) in amd64 Windows Vista/2008/7 Setup so you can't run Win32 programs there. So I am thinking a subsystem is more of a component which can be enabled or disabled, installed or uninstalled etc., and unless explicitly said to exist, it probably doesn't exist in other platforms of Windows. 125.163.230.152 (talk) 04:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Place to buy old PCs?

Is there a place to buy old, outdated PCs for cheap? Like, PCs that were going to be thrown out anyway? Anything down to and including a 286 would suffice for my current project, so the cheaper the better. Horselover Frost (talk · edits) 03:09, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You would be surprised what you can find on eBay and Craigslist. RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 03:38, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a local store here that sells used furniture, appliances, books, CDs, etc. Even 8 track tapes. They also have a computer section. Maybe there's one like it in your area. Or maybe a few Raspberry Pis will do what you want. Dismas|^(talk) 03:42, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've bought a ton of PC's and laptops at Discount Electronics over the years - they have $100 machines (with Windows XP) or $50 machines (with Linux) that are reconditioned and work great. The best deals are to be had by going to one of their stores - but very often the cheapest machines are slightly strange in some way...I bought three that came from Cinemark movie theatres that had mounting brackets to fit them under desks and no audio outputs. I agree with Dismas that for lots of those kinds of project, a Raspberry Pi will suffice. I actually prefer the BeagleBone - but both are fairly cheap and run Linux quite nicely.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:44, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've picked up a lot of computers from the recycle dropoff. It is free (and they often have a lot of commercial software on them). 209.149.113.162 (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox dejo de reproducir videos en vivo de globovision.com

Hola, Firefox dejo de reproducir videos en vivo de globovision.com

Todo lo que veo es una ventana negra y a pesar de que dice "playing" no se ve nada.

Alguien sabe como solucionar este problema?

Gracias, AK — Preceding unsigned comment added by A723 (talk • contribs) 11:09, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How to find full name of my Laptop so I can order the right battery, as I need a New one?

My laptop's battery is spent. When I have put in the charger it won't recharge. I can still use the laptop though on 0% battery, so long as the charger is in. Probably not gonna last much longer. Anyway, it is clear that the battery is spent and that it needs changing...

Problem is I don't know what laptop I have so I can't really go about ordering a new one.. All I know is that I have a Toshiba. Where do I see the whole name or model or whatever of the laptop? Is it on the underside of the laptop? There are lots of rows of digits and letters, like a serial-number and other stuff I don't know what is. I don't know what to look for, so any help would be appreciated :) Maybe serial-number is all I need?

Also, new battery is probably expensive, right? Will I get more for the money if I buy a brand new laptop? Considering that the laptop is only 2 years old it's disappointing that the battery is spent already.

84.211.153.120 (talk) 12:26, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Enter the serial number here http://www.toshiba.eu/innovation/generic/SUPPORT_PORTAL/ It might help you identify the laptop --TrogWoolley (talk) 14:23, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or try here: http://www.toshiba.com/us/laptops/battery-finder The second part of your question will depend on too many things to speculate. 196.213.35.146 (talk) 14:26, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the straightforward approachs (see above) fail, this Toshiba support page contains some helpful guidance about using the "device ID" (all IDs "should" be noted on a label on the laptop's back) and device manager (under Windows). GermanJoe (talk) 14:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks goes to all of you. You truly are a helpful bunch ;D 84.211.153.120 (talk) 15:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your battery should not be showing 0% after only two years of use. The laptop on which I am typing this is more than 7 years old and the battery is showing 100% with the charger plugged in. Admittedly, this quickly falls to zero when the power supply is unplugged, but the battery has not failed completely after seven years of constant use. This makes me wonder if it is the charging circuitry or the battery connection that is faulty. I should get advice from Toshiba before buying a new battery. Dbfirs 16:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Word Security Notice

In a Word doc (Word 2010) I've posted online, and also sent as an email attachment, when I click any link I get a "Microsoft Word Security Notice" saying, "Hyperlinks can be harmful to your security and data. It is important that this file is from a trustworthy source." Then it gives a file name such as "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Anatolian_Civilizations" and continues, "Clicking yes will enable all the hyperlinks in this file, for this session. Do you want to continue?"

All the files it shows are legitimate.

What should I make of this? --Halcatalyst (talk) 15:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a security feature of Office. Microsoft has an article on how to disable this.[1] -- Gadget850^talk 17:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Office 2013 installation

My father's computer recently crashed so badly it required resetting its entire Windows 7 system to its factory settings. My father keeps all his personal files on a separate USB hard disk, but this resetting wiped out all his installed programs. After the reset, the system has Microsoft Office 2010 installed, but it is not activated yet. My father bought Microsoft Office 2013 separately, and he still has the activation code, but neither of us could find any installation medium. The activation code for Office 2013 won't work with Office 2010. Where can I find the actual installation medium for Office 2013 so I could install it on my father's computer and activate it with the code? JIP | Talk 17:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can download it from Microsoft.[2] You probably want the option "My copy of Office came with a disk." -- Gadget850^talk 17:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Commodore 64 demos

I've watched a few Commodore 64 demos on YouTube recently, and was genuinely impressed. I know some 6510 assembler programming, and have even made a semblance of a BASIC extension purely in assembler, but these demos are currently far beyond my Commodore 64 programming skills. I'd just like to first ask one question. Pretty much every demo I have seen routinely features 160×200 pixel, or even full 320×200 pixel, pixel-by-pixel graphics in all 16 colours. As far as I know, the Commodore 64 can only natively display two graphics modes: 320×200 with a single uniform background colour and a single unique foreground colour in each 8×8 block, or 160×200 with three common colours (background and two others), and again a single unique foreground colour in each 4×8 block. Attempting more colours results in attribute clash. But the demos I've seen on YouTube don't seem to have this problem, but instead can colour individual pixels in all 16 colours freely. How did they do this? JIP | Talk 18:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Commodore 64 demos and links may help. -- Gadget850^talk 18:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article talks about many custom graphics modes but does not mention how they are used. I suppose all these can be accessed simply in 6510 assembler, by LDA with some value and STA it at some location. But I'd like to know the details. Is there any documentation on how one accesses these custom graphics modes? JIP | Talk 18:26, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A great deal of the fancier tricks one could do on a C=64 involved manipulating the registers of the VIC-II chip dynamically, in real time, and sometimes exploiting bugs in the chip. The chief mechanism is using multiple raster interrupts. A raster interrupt is set (using the VIC-II register mapped at $D012) to occur at a specific scan line. The initial intention of this was for programs to set this to a point in or near the vertical blanking interval; programs could set the VIC's scroll registers, and manipulate the memory mapped into the VIC's 16K window (which, subject to more register settings, corresponded to the character mode screen, screen bitmap, and colour map). So this was how vsync was to be implemented. But as there's no driver and no API, the registers are exposed straight to a program; and because there's no dedicated video ram (the VIC simply saw part of the system memory space, be that ROM or RAM) a program could manipulate that in real time too, with no (additional) lag. [Note incidentally that here when I say "vertical border" I mean the horizontal strip and the top and bottom of the screen, and "horizontal border" I mean the vertical strips at the left and right; this nomenclature makes sense when you think about the screen from the perspective of the raster and the PEL generator inside the VIC chip]. Real time really is the essential thing here. With skilled use of raster interrupts, programs could:

Set an interrupt for scan line Y=a, do stuff then, set another interrupt for Y=b, do different stuff, and so on. It was certainly possible to set up 20 or more horizontal zones this way (handling the interrupts takes time, and "do stuff" takes more time too, so one couldn't get an interrupt per scan line). So one zone could scroll and another be fixed; one could be multicolour mode and the other hires mode, etc. Programs like Boulder Dash used this to have a static area (to display scores) and a scrolling playfield below it.
Then people realised that a raster interrupt could manipulate sprites. the C=64 had only 8 sprites, all rather small. If you changed the sprite x and y locations in each raster interrupt, you could have 8 sprites per zone; if you also manipulated the data pointed to by each sprite, each zone's version of a sprite could look different. This is fun for demos, but not so much for games - having 8 zones with 8 sprites in each doesn't mean you have 64 independent sprites - your game can't have 64 individual spaceships flying arbitrarily around, as each has to stay in its slot (or you need a pretty clever scheme to allocate them, and make sure you're not every trying to have more than 8 at a time).
People used the above strategy to make "megasprites", where big boss monsters were composed of layers of sprites which all moved around in a block. So you might have a megasprite that was 6 sprites wide (leaving 2 for the player and his missile), and the megasprite might be 6 layers high (meaning 6 dynamically repositioned raster interrupts).
You'll notice the C=64, like other machines of its era, had a pretty large horizontal and vertical border. This was because they rendered to analog TVs, which were very variable in what they could display. The VIC-II had essentially an internal operation that operated when the scan line was at the top of the bottom border, where it set itself to "border" mode (it would push only the border colour register out to the pixel generator, not video memory), and another operation when the scan line was at the bottom of the top border, where it would go back to normal operation. Then someone discovered the VIC-II has a bug. If you set a raster interrupt for just the right scan line (I think it's either the top of the bottom border, or a line before it), and you positioned the Y coordinate of a sprite just so (I forget exactly how, but it was to start on that scan line or so) the VIC-II failed to turn the "border" on; it rendered the background colour instead. This wasn't all that useful, but it did allow one to position sprites in what had been the top and bottom border, and they'd display. With more interrupts, and more deft positioning of sprites, one could kinda display in this overscan area, all the way to the top and bottom of the screen. But the VIC-II wouldn't display characters or bitmapped (non sprite) data, so there was only so much you could do with that. Again demo authors had more use of it than games did - there were lots of demos that put bouncy scrollers down into that area. If you've seen them, you'll see that the same scroller is often at the top and the bottom - this is because TVs would often display the sprite in this no-go area in both the top and the bottom (that's why the C=64 had the borders in the first place).
You'll have seen lots of demos and games that do this, but that have the telltale "raster flicker" - where the code running in the raster interrupt runs when the raster itself is in the middle of the screen (so a given scan line is in the "before" domain up until a given X location, and in the "after" domain right of that); and because the timing isn't very stable (and the CPU is so slow that only a few instructions run per horizontal pixel) that update point would typically wobble back and forward slightly. It was possible to poll the horizontal position of the raster, but not to interrupt on it. People eventually found ways to work around this, which required thinking about what has happening down to the cycle; an example is here - note all the NOP waiting to get things just right.
Now we've (kinda) turned off the top and bottom border, can't we turn off the horizontal border too? That's much harder. People tried effectively bit banging the border colour register when the raster was in the border area, but this again isn't fully time-stable, and the CPU is so slow that you couldn't do it per-pixel. So again it was more useful to demo authors showing off than to games trying to render useful things. I think someone eventually found a mechanism for sort-of displaying sprites in the horizontal borders too, but it was still fully CPU intensive (so if you wanted to render chunky sprites over the whole screen, it effectively look almost 100% of the CPU).
Next is vertical resolution. These home computers mostly output onto 625 line PAL or 525 line NTSC TVs (of which about 576ish and 4?? scan lines were actually visible). But these were interlaced displays, when only every other line was rastered each "frame"; the raster then retraced to the top and did the other lines on the second. So the actual rate at which the raster illuminated the phosphor dot (don't think pixel, yet) on a PAL screen was 25Hz, and 30Hz on NTSC. That's slow enough for the human eye to see the change; makers of TV programs had to make sure that they didn't have sharp vertical transitions (particularly on on-screen graphics like sports scores or logos) from black to white, as this would cause a very visible flicker when the apparent transition seemed to bounce up and down (at 25Hz). To avoid this, 8-bit console and home computers just doubled down, rendering the same pixel value in both frames - this effectively halves the vertical resolution (which is why the C64, spectrum, etc. all have a vertical resolution that's about 200 pixels). Plus memory was expensive back then, and doubling the RAM needed to store a screen was a real cost item. Now the VIC-II doesn't expose which of the two interlaced frames it was rendering, but if you kept track yourself, you could alter the screen registers yet again and try to send different data in the A frame and the B frame. So you've sorta doubled the vertical resolution, but at the expense of turning it into a very visible interlace mode; you either have utterly hideous interlace flickering or you have to only display an image that (like those TV scores and graphics) has been expertly smoothed to minimise the raster effects). And we've doubled the amount of memory we're using, and crucially we're using a great proportion of the CPU to manipulate that (the CPU really isn't fast enough already). So yet again, it's useful for demos, not so much for general purposes like games. It's noteworthy that later machines like the Amiga, which still (in part) had to display on PAL and NTSC TVs, did allow full interlaced modes - they could do this because a) they had more memory b) they had much faster CPUs and busses, and c) some (like the Amiga) had a real-time coprocessor which could manipulate the pixel stream in real time without saturating the CPU.
I've heard of there being means of manipulating the colours that the pixel generator is emitting to sneak in more colours than the standard 16 colour palette, but I don't know what those were. That might be as "simple" (ahem) as displaying one colour in interlace frame A and a different one in B, and claiming that the interlace flicker effectively "blends" them together (which it really doesn't, except perhaps for the C=64's comparatively rich gray ramp).

Some additional reading here and here may get you started, but you'll end up reading discussions of modern c=64 emulators, which have to reproduce all this hairy, analog real-time behaviour and hardware bugs in order to make ancient demos and games run just-so. Anyway, TL;DR: the C=64 doesn't have any fancy graphics modes, but it allows direct access to the ongoing process of generating the screen signal, and by sheer bloodyminded brute force and buggy happenstance it was possible to wrench additional things the hardware designers hadn't thought of (or didn't want), mostly at the expense of all of the machine's useful CPU cycles. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 20:33, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to shoot a quick "Thank you," Finlay, for the detailed and interesting answer, especially for a layperson Justin15w (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can I sign up for a hosting plan and have my own VPN?

Can I create my own VPN to get a geo-local address in the US to watch movies (legally?) Is it difficult to install a VPN in a service meant for hosting web-pages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.37.136.167 (talk) 18:43, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the terms and conditions of the streaming site only permit you to watch the movies in the USA - then routing through a US VPN doesn't affect the legality of you watching them. It might make it easier to watch them illegally...but that's another matter. SteveBaker (talk) 20:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) How difficult it is will depend significantly on what the hosting plan is actually offering. If it's simply offering a webserver (Apache or something) with a few extras installed and all you're really allowed to do is put your files and some other customisations options, it's likely to be rather difficult. If the service offers access to a VM where you can basically install whatever you want, it's likely to be a fair amount easier.

However, however easy it is, if you're violating the TOS you agreed to when signing up for the hosting plan, you may find your service revoked at any time. Also, the service may not offer the downstream bandwidth (and may be even the upstream bandwidth) necessary for this, or may charge a fair amount for data usage or something else may mean it won't work very well even if you aren't cut off and can do it.

I'm also unsure why you want to do this, instead of using one of the many services which offer this for $3-$10 or so a month (and a few even free). Don't be sure that your home brew service will be better than the service run specifically for that purpose, with hopefully competent technical staff working to ensure it works for their paying customers, just because you're not such an obvious target. Particular since this question suggestions you're perhaps not that competent in such matters. (I've never used such services myself but some of them seem to get decent reviews. And although many of them do offer discounts for yearly subscriptions, there are likely many customers paying month by month who will simply leave if the service no longer lives up to their requirements.)

Nil Einne (talk) 20:46, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

October 21

ProBoards page numbers

http://displacedcwloungefan.proboards.com/thread/48/paying-gas

Watch what happens to the page numbers when you scroll down.

What makes that happen?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:51, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is using absolute positioning. Look at the bottom left of Wikipedia:Help desk.

I've actually disabled that feature, but I remember it. Did you notice the page numbers are in the middle of the page until you scroll down, and then they stay at the top?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:27, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't looked at the markup, and it is likely buried in CSS rules. The masthead likely has markup making it the top boundary. -- Gadget850^talk 10:16, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Though it's not the top boundary until you scroll down. I'll ask them.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:45, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably using some jQuery code (or a jQ plugin0 - see here for an example. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:31, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I found this which is similar. The information at the top of the screen disappears briefly and then reappears as you scroll down.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:51, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Way to see history of pictures I viewed at Google Earth?

I clicked on a photo and closed it, and after seeing some more I couldn't easily track it (there where many Pic icons at the GE simulation. Any way to see "View History" list of pictures I clicked on? Thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 02:30, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I only use GE occasionally, but since nobody else has responded I'll just say I don't think that's possible. I prefer to use Google Maps in my browser, partly because the history is then available.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:35, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

netsh advfirewall set store gpo = %computername%

How to make this work? I know need to exec to get the context but %computername% does not work. It works if I type the actual computer name but I have a batch file to use for a few computers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 42.61.51.210 (talk) 02:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GRUB trusted boot

After two years of searching for some kind of easy secure-boot like process for x86 computers, I was pleasantly surprised recently to discover that GRUB2 has software-based digital signature verification capabilities. So, I fired up Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS in VMware Player. I generated a DSA key pair using GnuPG and exported the public key into the file boot.key which I subsequently placed in /boot. I signed my kernels, ramdisks, and GRUB modules with sudo -E gpg --no-use-agent --detach-sign <insert file name here>. I reboot into the GRUB shell and enter:

trust /boot/boot.key
set check_signatures=enforce

I found that not only are these changes non-persistent, but trust did not actually add boot.key to the trusted list of keys as evidenced by list_trusted returning nothing. I did some reading and learned that grub-mkimage could make an instance of GRUB (core.img) with boot.key embedded in it and that this would implicitly enable signature checking by default. So I did that and swapped out my core.img for the default one. Still nothing. I also tried to use verify_detached from the GRUB shell, but I keep getting error: public key 9e142d77 not found. What am I doing wrong here? — Melab±1 ☎ 19:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yosemite default font

I installed OS X Yosemite today and, to my disgust, Neue Helvetica is everywhere. It does not belong in menus and even less in the list of unread mail. Is there a way to go back to the more legible Lucida Grande, if not generally then at least in Thunderbird? —Tamfang (talk) 22:26, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a way to change it with Tinker Tool on the development builds. Not sure the same would work with the public release. Dismas|^(talk) 07:23, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tinker Tool took care of it (in most apps, including Tbird) without fuss. Thanks. —Tamfang (talk) 03:41, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For Thunderbird see here [3]. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:07, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VLC and image stabilization

I just downloaded VLC to work with some videos I made. It's easy to use and I like it. But there is one thing I haven't figured out how to do: is there an image stabilization tool in VLC? I was at a sports stadium and the crowd foot stomping make it really hard to make a decent video so they're all jittery. Anyone know how to do this? Thanks. PumpkinSky talk 22:50, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Use VLC myself and as far as I'm aware it is purely for playback not editing of the footage, sorry can't point you at any editing alternatives maybe someone else can Sirrob01 (talk) 04:25, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Adobe After Effects can do automatic image stabilization. 217.158.236.14 (talk) 09:26, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you considered, for subsequent shoots, trying to stabilize the tripod? Google (or your favourite engine) searches for tripod steadyicam and tripod video dampening seem interesting, including this one http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/open-dv-discussion/469721-vibration-dampening-your-video-tripod.html which suggests using speaker/turntable spikes and a large weight. CS Miller (talk) 09:43, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone isn't aware, digital stabilization is getting really good, and can be used to make cool stuff where physical stabilization wouldn't help much (e.g. motorcycle helmet cams, etc). Anyway, this subreddit has some tutorial info on the side bar, and occasionally some interesting clips [4]. Here's a tutorial that seems to only use open source tools [5]. I agree with the above that VNC is probably not the appropriate tool for this. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I had nowhere to put a tripod. Thanks for the tips. VLC can at least easily cut out the unwanted parts of a video. PumpkinSky talk 20:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The last few times I've uploaded videos to youtube, it has offered to stabilize my videos for me. I have always declined so can't say how good it is, (at least one person thinks it's awesome) so it might be worth a try, particluarly considering it is free. Might however not be particularly viable if you have a particularly large video file that you want to leave in high quality.Vespine (talk) 00:13, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

October 22

Downloading Drug Data into MS Excel

Dear Wikipedia-

I am a 4th year medical student doing research on how the properties of some medications are determined by their structure (ex half life and the molecular weight). Wikipedia has wonderful information about each drug in its Chembox's. I wanted to know if there is a way that I could download the drug data contained in the Chemboxes' into an Excel spreadsheet or any other filetype that could be uploaded into a SQL database such as MS Access?

I would be extremely grateful if this were possible as it will make my research better and more comprehensive.

Thanks, Rob — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sangfroid90 (talk • contribs) 11:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is certainly possible, but a lot depends on what tools you know or are willing to learn, and how much time you have. If I really had to, I could eventually take the raw wiki markup as described here Template:Chembox, and write a script to convert it to xml or csv for each page I scraped - are you willing to do that? There may be easier methods. You also might have an easier time with ChemSpider, and you can also check at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals/Chembox_validation, which seems to imply the existence of some excel file that might be useful to you. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:06, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not what the OP asked, but so everyone knows: there's work being done to get all infobox data (all infoboxes, not just chemboxes, and across all the language wikipedias) into one grand unified database, wikidata. It's going to take a few more years, though... —Steve Summit (talk) 22:08, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

hey were u come from

hey were u come from? and i need to be rich like u can u help me hey get this e- mail from riley and u dont know my last name that all — Preceding unsigned comment added by JeNea06 (talk • contribs) 19:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about but I hope there's some way I can help. Is your name Riley? I don't know your last name. We would all like to be rich. Horatio Snickers (talk) 20:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

a park in Moscow

Question copied to the poster's talk page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Halcatalyst&oldid=630903682#a_park_in_Moscow

as not appropriate here, --CiaPan (talk) 07:56, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a picture of a statuary group in a park in Moscow. Can anybody tell me the name of the park? I'd like to know more about the statuary. Thanks. --Halcatalyst (talk) 19:14, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like this...
http://englishrussia.com/2009/03/17/the-sins-monument/
http://www.dauntlessjaunter.com/2014/03/02/weekly-photo-children-are-the-victims-of-adult-vices-monument-moscow-russia/
ru-wiki: ru:Дети — жертвы пороков взрослых
en-wiki: en:Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices
CiaPan (talk) 19:44, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Master System or NES?

Hello, I have the chance to get either a Master System or a NES, which one should I get (eg: which one will bring me the most enjoyment over time), and which games should I get? Horatio Snickers (talk) 20:20, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"The reference desk is not a chatroom. We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." Perhaps you could try a gaming forum. 183.228.170.150 (talk) 20:32, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

in terms of enjoyment over time, take a look at List of Master System games and List of Nintendo Entertainment System games. Master System had 318 games, whereas the Famicom had 709 licenced games, so based on the amount of games alone (i.e. no regard to quality of the games or other factors), the NES appears to be superior. Beyond that, the IP above is correct in saying that we don't give suggestions like that. Cheers, ~Helicopter Llama~ 21:24, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We can give references to opinions. According to OfficialNintendoMagazine.co.uk, these games are the most enjoyable. Also, here's a list of video game emulators and a a look at Nintendo thumb. Something to consider. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:09, October 22, 2014 (UTC)

I don't have a citation, but I've read more than once that the best Sega games were adaptations of their arcade titles, such as Space Harrier, Afterburner, and Out Run; Nintendo, of course, had the Mario and Zelda franchises, as well as several popular games from third party designers such as Konami. I own both systems, and really, you'll almost certainly get a lot of enjoyment out of either one. OldTimeNESter (talk) 12:26, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

October 23

AT&T behavior

AT&T recently added fiber optics in my area, and immediately dropped the speed to a crawl on their copper wire DSL system to "encourage" everyone to upgrade to fiber optics (their technician admitted this to me). Have they done the same thing elsewhere ? Have there been any protests ? StuRat (talk) 03:23, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

i think i recall some save the Internet protests regarding the control of speeds, so net neutrality may be a relative to what you're referring to? particularly "control of data" section of latter article ~Helicopter Llama~ 12:17, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AT&T's behavior is often painful to decipher...and I've long learned that in the absence of evidence, it's generally wiser to attribute failure to incompetence rather than malice.

12 years ago, I had a copper DSL line from them which had worked solidly for many years. One day I got a call out of the blue offering me a free upgrade to 2x speed. Obviously, I leaped at the chance - they came and installed the new equipment as promised. I soon noticed my network speed was now about 1% of what it used to be - and found that I was getting a 99% packet failure rate! I called to ask for help and they said that I was too far from the telephone exchange to use the higher speed DSL. I asked them to down-grade me to the 1x speed service I had before and they said that they had no mechanism in place to downgrade people's service. Then they offered us their cellular service instead - which was outrageously expensive, slow as all hell - and only worked when the antenna was 30 feet from our house! So in the end, they just cancelled my contract so I was left with no internet at all! I complained to AT&T headquarters and they promised to refund the payments for the period when I had the 2x service - which was something like $15...gee...thanks! Soon after, we moved away from the area - so it stopped being a problem. Then, just last year, a decade after all of that nonsense, I got a call from a collections agency saying that I owed them $1,000 because of an unpaid $15 bill from AT&T dating back a dozen years ago. All efforts to get AT&T to admit the error fell on deaf ears ("we've turned the debt over to a collections agency and now it's not our problem") and I ended up settling that 'debt' for $150. I swore off AT&T - but recently, they made us a VERY good offer for cable TV+Internet at low cost and with phenomenal Internet bandwidth. When it was all plugged in and running, the internet bandwidth was terrible. I complained that it fell far short of their promise and after several techs visited the house and (mostly) just rebooted the cable box and the WiFi moden, they told me that to get bandwidth higher than our old TimeWarner system, I'd have to turn off all of the TV's in my house...turns out that the stated numbers were for TOTAL bandwidth..minus TV. With two or three TV's turned on, my internet ran like dialup! So we told them in no uncertain terms to pull out their crappy system and pay for the re-installation fees from TimeWarner - which they EVENTUALLY agreed to do. I'm expecting another call from a collections agency in about another decade - so the final statement and receipt of payment are in our wall-safe where I'll be able to find them again!

However, while it's possible that they did this to you maliciously - it's more plausible that they are phasing out the DSL equipment as the demand for it decreases - and there is some kind of bottleneck arising because of that. The 'admissions' of a tech don't mean much...it might be true, it might not.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know if the sync speed has changed at all? Beyond what SteveBaker has said, if there's any connection at all between the fibre and the existing copper network (e.g. the same fibre is used from the DSLAM/cabinet) it's also possible someone screwed up and bumped a wire, connected something incorrectly or whatever when they were installing the fibre. Nil Einne (talk) 14:38, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NonNetwork Printer Shared Between Computer

Yesterday I needed to move a printer (that lacks an ethernet jack and does have any type of networking) that was setup as follows: the usb runs from the printer into a box that has an ethernet cable coming out the other end, the ethernet cable runs into a switch, then that connects into two computers. The printer works from either computer and was installed without discs. I moved the printer, installed it using by plugging the usb into two different computers, then duplicated the setup with the wires - however, in this case, it does not work (I didn't expect it to...). What do I need to do to duplicate this setup? I'm usually fairly savvy with this type of thing, but I wasn't aware that a setup like that could work, any suggestions? Thank you for any help:-)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:20, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The box was surely a little print server appliance. So, as far as each PC (which I assume you mean Windows machines) is concerned, the printer is a network printer. When you installed the printers with USB connections, you created what, to Windows, is logically a different, local printer. You need to have the Windows machines add a new printer, but have them search on the network for it. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 10:43, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried that, nothing is found for a network printer - the printers config page does not show an ip address, nor even have a line to list one. On the two printers it works on, the printers are not installed as network printers, though many fields under their properties are listed "unavailable", this changes if I plug it in directly via usb. The box, as far as I could see, looks like it is simply a converter, like this: [6].Phoenixia1177 (talk) 10:47, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A print server doesn't need to be very complicated. Any smart phone with an ethernet port and USB host most could nominally function as a print server, and that has an unnecessary screen, battery and other stuff. That said, are you suggesting that the device doesn't have any external power? This is somewhat unusual. While some printers may provide power to special USB2Go or host ports (for connecting phones, cameras and may be smart cards and external discs), these are generally seperate from the main USB port used for connecting the printer to the computer. And even if they are the same, a printer wouldn't normally provide power when connecting as a client. And connecting to the printer in USB host mode wouldn't normally allow the device to connect via normal drivers etc. So if the device really has no external power (which to be clear, would include a microUSB connection to a computer) and I'm guessing it's not getting Power over Ethernet that would mean it's probably somewhat unusual. There's still a resonable chance it is a print server and the printer has some special USB mode which provides power but allows the server to still connect as normal but it's difficult to say without more info on the device. I'm pretty sure it's not the same as what you linked to.

Anyway, I'm slightly confused about the current setup. Is the printer going to the same switch as before? Did you move the switch? Or change the connection between the computers and the switch in any way? Are you using the same ethernet cables? Have you verified the ethernet connection between the computers is working? Did you save anything before moving so that we can perhaps work out how it was connecting before? If you can move it back, does it work when you do so?

BTW what version of Windows are you using? I seem to recall on some older versions of Windows, 'network printer' was confusing since it referred to those connectable via a few different network printer standards, but not via the Windows (File and) Printer sharing i.e. Server Message Block which a number of printer servers use (probably using SAMBA) for simplicity and compatibility. Have you tried browsing for the printer on the local network like you would browse for shared files?

Nil Einne (talk) 14:32, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is the brand and model of the box? Most external print servers have a software discovery tool. -- Gadget850^talk 21:23, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the help and suggestions - I just ended up buying a new printer (it was easier, and the new one is a better one anyway); the prior set up had some goofiness going on, besides the mentioned, and it seems easier to just leave it be and redo it later if need be - it is, apparently, networked, but there is more stupidity that explains the other things mentioned; I'm not impressed by what the other person did, but don't feel the need to mess with it.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 15:13, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Resource for Raytracer

Hi. Can anyone recommend a good resource to help me understand how to calculate a ray for a camera in a ray tracing program? For example, I have X and Y on a viewing screen, and I want to convert it to a ray with the origin at the aperture of my camera and passing through the appropriate pixel in the screen. I was looking at scratchapixel but I wonder if there is something else you can recommend. Thanks. Duomillia (talk) 17:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You need to know how far the virtual screen is from the camera - which would provide the Z coordinate for each pixel. The distance may be specified directly, but more commonly you need to know the horizontal and vertical field of view. So, typically, you might use a 60 degree horizontal FOV. If the virtual screen is considered to be (say) 1 meter wide - then it's going to be (0.5/tan(30 degrees)) meters from the camera. The actual screen pixels will be spaced equally across your 1 meter wide virtual screen - so you need to know the screen's origin and X and Y resolutions to be able to compute an (x,y,z) for each pixel. Once you have that, it's easy to figure out a vector describing the ray from the camera through each pixel. SteveBaker (talk) 19:31, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you reviewed our list of ray tracing software? A lot of free software exists to do what you want, with varying complexity. Commercial packages are also available. Nimur (talk) 21:11, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

October 24

Windows Explorer List Order

I'm using Windows 7. When I copy and paste files from one Windows Explorer folder to another, they get added at the bottom of the list, not alphabetically, even though the window is sorted on the Name column. I then have to refresh the window before they pop into place.

Is there a configuration option that will force Windows to drop new files in at the right place?

Thanks, Rojomoke (talk) 13:10, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Advanced histogram plot

I am plotting a function, from reals to reals, that is a sum of a finite number of dirac delta functions. I need to plot it like a histogram, with the area of each bar proportional to the area under the corresponding delta function, and the width of the bar the maximum possible so as to avoid overlap with the neighboring delta function.

I'm using Octave on Linux. Can anyone suggest plotting software, or code that will do what I want? Thanks! --RM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.247.216.109 (talk) 15:47, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Octave produces histographs. Example: hist (randn (10000, 1), 30); — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.149.113.162 (talk) 18:32, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Last I used Octave, it had to hook into gnuplot to do that sort of thing, and that could be a bit tricky on some installations. But if OP can get Octave to plot anything directly, then 'hist' will indeed plot a histogram [7]. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, the area under Dirac_delta_function is 1 for any interval that contains the center point, right? Are you thinking of something like a Dirac comb, but with some sort of weighting? I would suggest doing whatever manipulations you want to get the appropriate heights and widths, then just feed that vector to 'bar' or similar, rather than trying to get a plotting command to correctly interpret the deltas. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:04, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The function is a sum of a finite number of weighted shifted dirac delta functions.

The "boxes" style in Gnuplot seems best as of now. Is there any plotting program that allows individual bar width to be adjusted for histogram plots? --RM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.247.216.109 (talk) 22:43, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

boxes does let you set each width—it even can compute it to touch like you want, but you still need them yourself to compute the correct heights. --Tardis (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BeagleBoard: making it mobile

If you buy a BeagleBoard, can you make it mobile attaching a battery and a screen to it? And what battery and screen would be a choice? I'd like the less colorful screen (but still touch screen) and the bigger battery (think: less esthetically minded, prefer longer running time). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.12.24.130 (talk) 17:51, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is possible. Review the latest BeagleBoard System Reference Manual. There is a whole chapter on power supply systems.

If you provide 5 volt DC power, you can expect that the supply will need to source around a half an ampere. (The spec actually says 1.5 A minimum). Not all batteries can do that safely. Choose wisely!

In other words some batteries will fail gracefully, (i.e., your board will suffer a brownout). (This is a more likely scenario for most of the kinds of batteries that are within the price-range of the enthusiast/hobbyist). But if you decide to shell out big bucks for bigger batteries with longer lifetimes, you need to be aware: some batteries will leak chemical, catch fire, or explode, if you sink too much current out of them. Some (bigger) batteries will over-current the Beagle Board and blow out its overcurrent protection circuit.

The moral of this story : before you go connecting a yacht-sized marine battery to your computer, you should read up on DC-DC power supply design. Choose an appropriate energy source (battery); choose an appropriate DC voltage and current regulator; choose appropriate cables and protection circuitry. If you do it all correctly, you can hook up a yacht battery, and you can run the board for days, hours, weeks or months. I once worked on a project where we hooked up many dozen (about a metric ton) of marine batteries to a small embedded system... its computer system and radio uplinks survived for several years until "a shark ate it." Nimur (talk) 18:22, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you really set on using a BeagleBoard? Those things are like 5 or 6 years old - a BeagleBone Black would be a more reasonable choice...and it's significantly smaller. If only needs 460 milliAmps at 5 volts - and then only when everything is running. Most of the time it's more like 250mA. Four rechargeable 2900mAh Nimh AA batteries would get you plenty of battery life. This display plugs directly into the BeagleBone and has an integrated touch screen...not sure how much power it'll consume though. SteveBaker (talk) 19:19, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tips. Yes, I'd go with the BeagleBone and not the original BeagleBoard. And go with some kind of replaceable, small battery. I'll try to find one specific to the BeagleBone, since it looks they are developing components specific to it.

October 25

Softcombing (Kuzhicombing), The Most Systematic Software Reverse Engineering Method

I wrote an article on "softcombing" and tried to put the article in Wikipedia. I could not find references. So the article is going to be discarded. How can I get references from the internet? There is a video clipping in YouTube on softcombing. But it is not acceptable to Wikipedia. Do I have to write a book on softcombing? Can someone else give references for me?

George Peter Kuzhikompil (talk) 09:33, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you invented this technique, then you should know if anything is published on the topic. For this kind of topic, a publication in a peer reviewed academic journal is where to write. But we would also expect that there is more than one writing on the topic to pass the notability criterion. Perhaps it has already been described by another name. By the way the draft is no where near deletion, Normally it would have to be abandoned for 6 months to be chopped. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:58, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I sounds to me like what people have been doing since year dot in decompilers. You make a list of possible entry points and start disassembling from the first one till you get to a jump putting any new targets into the list as one goes. Rinse repeat. You need to do more though like spotting jump tables and method functions and function addresses passed as parameters for example to sort, and in old code there may even be overwritten code or there may be inline data after a call that the subroutine jumps over. Dmcq (talk) 15:42, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External Memory

Why is it that some devices only support a limited amount of external memory? I have two 64GB SD cards, and neither of them works in my phone (Samsung Galaxy SIII mini) or my wearable action camera I use for cycling. They bot have to use a 32GB one. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 15:34, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Everything needs a software driver! Even the RAM on today's microscopic computer-on-a-chip needs a software driver, as mind-blowing as that is for most people who program computers! Storage devices like SD cards also need software support: the main computer cannot talk to it unless somebody programs in the specific language that the peripheral understands.

In this specific instance, the system doesn't speak the right language - but only for very large SD cards. The most likely culprits are either the file system or the device driver for the SD card interface. It is also possible that the storage configuration is malformed for this device, at a higher level of abstraction. Most probably, your devices do not support the SDXC protocol that is used for most cards with greater than 32 GB. Suffice to say, one or more software pieces are broken, but the exact nature of this problem is difficult to diagnose without deep inspection of the software and hardware on this device. This kind of software work isn't commonly accessible or fixable by nonprofessionals - even when the source-code is available!

As an example of the complexity, you can take a look at a free software implementation of an SD card driver, and try to decipher its inner workings. (I had an easier time finding good documentation and reference code for SD card drivers on Windows than for Linux or Android! And Apple makes a USB mass storage driver (with SD card support) available in source-code form, even though I'm not aware of any iOS devices that have an SD card slot!)

Instead of trying to fix it yourself, a better strategy would be to file a detailed bug report to your hardware vendor, so that they can actually track its occurrence and make a decision to prioritze a fix schedule.

Nimur (talk) 16:13, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]