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December 29

Installing stuff in Linux

Installing some packages (not in the Ubuntu repository), the instructions say follow the Macintosh instruction which are:

"uncompress the folder and move it to a central location, e.g. /usr/share, and set MALTPARSERHOME to point to this location"

"install megam binary, e.g. to /usr/local/bin and set MEGAMHOME to point to this directory)."

Why do you install one package to /usr/share and the other to /usr/local/bin? Does it matter?

Where do you set the path MALTPARSERHOME and others? The packages are to be used with Python.

And a second point is about installing stuff in general. Is the standard procedure to decompress, change to the directory and ./configure -> make install -> makefile OR simply make? Are there other procedures? Like make install alone?Mr.K. (talk) 01:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

/usr/local/bin/ is usually on your path - so it's best to put as few files in there as possible. (Typically, only the executable/script, or a symbolic link to that, should be in the .../bin/ directory). The program may have any number of required extra program files, data files, and so on; those belong in /usr/local/share (or any other non-standard location of your choosing); and by setting the environment variable to point to it, you can specify it to be whatever you like. (See this Ubuntu help page for instructions on setting environment variables - note that the correct syntax depends on your shell and not on your version of Linux; but if you aren't sure what to do, you probably will want to edit your .bashrc file and add a line export MALTPARSERHOME=/usr/share/maltparser/ or something like that - read through these links for more information). Finally, regarding your last point: ./configure; make install; is a convention that originates with autotools, a very common standard GNU build system for compiling and installing programs from source-code. In practice, many programs use this convention, even if the programmers did not use autotools. "configure" is a script, and in the common case, it creates a Makefile. This makefile is another script designed to automate the process of compiling software; in theory, "configure" created a special version "optimized" for your particular computer (if a programmer designed "configure" to do smart things like check your CPU type or amount of RAM, for example). Then, you use the GNU program make to interpret that makefile - which contains a special instruction/routine for "install" (if the makefile script was automatically generated by autotools, or following that convention). Programmers and software designers can also write their own custom makefile; they can provide any convention for installation procedure; but following these norms makes it easier for users to compile code from source (without having to learn details of the entire software project). Usually, a makefile contains instructions for compiling, linking, and copying binary files to specific locations; but make can run any steps needed for a build. Nimur (talk) 02:01, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally I'm skittish about making changes to a global settings file like .bashrc to suit a specific application (which will probably be called by via a script or makefile anyway). I've seen people get into a tragic muddle with multiple versions of things on their path, or suffering from the unexpected effects of environment variables that they had lying around. It's often good practice to write a (e.g.) do_parse script which clears the entire environment with env - and then explicitly calls executables by their full path names with only the bare minimum of specifically-set environment variables declared beforehand. So, for your maltparser example, you might end up with a script that read env - MALTPARSERHOME=/usr/share/maltparser /usr/bin/java -jar /usr/share/maltparser/bin/maltparser.jar foo bar, and you can guarantee that you'll always get that version of the program, and that your setting MALTPARSERHOME doesn't conflict with some other use of it (by some other unrelated program that you didn't know about). 86.164.11.154 (talk) 14:36, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

ebooks on Nokia 5300 classic mobile

Can i read ebooks on my Nokia 5300 classic mobile? If not what software should i install in my phone that would support reading ebooks on it.? please help.117.204.6.94 (talk) 06:52, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Search for "Nokia 5300 ebook reader" and you will find many programs you can purchase and download to read ebooks on a Nokia 5300. -- kainaw™ 17:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Deleting

When permanently deleting (ie not to recycle bin) a folder on Windows 7 with thousands of files in it, why does it take so long? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 17:05, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

You are probably using the exFAT file system, which implements a chunked free space bitmap to keep track of free space. When deleting a small amount of data (where the location of newly freed space fits in memory), there is not noticeable degradation. If the amount of newly freed space cannot fit in memory, a swapping nightmare ensues as the drive continually allocates drive space on one chunk to calculate freed space on another chunk, then has to free the newly allocated space, which may require allocating space on another chunk, etc... Keep in mind that overall the free space bitmap is rather fast at quickly locating contiguous free space, which avoids fragmentation. So, this one weakness isn't too bad of a problem. -- kainaw™ 17:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

The file system is NTFS 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:11, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed that deleting files with Windows 7's Explorer is sometimes very slow. I don't know why it happens, but it's Explorer-specific, so you could try a third-party file manager. The best list I can find on Wikipedia is Template:File_managers. Kainaw, do you have a source for what you said about exFAT? It sounds implausible to me. -- BenRG (talk) 22:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

It is described well in our article on free space bitmap. See the very end of the article. -- kainaw™ 01:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

That article isn't about exFAT. As far as I can tell, exFAT is no worse off than FAT16 in this regard, and slightly better off than FAT32 since it has one FAT instead of two. Calculating free space doesn't require "allocating space on another chunk". I don't think exFAT's free space bitmap is chunked in the way that article describes, but it wouldn't matter even if it were. -- BenRG (talk) 01:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Wifi access

Hi there, Can I plug a wireless router into the LAN cable in my office so I can use my iPad or does it have to be plugged into the original feed from the cable modem? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.24.193.175 (talk) 17:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

You can do that, but you may run into issues with local internet use guidelines by exposing the local network to unsecured wireless access. -- kainaw™ 17:42, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you explain that a little more? Won't securing the access with a password keep things secure? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.24.193.175 (talk) 17:45, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

In my experience, nobody takes the time to read the manual for the router and properly add an encryption key to the router itself. They think that requiring a password to login into their Windows/Mac account means that the wireless access is also secured. Then, even if they do add encryption, it is usually WEP, which takes seconds to crack using freely downloadable programs (no, I won't provide links for the script kiddies). WPA is better, but has inherent weaknesses that allow others to hijack a key that is in use. So, users should be turning off broadcast, which only inhibits the most inferior script kiddies, and turn on MAC filtering, which inhibits slightly more experienced script kiddies. In the end, your wireless access point is an open weakness to the internal network. For that reason, rogue routers are rarely allowed. If wireless networking is required, it is usually placed on a separate network with limited access to the main wired network. -- kainaw™ 17:55, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

All that is true and valid. I would add that even if a hostile attacker has access to the network, there are techniques to keep data secure; so "theoretically", an insecure wireless hotspot should not be a problem for data security. Transport layer security and end-to-end encryption should be used for all sensitive data; those technologies are specifically designed to keep information safe when transmitting it across "untrustable" networks. Unfortunately, few people are careful enough to always use the SSL / HTTPS / otherwise-secure version of whatever data protocol they are using; this is unfortunately especially true on intranets, where (for reasons unknown), users implicitly trust their network to be perfectly secure. So, in practice, a wireless hotspot often is the weak entry-point that allows data security to be compromised. For this reason, you should defer to the decision of your I.T. department, who we can only hope have made a realistic and competent assessment of the security risks to your particular organization. Nimur (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Serious question : Do you think your IT department or network admin will be cool with it? If so, why not ask them? If not, you probably shouldn't do it. They should spot it, and will probably give you no end of grief.

But technically? Yea, that should work without any trouble. APL (talk) 23:04, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

URL is not available; why does this happen?

I may have asked this question in the past. Furthermore, it is related to one of the first questions I ever asked here, but I'm not going to go looking for that one right now.

Yesterday, and several times before, on library computers with Internet Explorer, I try to go to a site and the circle beside the name of the site just goes round and round with nothing coming up. I try to enter a new URL and get the messsage "[URL] is currently unavailable." The circle never stops rotating. I go to another screen, type the same "unavailable" URL and it comes up. In fact, when I try to go to the site I couldn't go to before, I can.

Now this is similar to what happens when the Internet goes down. The computer doesn't just go to the site because the Internet came back. The circle just continues to rotate and rotate.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

This is easily explained by an overloaded switch/router in the library. Packets are getting dropped. Your request may have never made it out of the library. It may have gone out and the response got lost in the library. After a timeout (probably about 2 minutes), a re-attempt didn't get lost. -- kainaw™ 19:47, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, why isn't it possible just to type in a new URL where the circle is constantly rotating? And why, if the Internet goes down, does the computer never "find" the site?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:49, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Because that isn't how the web browser was programmed to function. If the network is down (and I say network, not Internet, since the Internet never goes down), you won't find a site because your request will never reach the site. Further, you need to understand that you are usually making two network requests. One is to the nameserver to get the IP address of the site. The other is to the site itself. If either one fails, you get a hung request that needs to time out. -- kainaw™ 20:03, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, the Internet never goes down. That's just what people say. If no one can access the Internet at the library for whatever reason or for however long, that's what we say.

The only solution seems to be to click on the red X in the upper right corner because it never does time out. It just keeps on going and going.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:12, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

If you don't mind, Vchimpanzee, I'm quoting you at Wikipedia:Trading card game/Action plan/Phase 2:Cards/Individual card proposals#Downtime. You've inspired a trading card. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:09, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Native Dalvik on a PC?

Would it be possible to run Android apps efficiently on a PC, by using a PC-native version of the Dalvik virtual machine that Android uses to run its apps? I know that the Android SDK has an Android emulator that emulates the Android hardware and processor, but emulating a different architecture is super slow; and since Android apps are packaged as interpreted bytecode anyway, simply porting the virtual machine to PC should be enough; emulating is unnecessary. --208.80.119.68 (talk) 22:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

#!

What does #! in a url for example http://example.com/#!/123 mean? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 22:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

"#!" does nothing as such. The "#" is the only significant bit: it begins the "fragment" of the URL, which is traditionally used to jump to a named place on the page. It is not passed to the server as the rest of the URL is. Its use in modern AJAX websites stems from the fact that it's visible to JavaScript, so e.g. http://twitter.com/#!/marnanel requests the page "/" from twitter.com, but the JavaScript on that page knows to look for "marnanel" (and in this case will display my Twitter timeline). The good side of these things is that you can link to a page and give instructions to JavaScript on it at the same time, and that the JavaScript can rewrite the URL in the address bar without causing the page to reload, so you can always bookmark the page and get back to where you were in the AJAX system. The bad side of these things is that you're effectively linking to the root page of the site every time, and there is no way for people who don't have JavaScript (they do still exist!) to get to the actual sub-page you wanted. Marnanel (talk) 23:03, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

What's the advantage to using a hash tag rather than a variable (e.g. example.com?123)? It strikes me as odd to use the hash tag to pass variables, since Javascript should be able to read query strings, but server-side scripts can't read hash tags. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Modifying the URL to change a variable would cause the page to refresh, which would remove many of the advantages of using AJAX. Modifying the URL to change the fragment (by assigning to window.location.hash) doesn't. Marnanel (talk) 03:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

December 30

running a c++ program

Hi there, I am trying to run this program from here. Got a red signal in #include <fstream> section. The signal did not show any error messages. What to do? --180.234.52.218 (talk) 00:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

What are you doing in order to run it, and with what compiler? Marnanel (talk) 01:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the OP needs to carefully explain exactly what they are doing. There seems to be a lapse of correct terminology; I hope my explanations help you to describe your problem more exactly so that we can help you diagnose it:

• It sounds like you are having a problem compiling, not running your program. Is that correct?
• Actually, in every build-system I am aware of, the line #include is handled by the C preprocessor and not the C++ compiler; perhaps your toolchain is not set up properly (failing to include standard system library headers?)
• Finally, the term "signal" has a specific meaning in computer system design - perhaps you intended to say "error message." To my knowledge, it is impossible for #include <fstream> to generate a signal.

Can you clarify exactly what you were doing, what tools or commands you used, and the exact error message you received? Nimur (talk) 14:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I use code block (v 10.05). I am learning C++. I put cursor on the error message but it did show nothing. Is there any problem with that program?--180.234.38.71 (talk) 14:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you compile ANY program that includes fstream? Can you compile ANY program at all? I would assume your include path is messed up before assuming that the program has an error in it. -- kainaw™ 14:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Machine Review

I've asked questions on here before about why games wouldn't work on my old laptop, and it was because I had a Dell Inspiron 15XX with a MOBILE INTEL 965 XPRESS CHIP SET. Which was, to be honest, rubbish for gaming. The GPU was low and it was shared with the CPU's RAM. I've bought a new laptop and would like to see what you all think. It has:

• Intel Core i5-460M processor
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M (1 GB dedicated GPU)
• 4 GB DDR3 RAM
• 500 GB HDD

Does this one look like it'd measure up to all the new games? Any problems that I might have? — Fly by Night (talk) 01:36, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I find it funny you bought it first and then ask if it measures up? That card is a midrange card ([1]) so you would be able to run modern games on it but you would most probably have to lower your resolution (away from native laptop resolution) and lower some of the advanced settings in games (like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering). A laptop will never compete with the gaming performance of a desktop due to the higher power requirements of high end desktop graphics cards. BTW the other components on your laptop are just fine and will help to improve gaming performance a little bit. So all in all, I think you would be able to run modern games reasonably well and older games very well. Sandman30s (talk) 11:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I know, it is funny, but I had to buy one. I fell in the snow and crushed my old one to death. I got what I thought was the best, but was looking for confirmation. I feel cheated now. The shop said that it would give "stunning game graphics". Was that a load of rubbish? It does have 1GB dedicated video memory; that has to be good, no? The game I play most is World of Warcraft, but I haven't been able to play it yet because I'm back home for Christmas with no internet. I should be able to play that with maximum settings; shouldn't I? — Fly by Night (talk) 17:47, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. It says here that it's a high end video card. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Just looking at the page you linked and nothing else, I'm afraid it doesn't say that at all. It just lists lots of video cards with scores ranging from 302 to 3786 and your card has a score of 595 which puts it closer to the bottom than the top. That doesn't mean it's a rubbish card though and likewise their statement of "stunning game graphics" isn't wrong either, that's a pretty subjective statement and it all depends on what you're trying to do with it, but I'm sure it is capable of stunning gaming graphics, just whether or not they're stunning and moving fluidly is going to be dependent on the game and resolution it's running at.  ZX81  ^talk 08:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The page I linked to says, directly above the top entry, "High End Videocards - Updated 31st of December 2010". There are High-Mid and Low End pages that you can access by the drop down menu. So that site calls it high end (it's on the high end page and not the high-mid nor the low end card pages). I used that Can You Run It? website and it blitzed all the games I play, especially WoW. It can play Civ 5 too, but it only makes the minimum requirements and not the recommended. So I still feel a bit cheated! Funny thing is, my old laptop was too slow to run Civ 4, and my new laptop is too new, and has compatibility issues -- without patches to fix them. It's scary really, that a game can become unplayable within a few years. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:39, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If you have compatibility problems with Civ4 then the problem is probably more about the OS than the hardware. Taemyr (talk) 12:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia coding help

Hi, I'm helping develop a highly complex template for Wikipedia, and we've discovered a need to find the name of a page that a given page redirects to.

I've searched high and low and can't find any documentation for this sort of function...perhaps I need to write this template myself.

Given a page name, how would I use WikiSyntax to produce the name of the page it redirects to? For example, let's say I want to find the following:

What page does User:Bob the Wikipedian/Test-30 redirect to?

Using some sort of code-- here's a pseudocode example: redirectTarget(User:Bob the Wikipedian/Test-30) ===> User:Bob the Wikipedian/Sandbox

where User:Bob the Wikipedian/Sandbox is the desired result. I thought perhaps something like {{FULLPAGENAME:User:Bob the Wikipedian/Test-30}} might do the trick, since {{User:Bob the Wikipedian/Test-30}} returns the contents of the redirect target page, but it gave me the title of the redirect page instead.

Thanks for any help or pointers to other potential help! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Wii games for old people

Does anyone have Wii games they would recommend for old people? Wii Sports is an obvious choice, anything else you would recommend? thanks 122.61.218.145 (talk) 09:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

My grandparents enjoy the bowling, golf, frisbee, tennis, and also the fairground games package. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:37, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

(JavaScript) Creating an alias for an object

For example, I want to create an alias for an object called 'television':

var products = {
television : 'Sony ABC-123'
};

now I want to access this product via an alias, so I created another line:

products.tv = products.television;

products.tv == products.television; // true

products.tv === products.television; // true

products.tv = 'SOLD OUT';

products.tv; // 'SOLD OUT'

products.television; // 'Sony ABC-123'

I have also created location and management objects. Now I want to create a parent object called myStore that contains all three of them:

var myStore = {
products : products,
location : location,
management : management
};

If I change the products object, the myStore.products object does not change. How do I organize my objects so wherever they go there's only one instance? -- Toytoy (talk) 11:51, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

var myStore =
{
	products:
	{
		television: 'Sony ABC-123'
	}
}

--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

CONNECTING MOTHER BOARD

I would be grateful to you if you help me to find details of connecting asus p4pe motherboard to front panel, hard disk power supply etc. I want to reassemble my old computer myself. Some terminals are not connected especially front usb terminals. I want to do it myself. But I dont know the meaning of terminals vcc1, vcc2, gnd1,gnd2, data 1, data 2 etc. etc. Pl. help me thank you.124.43.25.100 (talk) 12:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

See if the manual helps. If not please let us know. 122.61.218.145 (talk) 10:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Partitioning drive in HP laptop running Windows 7 Home Basic

I've been asking questions here for the past few days regarding my laptop. So anyway, I decided to create recovery backup disks of my HP G42-355TU laptop and then partition my C drive. (Currently, it has two drives: C, with 282 gb, and D with 15 gb, which is the recovery drive. I don't intend to touch th erecovery drive anytime soon.) I shrunk the volume C, and tried to rename the unallocated disk space with a new drive letter and format it with NTFS file system, in disk manager. However, I got an error message saying "Dynamic disks are not supported by this operating system or server configuration. Dynamic disks are not supported on clusters.", and couldn't create the new partition. On the other hand, my C drive got smaller, and unallocated disk space couldn't be viewed in My Computer, since I couldn't allocate it a new drive letter. Please help. Is there any way I can partition my disk, or is disk partition not possible in HP laptops? 117.97.215.196 (talk) 13:31, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's a first. This post's been here for more than three days, and yet, no one in Wikipedia has been able to come up with an answer!! 117.194.232.99 (talk) 08:42, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Mac's magic mouse: swiping sideways changes the page

I have a new imac with the magic mouse. When I swipe my fingers across the mouse left to right or right to left, I am taken back or forward in webpages. It's driving me crazy. I have to be careful while typing this post to not touch the mouse, or if I need to use it, to only making up/down movements or I while navigate to a prior web page. I have already lost material I have been working on in email and so on because I unintentionally navigated back or forward. It's as if the browser back and forward buttons were connected to any sideways swipe. This happens in both Firefox and Safari. It's awful. Any help?--141.155.143.65 (talk) 14:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This feature of the Magic Mouse is intended to enhance your Mac OS X experience. Fortunately, you can disable it: the Apple Magic Mouse page shows the configuration panel, where you can un-check the box for "Swipe Left/Right to Navigate" to turn this feature off. To get to Mouse Configuration, follow these instructions from Apple: "The System Preferences pane controls system-wide settings ("global" settings), and is available from the Apple menu at the upper-left corner of the screen" (right where the intuitive Mac interface stores all other system settings). Nimur (talk) 14:32, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

TTF to TGA

How to create a .TGA file from a True-Type font file (.TTF), to be used as a text string with a UV texture in Blender game engine? 83.183.172.203 (talk) 17:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Presumably showing a particular message, rather than just any random text? Easiest way is to write the text using something like Inkscape and then save it as a bitmap. I don't remember whether Inkscape exports to TGA; if not, apply ImageMagick to the problem. (If you just want any text, ImageMagick can convert TTF to any bitmap format it knows in one step, but the text always says "That which does not destroy me only makes me stronger".) Marnanel (talk) 17:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that this tutorial will help. -- kainaw™ 19:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Files

Resolved

In Windows 7, if I have 400 files selected is there a way I can unselect every other file, so now only 200 files are selected? Its absolutely necessary that it be every other file which is selected 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know any automatic way to do this (and it seems an unusual thing to want to do, so I'd be surprised if there was one), but you can hold down the Ctrl key and then click files to deselect them. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:47, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks but that would take hours when dealing with thousands of files. I know it's a unusual feature I'm looking for, and google gave nothing, which is why I'm asking. The end goal here is to delete every other file in a directory, so selecting them in Windows Explorer isn't absolutely necessary it just seemed like the easiest way. I'm open to any solutions such as .bat scrips or even php though I'm very inexperienced with advanced php. I don't want to use python or that other one also beginning with "p" 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting task, and yes, there's a very simple way to do this, although it's manual. Assuming they're 400 consecutive files, use CTRL+wheel to resize the icons until the window displays two icons across (this may require a window resize as well, depending on your resolution). Then, CTRL+lasso to unselect the side that you don't want. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

:D awesome! Thank you! 82.44.55.25 (talk) 22:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

How to stop my laptop downloading

I've been using a mobile broadband dongle to access the internet. Well, it's just gone mad. I only have a limited usage, about 5 GB. My laptop has started downloading updates without asking me. The internet usage shot up, so I typed netstat -b into cmd and EGIS update had about ten connections open. I used task manager to terminate EGISupdate.exe but the download carried on. I closed my internet connection and unplugged my dongle. But after I plugged it back in, the usage shot up again. It's drank about 1 GB in five minutes! When I type netstat -b all of the connections are un-named -- no mention of EGIS update -- but there are lots of connections. How do I stop it downloading stuff I don't want it to download? I'll be back home in a few days, with unlimited broadband, it can download then! — Fly by Night (talk) 23:08, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Best way would be to identify and disable the applications doing the downloading. Benign applications would system updates, anti-virus updates and the like. You could also have a virus or malware creating the connections. If you can identify the IP, you can add it to your hosts. For example, if you add:

127.0.0.1 www.badstuff.com

Then that site is blocked— you can use an IP or a domain name. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:20, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not a virus or malware. My laptop is 24 hours old. The program was, as I said, EGIS update which is disabled in Task Manager. Even after terminating the process, the connection stayed open and downloaded. I assume that the dozen EGIS update connections that showed themselves remained open even after closing the process. So, to repeat the question: How do I stop [my laptop] downloading stuff I don't want it to download? — Fly by Night (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It's quite common for lots of updates to be needed immediately with new hardware or software. I even suspect that some products come without full software and always need an update to run. It sounds like your dongle is in that category. So, here are your choices, as I see them:

1) Allow the downloads.

2) Remove the dongle until you are willing to do the updates.

3) Disconnect from the internet, by pulling the cable out of the back of the computer. The dongle may refuse to work without an update, or may just give an error message, but work anyway.

4) Wipe the software on the dongle and start clean. I wouldn't recommend this, as it may take longer than the updates and provide worse results. StuRat (talk) 01:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Maybe I didn't explain myself. The dongle is a mobile broadband device that gives me temporary internet access. I'm away from home for Christmas and am using that while with my parents. It's the laptop and the laptop's software that is updating itself. I have unlimited WiFi at home, and can download whatever the laptop wants when I go back home. I want to stop the laptop and the antivirus etc connecting to the internet and downloading. The dongle isn't downloading anything for itself. I just want my laptop to stop downloading things without asking me first. Mobile broadband (not in-house, fibre optic, but just a dongle that connects to the cellphone network is really expensive and not suitable for large data movement. I want to read the news and edit Wikipedia; not install 10 GB of software updates. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Gadget850 actually answered your question. Netstat should give you a domain name for the remote host, which you can then block in the hosts file. You can also prevent the updater from starting in the first place by going to the Start Menu and typing msconfig in the search box and pressing ENTER. Then, look under Startup for the updater and uncheck it's box. You can also just uninstall any software from EGIS, as that company appears to specialize in useless pre-installed programs that slow down your computer.

I wouldn't worry about those connections, by the way. They're not actually transferring data if the program isn't running. The connections are probably dead, but Windows has no way of verifying that they're completely killed.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe he did answer my question, but I don't know what I'm doing. That's why I came on here. It is probably really easy for most people, but I'm really useless. I need a step-by-step guide. The connections were not dead, I came on here because I could see my usage shooting up. I've had to pay for more GBs since my last post because the laptop just drank up all of my data allowance. If this happens again then could you give me a step-by-step guide of what I need to do to stop the GB vampires? I can't wait till I'm back at home and I don't have to worry about this again. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

... and for anyone else who has a limited broadband access (mine is much more limited than that), when you get a new laptop, try to connect it to an unlimited connection first to perform all its updates, and for anti-virus updates. Many updates automatically switch the auto-update back on again, so be sure to check that all of the software has auto-update switched off. Some updates can be downloaded independently of the software (e.g at a library, onto a flash drive), then transferred to the laptop. This will seem silly to the fortunate majority who have fast unlimited broadband access! Dbfirs 09:23, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I would simply install a firewall with with outgoing connection control. Then, as programs attempt to use internet, they would have to ask to be whitelisted. You can do it on permanent or individual basis, with good firewall sky is the limit. This way you would have fine grain control over what programs use internet. I have not used advanced firewalls in a while so I suggest you Google some comparisons and reviews. There is a wide selection of free and open source firewalls, you shouldn't have to pay anything. --110.174.117.185 (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

December 31

What is XBee?

I have trouble finding an authoritative source for what XBee is.

For instance,

• Is it a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols, like ZigBee (but distinct from ZigBee)?
• Is it a (hardware) implementation of ZigBee?
• Is it a (hardware) implementation of ZigBee, with particular characteristics (for example, physical dimensions)?
• Is it a particular product, implementing ZigBee?
• Is it a brand name for some wireless devices?
• Is it a name for a series of integrated circuits (ICs)?

Sample page containing XBee: http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/point-multipoint/xbee-series1-module.jsp

--Mortense (talk) 00:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Though I'm unfamiliar with wireless devices like this, it seems to be "...a particular product, implementing ZigBee". See the entry for Digi International Inc. in Comparison of 802.15.4 radio modules#Integrated MCU + Transceiver modules. Astronaut (talk) 10:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. From Series 1 XBee manual (linked from that page): "XBee and XBee-PRO are registered trademarks of Digi, Inc.". XBee (and XBee-PRO) is a series of OEM RF modules, and they all happen to have the same physical layout (wrt. to pins). And with this lead I actually found it on Wikipedia, Digi International, section "Embedded", subsection "Wireless": "XBee - family of small radios with compatible footprints". --Mortense (talk) 12:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The metals that make up a CPU

I want to know what the gray colored non- magnetic metal in the center of the back of the CPU? I would also like to know the gold content ion the pins on the front of a CPU? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.20.114 (talk) 04:53, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I would be surprised if the casing of a CPU was not aluminium - I assume you were asking about the casing rather then the semiconductor materials of the chip itself. As for the gold pins, the Gold plating article suggests the plating used on pins is "Bright hard gold... purity of 99.7-99.9% gold". You might find Integrated circuit packaging, or the many articles linked from there, useful. Astronaut (talk) 11:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

If you are speculating about the cost of melting them down, I seem to recall previous threads on here finding it was not an economical (or very safe) way to acquire precious metals. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Though not directly discussing CPU, This article goes through the process of obtaining gold from motherboards (and as Mr.98 pointed out, it is far from being lucrative) PrinzPH (talk) 20:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Why are cell phones so expensive?

Why are cell phones so expensive compared to other electronics? I have noticed many touchscreen internet and media tablets have for a long time offered everything single thing a cell phone does except phone calls and 2G/3G data and cost $200-300 less. Now, with Google Android there are more and more internet media tablets coming out. Why don't those smaller manufactures just add the 3G antenna/card into those to make them phones? Similar phones are selling for more than double. And with Google Android, frankly the lack "brand name" reputation is largely mitigated. Roberto75780 (talk) 11:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You can buy a cellphone for under $20 in most countries, you can't buy a tablet for that price. Nanonic (talk) 16:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh I am also wondering, is Android free for OEM's to install on their devices? Doesn't this significantly reduce the cost of devoloping a phone or internet media table? Roberto75780 (talk) 11:27, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

If a touchscreen internet and media tablets costs $200-300 less then a mobile phone with Google Android then it must be free...

To avoid any unnecessary controversy I'll offer a brief explaination of what I mean. You can find unsubsidised Android phones for US$200-$300 in various countries. So the question is confusing. What are these internet and media tablets? How much do they cost? What are their specs (capacitive or resistive? processor? memory? GPS? wifi? accelerometer? Screen size? Screen res? Cameras? Proximity sensor?)? What are the specs of the phones you're comparing them to. Are you sure you can't get phones with similar specs for similar prices? It's probably not unresonable to expect to pay US$50-100 extra for the added bits needed to make a phone. Also comparing a tablet to a phone is problematic, with the tablet you generally have a larger screen but can also afford to include a larger battery and bulkier hardware.

BTW for a variety of reasons people still do care about brands particular in developed countries. However there is I'm pretty sure a large number of cheapish Android phones available in China and these often are sold in other developing countries like India sometimes via local rebrands. From what I've read the Spice Mi300 someone discussed above appears to be one of those, sold in India and Malaysia but apparently a Chinese OEM. The Spice Mi300 isn't that cheap, in Malaysia it appears to be MYR699 i.e. about US$220 and you can get more established brands for that price (well may be not so easily in Malaysia) but it does have a capacitive touch screen and a 3.2 inch 480x320 screen (along with the normal stuff like GPS, wifi etc) which I don't know if you can get from a more established brand. Anyway some of these even make it to the developed markets on occassional although usually only from the more established Chinese brands from what I've seen. Note that in some countries and I suspect this includes the US, you may need various approval certs (e.g. FCC in the US) to be able to sell the phones commercially. The US of course uses different frequencies from much of Europe and Asia putting another crimp in to attempts to import phones not designed for there.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

An Archos 28 Android tablet (sold as a media player) is $100 retail and has all the stuff of a fairly fancy phone, except the 3G chip. So I do have to wonder why they don't just add phone functionality and charge a little more for it. 67.122.209.190 (talk) 19:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

video download toolbar for opera 11

Is there any video download tool bar for Opera 11 available out there? I have used ant toolbar for IE and Firefox. It was great. Now I am looking for similar tool bar for Opera 11. Thanks--NAHID 11:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Mediawiki one click (or two click) add text editing

I would like to extend a Mediawiki install by having either a tab along the top of the article or an edit button that performs the following function: It adds a predefined text string to the article (at the end is fine) and then saves the edit. Ideally this would be a tabbed link at the top to the right of history, watch, etc. , but it can also be a edit toolbar button on the edit page. Could someone point me in the right direction how to do it , ideally in the first way? Thank you. --Rajah (talk) 15:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like fairly simple PHP programming if you've already got the code running. If you don't know PHP, it is a pretty easy language with good online docs (php.net), but doing a solid integration is going to require a code patch (unless I'm overlooking something). I don't understand why you'd want that: something like a "flag for attention" button? 67.122.209.190 (talk) 19:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Article title shows wrong spelling

After the article Samuel Garner Wilder was moved to Samuel Gardner Wilder the spelling in the URL (Samuel_Gardner_Wilder differs from the article title. The redirect page Samuel Garner Wilder seems to be ok. The talk page Talk:Samuel Gardner Wilder shows the right spelling instead. In the HTML source text of the article the spelling without d can be seen in the tags

• <title>
• <h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">
• <h2><span class="editsection">

and in other places as well. The [edit]-links are therefore not working. Could this be a parsing problem? The problem is also reported at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hawaii#misspelled article name. --ThT (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. You probably need to Purge. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The null edit did the trick. --ThT (talk) 21:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Website Accessibility Question

Hello all, I'm developing a website (I am a noob and it's early-ish stages yet) and I have a question about accessibility - How do I build it in to the website? I'm currenty using a single CSS stylesheet to set the appearance of the site, and then building the content in html, is there any sort of widget I can add to site to do things like increasing the text size, use high-contrast colours etc., or do I need to build this in to the CSS doc? (I'm thinking something like the widget on the BBC site ).

Any tips or good links are much appreciated. Happy new year Wikipedians ;) Darigan (talk) 20:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You shouldn't worry about accessibility like that. You shouldn't be changing the text size. The person using the web browser will have set the text size the he or she likes. Changing it guarantees that your website is using a font size that he or she does not like. Further, web browsers have the "widgets" for changing text size built in (ie: pressing ctrl+ in firefox). So, you would be adding yet another method of changing font size to an application which already has at least 2 methods of changing font size already (a keyboard shortcut and a menu option). As for contrast, if a user needs high-contrast colors, the user will be using a high-contrast setting on his or her computer. So, they won't really see the difference if you switch from plain colors to high contrast. However, that is no excuse for doing something silly like putting purple text on a blue background. -- kainaw™ 20:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

After saying all of that, if you want an example of a website that automatically tries to change the font size dependent on the window size, you can see http://djrickylee.com (and I must state that I am very opposed to changing font size - especially through JavaScript). -- kainaw™ 20:26, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you Kainaw - That advice certainly makes things a bit easier for me. A few days ago I was linked to a domain/host thread you contributed to a while ago - You left some more advice there that I ended up finding quite useful, so thanks again (I must say, I have seen some sites with Javascript fontsize change tools, and the fontsize change really did screw with the overall look of the sites quite badly). Anyways, thats something I can scratch off the list, thanks Darigan (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

As a frequenter of many websites, I would like to echo the above advice; please don't use widgets and excessive javascript and weird size changing options etc - it confuses me, slows down my browser and makes me sad :( 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

How you organise links is important, make then easy to locate with sensible descriptions. Use alt for images. If you have an input box, make sure the cursor starts in a sensible place. It looks like you have already figured out to avoid flash and other plugins. Use semistandardurl directory structure such as /products /support and for Wikipedia interests make a copyright page or terms of use clear! Make sure there is a sensible back path from each page, otherwise you should also make your subdirectories come up with a meaningful page instead of an error message. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Some suggestions:

1) Have a "TEXT only" option, so people using screen readers will be OK. The simpler you can make the web site, the better. Here's an example of a simple weather page: [2].

2) Include a "Site map" to allow people to navigate more easily between pages.

3) Be sure to define the links in the same order they appear on the screen, since some screen readers will list them in that order, not in the order they appear.

4) Don't have any video or audio start automatically, as they can interfere with screen readers and magnifiers. StuRat (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks IP person, Grame & StuRat (This is why I love Wikipedia - People are always happy to help)

82.44.55.25, I shall ensure that my site will not make you sad... or, at least not for the reasons you mentioned anyway ;)

Graeme - I am trying to make it make sense link-wise (If that makes sense). As regards error messages etc. (sorry if you encountered any - although you probably did), I have only uploaded the one page at the moment - An organised person might have built the majority of it off-line, but not me. I've got a programme called Xenu Link Sleuth that will check all the links for me and let me know where any go amiss (Its actually a pretty decent programme, free too). I think that you might be able to call the page that I linked to (if you were being generous) 'the softest of soft launches'. As regards the terms of use stuff, I had intended to slap creative commons licence info all over it, but with all the issues that cropped up with trying to make it live (and work out the FTP stuff) I had forgotten all about that, but will start working on it now, thanks for the reminder... got a good link for creative commons boilerplate?

StuRat - Per your point #4 - Nothing frustrates more than a site that automatically plays audio or video. I see what you mean about the text only stuff, so I'm going to look at that again. On the sitemap - I've always understood a sitemap to be a simple page with a list of links in the order that the site is layed out in... <<<googling>>>... you mean like: W3Schools' sitemap?

Anyways, back to work, its about 9/10 min to the New Year in London Town - Cheers all, and happy new year! Darigan (talk) 23:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that looks like a decent site map. It's basically just a linked index to the entire site, for those who forgot how to navigate to a certain page. StuRat (talk) 07:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to be a pain in the backside, but is there some sort of CSS shortcut/trick for automatically generating a "Text Only" version of a site - I've seen some blogs and forums mention using the "Print Version" in some way... is this suitable, and if so, how do I do it? (Appreciating your patience, if you ever want any questions about the history of Co Wexford answered in return, please feel free to ask me) Darigan (talk) 00:19, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It's probably not worth doing it on your end — someone who can only read (or prefers to read) text-only sites will surely use a browser that lets them throw out all of the images and process it in a text-only fashion. I think from this point of view you want to just do it all in good, kosher CSS/HTML, so that the browser can make smart decisions based on its customization.

In any case, what you can do is set up another stylesheet (say, "textonly.css") and you could use Javascript or a server side script to switch between which ones are displayed. By default you can tell the page to use one stylesheet for "screen"s (e.g. monitors) and a different one for "print" (printers) automatically (see the "media" attribute to the LINK tag). --Mr.98 (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem with non-text-only sites is that they often depend on graphics to convey info. For example, to specify your location, they pop up a map which you must use to select your nation/state/province/city. If no text-only selection method is provided, then the accessibility software won't be able to do much with it. A secondary concern is the time it takes to download all those pics. I doubt that the accessibility software can prevent the downloads, but instead must download them, then discard them. This is problematic for those on dial-up modems or otherwise limited in download speed. StuRat (talk) 17:29, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

On the Creative Commons stuff, not to worry, I am now a fully paid up member of the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported and have added the requisite details and links to the footer of my pages ;) Darigan (talk) 01:46, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Best search engines

When I looked into this in the past, I found out that some search engines share their content with other search engines. Is there a list anywhere of the best independent search engines? For example, if the best search engine is Google, what is the next best engine that does not simply use Google's content? The search engine or List of search engines articles does not give such a list.

Second question, is Dogpile the best metasearch engine? Thanks 92.24.176.169 (talk) 20:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

We might be able to answer your question if you tell us what your definition of "best" is. How would you test "best"? Search result relevance to the query topic you're thinking of? Accuracy of guessing the correct topic when multiple meanings have to be disambiguated? Number of relevant results? Easiest-to-read results page? Opinion polls? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 23:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

...least number of annoying adverts?....--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:26, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If I'm searching for some information that is only to be found on an obscure little-visited website, then the best search engine would be the one most likely to find it. 92.15.14.57 (talk) 14:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This site lists what it calls the "top ten alternative search engines", they appear to be niche-related engines, but, without knowing what niche you're interested in, I couldn't possibly direct you to a suitable search engine. That being said, as long as the obscure website that you're talking about has been crawled by any of the big engines (personal preference being google), then it is less about the search engine you use, and more about how you use it. You might benefit from having a look at this blog post which includes some handy google search tips. Also, when visiting google, you might benefit from using the more option, or the advanced search options. Let us know if you have any luck searching. Darigan (talk) 18:15, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I did use the word "if" at the start - did you see it? 92.29.119.95 (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Let me put it another way: which search engines use the content from other search engines? For example, the Yahoo! Search article says it is "powered by" Bing. So if you have searched on one of the two already, there would be no point searching on the other one as you would just get the same results. What other search engines are "powered by" other search engines?

And which search engines have the largest database? 92.29.119.95 (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I did see the word "if" - But that could be used as a hypothetical term (which appears to be the way you used it), or as a colloquial way of saying "thats what I want/am going to do". Anyways, to your further explanation of your query, and specifically to your Bing/Yahoo example. Just found a source that states that Bing and Yahoo do use the same algorithm, but manage to produce different search engine results.

On the issue of databse sizes, I'm afraid that I can't find any good sources on that - The only thing close is an article on the google blog that shows they had hit an indexing milestone of 1Trillion indexed pages in 2008... Darigan (talk) 13:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Not really, the article says that Bing truncates the results to the first five followed by - surprise surprise - advertising, whereas Yahoo shows more of the results. 92.29.114.99 (talk) 22:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

??? The article linked to above doesn't really mention the advertising at all (it does say some was removed). It mentions that the first 5 results are shown along with other searches Bing thinks may be useful Nil Einne (talk) 10:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

You are right, it was the "Laptop Brands" and "Laptop Buying Guides" that gave me that idea. Nevertheless the results are the same, they are just edited and displayed somewhat differently. If you are looking for obscure information with few sources then you would get the same results displayed. 92.28.251.68 (talk) 00:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

January 1

Electromagnetic/electronic interference?

Just over an hour ago, an unusual event occurred that I'm unable to explain to my own satisfaction: In one room of an apartment, a personal computer was being used, with the bulb lights in the same room being on. All devices were using a standard UK power interface, and no electrical problems have ever been noticeable in this room before. At around 1am, a phone call was received on a mobile telephone. During the few moments that the call was being received (possibly a few seconds before and after), the bulb lighting flickered and strobed rapidly, the PC reported that connections with peripheral USB devices had been disrupted (with the characteristic USB disconnection tone sounding repeatedly), and the speakers connected to the PC (via standard audio jack) gave a piercing stutter of feedback. Everything I've read, in textbooks, my own course texts, and on Wikipedia itself, concerning the electromagnetic spectrum, usual forms of electromagnetic radiation, and the methods by which mobile telephones communicate, assures me that the two events cannot possibly be related. Is there a large gap in my knowledge of basic physics that I've overlooked? Are the two events unrelated? Malusmoriendumest (talk) 02:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The interference on PC speakers from a cell phone I often experience myself, but the other events do sound like a coincident power spike. This reminds me of when I flushed a doodle bug down the toilet and simultaneously lost power to the house, leaving me in a dark, silent room. I thought to myself "drat, that must have been God I just flushed". :-) StuRat (talk) 07:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You say there was a phone call; was there actually a person calling that you or someone talked to, or do you just mean that the phone rang? rc (talk) 12:51, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

May (or indeed, perhaps more likely, may not) be related - I use wireless internet at home, with my computer (upstairs) receiving a signal from a BT Home Hub (downstairs) through an (oft dodgy)USB wireless receiver. A few months after having the wireless internet set up, we also got a pair of wireless landline phone handsets (One for upstairs, one for downstairs). Very shortly after setting up one of the handsets upstairs, my wireles internet signal began to suffer - When ever the phones rang, the signal completely died. I don't know if this was electromagnetic etc, but I do know that it was the signal required for the phone handset that killed my wireless internet signal (We now only use one handset... downstairs). The a report/study here that looks at the impact of new gen mobiles (c. 2007) on "Critical Care Equipment" - This may or may not help to explain what you experienced... All that being said, StuRat does make a good point about a coincidental spike... :S Darigan (talk) 17:55, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Why is 'How to tie a tie' the first autosuggestion for Google

When you type 'How to', is that really the most common how-to question according to statistical data, or is it some coder's joke with a backstory at Google? Peter Michner (talk) 02:10, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you do a search for it, under the entry field, you'll see that there are 36,000,000 results. The next one on the list is only 111,000. The next after that is something like 8,000,000. So, it would seem that it is used fairly often. Remember, this is counted by number of search results and not by number of times asked. So there may be more sites offering the help than the number of people needing it. Dismas|^(talk) 14:28, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Remember of course Google results tend to also depend on things like which site you use. For example for me http://www.google.com.my currently gives 'how to hack facebook' as number 1, 'how to lose weight' as number 2, 'how to make love' as number 3, 'how to download youtube video' as number 4 and 'how to' as number 5. Meanwhile http://www.google.co.nz gives 'how to get abs', the infamous 'how to tie a tie' as number 2, 'how to lose weight fast' as number 3 and 'how to' as number 4. http://www.google.com can be fairly tricky to test (due to redirects in some places) but perhaps I'm getting the same results as you in which case the infamous 'how to tie a tie' is in fact number 2 as 'how to' is number 1 (this may not be obvious if you haven't see the other results and aren't used to Google suggestions). 'how to train your dragon' is number 3, 'how to lose weight fast' is number 4 and 'how to roast pumpkin seeds' is number 5. If you add a space i.e. 'how to ' the 'how to' of course disappears from suggestions. These are from a Malaysian IP with instant on for Google.com and Google.com.my and off for NZ (well it doesn't seem to support).

I appear to get the same from a NZ IP but the results do change if I turn instant off. With google.com.my 'how to make love' now takes first spot, 'how to download youtube video' number 2, 'how to hack facebook' number 3 and 'how to hack facebook password' number 4. With google.com the results are similar except 'how to tie a tie' does indeed take first spot with 'how to' relegated to third (after 'how to train your dragon').

Nil Einne (talk) 15:33, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This is purely speculation but there used to be some guy who created a web page on tying ties. This was maybe 10 years ago, before YouTube, eHow, etc.. Back then, it was amazing that anyone would have bothered to do such a thing. I don't think that the page exists anymore, but maybe this search query might be popular because of this site. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:17, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Just anecdotally, I have searched for "how to tie a tie" at least 10 times over the last few years. I don't wear a tie regularly, and as I'm the only male in my household, I have to look it up each and every time I need to (for a wedding, funeral, whatever). I'm sure if I did it regularly it would get as easy as tying my shows, but I don't do it more than a couple times a year. Ergo the search. So I don't have a hard time believing it's a common search. It's one of those things that isn't exactly handy if you don't know it, and it's not an uncommon phrase (how else would you ask the question?). Incidentally, when "how to tie a noose" gets to be #1, you know you're in trouble...! --Mr.98 (talk) 19:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Snap. I've twice changed how I tie a tie as I've not been satisfied with the results. Thank you internet and Google, I would never have thought of the way I now do it. I believe you can get a book showing about eighty different ways of doing it. Dmcq (talk) 21:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear. I looked up what my knot is called on Wikipedia and I think it is called the Pratt knot. Sorry any of you there but I think I'll refer to it by the alternate name Milan style knot. Dmcq (talk) 21:47, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Recording background music while reading poetry

At risk of sounding like a sap, I need some help with this. My anniversary is coming up and as a gift to my beloved, I would like to record me reading some poetry with music in the background. The music part is easy. The voice is easy. Combining them nicely is not. Can anyone offer some suggestions? 99.250.117.26 (talk) 16:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If you have the two as mp3s, for instance, I think the free program Audacity would be suited to your task. Peter Michner (talk) 17:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to use Audacity to do this decently. I think even Sound Recorder has the ability to merge two files, too. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

IE freezing when I try opening a new tab

I have Windows Vista (in case that is important). Over the last month, when I have opened IE, everything is fine until I try opening a new tab. About 75% of the time, the thing freezes necessitating me having to shut IE down and start over. Any thoughts or suggestions? I have run both Spybot and AVG but nothing has been found. 99.250.117.26 (talk) 16:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You could install an alternative browser such as Mozilla Firefox, if only to eliminate your actual internet connection as the cause of the problem. Exxolon (talk) 17:02, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This is not at all normal. If I were in your place, I would run a malware scan with something like the Malwarebytes scanner, then I would uninstall any IE related accessories like Google Toolbar, then I would uninstall IE and reinstall it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:02, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If you don't have Malwarebytes installed and you can't access it with IE, Try all the major browsers. If it dosen't work, download it somewhere else, put it into a USB then install and run it.General Rommel (talk) 06:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

e-mail malware

Everybody knows (if only!) that clicking on a link in an e-mail messages might load malware onto the computer. But can this be done in other ways? Like clicking on an image or even just opening the e-mail? --Halcatalyst (talk) 17:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You've probably noticed a lot of email clients disable images by default, and that's because yes, loading binary files (including images) is a good way to get surprise data. Just opening an email should not usually be a risk, unless your email client (for webmail this includes your browser) is particularly out of date. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

A reason that images are disabled is that just opening the image, even if it has no malicious content, can give the sender the information that the email address to which it was sent is valid and active. Spammers are often looking for verification that an email address is in use. rc (talk) 18:11, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Issue with flash/custom mouse icons.....

I've noticed an issue lately with FireFox3 and i believe with some internet explorer browsers where when im playing a flash game and theres a part that uses a custom mouse icon, such as crosshairs, the mouse is not visible at all outside the game, and sometimes isnt visible IN the game either, after the custom icon part is done with in the game.

Is this a known issue? Is there something i can do to fix it? Different browser? Different Flash version? Some sneaky work around? Ill take anything that will help, its really annoying not knowing where my mouse cursor is!

If it helps, The OS this has been happening on is WinVista. Thanks!

74.117.245.62 (talk) 21:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I seem to recall this problem before (on Win98), but for me just moving the mouse outside the window and back fixed it. Try redefining the Windows mouse pointer, and see if that helps. Do you know how ? StuRat (talk) 23:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

.... seems odd for an issue that early (win98) to disappear and then come back in a later OS. I'm not sure if i know how to "redefine" the mouse pointer. Do you mean how to change the icon used as the cursor? Please clarify. :)

63.26.250.109 (talk) 03:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I mean. I'm also not sure the issue ever went away. It seems to be one of many bad things that happens when memory runs low. Perhaps memory often ran low under Windows 98, because memory was limited back then, then it got better under XP, as computer memory increased, but then got worse again as memory hogs like Vista and Windows 7 came out. StuRat (talk) 22:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

IP addresses

When I sign my "name" on Wikipedia, I post a certain IP address (174.20.220.94, I think, check my sig). When I look on my computer (windows 7), this IP address is nowhere to be found. Rather, my "IPv4 address" is given as 192.xxx.x.x. What gives? Where is (or where might) Wikipedia getting this 174 address that I've never seen before? 174.20.220.94 (talk) 21:42, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I imagine the 192.168.0.1 address of your computer is a Private network address for your machine. You;re connected to the internet via a router, and it has an external IP address, given to it by its internet service provider, of the 174.20.220.94 variety. The router's job is to transfer data from your private network to the internet, and vica versa. Your router will have two addresses, the internal address by which you know it - in the 192.168.*.* range - and the external IP address by which it is known to the wider internet. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:48, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Public IP address 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:54, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

So how do I find my Public IP address, other than by editing Wikipedia? Can I access my router, somehow (in general, I don't really want details for any specific brand or provider). 174.20.220.94 (talk) 22:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

IIRC, one of the set-up screens in your router should show you the internet-facing IP address. Any number of websites volunteer to let you know what it is from the outside. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:11, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Expandable Vector Animation

I've read the article Extended Vector Animation and I like the idea of animation that can be slowed down without becoming frame-by-frame, much in the same way that vector images can be zoomed in on without pixelation. I've searched around for software that can do this kind of thing and I found Synfig. The problem is that it seems to be focused on eliminating tweening and their tutorial on creating an animation with a ball moving back and forth, from left to right, using tweening or something, does not seem to be anything like the Extended Vector Animation format. I've also played with Adobe Flash CS5 but all that it seems to use is frame-by-frame animation. I'm looking for a product that can do the kind of stuff EVA can do. Any suggested software or am I missing something in Synfig or Adobe Flash? --Melab±1 ☎ 23:39, 1 January 2011 (UTC) Plus, I'm planning on using it like this, for example:

• Create animation that has an off-center circle rotate continuously.
• Export a movie by way of a dialog that allows me to determine how long to make the exported movie and how many frame-per-second it'll have.

Is Flash able to work like this? --Melab±1 ☎ 23:34, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

January 2

Subtitles in download

I downloaded a foreign film movie, which said that subtitles were included. I burned it to DVD I then tried to watch it. The image and sound is beautiful but no subtitles. So I took a look at the download folder and it has, separate from the avi file containing the movie, a file called "English.srt", which I opened with text editor and can see that it contains the subtitles and where they go, in a form like this "13 00:03:36,591 --> 00:03:39,343 English translation text". I've just now figured out that the .srt file extension refers to SubRip. Still, I haven't a clue how to integrate into the downloaded file the subtitles. Can anyone give me a step-by-step explanation of how to add the subtitles to the film? I am using an imac running snow leopard. I use toast titanium for burning.--141.155.143.65 (talk) 03:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

With VLC, I think you should be able to select the file under right click, Video-Subtitles track. THen choose it or select the file. I think it will work... General Rommel (talk) 06:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Making_a_basic_DVD#Converting_the_videos (there's a GUI if you want it, and I assume you can specify a subtitle file from it, but haven't personally used it) ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry. You're speaking a foreign language. I explored the link. Have no idea what that means or how I could use it to add it to the avi file for burning. I was able to figure out what you meant about "VLC" (you really should link thinks like that, for the uninitiated) but that seems to me a program that might allow me to watch the file with the subtitles, maybe, but not to add it to the avi file for burning. Even if the former, once again, you have to assume your audience does not have your sophistication, which I do not.--141.155.143.65 (talk) 18:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

In that case, you might try DVD Flick; a tutorial including adding subtitles (item 11) can be found here: http://beginwithsoftware.com/videoguides/dvd-flick-guide.html (if this seems out of date, check these: [3] [4] [5]) ¦ Reisio (talk)

These instructions seem to tell how it could be done pretty painlessly on a Mac as long as you don't care if the subtitles are "switchable" or not (most commercial DVDs have "switchable" subtitles that can be turned on or off; that method would burn the text onto the image permanently). It relies on using the Perian plugin. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Firefox 3 and the cache: can i force websites into it?

I have Firefox 3.6.13. Going to Tools > Options > Network(Tab) provides me with cache options including a window that offers the websites which are currently storing data in my cache. This window is empty. However, i am running on a slow connection and i wish to have a website in my cache as i visit it. The items i might need caching are mainly pictures and flash content (.swf)...

Is there a way to force/tell my browser to collect this data and store it in cache for later use so i don't have to wait all the time for things to load that are on almost every page of that site, etc?

63.26.250.109 (talk) 04:07, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You could try setting the amount of MB the cache can use higher. Or try using a standalone web cache which will give you much more control over which sites are cached and how 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:38, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

"Found new hardware ACPI Uniprocessor PC"

After restarting my computer this morning I had a yellow bubble pop up with the above message. Soon afterwards I got other messages saying that the hardware had been installed and I needed to restart my computer. Did so, no problems. I use WinXP Sp3.

Perhaps it was related to last evening when I restarted my computer, which does not power-down the USB pendrives I have pernamently attached to my computer, and after that restart (yesterday evening) I saw what I think is a USB symbol on the bottom right of the screen next to the clock.

Can anyone explain what the above was all about? Has for example windows been installing a better USB driver or will it just be the same one as previously? Thanks 92.24.185.225 (talk) 11:26, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

meta tag problems with <meta name="keywords"...

Hi guys, I've posted on here a few times recently (lots of very helpful responses ;) ).

I've been adding meta tags for 'description' & 'keywords' to the pages on a site im working on. The description tag is working fine, but when I validate the page (Using the validation tool in Macromedia Dreamweaer) the keywords tag creates the following error message:

"the tag: "meta" doesn't have an attribute: "keywords" in current active versions.[XHTML 1.0 transitional]"

The keyword section code (with some of the keyword content cut out save some space):

<meta name="keywords" content="thames gateway news,... <<<etc>>> ...tower hamlets news" />

I've looked at the keyword code on other sites, and the code I'm using appears to be correct. When I begin typing "<meta name="....." one of the Dreamweaver auto-suggest options is "keywords". link to one of the live pages with the problem

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Cheers Darigan (talk) 13:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

No form of the string 'keywords' occurs in the page you linked. Also they're almost completely useless, I wouldn't even bother adding them. Read: Meta element#The_keywords_attribute ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Reisio - I deleted the Keywords & Descriptions a short while ago - They were screwing up the Dreamweaver interface (I was about to update this post before I got distracted by another query on this page). I've just had read of the page you linked to, I had no idea that the keyword data was so insignificant as regards SEO. If I may - Can I ask your opinion on Description metadata - Im aware that this shows up on Google SERPs, but does it have any impact on SEO? I always thought that both Keywords & Descriptions had good SEO effects if the onpage content reflected the words and terms in the Keywords & Descriptions. Thanks for your reply Darigan (talk) 16:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

See Meta_tag#The_keywords_attribute.

My suspicion was that the META tag wasn't valid with your DOCTYPE, but I haven't been able to find anything that suggests such is the case. Have you tried validating it with something other than Dreamweaver? That will at least tell if you if it is just Dreamweaver or not, or a symptom of some other typo. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Mr.98 - Have you got a link for a tool that I might be able to validate it with (I trust Macromedia Dreamweaver to be fairly reliable, but am not convinced by these particular validator results)? (Cheers for the reply) Darigan (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Try this one. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Google and Youtube serious security flaw?

I'm trying to figure out if this is in fact a seucurity flaw. Google and Youtube were separate and they now have a unified login where your Youtube account is linked to a Google account. Older Youtube users that have not been linked to a Google account (or perhaps have not been logged into since that change) can still log in as before with the Youtube username and password. Google account holders can also log in by typing there Google username (the part before @gmail.com only) and their password. This creates a situation where the exact same "username" can be entered, and the account logged into will depend on the password. This is no problem as long as the users have different passwords. The problem is, if the passwords are the same by chance, the first person to attempt to log in will "discover" the password of the other user on the other service. While this may seem as unlikely as trying to guess someone's password in the first place, I think this might be much more vulnerable to happening, and it can happen without any "attempt" to hack into the other account.

If your kind of lost on all of this, I will give a quick scenario. John Smith has signed up for the username jsmith on Youtube a long time ago and his password wanting his password to be easy, chose asdfasdf as the password. After Google decided to merge the logins of Youtube and Google, a Google user, Jason Smith, who had by chance originaly signed up for Google with the username jsmith and password of asdfasdf decides to start using Youtube, learns that he can use his existing Google account, and enters the username jsmith and password asdfasdf.

Bang. Problem. He just discovered the other user's name and password and can take over both accounts and change the passwords.

I have myself, already carried this out as an experiment. The result is you are shown a page telling you to link YOUR two accounts. It is assumed that it's the same person. Even though both accounts when created, where on completely seperate websites, completely seperate services, and login processes. This is not that unlikely to happen! Especially vulnerable are people who have simple usernames, and simple passwords. Simple password is kind of your fault but simple username is not. Either way, you should not be exposed to this vulnerability. Does anybody else, who has read all of this, not see this as a security flaw? -- Roberto75780 (talk) 14:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The same thing happened on Wikipedia with Help:Unified login. An account on another Wiki with the same name and password was assumed by the system to belong to the same user when merging accounts. I don't know if there were any cases of it actually happening, but I remember there being a discussion on it and one of the technical people at WP:Village Pump saying it was "so unlikely to happen it wasn't worth worrying about" or something to that effect, probably trying to hide the flaw per WP:BEANS. But, unlike Wikipedia don't Google and Youtube require email addresses to make an account? Surely two different people wouldn't have the same email address? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You don't have to have the same e-mail address in the above scheme. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The odds of the same username and the same password seem quite astounding, even given the fact that a lot of people use bad passwords (e.g. 1234, password, qwerty, asdf, etc.). Even if we assume both jsmiths use bad passwords, they both have to use exactly the same bad password. There are a lot of bad passwords out there — not enough to avoid a dictionary attack, but enough to probably avoid accidents. If this is something that doesn't happen 99.99999% of the time, is it worth worrying about the few dozen people it affects? --Mr.98 (talk) 18:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately, this "flaw" is tantamount to a brute force password-guessing attack. The probability of having identical username and password are the same probability as guessing the user-name and password: and this is an even lower probability than guessing the password alone (i.e., a conventional "brute force" attack). If the users have weak passwords, then that is the vulnerability; and that account would have been even more susceptible to a random brute-force password-guessing attack than a simultaneous (account-name + password) guess. So far, there are no effective strategies for precluding brute-force attacks; see our section on countering them. Furthermore, the flaw in relying on Google for securing documents is really one of social-engineering: Google may be an untrusted party; at best, they provide technical measures that secure the data you communicate to them during the transaction (to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack). But unless you actually trust Google, relying on security-technology is moot; the data is under the control of a third-party organization (Google); they may share it with anyone they choose (including the random user who happened to have the same account-login-name as you). Nimur (talk) 20:03, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I've been thinking about this and I think there may be the chance of a few clashes like that. I saw some statistics about weak passwords somewhere so I'll need to look at that first to really confirm. Dmcq (talk) 22:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yep it is practically bound to happen. If 'password1' is used by 0.22% of users then about 1 in 500 will choose that. That means it only requires about 250,000 user accounts with similar names joined up and you've a good chance of a clash using that password. Never mind all the people who use their first name as a password for instance. Dmcq (talk)

Computer user interface and grammar of commands

In English, French, Spanish and presumably most other languages, you see commands worded as instructions (but sometimes the words a/the are inferred). Examples: "Change font size", "Create new document", "Cancel", "Accept" "Execute this, Execute that..."

Why do Arabic language systems display commands in the awkward grammar tense such as: "Changing of the font size", "Creation of a new document", "Cancelation", "Acceptance", "Execution of this and that..."

If you don't speak Arabic, I'll tell you this much, that is not the more intuitive or usual tense used to give instructions. They should be the same tense as used in those other languages. So why are user interfaces for Arabic software written like that? I have seen this also in mobile phones, cameras, and other computer-like electronics. --Roberto75780 (talk) 14:42, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Probably because they were "translated" with machine translation software and not professionally. Either that or you don't know Arabic as well as you think (no offense, that's just the greatest alternative option I can think of). ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

None taken but its my first language and the language I was originally educated in (don't let the name throw you off). --Roberto75780 (talk) 21:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

<e/c>This might sound like its a million miles away from your question, but please bear with it for a few moments. I'm Irish (ROI) - Ireland was once a British colony (Not getting into the rights/wrongs on the computing helpdesk). Under a colonial power, there was a massive effort to Anglicise placenames etc. (I come from Wexford - I believe that term is derivative of a norse term for "something<?>_fiord". The Gaelic name for the same place is Loch Garman (Which I understand to mean Garman's Lake) - Point being the Anglicised term was very far from the term that had previously been accepted.

How does this relate to your query? - I believe (although I could be very wrong) that the interfaces you are talking about were designed with an Anglophile/western usage in mind, and it is probably a case of poor translation. By this I mean, poor translation of the interface terms rather than proper localisation of the interface. Does that sound like a reasonable possibility? This article (lots of spammy adverts on it) points to the difficulty of arabic localisation. Don't know if its accurate, but might be worth a read.

<<<Disclaimer - I'm not sure about that answer, but it does appear like a logical possibility to me. Hopefully a more knowledgable Wikipedia will come along and offer an answer - At the very worst, this reply is at least a 'bump'>>> Darigan (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You might like to read Internationalization and localization to learn how commercial software is typically "ported" to another language and locale. Usually, the process is something like this: first, a programmer writes software to perform some function, like "Save File". A user interface programmer then creates a dialog-box, and creates a button in it that says "Save File." Next, an internationalization and localization engineer (who is sort of like a programmer) goes through the user-interface code (note that somebody else designed it, and somebody else wrote it). The internationalization engineer will see the text message "Save File" and replace it with a tag, like SAVE_FILE_BUTTON_TEXT; then they will create an indexed text-file with a series of tags and their text-string as it will appear in the interface. So you'll have a text-file with a list of software-feature tags, and a list of "human-readable strings" that represent them: take a look at this example from IBM. Now, this lookup-table file gets sent to linguists in a bunch of different locales; their job is to guess what the user should be reading when the programmer presents them with a particular software feature. In some cases, this can be very abstract - especially if the software feature is a bit complex. (Try to imagine explaining the purpose of an otherwise opaque bit of user-interface software code without using the String that actually represents it)! (I'm scanning through the menus in Firefox - think about translating "find" in a web-browser, without knowing the context. That could mean "search the internet", "scan the bookmarks", "locate this text snippet within this page", and so forth. The point is, a translator (who often is not a programmer) must scan through thousands of these tags; for each one, they have to use a tiny bit of English text fragment to guess what the software is doing, and then create a localized language representation of the feature. The process is really difficult. (Try reading the official instructions for translating and localizing Firefox!) And take a look at here's a bit of Firefox's Browser Preferences translation table into Norwegian. Pretty tough to guess what the msgstr should be, even if you are a fluent speaker of both languages! (Compare an English version)... Finally, as a closing note, consider a proprietary, non-free software project, where the translator does not have permission to ask the software developers about the meaning of particular software features (for proprietary intellectual property protection)! Nimur (talk) 20:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I think they probably are just trying to go with a common thing of not giving direct commands as that can be demeaning or rude. So they say what you can do by pressing the button rather than putting you in an uncomfortable position. Dmcq (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

urls

Resolved

I'm trying to use the windows version of grep to extract urls from several thousand files. I don't understand "regular expression" but basically I want it to list all urls that are "http://example.com/123/*" with * being wildcard. How do I do this? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Regular expressions are much more complex than simple wildcards. They have a special syntax; and it so happens that in your example (because the wildcard is at the end of the word), the correct way to search would be to grep on http://example.com/123/ ... without an asterisk. If that's all you want to do, you don't need to learn more sophisticated regexp syntax; but you should know that (1) reg-exp syntax is very powerful; and (2) reg-exp syntax is not usually "easy" or intuitive for novice users (especially if you are used to the DOS/Windows style of wildcard searching with * and ?). Your command should look like this:

grep http://example.com/123/ [FILE(S)...]

Here is the official GNU grep manual, if you want to learn how to search for more complex patterns. Regular expressions are very powerful pattern-matching tools, and can be extremely configurable for complex text patterns. Nimur (talk) 20:47, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

hj

i download hj-split but i cant figure out how to use it. can anyone help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tommy35750 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

January 3

Media center help

I'd like to set up some kind of all-in-one TV box for my parents with a minimum of expense and effort. The current situation:

• They live in California.
• They have a decent 4:3 CRT TV with coax and S-Video inputs; they don't want a new TV.
• They watch digital broadcast TV (using an external decoder box) and record it on a VHS VCR. They also rent DVDs and are thinking about signing up for Netflix for the online streaming feature. They don't have or want cable.
• They have some disused tower PCs, but they're a bit outdated (circa 2000), and somewhat noisy, and have the sort of hardware you'd find in an office PC.
• They have several current PCs running XP or Vista, but they are only powered on when in use. One of them is a laptop with an S-Video output, but they don't want to use it as their media center PC.

Desired media center features:

• Remote-controlled, of course.
• Play videos from YouTube, Netflix, etc. in full screen mode.
• Record and play back broadcast TV on an internal or USB drive (including recording one thing while watching another).
• Optional: play AVI files and the like (ideally with mplayer/VLC's codec support).
• Optional: play DVDs (their existing player works fine).
• No monthly fee (which rules out TiVo, for example).
• No slow animated menus or "recommended shows" or anything else that will get in the way of playing the frigging movie already. Their lives don't revolve around the boob tube.

I have no experience with setting up something like this and I'm overwhelmed by the number of products listed at Template:Home theater PC (application software). I don't want to sink a lot of time and effort into a system only to find that it's a hassle to use or the video skips on playback. I'd prefer something that's open source, or at least has an open API, not only on principle but also because it seems a lot more likely to have the right feature set.

Ideal cash outlay would be less than $100. That seems ridiculously low until you consider that there's an XBox for $20 on Craigslist right now and I could probably install XBMC4Xbox on it. Not that that's necessarily my best option. I hope that someone here with more experience can advise me. Sorry about the long question... -- BenRG (talk) 10:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

One inconsistency I see right away is wanting Netflix and not wanting monthly fees. I suppose you can sign up for the free month, but after that they will catch you, if you cancel and sign up again with the same credit card or at the same address. Some thoughts:

1) Bite the bullet and get a Netflix subscription, for under $10 a month.

2) A set-top box, such as the LG BD300, would give you access to both Netflix streaming on the TV (with a subscription) and to YouTube (for free), with a remote. It can be had for around $150: [6]. However, this model also includes the ability to play both DVDs and Blu-Rays and audio CDs and show a picture slide-show, with music, from a USB stick drive, and has many outputs, such as digital audio and HDMI, which you don't need. If you don't want all that, you can probably find a cheaper model. That model also has the annoyance that you have to reauthorize Netflix every 3 months by going online and punching in a code it spits out. That wouldn't be so bad, except it gives no warning that a renewal is needed, and stops you right in the middle of a movie with the message that "You are not authorized to use this device".

3) If the TV only has 2 inputs, one being S-VIDEO and the other being a coax (antenna) input, you are likely to need a switch box, to allow one from multiple input devices to be directed to the TV's S-VIDEO input. Unfortunately, these tend to lack remote controls, meaning they would have to walk over and push the button for the desired input (computer, digital-to-analog over-the-air box, Netflix box, DVD player, etc.).

4) Recording and playing back shows is probably the hardest, in your price range. You'd need a large hard drive (if you don't already have one that's available), or several USB stick drives, as a typical movie runs around 4-8 GB in standard def. You'd also need a TV capture card (be careful, as the cheaper ones record at a lower resolution only). Those two items alone probably would blow the $100 budget.

Some follow-up Q's:

A) What are the outputs from the modern PCs (XP or Vista) they are willing to use for media ?

B) I think Service Pack 3 is generally required for XP to play video properly. Do they have that ?

C) Why don't they want to use the laptop for video ?

D) Would they consider watching videos directly on the PC ?

E) What are the outputs from the DVD player ?

F) Does the TV really only have 2 inputs, one being S-VIDEO and the other being a coax (antenna) input ? What is hooked up to those inputs now ? StuRat (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately for your money and existing hardware, you won't be able to find what you want. I recently set up a (relatively) cheap media center PC, and it ran close to $500, but I built it from scratch. A decent TV Tuner card will run around $100 and you need a graphics card capable of outputting to your TV. Depending on your needs, this may be more or less expensive. For people who are less technically savvy, Windows 7 with Windows Media Center seems to be fairly intuitive once set up and works great with a remote (unfortunately remotes that work with windows media center can get a bit pricey). You will need a large hard drive for recording TV. I'd recommend a MINIMUM of 500GB on a separate drive from the system drive for storing recordings. Even converting existing hardware can get a little pricey. I'm not going to recommend any open source solutions because I haven't found any that my grandma can pick up and use. Many are very powerful, but they tend to expose too many options at every level for your "average" user. If they just want to watch netflix streaming, a Roku box is available for $60. The media center PC is simply not something you can do for $100 unless you want to make major compromises. If you want to hook up an existing PC to a computer, you can throw XMBC or something onto it and find a remote that will work. There are also USB TV Tuners you can buy. It won't be pretty or very well integrated and it will likely exceed your budget on the TV Tuner alone, but it will work. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 17:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

When sending a .JAR (Java ARchve) file with gmail. Can it somehow be rendered useless?

I want to send a .JAR (Java ARchve) file as an attachment to an email (I, the sender, use gmail.com).
Will it allways get through, as a still runnable application, to and from any operating system? and no matter what email service/emailprogram the receiver uses?
Or are there some combinations of platforms, or circumstances, that will render the file useless? --46.15.75.225 (talk) 11:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Does the receiver's computer have a compatible Java Runtime Environment installed? If you want to verify the file integrity, you should compute an MD5 hash or other checksum; see our article on md5sum. If the files match on both ends, then it has been transmitted exactly, bit for bit. If it still does not run, have the user check if Java is installed. Depending on the contents of your JAR, you might require a recent version of the JVM - especially if you used Java 6 or newer. Nimur (talk) 14:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Is there a standardized scanner interface that one may use in Java? (Scan to PDF application)

I know next to nothing about java programing (I have only written a "hello world!" program once about ten years ago :-)
Now I wonder:
Is it possible to write a Java application, with a graphical user interface, that will:

• let you directly scan some pages (i.e. not depend on any other scanning software)
• rotate, zoom, crop and make a single PDF file of them

and to make this application work

• on any hardware and operating system platform
• without knowing in advance what kind of scanner(s) will be installed and available.

?
If the above is possible, then how much is it likely that I would have to pay for someone to write this and to release it as open source free software? (Possibly with the condition that any subsequent use of this code also must be open source and free). --46.15.75.225 (talk) 12:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The Java Image Acquisition package, part of the official Java Advanced Imaging, exists. It will rely on the operating system to provide drivers for the scanner, so that might require some custom configuration or installation of scanner software external to the Java environment; but once that's set up, all scanners, cameras, and other image sources can be accessed in a platform-independent way. The Java code you write never needs to know the exact type of scanner. The other features, such as cropping, zooming, and so forth, can also be done with the JAI library. Saving to PDF, if I recall, requires a third-party unofficial Java library (though there may be some support from the official Java system libraries). I also have found JLibEPS useful - it's the open-source (GPL) fork of a now commercial Java post-script library (another useful format for saving images - postscripts are often an intermediate step in generating PDFs from generic images or documents). I guess I should clarify, since you are apparently not a programmer - these are libraries that would make it easy for a programmer to write new software - but they are not finished applications that an end-user could use today, with a user interface to support image scanning and manipulation. That would require some work, but any qualified Java programmer could design an application to your specifications, without much difficulty, by using these and other libraries. Nimur (talk) 14:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Hard drive

I looked under the system properties of my hard drive today, and it says the manufacturer was "(Standard disk drives)". Obviously this isn't a corporation, so what is it? And any clue on who made my hard drive? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 18:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)