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November 5

Firefox restoring old session

I use Mozilla Firefox as a browser, and I have Googled for help with this question to no avail. I have an issue with Firefox, where I wish it behaved differently, and I can't find a page on the Internet to satisfy me on this point. I either want to ask how to make it do what I want it to do, or I want to suggest that it be modified so that I can make it behave.

When the computer crashes, for whatever reason, and there was a browser open, I can't open a new browser window without it trying to reload all the tabs I had open at the time of the crash. That's terrible, because seven times out of ten, the crash was caused by a tab I had just opened, probably in a grave error of judgment. Mozilla currently tries to restore my browser as it was at crash-time, and only when this fails does it offer to start a fresh session. This attempted reload has by now cost me n minutes, where n is some number between 3 and 525,600.

I want to tell Mozilla to open a fresh browser without even attempting to reload whatever perverted thing I had just been doing to crash the previous browser. Is this possible? If not, what does it take to make it possible? I thank you in advance for any responses. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:18, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but whenever this happens to me I just stop loading the tab then it ASAP before it even starts loading. I do this by using "ctrl + pageup/pagedown" to move from one tab to another then mash the "esc" key to stop it from loading.

Unlike internet explorer, I know firefox is more responsive especially when it comes to using shortcut keys. But if this doesn't work for you and it takes a long time to load (525,600 minutes!), I'd seriously consider just reinstalling it since I only have a couple of add-ons anyways. --Thebackofmymind (talk) 07:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It's possible, but you have to go into about:config IIRC to fix it; http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:config_Entries There might be more than one, but I think browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes is one (mine is set to 0). Frequently what Thebackofmymind has suggested works, however, and you can also try starting the browser in safe mode with the -safe-mode switch. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:02, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Should be much easier than any of that. Assuming you're using a recent version of FF go to Tools>Options in the menus, choose the General tab, and right at the top is the option "When Firefox starts:" with a drop down list with three options, either show your home page, a blank page, or reload tabs from last time. I know this because personally I want it to reload all my tabs (I keep a lot open) and spent a while finding out how to make it do that, as mine was defaulting to reloading the homepage; horses for courses. :) --jjron (talk) 22:42, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Odd, mine does something not listed in those 3 choices: It pops up a window that asks me if I want to start fresh or continue with the old tabs. This is the best option, IMHO, although I do wish I could pick specific tabs to reload and others to close. StuRat (talk) 23:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I assume you have older versions of firefox too. Because in my version (Firefox 6.0.2) when firefox crashes there is a new window labelled "Well this is embarrassing..." showing a checklist of which tabs I want to re-open. I thought that OP was one of those people who didn't like new firefox so I told them what I did before. Also, in this firefox I can manually trigger Jjron's idea by hitting the new "firefox button" then clicking "History" then "restore previous session". Just thought I'd let you all know :) --Thebackofmymind (talk) 23:32, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, this is true (both comments above). I think in the newer versions if you have 'reload my tabs' selected in the General tab it comes up with the "Well this is embarrassing" thing with the options to reload or start fresh - this is in case one of the tabs caused the crash. From memory, if you have 'reload my homepage' selected (and presumably 'load a blank page' but I've never used that option) you don't get the choice, it just reloads the homepage/s, but as you say you can reload via the history (I also used that route a few times before I found the drop down list to set the default). I have v7.0.1 and I think it still gives the option at restart (but can't remember for sure, they seem to be updating it a hell of a lot recently). I also wondered whether the OP may have had an older FF; I seem to remember at some stage it automatically reloaded your tabs, which is why I went hunting for that when I got a newer version and suddenly it was just reloading my homepages. So the options - go the back-door route, or update to a newer version and use the built in options; it is free after all. --jjron (talk) 08:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

transparent window?

Is there a program out there that lets me type on a window that is semi-transparent, letting me see the contents of another window below? thanks --Thebackofmymind (talk) 07:48, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, a few of them. Googling "transparent notepad" or "notepad transparency" turns up a bunch of similar programs. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It is a function of the window manager. If I wanted, I can set my window manager to make all my windows transparent. I wouldn't be able to use it very well, but I could do it. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have added a lot more eye candy to their window manager. I'm sure transparency is in there somewhere. -- kainaw™ 13:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerMenu is Windows freeware that can make (almost) any application window transparent, among other things. -- BenRG (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

BenRG, your suggestion looks the most attractive, but it doesn't seem to work for Windows 7.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about Kainaw, and Mr. 98 it was kind of suspicious to click whatever download you found on google but I went and tried them out. The 2nd one looked better, but my antivirus (F-secure) detected malware. The 1st one seems to be working fine though. Thanks people. --Thebackofmymind (talk) 21:28, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerMenu works for me on Windows 7 32-bit, but it looks like it doesn't support 64-bit processes on 64-bit Windows. You could try sifting through the alternatives listed here—it's not clear which ones have 64-bit support. Or you could look for a 32-bit version of whatever application you want to make transparent, I suppose.

I'm almost sure the malware report is a false positive. False positives are very common, and are a serious problem for small software developers ([1]). According to VirusTotal.com, F-secure sees "Gen:Heur.MSIL.Krypt.2", which is obviously a heuristic. Interestingly, another scan of the exact same file less than three weeks ago triggered no warnings ([2]). I bet this "virus" will disappear in a few more weeks. -- BenRG (talk) 04:34, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

May I ask how you got PowerMenu to work? The program's icon appears on the bottom left, but right clicking on that or right clicking on any other windows of any of the programs doesn't bring up the additional options they promised. The "properties" section of "my computer" says that it's 32-bit, but maybe it's because it's Windows 7 starter?

And I don't know what a heuristic is, but I guess that is good? --Thebackofmymind (talk) 01:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I used an application called actual transparent windows, it's $20 but has a free 7 day trial, so if you need it for a once off thing that would work. I used it to trace some maps I had into level design program for a game. It was quite good, if I was going to use it more often I'd consider spending the $20. It works on win7 64bit, that's what I have, and you can set the level of transparency very easily. Vespine (talk) 05:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The PowerMenu options appear in the system menu of each window, which is the menu you get by clicking on the icon at the far left of the title bar. PowerMenu is a 32-bit application; I don't think a 64-bit version exists. It will run on 64-bit Windows, but the method it uses to alter the system menu (injecting code into the application) won't work with 64-bit applications because it's 32-bit code. It does seem to work with 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows. It won't work with the bundled version of Notepad, but it will probably work with the 32-bit version of Notepad if you can get your hands on it (from a 32-bit version of Windows) and it will probably work with any third-party Notepad replacement as long as you use the 32-bit version.

A "heuristic" means that instead of detecting a specific known malware program, the antivirus software tries to detect things that are supposed to be "suspicious" in some way. Often "suspicious" means "characteristic of some known malware and also a lot of legitimate software". For example, some antivirus programs have marked anything that uses UPX as "infected" by UPX. As long as no large software vendor (with lawyers) uses UPX, they have minimal incentive to fix this because the false positives make people feel like they're being protected. In this case, judging by the name "Heur.MSIL.Krypt", F-Secure thinks this program is encrypted MSIL (.NET). It is a .NET application, but I looked at it with ILSpy and it's not encrypted. Even if it was (which it isn't), all it would mean is that the author didn't want people looking at the code with ILSpy, which is no more suspicious than not publishing the source code. -- BenRG (talk) 06:39, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerPoint Compatibility

I'm using PowerPoint 2010 on a Windows 7 machine. I will be giving the presentation on an XP machine that uses PowerPoint 2003. I'm having problems with compatibility. When I tried to give my presentation on the old machine with the old version of PowerPoint, none of the animations would work, even though I had saved the presentation as a PowerPoint 1997–2003 .ppt file. In all fairness, Windows does tell me that my animations may not work. Does anyone know a work around? — Fly by Night (talk) 11:29, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

From the grumbling I hear from the powerpoint jockeys, animations are not cross-platform. Everything else has a workaround. The rule is to fake animations whenever possible by making multiple slides and moving objects a little on each slide. Then, use auto-advance or simply click forward a bunch of times. -- kainaw™ 13:20, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Is installing Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer on the machine an option? Another possibility is to convert the presentation into another format, e.g. Flash, in a way that preserves the animation. I found this from a quick web search. (I have no experience with that software whatsoever so I'm not recommending it; I'm just point it out as an example.) --173.49.15.58 (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the ideas. I'll take a look at the links now. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

If you can't install the PPT viewer on the other machine, you may be able to load the viewer and show on a CD or USB drive and run them both off there (may depend on your access privileges though on the other machine). In the File menu go to "Save and send" and choose "Package presentation for CD"; this even automatically includes the PPT viewer on the CD. And if that fails, perhaps try the "Create a video" option (would depend on the nature of your slideshow how successful this would be though). --jjron (talk) 11:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea. I would only have very limited authorisation on the system. If it were to be saved on a CD, then would I need to keep pausing and unpausing all the time? — Fly by Night (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

No, if you do the first option it just runs as a normal PPT, just uses the viewer on the CD rather than relying on what's on the system. One thing to be wary of is that I have found PPT can struggle for speed if it's running off anything other than the harddrive if it contains any really big graphics or anything. If you did the second option, saving it as a video, then as I understand it, it uses all your set timings, animations, etc, to create the video (I've never actually done this cos I've never needed to). If your timings were out, or if you don't really use timings in any meaningful way, then yes, you'd need to keep pausing to get the breaks you wanted. --jjron (talk) 14:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get a copy of PowerPoint 2003 for, and install it on, my Windows 7 machine? — Fly by Night (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure; I can't imagine there'd be any incompatibilities with Win 7 & 2003. A quick search on eBay turns up many copies of it, though you'd probably have to buy the full Office suite. They start from only about $30, so not dear. But most likely someone you know would have an old outdated copy laying around that's no longer in use and you could install. Having said which, some of those programs don't like having different version installed on the same machine, and perhaps you don't want to uninstall 2010, just want the option of using 2003. I can't say for sure about Office, but I have had different versions of various Adobe programs installed at the same time with no issues, same with various other less demanding software. And if you went down that path, you'd still have to go through and re-setup the PPT pres. --jjron (talk) 10:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Question about Android

What download mode does? what is the diffrence between firmware to the opreation system to rom? Did Samsung release its own version to the 2.3.6 firmware(or there is one global)? Does Samsung Kies update the kernel or both? Will it extint the mods of Orange? What is recovery mode?Exx8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:29, 5 November 2011 (UTC).

This is a duplicate post. I answered above in great detail. Nimur (talk) 17:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Free software for motion-compensated de-interlacing

Are there free software tools that can perform motion-compensated de-interlacing of video? (From what I understand, de-interlacing algorithms incorporating motion compensation are computationally expensive and are usually implemented in silicon.) --173.49.15.58 (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You can play with deshake in ffmpeg. The tool is free software, the algorithms are all free source code. The hard part is doing it well. You can iterate successive passes of deshake and deinterlace, making incremental improvements each time (I'm envisioning an iterative small-change in each pass, then using the result to re-estimate the shake, then re-deinterlacing, all using avsynth or some other tool to avoid recompressing intermediate results); or you could modify the algorithms to feed forward the motion vector estimates. "Computationally intense" is half the problem; "theoretically difficult" is more apt .... the problem is underconstrained, which means it cannot be done perfectly for all cases. And let's not even try to resolve rolling shutter. If you have interlacing and rolling shutter: your video is as good as it will ever be. Live with it, or blur it until you can't tell anymore. Fortunately, few sensors exhibit both effects. Nimur (talk) 17:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure deshake + deinterlace is the same as motion-compensated de-interlacing. It seems that deshake compensates for small camera motion within the duration a field is captured. Motion-compensated de-interlacing involves spatial-temporal interpolation across fields. --173.49.15.58 (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

High quality (often motion-compensated) deinterlacing is a common topic in the doom9 forums. [3]. I believe QTGMC is often considered subjectively one of the best at the current time but MCBob + NNEDI may also hold that role, but can also very slow. I'm not sure if either are completely free software however. (These often rely on several plugins so it's likely complicated to check.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've also found TomsMoComp. An old comment I saw at http://forum.digital-digest.com was very positive about the quality of the results. --173.49.15.58 (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

'Old' may be important here, I believe TomsMoComp was considered amongst the best once but is now generally considered to have been superceeded in quality by QTGMC and others (see [4] [5] [6] for example). Of course as Nimur has said and some of the forum postings discuss, this does depend on the source and in any case is subjective. Also I'm not sure whether the quality difference is enough that you will generally notice the difference when watching the content. And if your interest is from a technical and free software POV, TomsMoComp may (I don't know if these are true, they are simply hypotheticals) have other advantages like being free software or being simpler to understand. I believe one of the advantages of QTGMC is it's generally considered easier to use and having a decent quality to speed tradeof, which may or may not be what you want if you're trying to learn how to do subjectively excellent deinterlacing. Nil Einne (talk) 10:14, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

November 6

Variable signal quality in WLAN network

What happens when you have a variable wi-fi signal quality. Neither the hot-spot, nor the computer is moving. It goes from 80% down to 0% sometimes. 88.9.210.218 (talk) 01:05, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Just a guess: interference from other transmitters (Wi-Fi and other kinds)? --173.49.15.58 (talk) 12:43, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Wifi can also be affected by people moving around in the house (as they can diffract the signal in various ways, potentially leading to destructive interference). Interference from things like microwave ovens, cordless phones or even a malfunctioning ballast on a fluorescent light can also be a problem. As far as other wifi transmitters goes, you might want to try switching your wireless access point to a different channel, in case the neighbours' wifi is set to the same or an adjacent channel and is interfering. You can apparently use tools such as this web based one to check which channels are used by wifi transmitters within range of your computer (I can't test this out personally as Linux doesn't appear to be supported, and unless you run Linux yourself I doubt instructions on how to run iwlist would be much help to you). This page from Cisco deals in quite some detail with the subject of wireless interference, and although it is from the perspective of a company IT department a lot of the information is more generally relevant. If you continue to have problems that can't be solved by switching channels, or be pinned down to e.g. your cordless phone system or wireless burglar alarm, you might want to go for the slightly ugly solution of just increasing your signal strength near your computer by putting a wireless repeater in between your access point and the computer. Note that this will generally halve your throughput on the wireless network, but for most people this won't be a problem as the choke-point in most home networks is the speed of the internet connection, not the LAN speed.Equisetum (talk | contributions) 18:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Alphabetically sorting icons in Excel

I have some excel tables that each have a column with a rating, expressed with groups of the symbols ★ and ½. The problem is that when I sort by that column, Excel uses the order: ★, ★★, ★★★, ★★★★, ★★★★★, ★★★★½, ★★★½, ★★½, ★½, ½. This is not the order I would like, it should be ★, ★½, ★★. etc.. Is there a way to make Excel sort them in the right order? Are there similar symbols that would sort in the right order (I already know that it does the same thing if I replace ½ with ✫)? If I replaced the spmbols with numbers from 1-10, is there a way to make them apear as icons? I know that "Conditional Formating -> Icon sets" has icons, but none of the available sets have more than five icons. Thank you. --96.52.144.175 (talk) 01:37, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

In Excel 2010 or, I believe, 2007, select the area on the spreadsheet you want to sort, then click the "Data" tab, then click the "Sort" button, then choose the "Sort by" and "Sort on" items normally, and then under "Order", in the popup menu, choose "Custom List...". Then choose "NEW LIST", and in the "List Entries" field, type ★, ★½, ★★, all the way up to five stars. You can see this is also how Excel figures out that March gets sorted before April. Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

To answer your other question, the following formula (not very elegant, but that's Excel for you) will convert a number 1-10 in cell A1 into ½, ★, ★½, ★★, ..., ★★★★★:

   =IF(A1>9,"★","")&IF(A1>7,"★","")&IF(A1>5,"★","")&IF(A1>3,"★","")&IF(A1>1,"★","")&IF(MOD(A1,2)=1,"½","")

Gandalf61 (talk) 11:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

... or, more concisely:

          =LEFT("★★★★★",A1/2)&IF(MOD(A1,2)=1,"½","")

Gandalf61 (talk)

To do the opposite, I think you could use:

=LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1, "½",""))+((LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1, "★","")*.5))

To convert the star/half system to numeric values. I haven't tried it, though. It assumes there is no other data in the cell but stars and halves. (Then you could sort by this column, obviously.) --Mr.98 (talk) 13:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

gmail - web browser only?

Can gmail be accessed only through a browser, or is there software I can download to access it? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to check it with any email program that you might have that allows POP3. Dismas|^(talk) 02:48, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Or IMAP. Shadowjams (talk) 05:43, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Or the e-mail programs on iPads and other mobile phones and tablets that connect with GMail more directly. Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:24, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

iPod full - can't delete

My daughter's ipod (3rd gen) is full. She says that she can't delete things she doesn't need because they used to show an "x" in the corner to delete them, but now they don't. How can she get the "x" back, or how can she delete things she doesn't want? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:47, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

She should be able to connect it to whatever computer she uses to sync it to and change the playlists, etc. via iTunes. Dismas|^(talk) 02:50, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Hold your finger on the icon for several seconds. The "X" will appear. Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:25, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm reading emails from a Hotmail user.

He's sending messages to a YahooGroup. His emails do not appear to carry his IP. Only Yahoo and Hotmail IPs are present in the header. Odd. 66.108.223.179 (talk) 06:02, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a question for the Reference Desk? Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:26, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

An email header does not usually contain the originators IP address. Email spoofing is also easy enough to make ANY information in the header, including the originating address, not very reliable. Vespine (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The first part isn't really correct. Many SMTP servers do add the IP address of the sender in the received: from portion. Many web mail providers do add the IP either in the same way or in some other header like X-Originating-IP. When Gmail started, they were notable for not doing so. A quick test confirms Hotmail still usually seems to (in X-Originating-IP) as does Yahoo mail (in Received). You're right that spoofing means the info needs to be considered with care but a careful analysis of the received: headers will usually give you a fair idea if those are genuine which will give you an idea if the X-Originating-IP or any other such header is likely to be genuine. Remember that while the sender can add whatever bullshit they want, they usually can't stop the intermediate servers adding their own info. Nil Einne (talk) 10:37, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

It's possible that Yahoo Groups removes IP addresses from incoming emails before reposting them to the rest of the group, in order to protect users' privacy. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:00, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

It's possible. However at least in this public (you may need to be signed in to a Yahoo account but you don't need to subscribe to the group) archive [7] [8] it looks like all the headers are preserved (minus things perceived as email addresses which have been hidden) so in that case it would seem suprising if subscribers receiving the emails wouldn't also receive the full headers. In case anyone is wondering, in the first example I think the sender's IP is in the X-Yahoo-Post-IP field, I believe the sender did not actually e-mail the group but sent a message via the Yahoo groups web interface. While in the second it appears to be the bottom most X-Received and I think was sent via email via the Yahoo mail web interface. It may be there is a configurable option or perhaps they do it for lists which require subscription to view the archives (or perhaps those which require moderator approval to subscribe). Also if you are receiving a digest version, it seems likely most of the headers will be removed (although I'd be surprised if any headers showing the IP are preserved.)

Of course it's impossible to predict what happened in this particular case, especially without the headers itself, which should not be posted here for privacy reasons. For example, while many SMTP servers do add the IP address, I'm sure not all do. Both Yahoo's SMTP in the form of username@IP in the received: and Hotmail's SMTP in the received: and the X-originating-IP seem to. Although because of Yahoo adding it in the form of username@IP, if you are looking at web archives which hide email addresses, it's likely to be interpreted as an email address and hidden, as in this example. (I actually found out what's likely the sender's IP even in that case as Yahoo allowed me to try to send an email which as I predicted was a quick failure.)

This is presuming the IP really didn't show and it's not simply the OP missed it, the headers can be rather confusing when long. (Also, I know certain web mail interfaces particularly Gmail can mislead people unfamiliar with headers in to thinking 'show details' shows all the headers whereas you need something like 'show original' or 'show full headers' to see all the headers, although if the OP is seeing some IP addresses they're probably seeing all the headers.) BTW, I found that Yahoo also adds X-originating-IP when it receives messages to their mail servers but when I tested an e-mail sent from Hotmail to Yahoo Mail (not groups) it did not remove the original Hotmail X-originating-IP, so both were present.

Nil Einne (talk) 07:20, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

November 7

VLC seek bar

Hi,

I'm running VLC player 1.1.11 and it seems that they've introduced a "feature" whereby the time seek bar now only has access at fixed intervals. In other words it does not let me select a specified time, but jumps to a seemingly arbitrary step position when I click. Sorry for the poorly worded question. Has anyone had the same problem/know how to fix it? I'm running Windows 7 Pro

Cheers, --58.175.32.245 (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually after testing with other videos I think it was the video that was at fault (it was a video tutorial and the software must have thought it somehow useful to prevent you from continuous time seek! --58.175.32.245 (talk) 08:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Just guessing, but the video in question might have very few key frames (I-frames), and VLC may jump to the nearest key frame when seeking to avoid a long delay. -- BenRG (talk) 04:14, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

3d model evolution simulator program

I've seen videos of 3d models (for thermal heating I think) where the shape of the model (a reflector in this case) was determined by an evolution algorithm that, as far as I know, made a huge number of small changes to the shape and basically "evolved" the shape until its efficiency was at a maximum. The shapes it was coming up with were really interesting, and obviously not something you would come up with if you were to just try a bunch of different shapes and simulate them yourself.

I'm wondering if there is any of this kind of software that is freely available, or even user-friendly, though I imagine that there's not much need for such software outside of the manufacturing industry, so there's not much need for the public to have access to it. I would like to try some designs in aerodynamics and with fan blades. Thanks! 99.199.59.120 (talk) 06:46, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

YouTube viewer statistics

Anyone here interested in how Youtube's insight data representation works? I have been attempting to work out the total number of different people that have seen anything I have done on the site, however I have a question regarding what some of the statistics mean in practice. I looked into the total number of unique users data, which is given as a 30 day running total, would I be right in thinking then that where the total for the first 30 days is 1200, and for the subsequent 30 days is 2300, there is no way of knowing how many of those original 1200 are within the second group? Or does it discount people continuously from their first visit in spite of being a running total? I thought what this data meant was that the total number of interested people could be anywhere between 2300 and 3500, with no way of knowing more precisely.

But then, being me, I looked up the numbers of views at various intervals across the 30 days, divided one by the other to find the average number of views per person, and found that after rising quickly, it remains around the same level for the last couple of weeks, so I divided the total number by that, and what did I get..? 3500. So, does this answer my above question? Anyone here know more about how they calculate this?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 10:57, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

About Software development process

Hi,

I'm Ranjan.. I'm beginner to software(PHP) development job.. I had many doubts to creating web pages interactively.but i searched many of the websites still i remains poor. so i need wikipedia help. how to work efficiently and learning all about PHP(Hypertext Preprocessor)... Please give some tutorials to my mail,...

Thanks & Regards,

RANJAN — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ranjan111 (talk • contribs) 12:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

There are millions (if not billions) of things you can do with PHP. Without knowing what you plan to do, it is very difficult to point you to a relevant tutorial. -- kainaw™ 13:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Mozilla firefox

I have problem with my mozilla fifrfox browser. It is that I have re-install it every time or else if I try through my shortcut, web pages do not open. How do I solve this/ Sumalsn (talk) 12:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

What operating system is your computer running? What exactly happens when you launch Firefox? What changes if you reinstall it? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:17, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Editable -> non-editable PDF

I have an editable PDF document that I edited recently with FoxIt (on Windows) and Document Reader (on Linux). I need to print said document at a local Kinkos, which has only Windows machines. However, I just learned that Adobe allows someone to fill in the fields, but not to actually save them. Thus, when I pull up the document in Adobe Reader for Windows, it clears the fields I've already typed in.

How can I save this document on another Windows machine so that I can port it back to Kinkos and print it out? 68.232.119.30 (talk) 16:24, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

If I "save as" a PDF form in Okular or "save a copy" in Evince (that's Document Viewer), both on Linux, the form-fillings get stored in the document. At least that's true for a simple PDF form I create myself (in Scribus); it seems some forms can have a "submit by email, don't allow printing" protection. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:32, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Character representations in ASCII and hexadecimal

I'm fairly sure I grasp how characters are represented in ASCII: it's a seven- or eight-bit code, with each binary string corresponding to a character. However, it is also possible (common?) to index these characters using decimal numbers within human to human communication. Is that right? I also need to know how characters can be represented using hexadecimal, and the differences between character representation in ASCII and hex, but it's not in either of the textbooks I'm using. Can someone fill me in? Thanks in advance. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 22:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

ASCII is strictly a 7-bit code. Because computers work in bytes (now) character data was (at least until unicode became common) usually (in the west) sent with a tacit understanding (or sometimes an explicit declaration) of the extended alphabet that the 8th bit was used to support (often a code page definition). It's rare to see the character code spelled out except in technical discussions (mostly by computer or communication engineers), but when it is there's not much consistency - you might see it simply written in hex (13) where the base is implicit, with a prefix or suffix that denotes hex (0x13 or 13h) or a hex char (\x13), as the control code (^M) or as a textual description of what it is (carriage return). It's very rare to see characters described in octal (partially because octal is pretty rare in general, but mostly because we're not using some weird architecture like a PDP-1 where the number of bits in a machine word is a multiple of 3). As to which of these many representations is appropriate, I'm afraid it depends on context. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Stuff I forgot to say: it's also rare to write it in decimal and (unless you're talking about how bits are stored or transmitted physically) very rare indeed to consider then in binary. Incidentally, once you've got your head wrapped around this, take a look at UTF-8 which extends ASCII to support the gazillions of alphabets in the unicode domain in what I personally think is a wonderfully clever way. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Alas; what has happened to the hex notation of my youth? $200, $2000, $3D0. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:49, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The ASCII code maps each character to a number. The base used to write those numbers can be whatever you feel like using. Looie496 (talk) 23:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

(EC)I think you just haven't firmly grasped the concept of hexadecimal, by your uncertainty about representing characters in ASCII and hex. Let's start off with something you're probably more familiar with. Whether you use the Arabic numerals 0, or spelled it out as "zero", they are the same number, just represented in a different way. When you have a capital "A" in ASCII, this is represented by decimal 65, which is equal in value to hexadecimal 41 (41 hex is adding 65 ones to 0 in base 16, or that the absolute value of 41 hex is the same as the absolute value of 65 decimal). In other words, there is no difference between character representation in ASCII and hex, other than the base used. Hope that helps. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 23:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt help, all of you. The general consensus seems to be that there is only a superficial difference between the representations (Looie496 made this particularly clear). This is what I had always assumed, until I saw this question: Q 25 (a). Would it be appropriate to say something along the lines of what Looie said, or is there more detail to add? —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:05, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

(My consternation is due to the fact that a 3 mark question generally requires as much as 100 words of discussion, and I don't see how there is that much comparing and contrasting to be done.) —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

At best it's a poorly worded question, and doesn't really compare like for like. It's perfectly reasonable to talk about an ASCII carriage return as 0x13; that's both hex and ascii. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

If you're thinking of the carriage return (^M), then it's D or 0D in hex, not 13. So it would be 0x0D, 0Dh or \x0D. 13 in hex would be 19 in decimal, meaning ^S. JIP | Talk 06:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The carriage return is 13 decimal. Finlay sometimes makes errors! I am shocked.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, what on earth do they have in mind? Searching around a context, I think perhaps you should see the question in the light of question 23. There I see a story about doctors sending messages over a network, using a particular syntax definition which can include hexadecimal numbers and ASCII characters - for instance it says <space>:: = ASCII character 32. Presumably ASCII here just means "a character as typed" and hexadecimal means "the ASCII number of the character". (These are usually written in hex, as Finlay says.) So the most obvious thing to say - the only thing I can think of - is that in hex you can enter non-printing characters like space and carriage return, which if entered in raw form (apparently "ASCII" in the parlance of the question) would cause problems since they have syntactical meaning (separating items or entries).  Card Zero  (talk) 19:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Excel question

Is there a way to specify in an Excel formula "everything in the column from *cell such-and-such* down"? Suppose that I want this "summing cell" to sum everything in column B starting at row 15. The formula "=sum(B:B)-sum(B1:B14)" only works if this summing cell is not in column B ... and what I'm trying to do is put a sum row up in row 10. I could do "=sum(B15:B999)" but that strikes me as inelegant. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I think in Excel, you're stuck with "=sum(B15:B999)". In Google spreadsheet, this was solved with "=sum(B15:B)". --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 00:15, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if you'd call this "elegant", but you can use =SUM(INDIRECT("B15:B"&ROWS(B:B))). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hm, I'd call it educational rather than inelegant, personally. B999 it is! Thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

You could use a named range; that would look a bit more elegant, but really is just a different way to achieve the same thing. --jjron (talk) 10:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

November 8

Windows Media Player as default

I used to have Windows Media Player as the default CD player on my Windows 7 system. Now somehow itunes took over that. I want to get it back to Media Player but I can't figure out how to do it. I looked in the Control Panel under Programs and didn't see Media Player. How can I get media player back as the default to play CDs? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:40, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Try the "AutoPlay" control panel. -- BenRG (talk) 05:00, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Pretty sure you can right-click the CD icon in the 'Computer' window and use "Open with" to set a different default program. If the standard right click doesn't give you the 'Open with' option try a Ctrl-right-click or Shift-right-click. Sorry, can't remember for sure and am on machine with no optical drive so can't check. --jjron (talk) 10:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

(1) AutoPlay doesn't show Windows Media Player. (2) Right-click doesn't show "open with" (only Open). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

And in the control panel, programs and features, turn windows features on or off, media features, Windows Media Player IS checked. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Try opening the drive in Explorer and right-clicking one of the .cda files and using "Open with". This displays on my Vista box. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:00, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Itunes was set as the default for .cda files so I unchecked that, but in the "other" programs to open with, Windows Media Player is NOT listed. It is as if WMP is gone. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

If you can start WMP, go to Tools/Options/FileTypes and select everything you want to play (or use the Select All button). If you can't even find WMP to start it, it should be freely downloadable from Microsoft, and the installation should ask about file associations while it is running. --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't start Media Player anymore. I can't find a place to download it because I'm already supposed to have version 11 (I did see a d.l for older versions and older operating systems.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Win7 uses WMP12. Search your computer for wmplayer.exe, that's what shows up in the task manager when I start WMP on my Win7 machine. Alternately, try this page, it might let you download the "Media Pack" - depending on the required validation. --LarryMac | Talk 19:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The webpage talks about Windows 7 N and Windows 7 KN - what are those? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:09, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I found that exe file and it starts WMP, but under Organize/options I don't see anything about setting it as the default, and I don't see any other options. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:14, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

N is a special European version without WMP; KN is a similar Korean product.[9] --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, let's approach this from a different angle. Under Control Panel / Programs, click on "Turn Windows features on and off". Then click the plus sign next to Media Features and make sure WMP is checked. If not, check it, then hit OK. You will probably have to restart if you've toggled that setting. Then go to Default Programs, which should be on your start menu (if not, it's also under Control Panel / Programs). Then select "Set your default programs". Hopefully WMP will appear in the list on the left. If it is there, select it and the click "choose defaults for this program". You can put a check mark next to cda and any other extensions you'd like to reclaim. --LarryMac | Talk 14:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

It was checked, but I unchecked it, rebooted, then I checked it and WMP showed up. Just to be save, I rebooted again, and then I set the defaults and it works again. Thanks. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Linkedin invitations

Over the past week and for the first time ever I've gotten a bunch of linkedin invitations in my email. These are from people I know, not friends but business associates, three of them, completely unrelated to each other, all somehow writing on the same day. Accordingly, I am guessing that these are not "real" invitations. Instead, I am guessing that Linkedin has done something like institute a program that searches a member's email contact list and automatically sends out these invitations, probably without the person's permission except by some fine print in the terms of service allowing them to take such liberties. Anyone else experience this suddenly this week or know something about this?--108.27.102.123 (talk) 15:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Linkedin and Facebook both have "import your contacts" options, by which means members allow those services to vacuum their Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Google mail, or other webmail service, or upload a contacts file generated by Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever, and import these wholesale to the service. Anyone with half a brain then goes through these and removes all the incidental ones (all those one-off purchases and ex-girlfriends and stuff) - but then anyone with much regard for their own or their friends' privacy doesn't allow a service (that derives all its value from building a social graph with other people's relationship in it) such massive and indiscriminate access to their private information in the first place. So I think that explains why you got invitations for people you don't feel very connected to (and I think much of the blame rests with the people themselves - Linkedin isn't quite so indiscriminate). As to why they've come in a big bunch - I think that's a consequence of how people use services like this: they tend to neglect it for a while, and when prompted into action by one invitation or message they log in and do stuff. Plus the whole "friend of a friend" idea that both services rely on to generate new introduction suggestions means that you're likely to get invitations from related people close together. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

LinkedIn's explanation of what they do with the contact information that someone has mass-imprted is here -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. The link is helpful. It still doesn't explain why I suddenly got these all on the same day, which is quite a coincidence. Given their policy, this is what I am extrapolating probably happened. Even if Linkedin doesn't send these invitations without a member's permission, as they say, they probably recently sent a notice to members advertising the option and these three people, after being prompted, all clicked yes on that day, which would explain the singularity of the timing.--108.27.102.123 (talk) 17:35, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

There's a chance this could be some kind of scam, such as attempted phishing. If you follow the links in the emails, make sure they're going to the genuine LinkedIn site and not a forgery. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's very possible. Malware also scoops up people's contact lists, which can then be used to send one person on the list email masquerading as someone else on the list. It's an astute piece of social engineering: they know you're unlikely to be taken in by an email from Luba in Lviv, but Alan in Accounting may be more persuasive. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

November 9

Android's pixels

Hi, Many Android devices have some diffrent scales. So how in the largest devices you cannot see pixels? When Google launched Android, I am sure that it didn't know about the futuristic scales. Exx8 (talk) 00:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Android software can support many different resolutions. If someone wants to release a tablet with a 10 inch screen and a high resolution display, software can be configured to handle it. And don't assume that Google did not know. First, the first Android device only came on the market three years ago. Second, they are not in the business of not knowing things. There are probably many things that they knew back then that many of us still don't know now. :) --Itinerant1 (talk) 00:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, when things are drawn on screen, it's usually "draw a line that's 2 pixels thick", not "1/30th of the screen". So, creating larger displays with the same size of pixel will still be 2 pixels thick. It doesn't become stretched out and pixelated, because the pixels are the same size. "Seeing pixels" only depends on the size of pixels. Do you mean devices with the largest pixels? KyuubiSeal (talk) 01:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

That depends entirely on your graphics library. Some graphics libraries do allow the programmer to specify "1/30th of the screen" - for example, consider HTML/CSS, in which a div element can specify its width as a proportion of screen (or canvas) area. Some graphics libraries allow the programmer to specify drawing-size in physical units, and handle the needed device-specific conversion. A good example is a font-rendering library, where font size is often specified in picas or inches or points, rather than in pixels. Some graphics libraries will accept a value in points and render in pixels anyway. Some will convert from "inches" to "on-screen inches", scaled by a configurable, user-settable zoom-factor. (Consider the ruler in Microsoft Word, which displays in inches, irrespective of actual size on screen). The "100% zoom" is, theoretically, corrected for screen-size and resolution; in practice, though, this is often not exactly compensated. If hardware can't communicate its dots per inch or otherwise provide some conversion between pixels and physical units, all bets are off. For example, a VGA monitor uses a simple, mostly-analog protocol and does not publish its true size to the computer. Most Android devices use MIPI/DSI, or HDMI, so the screen can actually inform the operating system of its specifications. Nimur (talk) 03:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Converting a PowePint presentation for the web

A colleague is delivering a presentation and has produced it in PowerPoint. What would be the best way to present this on a website? The assumption being that PowerPoint as such is not an appropriate format for the web. The site uses Drupal, if that's of ay relevance. --rossb (talk)

Versions of PowerPoint up to 2007 have a "Save as HTML" option, but this option has been removed in Office 2010. However it's apparently still possible to do it using VBA - see this discussion. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:42, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Do they want it work as a slideshow which the viewer can control, or just be used for presentation purposes? If it's just for presentation, you can save it out as a video file which you could put on a website in a web friendly format. --jjron (talk) 10:26, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Is exporting it as a PDF not enough? (If not, explaining why will help us figure out what you're after, here.) --Mr.98 (talk) 12:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping to have it in HTML, as i don't like to create PDFs when there's a reasonable alternative. I tried the direct conversion from PowerPoint to HTML (had to use an old version of PowerPoint as the feature's disabled in the current version) but the resulting HTML was really horrid with lots of frame stuff and JavaScript - hence useless as a basis for incorporating into Drupal - so in the end I used a PDF after all. --rossb (talk) 18:06, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

hacking

how the hacking of websites work? in the movie swordfish, hero is asked to hack FBI website and he did some coding.I mean where he write thee code and where he compile it.--nijil (talk) 09:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The representation of hacking in movies and on the TV tends to be extremely unrealistic.

The biggest misconception is that any site can be hacked by a skilled hacker in a matter of minutes. In real life, unless the site exhibits a known vulnerability (and it would take minutes to scan the site for exposed services and to look for known vulnerabilities), one would have to search for unknown holes in software, and that would take a long time - days, maybe weeks. (All software has holes, the question is, how long it would take to find one.) Breaking into a site after two weeks of coding, trying different approaches, and failing does not make for a good movie. --Itinerant1 (talk) 12:25, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

suppose hacker can write a code but my question is where he run it? how can he apply that code to that website?we can only see the source code of a page ,not edit it.then this hacking thing works?In that movie in where he write that code ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nijilravipp (talk • contribs) 14:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

He could be writing a program to talk on port 80 on the server and fake some HTTP requests. He could be altering the get string of a URL to exploit a database query. He could be attempting to access the server itself through some exposed SSH or FTP connection. The movie is entirely fake. So, using that as a starting point is silly. -- kainaw™ 14:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's a very simple idea of how these things might work out in the real world. Let's say a hacker wants to attack a website. The website is hosted on a server, which is just a computer somewhere in a big, air conditioned building. The hacker uses software to probe the ports (which connect the server to the internet) for vulnerabilities. "Ah ha!" says the hacker, "they have left port 125 open, which normally is used by some kind of obscure server software. If they haven't been applying all of their update patches, I can launch a buffer overflow attack on it!" To the hacker's dismay, the server is patched, and that attack won't work. However some further poking around on the website's interface itself reveals that shoddy coding has left its database exposed to an SQL injection attack. With this, the hacker is able to get details about the administrator account on the website, which eventually gets him into the control panel interface, which gets him FTP access, which lets him upload some malicious code and set it to regularly execute.

This is just a silly little example. There are more or less sophisticated types of hacks, ranging from pure social engineering ("Hi, this is Bob in IT. We're having trouble in your account — do you remember what your old password was? Thanks.") to very sophisticated technical attacks (discovering and exploiting a totally unknown vulnerability — e.g. using a zero-day attack). Web servers are complicated pieces of hardware and software, and web sites rely on many complicated programs (server software, database software, scripting software, etc.), any of which can have obscure bugs in them that allow people to get database information, execute arbitrary code, etc. Even just setting the permissions bits incorrectly can lead a savvy hacker to find lists of usernames and passwords, and so on.

Most of this is pretty time consuming and makes for poor television viewing, which is why on the TV the guy presses the "HACK" button and a little program with a skull and crossbones appears on the monitor and the files are copying but the bad guy is right outside and so on and so on — it's just to make sitting at a screen and typing look like something dramatic, as well as something comprehensible to your average non-hacker audience member (because having the hacker shout out, "Ah ha! An improperly escaped database query! Finally!" is not going to mean a lot to most people). --Mr.98 (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

More or less realistic hacking has been shown in some movies. 188.117.11.111 (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that a lot of it is just script kiddies, people applying known exploits to easily found targets, and not necessarily a person doing personal investigation and "hacking" or cracking. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, the assertion was made earlier that "all software has holes" - which is not correct. It is theoretically possible to construct software - even network server software exposed to the internet - that has no "security hole." Proper, secured software can correctly implement a secure interface; it can be made impossible to gain unauthorized access to the server administrator's interface. For example, in the simplest case - suppose the system does not allow any user to log in except through the serial port. Even if you know the password, it is impossible to connect to the computer except via physical access. Buffer overflows, SQL injections, stack shooting, code injection - and other tricks - these are not "known limitations of all software" - they are results of incorrect or incomplete validation, usually attributable to system complexity and/or programmer incompetence. Nimur (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

video sharing questions

So, one of my films uploaded to youtube was just banned for no clear reason. Whilst trying to find out more, I happened upon discussions in the forums that suggest this is an increasongly common problem and that large numbers of people are leaving youtube to upload things at other sites that are a little less strict, however the poster of that comment didn't think to say where they were going, anyone have any ideas?

Meanwhile, whilst I'm here, any ideas on how to go about finding out the reason for the ban, the notice I recieved from the site was rather vague, and the terms and conditions even more so.

148.197.81.179 (talk) 13:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Since you have gone to great attempts to ensure you didn't tell us exactly what the notice said, it is not reasonable to expect us to have any idea why the video was banned. -- kainaw™ 14:50, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not asking you to tell me why it was banned, I am asking where on that site I could go to ask the people that made the decision why they thought it should be, since they are the only ones that could really know. 148.197.81.179 (talk) 16:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

If DMCA was mentioned, it could be almost anything or nothing, and sometimes you can have the media restored by a similarly bureaucratic process of merely asking. Consider whether you included anything that violates YouTube's rules, including having used copyrighted media in a non-fair use fashion. YouTube alternatives. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't see anything in the rules, it was a film I recorded myself, in my bedroom, with no music, there was nothing like the things they say not to include, racism, nudity, inciting people to commit crime, that sort of thing. Anyway, just as an update, I thought I had found a few things that were slightly controversial, removed them and refilmed it much shorter and simpler, with almost nothing happening, and that got banned as well, even though I do little more than sit on my bed juggling with a bunch of tennis balls. I can only assume someone has deliberately targeted my account, or that there is something barely visible on the edge of the shot which looks almost like something that is not allowed. Or perhaps it is because there is a child's toy visible in the shot, and you are no longer allowed to have an adult and anything child-related in the same image any more. I have appealed against this decision, and fully expect them to completely ignore me again. Perhaps I can write them a letter asking for an explanation? 148.197.80.214 (talk) 18:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Case sensitivity in Oracle DbCommand in C#?

Today one of our customers reported they were getting an error "ORA-01036: Invalid variable name/number" in one of our products. It turned out that the reason was that the code was creating an Oracle DbCommand with SQL such as "select name from record where id=:id" and then adding a DbParameter to the SQL with the name ":ID". Changing the name of the DbParameter to ":id" seemed to fix the problem. I thought SQL was supposed to be case insensitive, when it comes to the language itself (values of string type columns are case sensitive, natch). Why is this? Is it somehow specific to Oracle, and if so, is it specific to a particular version? JIP | Talk 21:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=JIP&channels=##oracledb ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:57, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Reisio, is there some reason you believe that the random channels on Freenode constitute reliable sources? You often post links to the IRC network as if it were an authoritative source of information. Why not point to, say, the official Oracle documentation?

Comment to JIP: The official OracleDB help system is already installed, if you have a standard Oracle system.

Also, it's not clear to me from your post whether ":id" is a string literal or a result of another SQL query - if it's a string literal, it should be case-sensitive. What is ":id" actually matching on? Nimur (talk) 17:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Harddisk Partition in Windows 7

Is it possible to increase size of a partition without disturbing it's data (there is space available). This partition happens to be "default partition" and is almost full, so I keep on getting annoying messages about it being having no more space ( I don't put any new data here, of course) but even when I install programs etc. on other partitions (which do have space), the fact that this partition has no spaces becomes the problem leading to giveup the install itself. What should I do ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 13:14, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

1. backup
2. download a Linux LiveCD like Ubuntu or Knoppix edit: ... and boot off that (I'm not suggesting you install linux; make sure you don't pick that option)
3. resize partitions with gparted (docs)

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:24, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You can skip #2 if you use a gparted live disc. (I've done it before, which means it must be pretty easy.) --Mr.98 (talk) 16:33, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

They say it's smart to defrag your filesystem before resizing (Windows filesystems in particular). ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

November 10

Apple Developer Account Question

I'm reading from a book about the process, and I read the following:

"You have to enroll as either an individual or as a company. If you choose individual, you will not be able to add other programmers or quality assurance members to your account, which is necessary to distribute your application to others during the development and testing process. However, if you select Company, you will be required to provide detailed information about your company."

I don't have a company, but if I were to get into this, I'd like to be able to put apps on my own iPhone that is registered to me. If I get a Standard Program certificate as an individual, will it be possible for me to put apps at the development and testing phase on my own phone? 20.137.18.53 (talk) 17:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I recommend checking the website at developer.apple.com. From the iOS Developer Account Management FAQ: "How many iOS devices can I register for testing and Ad Hoc distribution? You are allowed to register up to 100 iOS devices for testing and Ad Hoc distribution per membership year. Please Note: Although you may remove a device from your account, it will continue to count against your 100 device limit." If you have other questions, you can start by checking the Developer Support webpage, often the fastest way to get your answer. Nimur (talk) 17:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)