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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.[1] --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)

You Could Do Google Docs. It automatically converts it. Cjc811 (talk) 01:47, 14 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)

Also worth noting is that a website is just a website. The CIA would be very foolish if they were to store their top secret information on the same machines that serve [2]. Cracking into their website is equivalent to spraypainting something on their headquarters. Now, breaking into a bank website or a webmail provider is a more serious matter, since valuable information is accessed through and provided to them. If cia.gov asks me for my email password, I'm probably not giving it to them. Paul (Stansifer) 22:02, 10 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)

Here's the generic "get in touch with YouTube because they say you violated the TOS" page. I'm not sure we can help you with anything more specific if you don't actually reproduce the message they've given you here. If you're in the dark about their motivations, we're doubly in the dark. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:09, 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)

":id" is the name of a DbParameter. Its value is a string literal. It is used something like this:

DbParameter param = new DbParameter();
param.ParameterName = ":id";
param.Value = "foo";

This is supposed to bind the string literal "foo" to the parameter named ":id", so the query "select name from record where id=:id" becomes "select name from record where id='foo'". Now I know that string literals are case sensitive in SQL. I am fully aware that "select name from record where id='foo'" and "select name from record where id='FOO'" might return different results. My question is, if I replace the above code with this:

DbParameter param = new DbParameter();
param.ParameterName = ":ID";
param.Value = "foo";

Why does it cause an ORA-01036 error? JIP | Talk 19:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Hm. I've never been an Oracle expert, but it looks like, in the case you describe, ":ID" and ":id" should both work. It's going to be hard to ascertain if the error is on the Oracle side, or in the MSDAORA driver.

My best advice is, assume this is case-sensitive, even if it ought not be. There's a little bit of description here, in the Remarks Section of the OracleParameter documentation. There are a few corner-cases where the C# string is parsed by the driver differently than it would be parsed by a SQL interpreter - for example, white-space-padding. Parameter names shouldn't be case-sensitive, per that doc, but "a bug exists." Consider filing a bug with Microsoft, or with Oracle. Nimur (talk) 20:34, 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)

Backing up is wise; changing partitions is not for the faint hearted. I agree that gparted is the best tool for the job. Do not use Partition Magic as bugs in that software has on more than one occasion ended in failure for me (thank goodness for backups but I would have rather had a successful resize rather than gigs of restores to do). The best tool for recovering lost partitions (just before embarking on a restore) is a brilliant free utility called testdisk.

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)

planck distribution function

I wanted to draw planck distribution function in Graph (software) and animate it with respect to T as the varying constant, but even though I put everything correctly, it doesn't draw it. Why?--Irrational number (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You say you're trying to animate with respect to T the function

$B_{\nu }(T)={\frac {2h\nu ^{3}}{c^{2}}}{\frac {1}{e^{\frac {h\nu }{k_{\mathrm {B} }T}}-1}},$ or $B_{\lambda }(T)={\frac {2hc^{2}}{\lambda ^{5}}}{\frac {1}{e^{\frac {hc}{\lambda k_{\mathrm {B} }T}}-1}}$,

but in that function, T is the variable. According to this,

"you select which constant you want to change in the animation. The constant must already have been created in the Custom functions/constants dialog. The selected constant will be changed in each frame in the animation."

(emphasis added by me) so like it seems you know, this software can animate with respect to incrementally changing constants and redrawing the function, but not incrementally changing the variable and redrawing the function so far. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 17:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Sonic Heroes Blender 3d Answer!

I'm making a Sonic Heroes fan game,but I need Blender models,where can I get some sonic models? comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 21:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

...make some, or pay someone to make some, or con someone into making some, or [3] ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there like a free Blender site where people can get models?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 20:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Certainly. I googled "free Blender site where people can get models" and found this list [4] of sixty of them. (Blender can import a wide range of formats.)  Card Zero  (talk) 20:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

No sonic models on each site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 23:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

In order to find Sonic models, I googled "Sonic models". This [5] is the first link (apart from links to youtube videos). It has Sonic models for the Garry's Mod game. I expect they will be in SMD format, so you will need the tools to import SMD files into Blender.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Sonic Fan Games HQ's forums may be a better place to ask, if you've not tried yet. --Colapeninsula (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Tried,this guy I know on youtube called Igon22 who has Sonic Heroes models but every time I ask him he won't respond. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 00:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Sonic Game maker help

Hi I'm the guy with Sonic Heroes Blender 3D question,Where can I get 3D gameplay(like Sonic Realms of Chaos) for Game Maker?~Tailsman67~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 21:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Your Google-fu is weak, strengthen, you must. Anyway, I googled "Game Maker 3D" and got 17,300,000 results. You could try looking there first. HTH, User:Bodman456 | Come talk to me or ask me a question! (I don't bite ;D) 04:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

November 11

MySQL

how to calculate the total number of disk writes by MySQL --nijil (talk) 11:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

You want to enable BLOCK IO profiling -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:19, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I want to print the total number of disk writes by MySQL using a c++ program.That's only time I am accessing mysql.--nijil (talk) 05:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

When to change an HDD?

It´s clear that you won´t wait until it fails, but how long can you use an HDD before it fails? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.16.11 (talk) 20:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

That depends. Could be an hour after you start using it, could be twenty years. Depends on the the standards the engineers were trying to achieve, and the conditions the drive actually lives in. Keep an on eye on the temps and the SMART warning metrics with a program like SpeedFan, and you might have a better idea of when your drives are about to fail. On the other hand, you might lose a drive without the SMART stats ever climbing to the point where you get a warning. RAID or backups are the only way to be (mostly) safe. Nevard (talk) 22:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

This is non-scientific, but in my experience when it starts to make odd/loud clicking noises, then it's approaching end of life (ok so there is a technical reason for this but the OP can research that). Get a full backup done and run some diagnostic tests on that drive. Don't use it for future valuable data. Sandman30s (talk) 22:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I have never seen a hard drive failing after 1 hour. I suppose the QA process will take care of such poorly assemble device. I don't remember the exact number of hours, but I suppose it was something like 50,000 working hours. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 22:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

It's very common for a failure to occur early in the product's life. We have an article on bathtub curve, burn-in - but surprisingly not infant mortality (in the industrial-engineering sense of the word). It's a well-known empirical fact that an overwhelming percentage of system-failures occur during the first few hours of use; mass-production facilities therefore test and remove infant mortality unit failures long before they hit the retail shelves. Nimur (talk) 00:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That would explain why I, as a user, never have had a failure of any device in the first hours of use. I suppose that even unknown companies test their products a little, so the devices are running their first risky hours at the factory and get shed out there. Maybe these are the refurbished products that you can buy at shabby online shops. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 01:19, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Given that you should have a backup system, yes, until it fails (or begins failing to the point that it's annoying you or making some part of your system too inefficient). ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Backups are not good enough, since some data could get lost and some people or businesses cannot afford to lose some data. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 01:22, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm honestly trying to be polite here, but if your backup doesn't contain all the data you need, then you need to change your backup methods to something that will be good enough for you. You may wish to look at our article Continuous data protection as this may be of assistance to you.  ZX81  ^talk 01:31, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for being polite. But, no, backups, even real-time backups won't protect against some forms of data loss, for example those caused by a corrupted file, which you could back up in real time and have two corrupted files, which are identically corrupted, and sometimes you won't know. There are also silent errors.. In the context of the OP, what you need is a RAID system, which is not a backup, but redundancy. Backups won't harm,of course. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 01:57, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

RAID won't protect you against corrupted files either though, you'll still have a corrupted file, but you'll have redundancy against losting that (already corrupted) file. If a scheduled backup isn't enough you can use Continuous data protection as per my previous post and just restore to the point in time before it was corrupted (whenever that was).  ZX81  ^talk 04:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Fax receiving app for Android

Dear Wikipedians:

I am greatly bewildered by the fact that all the fax apps I can find on Android requires the use of the Internet.

I mean, doesn't the cell phone itself interface with plain old telephone system, and as fax is also a technology that rides on the back of the POTS, shouldn't the cell phone be able to directly send/receive faxes by itself without resorting to the use of the Internet???

Therefore, my question is this: is there an android app, that would be able to intercept an incoming fax-call made to my android phone, and demodulate the fax signals (those modem-like noises) into the original fax document, and store it on my android phone for later perusal?

Thanks,

174.88.35.195 (talk) 21:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Android's public API provides limited support for telephony: android.telephony package documents those functions that programmers may use. For example, programmatic access to the audio-signal of a telephone call is not supported. Therefore, no Android program can record the audio-signal and decode or demodulate fax data from the telephone service.

Such a program could be written, but it would not be an "Android application" - it would rely on software libraries (possibly provided by a device-manufacturer) other than the Android system suite. Nimur (talk) 23:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not really possible for technical reasons.[6][7][8] A mobile phone doesn't just take the signal from a telephone wire and put it over the air as-is. The audio signal to a mobile phone is heavily compressed using AMR or similar, which dramatically reduces the amount of data bandwidth required for speech but will do nasty things to fax data (the same is true for VoIP). It should be obvious that you can't fit 33600 bps fax data in a 5600 bps audio codec. Control signals used by the fax transmission also suffer in the process. There are ways of getting around this by using special protocols to decode and re-encode the fax data, but this will require support from your mobile network. Internet fax says doing it over the internet is far cheaper than paying for calls (e.g. OneSuite costs 1 US$ per month[9] and some companies even do it for free). Is there a reason you can't use a service like this? Have you tried contacting your mobile network for advice? --Colapeninsula (talk) 23:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Colapeninsula. That was a clear and excellent explanation. My original proposal was made out of sheer curiosity. But now that I understand the compression scheme, I know that Internet fax is the only viable route for faxing on a mobile phone. However, I just have one more question: my VoIP, iTalkBB, seems to be able to send faxes just fine. In fact, the other day I have sent a fax to Ottawa using my VoIP. 174.88.35.195 (talk) 01:48, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Voops, never mind. Just answered my own question from one of your external references: "However, people often get perfectly good results on lightly loaded LANs. It still isn't perfect, as a burst of data on the LAN can still upset things, but some people get results they can live with." 174.88.35.195 (talk) 01:51, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

LaTeX print number as a word

Hi! I have a LaTeX document with a few counters. I can use \arabic{mycounter} to get a numeral for the counter, but I would like to print my counter as a word, like "six" or "nine." While not necessary, it would be cool if I could customize it so that if the counter were greater than some number (say 9), then print it out as a numeral, and then as a word for all lesser values. My Google-fu is poor and thinks I want a word counter. Thanks!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 23:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

You'll need to use an add-on package, like 'fmtcount'. Loading them is pretty simple, as are If statements. Nevard (talk) 01:14, 12 November 2011 (UTC)