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April 2

How do I speed up the smooth scrolling? (in InternetExplorer 10, Windows7)

With "smooth scroll" enabled in Internet Explorer 10 (IE10), The mouse wheel vertical scroll speed in IE10 is extremely much slower than all other vertical scroll speeds under Windows7.
How do I increase the scroll speed of "IE smooth scroll" in particular ?
There is no help in increasing the:
WindowsControlPanel->MouseProperties->MouseWheel->VerticalScrollNumberOfLinesToScroll
because then all other vertical scroll speeds get far to quick.
(Disabling the "smooth scroll" is not a tolerable solution either!).

Could you please help me?
PS! I need the solution to be both legal and no cost (gratis).
-- 46.15.145.216 (talk) 17:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Some ideas:

1) Does the mouse driver have it's own customization menu (some do, some don't) ? If so, that might allow you to set the smooth scroll and jump scroll speeds independently.

2) Try this: Press (as opposed to rolling) the mouse wheel. This should give you a white circle with 4 arrowheads inside pointing each direction. This is a special scrolling mode. In this mode, it scrolls in proportion to how far you move the mouse from that symbol. That is, if you are very close to it, you will get a very slow scroll. If you are quite far away, you will get a much faster scroll. Once you are done scrolling, press the mouse wheel again to get back out of scroll mode. This only works if you are on a screen with scrollable fields. (It will scroll vertically, horizontally, or both, depending on if there's some place to scroll to in those directions.) StuRat (talk) 18:08, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

No, the (1) mouse driver solution is not available, and the (2) special scroll mode (by pressing and holding down the mouse wheel button for a few seconds) is not helpful for me either, because the unintentional horizontal scrolling gets far to distracting (Poor eyesight forces me, most of the time, to zoom in on web pages which results in a horizontal scroll-bar in IE10 on the page).
What I would need Is a solution that I may use on any PC (running Window7 and IE10) regardless of which ever mouse is available there.
-- (OP) 46.15.5.184 (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Running Gnu/Linux on an Android phone

Is it generally possible? Can a manufacturer restrict what OS is running? Can you just format the phone like a PC running Windows and install Linux? The 1000+ Ghz of the processor and the 32 GB of a mini SD card seems as plenty of space to have a descent OS running, but does the phone need a dual-core or better? I read something about this last requirement, but I don't know if it's general or just for some specific Gnu/Linux installation. OsmanRF34 (talk) 18:20, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

First is: I suggest you get a multi core no-contract phone. You'll be able to then update the Android os with ease – without having to wait for your carrier to pull their finger out and do it - which might take years. If you load Debian I don't think you need a multi core. If you just want to experiment, then Ubantu Android may well be the easiest. [1] and that need s multi core. To answer your question. The manufacture can only use Android if they abide by the licence which ensures it remains under the control of the user rather than the manufacturer. So no, they cant control what you run on it.Aspro (talk) 19:38, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Ubuntu for Android actually runs on top of Android, IIRC. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Ubuntu for Android OS runs on top of the Android OS. Ubuntu or any other Linux flavour on an android phone means: it replaces the Android OS completely. Just getting Linux to solely run an Android phone should not be difficult itself. Yet, to have a useful phone, then there are (as already stated) hurdles to over come. As Reisio suggests below (paraphrasing): Why reinvent the wheel when you can get a GNU/Linux phone that works out the box. Once you get comfortable, you can then experimenting with your own thing. So, again, one has the freedom to run Linux 'on' or 'for' with any Android phone – the manufactures can't stop you. The choice is: which route to take to satisfy your purpose or curiosity.--Aspro (talk) 12:13, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

The other problem with phone on contract from a carrier is that they add loads of their own stuff on it that gets in the way. Also in the long run, it cost you way more than buying the phone outright in the first place.--Aspro (talk) 19:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

But for this you must compile the Linux kernel and all other necessary software for ARM architecture. In addition you must obtain necessary drivers for all devices that the phone has. (See also List_of_Linux_supported_architectures). Ruslik_Zero 19:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The greatest obstacle will be just installing any other OS at all, compared to that the drivers might be simple. If you are buying, you can get a new phone that comes with a real GNU/Linux instead of jumping through hoops. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

April 3

Which laptops have the best keyboards for fast typing?

Hi, I'm thinking of buying a new laptop, and wondered whether anyone here had experience of laptops with keyboards that allow fast typing. I've had a couple where I've had to keep repeating missed keystrokes, and even had to use an external keyboard with one, so this time I'm looking for one with a really good-quality, responsive keyboard, if such a thing exists. Any advice at all would be very helpful. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I've always found the apple style chiclet keyboards to be excellent (for me the shorter keypresses just feel more responsive). I have been particularly impressed with the ASUS zenbook keyboard which I tried recently that uses this style of keyboard. Alternatively the Lenovo thinkpad family has always had a very good reputation for keyboard quality. Do you use a desktop regularly? If so, I find it nice to have a similar style of keyboard on both the desktop and laptop so the typing feel is more or less consistent (it may be easier to change the desktop keyboard to match whichever laptop you get). 143.65.196.20 (talk) 10:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

They’re all pretty bad (short travel, flat keys, cheap components, form over function). You might put hands onto a ThinkPad keyboard—despite being redesigned to look more like (awful) Apple-style keyboards, underneath the keys the mechanics are almost exactly the same (as they were before).
Something else you could try is getting a tablet with laptop equivalent hardware and capabilities and simply use one of your externals. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for the replies. I keep seeing the ThinkPad come up as having a good keyboard, so I'll definitely look into that. I've been using an external keyboard on and off (the same kind as with my desktop), but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop, and the screen is then so far away that it feels odd. So I'm hoping I can find a laptop where I can stop having to think about the typing. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

My IBM ThinkPad keyboard isn't bad, I agree, but making a keyboard small enough to fit on a laptop is bound to cause problems. Perhaps one with a huge screen will have a bigger keyboard. Also, if you don't want to use an external keyboard, they also make an external numeric keypad, which is far more portable, and can speed things up when doing number intensive tasks, like accounting. StuRat (talk) 21:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stu, I'm looking for a keyboard without a numeric keypad. When you have one of those on a laptop keyboard, it pushes the letters (and trackpad) to the left of the screen as you look at it, and there's nothing you can do about it – unlike with an external keyboard that you can position wherever you want. If I sit in the middle of the screen (and it feels odd not to), it means when I'm touch-typing that I keep hitting the wrong keys, and the whole experience feels oddly off-centre. This is a separate issue from the keyboards that keep missing keystrokes, but it's an extra factor in having to think about the typing rather than the writing.

I don't mind the MacBook chiclet keyboards, but the letters are spaced slightly too far apart for me, which slows typing down a little. The ThinkPad is the one I've seen praised most often specifically for the keyboard. People rave about Das Keyboard too, but then I'd be back to using an external one. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, my point was that with an external numeric keypad, this allows you to get a laptop without an internal numeric keypad, which allows it to be spaced out better. However, the external numeric keypad is still there when you want to type in lots of numbers quickly, and is reasonably portable. StuRat (talk) 01:13, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good point. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I’ve been contemplating this issue for a while (read: years :p), and I’ll probably end up going the tablet + external route myself. You can get some pretty compact external keyboards that are also undeniable typing machines, such as the Noppoo Choc Mini or Happy Hacking Keyboard (none of them are absolutely perfect, of course; the noppoo makes use of function keys smartly but still has an extra column of keys on the right, and the happy hacking is actually missing keys where you’d expect them… but they’re about as good as you can do short of waiting for a Miniguru). You can of course make your own as well, heh. For joining with a tablet there’s 3D printing (or duct tape!). :) ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:01, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

steps of writing a system proposal

What are the steps of Writing a System Proposal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maddalaratan (talk • contribs) 09:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Step 1 is to know what a "system proposal" means. This is not a common expression. When you have solved that, tell us what it means to you, and we might be able to help you with it. Looie496 (talk) 19:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Inserting an image into an Excel-type spreadsheet

Is there a way to keep it "inside" a single cell, rather than have it sprawl over a bunch of them, until you click on it? Clarityfiend (talk) 10:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried the instructions that come up if you Google "insert image into Excel cell"? E.g. this sort of thing: ehow.com/how_5452020_insert-picture-excel-cell.html If they're inadequate, let us know, but try those first... it might help also if you clarify whether it is just an "Excel-type spreadsheet" or really that you are using Excel, and what version/OS, as they can differ quite a bit. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that explains how to resize the image (d'oh). Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:32, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

HD TV channels

Why do HD TV channels look sped up a bit like a film playing in 48fps? I checked and HD TV channels are broadcast at 25fps so why does it look sped up compared to SD? Clover345 (talk) 14:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Your TV probably has some sort of built-in interpolation or tweening. This computer-generates in-between frames to double (or quadruple!) the frames per second.

Philips calls this feature "Digital Natural Motion", I'm not sure what other brands call it.

Personally, I recommend turning it off in your TV's settings. I think real 48fps is great, but faking 48fps is like colorizing Casablanca. IMO, Better to see things the way they were intended to be seen. Flicker and all. APL (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

But interpolating frames would not, in-and-of-itself, speed things up. If the broadcast is at 25 fps and they interpolate one frame per actual frame, then they would hopefully be smart enough to play it at 50 fps. However, they may have done something wrong, in which case, turning this feature off might fix it. StuRat (talk) 21:48, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I assumed it wasn't literally sped up. Some people report that the smoothness of high-framerate video looks "sped up" to them. (And he did say "look sped up".) But you're right, if it's really playing back at a noticeably wrong speed there may be a greater problem. APL (talk) 01:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I can't picture interpolation of frames being much good. For example, if a tossed ball is on the right side of a pole in one frame and the left side in the next frame, how would the software know whether to place it in front of the pole or behind it, in the interpolated frame ? StuRat (talk) 03:56, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Presumably the same way they knew what color things were when they 'improved' Casablanca : It guesses.

However, I'm forced to admit that any object moving that fast would basically just be a blur anyway, and many people seem to really enjoy the processed effect, despite the artifacts. APL (talk) 04:23, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

(On the other hand, if it acclimatizes people to high framerates so that we can finally have movies with framerate better than they used in silent era, then I'm all for it.) APL (talk) 04:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I myself have noticed when walking through places like Best Buy where many televisions are playing the same movie that some of the upscale models showing the same movie just seem to be different, more "videoey" is the best way I can describe it. 67.163.109.173 (talk) 22:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Who manufactured the Osborne 1?

The article about the company states "Osborne had difficulty meeting demand, and the company grew from two employees, Osborne and Felsenstein, to 3,000 people and $73 million in revenue in 12 months." So who physically made the things at the very beginning when it was just Osborne and Felsenstein? Felsenstein burning the midnight oil in his garage? Or a contracted company not mentioned in the article? 20.137.2.50 (talk) 16:19, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Very begining? Do you mean the first Osborne 1 ever built? If so then it would have probably been Osborne making a prototype. RunningUranium (talk) 08:57, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Not the prototype, the first ones for sale. 20.137.2.50 (talk) 12:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it just me? (garbled text on web page)

Does this page have a bunch of gibberish in the last few sections or is it just me? Dismas|^(talk) 20:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

At a glance it all seems to make sense. What specifically are you seeing? APL (talk) 20:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

One of the last lines of the page reads: Dostallatnt pninstds either Java llory aning the Java Navis from ntt>/usrloweining.rong>IInternetytis part of the want t. What is going on here?! Am I having an aneurysm or is that gibberish? Dismas|^(talk) 20:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Close your browser and restart it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:35, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

It's doing it on both Firefox and Safari. I don't think it's a browser issue but I'll give it a shot. Edit: I restarted Firefox and it's still gibberish. Dismas|^(talk) 20:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

In that case it could be something worse, something to do with your text or graphics rendering system in general. What do you see if you use wget or curl? ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:39, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I've never used either of those commands. I'm running OS X. I have the terminal open, what now? I tried wget http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/webnotes/install/mac/mac-jre.html but that just came back as command unknown. I just tried curl and I got the same text as what I gave you above, gibberish. Dismas|^(talk) 20:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I read the final line as

Do not attempt to uninstall Java by removing the Java tools from /usr/bin. This directory is part 
of the system software and any changes will be reset by Apple the next time you perform an update of the OS.

How strange that it doesn't work for you. APL (talk) 21:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Not only does it not work on this computer but it doesn't work on my iPad or my MacBook (in either Safari or Firefox). Can someone please email me the text from the page? Dismas|^(talk) 21:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

FYI the Google Cache version is here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

By any chance have you changed your font size ? I've seen problems where each letter is drawn larger, but they don't increase the distance between them accordingly, resulting in overlapping letters. StuRat (talk) 21:35, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Finlay! That works! I can read it.

Stu, no that's not the issue. I uploaded a screenshot. Dismas|^(talk) 21:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

[Readability.com Link Here. Hope this helps. APL (talk) 21:44, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I can read both the Google archive version and the Readability version. Thanks, both of you. Unfortunately, my original problem, the one I was having that made me pull up the instruction page in the first place, is still occurring. So I'm back a square one. Thanks again, everyone! Dismas|^(talk) 22:06, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That's a very odd sort of error. Try turning off Javascript or other extensions and see if that changes it. The two options that I see are either that your client is executing something wrong (unlikely given that you've used two browsers and curl), or that some sort of proxy between you and the server is malfunctioning. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I am having the same problem with viewing this page as the OP. So it is not just his setup. The strange text is also present if I "view page source". Firefox 17.0.5 on Linux. 109.153.20.62 (talk) 22:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, in a way, I'm glad. And yes, I tried turning off Javascript and when I did, I got an error at the top of the page saying that Oracle wouldn't display it, or some such thing, because it required Javascript. Dismas|^(talk) 23:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I added to the title to make it more useful. StuRat (talk) 23:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I should have come up with something better. Dismas|^(talk) 23:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. StuRat (talk) 01:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if by shear chance it's somehow triggering a packet-mangling function on your routers or something.

For instance a DMZ mode on some routers will occasionally mangle packets when it incorrectly tries to translate ip addresses contained in the packet. APL (talk) 01:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Plausible, but I doubt that is it in this case. It seems like a reordering of the data, address translation would mangle it worse. I can't see a pattern in how things got rearranged. I'm assuming that the "Navi" in it got pulled from the "Navigate" instructions just before the whole thing. I can't view the screenshot to see if anything else is garbled because photobucket is blocked in my office. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 13:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a setup that lets you plug your computer directly into your cable/DSL/whatever modem? It would be nice to see if the problem happens in your router/switch or if it is further upstream. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 13:38, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I did the view source (IE8, win7, HP elitebook 8440p laptop, company firewall and VPN) and the source it shows me is all garbled. Gzuckier (talk) 16:02, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• My guess is that you are seeing a bug in the server (bad php code or something), and that trying to figure it out is a waste of time. If you care enough to do something about it, report the problem to Oracle. Looie496 (talk) 16:11, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I have reported the issue to Oracle. here. And, as of this writing, my laptop is directly connected to my ISP's modem and I am still seeing it garbled. And no, it's not a cached copy. I refreshed the page. Dismas|^(talk) 16:21, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Refreshing the page does not necessarily purge all the cached values. Your ISP, or Oracle's CDN, may maintain multiple cache servers between you and the actual web server (Oracle almost certainly does; Wikipedia does also). If one of those has cached a bad value, simply revisiting or reloading the page will have no effect - you'll just be sent another copy of the bad cache. To make them flush their caches, your browser needs to send an HTTP cache-control header that forces this. Depending on the browser this is done with Ctrl+F5 or ⇧ Shift+reload. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Finlay, that's what I did. I didn't just hit reload. I hit shift+reload.

And if anyone is curious, I'm at work now and see the same problem using Windows Server 2003 R2 through a Citrix Kiosk account which forces us to use IE 8. I haven't had a chance to get to my office yet where I can try the site on my laptop running Win7. Dismas|^(talk) 02:26, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess that limits it to the ISP, likely. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Would a large multi-national corporation go through a local ISP like I have at home? Dismas|^(talk) 09:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Our IP user with the same issue locates to the UK, and your user page shows that you are from the US, so it isn't specific to your local ISP. I sent an email to Oracle's documentation feedback address and referenced this conversation before you posted in the forum. I'll let you know if they have anything else to say. That glitch is just bizarre. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 15:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

S.Ytimg.com

Hello After hours of Googling etc. I find no answer as to whether this is a harmless cookie or malware that needs attention. Every time I open a video this appears and obviously is a YouTube feature. Any advice appreciated. Peter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:558:6020:153:3D72:ECEF:7370:1ADC (talk) 21:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems like you answered your own question. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Virtual box spawning X windows on host?

Can I get an Ubuntu virtual machine guest to create windows through an X server on my OSX host? I run the virtual machine in console only, for performance reasons, but I'd like to be able to launch a few GUI applications from the VM to a window that OSX or X11 can see. I know a bit of the basics here, but apparently not well enough to find an answer by googling. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

So you want to do something like run the Ubuntu version of Firefox and have the window appear on your OS-X desktop (without it being inside the ubuntu VBox window)? Sure, that's straightforward:

• On OS-X, xhost + (to allow other X clients to connect without the requisite magic cookie); I know very little about OS-X, so I'm assuming its X server is already running.
• On Ubuntu: DISPLAY=192.168.0.11 firefox, where 192.168.0.11 is whatever the IP address of your real OS-X machine from the perspective of stuff running inside the ubuntu virtual machine. That'll differ depending on how you set up the networking emulation when configuring the virtual box.

That should be it. It's possible to start a VirtualBox session without creating a dedicated window (it's one of the gazillion options of vbox-manage), and you can to the 2nd step above over an ssh from OS-X into ubuntu (which can be automated if you set up passwordless, credentialed authentication in ssh with an RSA keypair in ssh's authorized_keys file). If you need more info, I'll do something tomorrow (it's my bedtime now). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:32, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that, if you're in an untrustworthy environment, xhost + is a bit of a security hole. If that's a possibility, tunnel the X connection over ssh instead, by setting up a ssh -X session. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:34, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

By which I mean run the following on OSX: ssh -X virtualMachineIPaddr firefox This relies on you having a working sshd on the ubuntu virtual machine (which is usually a good idea anyway); this is probably the simpler, safer way, rather than the xhosts way. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:04, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Finlay! I'll try it out in a few hours. I can/do use ssh to connect to the VM, so I guess it's just like any other ssh connection at that point. I'm not entirely sure how to get the host IP from the guest's point of view, but I do know its "real" IP, and it's also matched to a hostname. So, if I can ssh to the host from anywhere as ssh user@hostname, will setting the DISPLAY to "hostname" resolve properly? SemanticMantis (talk) 13:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

If you do the ssh -X thing (which you should) then sshd will set the DISPLAY variable to a magic socket it makes itself, which will forward any outbound X connections back to your host machine (so on my machine it's set to localhost:10.0). The host's IP address from the guest's point of view is usually just the host's usual address; to find the guest's run ifconfig inside it to see what it's been given - I usually run VMs with their network set to "bridged" rather than "NAT", so they're given an address by the local network's DHCP server (that is, the internet router box thing). Once you've got it working interactively, you can spin up the VM without starting its own gui with vboxmanage startvm --type headless "vm name"     -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, when you're experimenting, don't use Firefox as an example (or run it with firefox -no-remote), as Firefox will otherwise try to talk (over the X connection) back to a Firefox instance on your host machine, which will confuse the heck out of you the first time. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• Magic, I was expecting this to be much harder than it was. Used Xterms as examples, ssh -X works like a charm! Thanks again, SemanticMantis (talk) 14:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

April 4

wireless pointing stick keyboard?

Does anybody make a wireless keyboard with a pointing stick (you know, those little widgets between the g and h and b keys to do mousy things like many laptops have?) I know there are a few wired pointing stick keyboards still made, but i might as well go for the moon, right? My fingers are too big for touchpads and use of a normal mouse always makes me wish i had three hands. Gzuckier (talk) 15:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the pointing sick is exclusive for laptops only because some people prefer the pointing stick over the mousepads. So yeah I'm sorry no I really doubt that they make them. One other thing, why do you not like normal ordinary mouses?RunningUranium (talk) 00:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I found this, it's not exactly waht you want, but it could solve your problem. I hope it helps. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RunningUranium (talk • contribs) 09:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

On my IBM ThinkPad, it's called a TrackPoint, so you might also use that term when searching. StuRat (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

"automated response might cause WWIII"

A topic such as "automated response might cause WWIII" seems highly appropriate right now when one of China / Japan / US / North Korea / etc might trigger our next World War unintentionally. To the history of the triggers that caused wars, we now must add: computer causes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.135.147.4 (talk) 20:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

The Reference Desk is intended for questions that can be answered with factual information. It is not a discussion forum. What you have written is not a question. Looie496 (talk) 20:45, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not a new concern; people have been worried about it since the 1960s at least. In the United States, the fear of automated or accidental nuclear war has led to non-automated procedures. During the Cold War there were a number of close calls attributable to computer or detector errors (e.g. 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident and several in the US in 1979-1980). Currently, accidental nuclear war just redirects to nuclear warfare, but arguably you could make a full article out of it, as it is a rich topic of both real history and popular culture. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:13, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Windoes 8 CHKDSK

How can you run Chkdsk in Windows 8? When I try to do it at the command line, it says that I have to be in "elevated mode", what ever that is. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?}

How do you run Command Prompt? If you click on an item to do so, try right-clicking said item and clicking "Run as Administrator" instead. If you don't, open up "cmd" in C:\Windows\System32 (at least there's where it is in Windows 7) by doing the same thing (right-click "Run as Administrator"). I'm not sure how 8's Start Menu operates (not sure how different from 7's), but you could also try typing "cmd" into the Start Menu's search box, right-clicking the "cmd.exe" (or "Command Prompt") that appears, then clicking "Run as Administrator". -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

That worked, thanks

Resolved

. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:38, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Why didn't they just say "run as administrator" rather than the obscure "elevated mode"? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

CHKDSK isn't really needed on modern hard drives. The S.M.A.R.T. system is pretty much standard and there are plenty of tools to query it. Used that quite a bit in my Dell tech support days back around 2002-ish, still seems to be the go-to. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Carbonite tech support is claiming that their software isn't working right on my computer because my HD is having way too many errors. I want to know if that is true. Do the SMART programs just monitor it, or does the system know to fix errors, etc? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

SMART just reports information logged by the drive controller. If the "Reallocated Sectors Count" (SMART parameter 0x05) is more than a few, and particularly if it's increasing, the disk is failing and you should get a new one. If the disk is new then it should be under the manufacturer's warranty and you should start an RMA replacement dialog with them (they'll surely require that you download their own disk health check program, which will recover the same SMART data). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm running HD Tune on it right now. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

"Elevated mode" is related to User Account Control. "Run as Administrator" sounds like it's for running the program as a different user (namely Administrator), but I think it actually just runs it elevated if the current user is an administrator. If you are an administrator, chkdsk is telling you the truth, while Explorer is kind of bending the truth. If you aren't, it's the other way around. -- BenRG 05:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Partitioning a 3TB drive

Hi! I bought a 3TB HDD that contains 3 1-TB platters. Is there a performance advantage in partitioning the drive into 3 1-TB parts (or subsections thereof, e.g. 500 GB, 500GB; 1TB; 250GB, 750GB), such that no partition spans across more than one platter? Is partitioning software conscious of the drive's platter composition, so that if I specify to GParted to create 3TB partitions, it doesn't push a few sectors over to another platter because of adding some metadata? I'd ideally like to use 3 partitions: 1 exclusively for Windows, 1 for Ubuntu, and 1 to share between them, but I probably wouldn't make them each exactly 1TB large unless there was some benefit to that partitioning scheme. Thank you for any info or advice :) --el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a performance disadvantage in having a block or sequence of blocks on only one platter, and drives will typically organise things so that a single block (or logically adjacent LBAs) is distributed across a cylinder (meaning it's on all platters) because that means each head (one per surface) can read the data concurrently with its brothers. In practice you have no control and little knowledge of how a disk controller organises itself. Makers of server-grade storage devices, which use higher performance drives like Cheetah, may be able to extract from their disk-maker partners information (and, crucially, guarantees that information will remain valid) about disk organisation, but for the rest of us don't know, and really don't need to. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, Finlay. Is my understanding of your comments correct, that for a consumer-grade HDD without knowledge of the fine-grained internal details, there is no performance-preferable partitioning scheme, so one might as well partition the drive however one wants, and the internal controller of the HDD will optimize for performance as best as it can?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

As long as you are using an up-to-date version of gparted, and use it as described here, it won't let you organise the partitions in a wrong way. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:57, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

For sequential reads, the outer edge of a platter is the fastest part of the disk, while the inner edge is the slowest. Some operating systems will reorganize the disk contents to put frequently-accessed data in the faster areas, and you can force this by partitioning and putting data in the "fast" partition. --Carnildo (talk) 02:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

To amplify what Carnildo is saying, with most consumer level drives, the fastest transfer rate and fastest seeks times are at the beginning of the disk and slowest at the end with a gradual slow down over the disk, regardless of how many platters are in use. See for example [2] [3]. However to amplify what Finlay McWalter is saying, the actual translation between performance for a certain purpose and raw performance metrics is quite complicated, see for example [4]. Even so, it's normally better to keep the most important (frequently accessed) stuff at the beginning of the disk. Nil Einne (talk) 03:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

More relevant to Windows(-specific filesystems), yes? ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Not really. There may be other reasons for wanting multiple partitions in non Windows systems and with some systems it may be difficult to ensure stuff within a partition remains at the beginning of the partition because of different allocations schemes but the actual raw performance advantage doesn't change. While as I mentioned, the raw performance advantage doesn't always translate into better performance in a certain app (for such purposes you need to benchmark whatever app you're using), generally speaking it's more likely to help then hurt presuming the choice is arbitrary. There are also benchmarks on *nix systems if anyone chooses to disbelieve. (I actually wonder whether the raw metrics more closely correlate to app performance in *nix systems because it's likely the various optimisations and caching algorithms are tailored to Windows systems but I suspect it's probably not that simply since some of the workloads are not that dissimilar across operating systems.) But the fact that most systems on average benefit from improved transfer speeds and particularly improved seek times shouldn't exactly be surprising. Now as I hinted earlier, if you are forcing abnormal behaviour or there are other factors at play, then you have to consider whether it's really a good idea. But on the other hand, if you have a data partition and a system partition/s and you're trying to decide whether to put the system partition/s at the beginning before the data partition or at the end after the data partition then yes, generally speaking it will be better to put the system partition/s first to keep the frequently accessed/important stuff at the beginning (this may also reduce the risk of boot issues in some cases but I wouldn't consider that an important factor). In a case like this, where there is Windows, Ubuntu and data, the logical choice would be for the Windows and Ubuntu partitions to come first. The question of which one of Windows or Ubuntu will come first will generally depend on how much you expect to use each one. Depending on your plans, you could also consider a more complicated partitioning scheme but in such cases it's probably better to ask in a more specialised forum (there are complicating issues here since of course if you spread out the important data over more of the disk you increase the seek times). P.S. I wasn't able to find any benchmarks online in my quick search earlier but I currently own 2 Seagate 3TB, 1TB/platter drives. These vary from 197MB/s at the beginning to around 90MB/s at the end for reading with very similar performance at writing. This benchmark was done in Windows but with an unpartition disk using HD Tune and were repeated a few times including some times without much usage of the computer. They do start slow for some reason at about 175MB/s with a fairly linear rise until they reach the 197MB/s speed after a few GB. Seek times are not that dissimilar from for other HDs. The sort of benchmark raw metrics are fairly similar to pretty much every example I've seen for a consumer HD (only the rise at the beginning is a bit unusual). Nil Einne (talk) 07:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Meant more in regard to file systems; how the more common Windows and Unix file systems tend to order things differently (some starting at the beginning of a disk[?], some not). Afraid I don’t know much about it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:14, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

According to this article, Linux spreads out files over the entire partition, leaving lots of space in between for file expansion, whereas old Windows FSs like FAT wrote files adjacent to one another, and still NTFS doesn't spread files apart adequately, leading to fragmentation. However, from the information above, it follows that NTFS and adjacently-ordered FSs would see an average-performance benefit over ext* on a not-so-full partition.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Assuming fragmentation isn't an issue.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 23:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Is maximizing usage of the outer edges of platters really as simple as partitioning the drive with gparted and then using the partition(s) closer to the front for the most I/O activity (e.g. OS, system)? Maybe I'm missing something (seems too easy). For one, I know whenever installing a Linux distro, the default/suggested partition scheme puts the main partition first and the swap following it. Wouldn't you want the swap first for faster I/O, especially on memory-parched systems? (Maybe this is a separate question, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the [platter edges]-partitioning concept.)--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The outer edges are only faster for sequential access. Swapping often involves extensive random access, in which case no part of the disk is substantially faster than any other part. --Carnildo (talk) 00:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Win7 Laptop, Wrong Language

Resolved

My Power Settings window now has one power plan setting option in the wrong language. The rest are in English. Can anyone think why? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:51, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Somebody screwed up. The person who set up the language support for that application accidentally put the Turkish version into the file of English translations. Either that or the application text was originally written in Turkish, and no English translation was provided for those items. Looie496 (talk) 02:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

So, basically, you are saying it is 'supposed' to be like this, as in, it was like that all along? Either nobody has noticed it, or Microsoft or HP (whichever is responsible) has not bothered to fix it? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

It would be HP, and of course it isn't supposed to be like that, but it's easy for things like that to slip by -- especially if you are, for example, using British English rather than the default form of English. Translation of computer messages is a mass-production job, and it's easy for errors to creep in. Regarding whether it has been like that all along, I haven't the slightest idea how old your computer is. Looie496 (talk) 15:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I will clarify (my dialect can be confusing): 'supposed to be like that' = 'was like that when I bought it (as I have done nothing to change these settings since)'. 'Like that all along' = ibid. :) Anyway, cheers. Interestingly, only one of my Win7 Home Premium laptops has this problem. My other one is Dell. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Since the top line in your picture says "HP recommended", that power-saving utility is definitely a specific HP product. It may well have been programmed by an outsourced contractor in Turkey -- there is really no way to know. Looie496 (talk) 16:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the power plan page is part of Windows 7, but the manufacturer can add settings to this page. Power plans: frequently asked questions says Windows provides plans called Balanced, Power saver, and High performance, and the computer manufacturer might provide additional power plans. This FAQ page also says you can create your own plans, see Change, create, or delete a power plan (scheme). User-created plans also appear on this page, but when I played around with it, the user-created plan only had a name and I couldn't find a way to add a second description line. Maybe it's available in a registry setting or I just didn't find the setting.

So based on this information, the Turkish text might have been created by the manufacturer or maybe by a user or a program with appropriate access to create a power plan. Make sure the Turkish plan isn't the active one, then across from the Turkish text, try clicking on the blue text to "Change plan settings", then see if there's an option to delete the plan. You can't delete Windows-provided plans or the active plan, so if it's not active and is deletable then it might be a user-created plan that someone or some program created. --Bavi H (talk) 03:21, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Your picture says the text is Turkish, so I guess you already tried translating it? Google Translate says it's "Gaming Mode Power Plan". Perhaps a game you installed by a Turkish developer also installed this power plan? --Bavi H (talk) 03:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

In fact, I had been using the Gaming Mode power plan a while back - I remember now that it was English (I didn't bother translating the Turkish one, so I didn't know), so, yes, it looks like it has been replaced by something. Interestingly, my computer has sounded recently like it is overclocking. This is how I came to look at the power plans in the first place, and am thinking this is very suspect. I cannot believe it is just a case of having got past the proofreaders, because I do that for a living. I will have to look through my utilities (the ones which have power-saving options) and then my games. I was looking forward to a nice weekend off...... Anyway, thanks! KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Just as I suspected - it was installed by IObit - I use their Advanced System Care, and there used to be a separate program called Game Booster (directly translated into Turkish: Oyun Güçlendirici. Now it's included in the package when you get ASC. Problem sorted. Thanks. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:18, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

April 5

Working on many files in unix

I need to write a bash script to run a program against all the files in a directory tree. The program takes two arguments, the input filename and the output filename where the output filename should be the same as the input filename but with a suffix added. So, for one file it works something like this: program -i filename -o filename.suffix. For many files I thought about using the find command, but can't get either the -exec action of find or xargs to work with the filename appearing twice or with a shell function. So that is something like:

find . -type f -exec program {} {}.suffix ;

or

afunc()
{
   program $1 $1.suffix
}
 
find . -type f -exec afunc {} ;

The first reports "find: missing argument to `-exec'". The second reports "find: `afunc': No such file or directory".

I am also looking for a way to avoid processing a file which has already been processed (and ending up with 2 suffixes) and for a way to report and act on any error messages the program might produce, but without stopping the script. Astronaut (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The first case should end in ;\ so

    find . -type f -exec program {} {}.suffix ;\

The second case can't work because afunc is a name inside this bash script, and program is a subprocess of a subprocess of that shell. You can create another script and have find's exec call that. Personally my bash scripting is weak and I devolve anything but simple tasks to a Python script (where os.walk does the hard work). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:53, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be \; rather than ;\ ? (That is, you want to escape the semicolon argument required by find from being misinterpreted by the shell as a command separator.)—Emil J. 14:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Oops, yes, it should. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

• I've written probably thousands of scripts that do things like that (neuroscience data analysis), and I recommend using a "for" loop. You can probably use $(ls -r) or something similar to generate a list of files. I have always used C shell because I know it better, so I can't be very helpful about the specific syntax, but I've always been able to make that method work pretty easily. Looie496 (talk) 15:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If you make your afunc into a shell script (a file, rather than a shell function in memory — sad that it's a redlink, since shell functions are quite useful; we do discuss them a bit at alias (command)), find will be able to invoke it (perhaps as ./afunc.sh). If you write the script as

#!/bin/bash
for t; do
  program "$t" "$t".suffix
done

you will be able to pass multiple files to it (as with most commands), and then you can use find -type f | xargs ./afunc.sh (or, to properly handle unusual file names, find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ./afunc.sh). (When the actual command, rather than a wrapper script, accepts multiple arguments, using xargs is also more efficient.) There is likely also a syntax -exec ./afunc.sh {} + that is similar to using xargs, including that you cannot do {} {}.suffix this way.

As for not double-processing, you can ask find to exclude files whose names match a pattern: find -type f \! -name \*.suffix .... (The ! and * are like ; in that they are special to the shell and so must be escaped to be delivered intact to find.)

As for error messages, by default they appear on stderr, and it can be a bit of a pain to intercept and interpret that. However, any properly-designed program will have an exit status you can use. Just like -type f specifies a condition, -exec ... \; does too: it "passes" if the command reports that it is successful. In this fashion you can make a sort of "find script" that does things for each file for which processing succeeded or failed:

find -type f -exec program {} {}.suffix \; -print # name the files that worked
find -type f \! -exec program {} {}.suffix \; -print # name the files that failed
# Complicated example: run additional programs on each success/failure:
find -type f \( -exec program {} {}.suffix \; \( -exec success {} \; , -true \) -o -exec failure {} \; \) \)

Alternatively (and more powerfully), you can do this in your shell script (whether it supports multiple files or not):

#!/bin/bash
program "$t" "$t".suffix && echo "$t" # name file that worked
program "$t" "$t".suffix || echo "$t" # name file that failed
# Complicated example: run additional program depending on success/failure:
if program "$t" "$t".suffix; then
  success "$t"
else
  failure "$t"
fi

The shell is also capable of doing things like checking for preexisting suffixes, checking for preexisting files you might not want to overwrite, and capturing stderr if that turns out to be necessary. --Tardis (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

online shop stuff

The trouble with selling stuff online is that you can either pay to use various services, such as amazon, ebay, paypal and so on, or it works out cheaper and easier to sell through your own website, but they cost so much more and take more time and effort to set up to start with. So, I had this idea of setting up a website where people pay a small fee for a subdomain and a template to sell through, in particular it gives them a platform through which to automate the use of various payment services, particularly accepting debit and credit card payments and such like. But the question is, this being my website but with other people using it to sell their stuff, would they use my merchant payment accounts, or would each person need to set up their own to arrange these transactions separately?

And in general, would this idea work, or is there something else that I haven't thought of?

Kitutal (talk) 19:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I’m not sure I see how it would differ from existing services of the type you already mentioned. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

There already exist services like you describe. Shopify is a big one, but there are a number of others.

So it's certainly possible. APL (talk) 19:45, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yahoo also offers a similar service : SmallBusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce.

APL (talk) 19:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

April 6

Check HD for errors

Carbonite says that my HD (on a Windows 8 system, NTFS) has a lot of errors when trying to read. Spinrite is supposed to test the HD and map out bad areas. Are there alternatives that do that (TestDisk may be one)? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:13, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Is CHKDSK still on Windows 8 ? It works, but it does take forever, so run it overnight (maybe one night for each disk). StuRat (talk) 01:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is still there. At first I ran it without the /R parameter, which it should have. But I ran it again. I had to tell it to do it when it reboots, and it only gives a % done, so I didn't get a report of errors. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 13:33, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

What exactly is the error you're getting from Carbonite? If it's complaining about I/O errors, you need to get a new hard drive. If it's complaining that, say, it can't read a particular file, that probably just means the file is open in another program. Either way, chkdsk and Spinrite are unlikely to help. -- BenRG 04:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Antivirus companies creating viruses

I read some time ago that an antivirus software company (or companies) had been caught creating viruses in order to boost or drive sales of their software. I can't remember much more detail than that. I'm looking for articles (on Wikipedia or news sources) that detail these actions or allegations. Thank you ahead of time. Vidtharr (talk) 18:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

There's evidence of that happening in China, as this story details. (The Epoch Times is not a very trustworthy source, but that story looks legit to me.) In spite of widespread rumors, that's unlikely to have happened in the US to any significant degree -- a company that did it would be risking its existence for a rather small gain. Looie496 (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Not to mention, US companies could face lawsuits, damages, and maybe even criminal charges (IANAL). --Wirbelwind(ヴィルヴェルヴィント) 00:21, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Problem with uninstalling Plustek USB scanner

I have a strange problem to solve: there is a PC with Windows XP, which has a Plustek USB scanner drivers and utilities installed. The files have timestamps from 1995–2000, directories were created in January 2008.

The hardware stopped functioning about 3 years ago and went to trash. Now I tried to cleanup the software, and ...the uninstaller refuses to work! It says:

Setup requires a different version of Windows. Check to ensure that you are running Setup on the Windows platform for which it is intended.

Error 102.

Possibly the Service Pack 3 has changed something in the system, so that the uninstaller no longer recognizes it. What can I do to properly remove the scanner software? --CiaPan (talk) 23:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I've used the free version of Revo Uninstaller when a program's own uninstaller fails. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:30, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

April 7

Download

Hi all,

Could you please answer this question about IT (I don't know much about it). If I download a file and then put it on a USB stick, does the file have any "print" of my computer? I mean, can anyone know this file was downloaded to my computer before being transferred to the stick? Thanks a lot!

92.97.154.11 (talk) 02:05, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Assuming you meant "Does it leave any trace ?", then, probably, yes. To be certain to avoid this, you'd probably need a read-only operating system, which can't possibly save any info, or you'd need to reformat the entire hard disk, after. Otherwise, some kind of tracker program running on the computer could keep a record, no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

However, saving directly onto the USB stick instead of first to the hard drive might minimize the trace, such that only the names of the files and times of downloads are stored on the hard disk, assuming nobody has installed a tracker program. StuRat (talk) 02:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

To remove any trace of your download:

Do as StuRat said and delete your browsing history for that time period so it doesn't look suspicious.

RunningUranium (talk) 02:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The OP actually seems to be asking whether the file on the USB stick can be traced back to his computer, and the answer is almost certainly no. The file should be passed untouched from the download to your hard drive to the stick, and won't have anything added by your computer. Rojomoke (talk) 04:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

It will depend on the file though, some things like Microsoft Office documents tag the 'author' of the document - so if it was created on the PC and transferred to the USB it may still include the name of the computer (not necessarily something that will make it easy/realistically possible to track down the PC though). E.g. at work our laptops get a unique number as their 'name', any Word documents I create on it show that number in the author field in the properties. ny156uk (talk) 08:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

True, but the possibility of that will be much reduced if you don't open the file (with Word or whatever program it comes from) before passing it on. If the OP could tell us what kind of file it is, we could give a more definitive answer. Rojomoke (talk) 08:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

HD tune results

I'm running HD Tune (see above) and at this point the results show

HD Tune Pro: ST32000641AS Health

ID                                  Current  Worst    ThresholdData         Status   
(01) Raw Read Error Rate            118      99       6        189990865    ok       
(03) Spin Up Time                   100      100      0        0            ok       
(04) Start/Stop Count               100      100      20       119          ok       
(05) Reallocated Sector Count       100      100      36       0            ok       
(07) Seek Error Rate                87       60       30       469998064    ok       
(09) Power On Hours Count           82       82       0        16046        ok       
(0A) Spin Retry Count               100      100      97       0            ok       
(0C) Power Cycle Count              100      100      20       118          ok       
(B7) (unknown attribute)            100      100      0        0            ok       
(B8) End To End Error Detection     100      100      99       0            ok       
(BB) Reported Uncorrectable Errors  100      100      0        0            ok       
(BC) Command Timeout                100      99       0        1            ok       
(BD) (unknown attribute)            100      100      0        0            ok       
(BE) Airflow Temperature            60       57       45       689831976    ok       
(BF) G-sense Error Rate             100      100      0        1            ok       
(C0) Unsafe Shutdown Count          100      100      0        46           ok       
(C1) Load Cycle Count               100      100      0        119          ok       
(C2) Temperature                    40       43       0        40           ok       
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered         54       27       0        189990865    ok       
(C5) Current Pending Sector         100      100      0        0            ok       
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable          100      100      0        0            ok       
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count      200      200      0        0            ok       
(F0) Head Flying Hours              100      253      0        16368        ok       
(F1) LifeTime Writes from Host      100      253      0        -1989403685  ok       
(F2) LifeTime Reads from Host       100      253      0        -1902847635  ok       

Health Status         : ok

Looks like almost 190 million raw read errors. But it says OK. Do these error numbers seem reasonable? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

From what I understand from [5], threshold is not the number of errors, but rather the limit. Your current test has 118 read errors, and before that the most number of errors was 99. The link I found doesn't show two values for Threshold. Maybe the program's help is more current or explains it better. RudolfRed (talk) 03:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

No, the "current", "worst", and "threshold" values are not counts of anything; they are abstract health values where higher is better and 100 (or sometimes 200 or 253) is normal. "Threshold" is a manufacturer-chosen constant value that's supposed to indicate the point at which you should think about replacing the drive. The "data" value is sometimes an actual count (as in "Power On Hours Count" and "Power Cycle Count").

The most relevant statistics here are the ones related to bad sectors: "Reallocated Sector Count", "Reported Uncorrectable Errors", "Current Pending Sector", and "Offline Uncorrectable". All of them are zero. That means the drive has never reported an I/O error to the operating system, so whatever error you're getting from Carbonite is not a drive hardware problem. -- BenRG 04:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The HDTune test finished and those still show zero. You asked what error I was getting from Carbonite - it is a long story. I bought Carbonite HomePlus because one thing it does is make a mirror image of the HD to an external HD (which is a USB3 in my case). The docs say that it will take several hours to make the initial mirror image. It was taking a very long time. It was getting < 1% of the CPU and usually < 1% of the disc bandwidth. It was usually 0.1-0.2 MB/sec. Sometimes it would jump up to a few MB/sec and sometimes to 20-25 MB/sec. It was going to take several days at this rate, and I have only 300GB on the drive. I talked to Carbonite tier 1 and tier 2 tech support a few times, and some said that it just takes that long and others said that something is wrong. It finally finished after almost 6.5 days (155 hours). I think this is unacceptable because the mirror image is useless until it gets a complete image. (I had to reformat the external HD to do it, and had wiped a Microsoft drive image in the process, thinking that it would only take a few hours to do the new one. The MS one had taken only 3 hours.)

Anyhow, they bumped me up to tier 3 support, but it took more than a week for us to find a good mutual time. By that time the initial mirror image had completed. Tier 3 said that I had way too many HD errors. He said that my HD is so bad that the minuscule amount of processing that Carbonite is doing on it (about 0.1% of its capacity) is putting too much stress on it (which I don't believe). He said that the mirror image was useless because if my HD crashed and I replaced it and restored from the mirror image, what ever is wrong would cause the new drive to crash. And if I put in another new drive after that and restored, whatever is wrong would cause it to crash. (I don't believe this either, since if I have a H crash, it will be a head crash or other physical breakdown.) He wanted me to quit using the mirror image feature and refund part of my money and downgrade me to carbonite w/o the mirror image. I didn't want to do that, because I didn't really understand how it could cause a replacement drive to crash. He did turn off the daily updates of the mirror image.

So Carbonite software never gave me an error message, it just took a very long time for the initial mirror image. THe tech support people were all very nice, but they told me conflicting things and things I find hard to believe. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

You should talk to a different support person, since that one has no idea what he's talking about.

Did HD Tune finish scanning the disk a few hours, or did it take days? If I understand correctly, you are not actually getting an error from Carbonite, it's just running slowly. Possibilities: 1. Another program may have been trying to access other files on one of the drives during the backup, causing a lot of back-and-forth seeking which can slow everything to a crawl. 2. There are a couple of SMART parameters above that do seem to show significant degradation: "Seek Error Rate" and "Hardware ECC Recovered". Both of those could conceivably slow things down. The next time you have this problem, you could look at the data values for those parameters in real time and see if they're increasing. 3. Maybe it's the backup drive that's failing; have you checked its SMART values? 4. There could be something wrong with the USB connection causing it to fall back to USB 1 speed. -- BenRG 05:32, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

HTTP Cookie

When a website is visited generally a cookie file is created at the server side then sent and stored in the client side.Is it possible for a human user to manually decrypt this cookie file with or without the help of some software tool.If so how?Will some Wikipedian elaborately expain this by giving an example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ichgab (talk • contribs) 07:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

You can view the contents of a cookie easily; most browsers have a simple function to do that. In Firefox it's rightclick -> viewPageInfo -> security -> viewCookies. But most cookies you'll see have a value that's just some random letters (or maybe a few labelled sequences of random letters). This isn't encrypted, so there's no decrypting to be done. Mostly cookies are like railway tickets: they have some numbers in them, and the important one may be a ticket number - but (unless you're a serious trainspotter) all the numbers are, from your perspective, essentially inscrutable. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 08:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Not just one cookie either. Wikipedia has 14 cookies on my PC.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Cookies aren't encrypted, although the values inside the cookie can be encrypted. For example, on the web site I work with, we store a session ID in the cookie, but encrypt it for security purposes. If the session ID wasn't encrypted, it may be possible for a hacker to hijack someone else's session. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

android ≠ / = android

I bought my first android tablet (a cheap Ainol Novo7 Mars), that has a lot of chinese programs among with english ones and does not have my native language installed. It has now 4.0.3 system from manufacture's update. Can I install another android 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 system in it or even higher like 4.1.x or 4.2.x?--RicHard-59 (talk) 12:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

This video shows how to change the OS interface to English. Mostly you can only get OS updates from the manufacturer; the Android distribution from Google is intended for manufacturers, who configure it for their specific machine and add in stuff like device drivers for that particular platform. In a few cases you can get homebrew builds from enthusiasts, working to replicate the manufacturer's work. Looking at the NOVO7 article, it links to two CyanogenMod based firmware builds for the NOVO7; you should look into those, or in general check the CyanogenMod forums. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I have the slightly older Novo 7 Basic and got useful advice from the forums at tabletrepublic. Their Novo 7 Mars forum doesn't have much content at present but would be a good place to ask for help. Flash my android is a forum with slightly more content, and has details of a 4.0.4 rom. I have no idea myself how good this rom might be.-gadfium 23:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

How old to learn Java?

When is the general upper limit, age-wise, for learning how to program in various code languages such as Java? Neuroplasticity degrades with age, so learning how to do it younger, I would image, would be best. If someone is in there mid-twenties, is it too late to learn how to program in Java well enough to make small Android apps? Acceptable (talk) 15:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

People tend not to go on degree courses once they get past 90 so I'd say somewhere around there is where one should perhaps give it a second thought. Dmcq (talk) 16:45, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

It’d probably be best to learn as much as early as you can, but there’s no particular reason to not learn it later in life if you have an interest. One might rethink learning Java™ for some other language that’ll have a better future, though. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that I pick up new programming languages now as fast as when I was 16 or 25 (and I have a lot more "experience" now ;-). I think Dmcq is spot-on. As long as you can hit the right key, you should be able to learn to program. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a big difference, I might add, from learning Java as one of many programming languages you already know and learning Java as your first programming language. If you already more or less know how to program, especially OO languages, then adding Java can be done practically at any age over the course of a few weekends. If you're learning to program Java from nothing, that involves quite a lot more brain-stretching. In any case, I don't think mid-twenties is any kind of cutoff date whatsoever. I know people who have learned significantly new computing skills well into their 40s and I really don't see why there should be any significant cutoff well until one is very old indeed. To make an analogy, there are many people who learn how to play piano very late in life. Do any of them become brilliant virtuosos? Probably very few. But there is quite a lot of gulf between "enjoys playing piano" and "plays sold-out concert halls." I doubt someone coming to programming very late in life is likely to be the next genius programmer, but that doesn't mean they can't make apps or many other things. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Linux Firefox download of .webm vs .flv

I downloaded a video from youtube using the plugin Flash Video Downloader, and selected the .webm file. The 306MB file took about three minutes to download. Just for a laugh, I decided to download the .flv version of the file and the 262MB took 29 minutes. Why should this take 10 times as long? --TrogWoolley (talk) 15:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with that particular extension (and the reviews for it don't persuade me that installing it is a good idea), but that performance hasn't been my experience, with similar extensions. FLVs, from YouTube or elsewhere, download many times faster than real-time for me, on a normal ADSL connection. It may be that your particular extension (documentation for which I failed to find) has code to deliberately choke FLV download speeds so it resembles the pattern of an actual Flash player (so as to thwart anti-download measures some cites may implement). If that's the cause, one would hope there was an option to disable that behaviour for sites, like YouTube, that don't care. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

You’d probably already watched the .webm version, and therefore already had it all cached somewhere, so the download was more of a move. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

In my experience, different display resolutions will download at different speeds from YouTube. I don't know anything about the webm format, but what might be happening is that the FLV is at a smaller resolution than the webm file, which will download slower. With my downloading plugin for Firefox, when I choose 240p, I get ~50KB/sec. With 480p I get 150+ KB/sec, and with 720p I can get over 1MB/sec. -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

April 8

Firefox prevent accidental quit

Because command-Q is sitting right there between command-W and command-Tab, it sometimes happens that I accidentally tell Firefox to Quit when all I really wanted to do was close a tab or a window, or switch to another app. And this is a problem, because I always have lots and lots of tabs and windows open (I'm not gonna say how many), all containing important state.

Once upon a time I had Firefox configured to warn me when I did this, but it seems to have disappeared with an upgrade somewhere along the way, and I can't find the option anywhere; now it just quits. Fortunately there's a workaround, of sorts: all I have to do is open $HOME/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xyz.default/sessionstore.js, jump to the end of the 2 meg of JSON gobbledegook, find the string that says "state":"stopped", change "stopped" to "running", and restart Firefox, whereupon it graciously offers to restore all my tabs and windows for me. But I'd really like to find the old option, to automate or obviate this. Is there a low-level "every option ever" screen hiding somewhere, or do I need a separate plug-in for that, or what? —Steve Summit (talk) 02:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

In the location bar, go to about:config, search for “quit”. There’s another option for altering how the session/crash restore functionality behaves, and the keyconfig extension could disable CTRL+Q altogether for you. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

You can apparently change the quit key to command-shift-Q by typing defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Quit Firefox" = "@$Q";}' in a terminal, or use the always-ask addon (both suggestions found here, not tested). -- BenRG 05:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why you need to go into about:config when there's an option for this in the preferences. On my version of FF, it's under Preferences > Tabs > Warn me before closing multiple tabs. Dismas|^(talk) 07:50, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Besides that he specifically asked for about:config, and that its location and usage has always been more reliable than the ordinary preferences, I don’t either. ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Reisio. In about:config, browser.showQuitWarning seems to have the desired effect. With that set to true, command-Q now pops up the dialog I had in mind, asking "Do you want Firefox to save your tabs and windows for the next time it starts?" and offering 'Quit', 'Cancel', and 'Save and Quit' buttons.

Dismas: I don't know why I have to go into an advanced, warranty-voiding configuration screen to achieve this functionality, either, but on this version of Firefox (5.01 on a Mac), the checkbox you mentioned under "Preferences > Tabs > Warn me before closing multiple tabs" seems only to affect the behavior when closing a window containing multiple tabs, not when quitting a session containing multiple windows or tabs. —Steve Summit (talk) 10:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There is of course no warranty to void. :p They haven’t changed how about:config works in ages, so again, more reliable. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

USB sound card

With an external USB sound card, does sound that would normally go to the 3.5mm speaker jacks go to the USB sound card? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

If it has its own input & output, you can no doubt use those, but with the right software you should be able to use whatever audio input & output you please, too. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The one I'm considering has a USB input. If I play iTunes, YouTube, a website, or other sound files, the sound would normally go to the 3.5mm speaker jacks. The card should have software that would make these things go to it instead, over the USB input? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

If you mean the “card” is a USB dongle that resembles a USB stick but is an audio device instead of a storage device, without audio jacks of its own, obviously it (or rather the audio output it produces) would depend on the computer’s existing audio jacks. This is how most such things work, to my understanding. There’s no particular reason a USB device can’t work just like a PCI card. OS sees hardware, OS utilizes hardware.
If you can link to or otherwise specify the particular device you’re talking about, a lot more could be explained more clearly. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There's no way to send analog audio over USB or PCI. PCI sound cards either have audio jacks on them or have to be separately wired to the audio jacks. -- BenRG 05:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, this card I should be able to just put it in a slot and the sound that would normally go to the speakers would go to its phono jacks, I think. But I'd rather have one like this, if it will work as I want. It plugs into USB, has phono jack outputs and a headphone output with a volume control. I would like for the computer sound to go to it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The USB sound card should show up as an additional audio device. Many audio players allow you to choose a non-default output device, and if not, you can set it as the default. -- BenRG 05:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

How do we make a GIF?

Am I the only one around here who doesn't know how? (Particularly, the moving gifs?)

Also, what are the time-limits to how much footage can be put in a gif?

Moreover, if I decide to print it out physically, what frame will show on said print-out? (Beginning? Middle? End?) Thanks. --129.130.237.131 (talk) 04:20, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

It's pretty easy to create an animated GIF using GIMP -- you just have to create a multi-layer image and then save it in the right way, and each layer becomes a frame. There is no time limit in principle, but each frame increases the memory size of the GIF file. The results of printing one depend on which print utility you use. In most cases you just see the first frame. Looie496 (talk) 04:43, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I found this it seems to be a very easy to use software. Just saying, there is no time limit but it is best not to exceed say 20 frames (but thats just my opinion). This is also because the more frames means bigger file sizes (and if your going to upload it onto a website they usually have size limits).  RunningUranium  07:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Terminology for error-message reduction

Many years ago, when mainframe computers became commonplace, there was a "programming paradigm" for end-user documentation to list a complete set of so-called "error messages" which were typically listed in a document explaining the meaning of each error message, often coded with an error-message id number. However, I am looking for a term that means programming in a style of "error-message reduction" where invalid data is just echoed back to the user, rather than flagged with a numbered error message. For example, in writing a span-tag:

• Old style result: <spann xx> <--ERROR G45-H78P: Unrecognized keyword "spann" at line 345 column 27
• New style result: <spann xx>

In the newer style of programming, it just echoes back the invalid input text, "<spann xx>" when an unrecognized keyword "spann" is used in the markup language, and there is no error message displayed, and no error id number, and no document to list all error messages. Sometimes that is easier, but sometimes the lack of error messages can be confusing. Question: what is that programming paradigm called, to not show a bunch of error messages, but only echo back the data, when a problem is detected? -Wikid77 (talk) 07:49, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

“Bad programming”. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Firefox crashes more unexpectedly than before

I run Firefox (latest version, it upgrades automatically) on a Windows XP computer. I have had problems for years with Firefox either crashing or freezing (and necessitating me to do a forced close through the Task Manager) when it is doing something: when I try to open a webpage with lots of content, especially scripts or media, or when I try to close one or many tabs or pages.

Lately, I have had the problem with Firefox just quitting unexpectedly without any such obvious cause (and no signs of previous distress such as slowing down) when I'm not really doing anything except reading content on an already open page. Is this something others have experienced with later versions of Firefox, or is it just that my computer is getting old or needs more memory? --Hegvald (talk) 10:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it’s probably more that your computer is getting old and needs more memory (and that its OS/version is incredibly out of date and more insecure than ever). ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Up until a month ago, I used to use Firefox 1.5 on an XP machine from 2006 (2 GhZ, 1 GB of RAM) for nearly all my browsing as I preferred it over later versions, with Firefox 12.0 also installed to support any pages that 1.5 didn't (e.g., HTML5). (I upgraded my machine because of increasing gaming/video speed/lag issues with my seven-year-old hardware, not anything else. And Reisio, I never had any issues with XP itself or insecurity -- only hardware issues.) I noticed that 1.5 would freeze on certain pages as well, especially ones with Javascript. I kept Javascript disabled by default, used a plugin called Keyconfig (hotkey configuring plugin) to re-enable and disable Javascript at the touch of a button for pages that needed it, and my problems disappeared. (In fact, the site that led me to do this was Wikipedia -- the internal design changed to include something that froze Firefox for ~10 seconds when loading anything, until I disabled Javascript.) -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 16:01, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Try to disable all add-ons and see what happens. Many of them are not compatible with the latest version. OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Firewalls in Linux

Is there a firewall in Linux which would let me block or allow applications? (instead of port or protocols).OsmanRF34 (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks like iptables can do it if your kernel supports the feature.

From the man page: "--cmd-owner name

Matches if the packet was created by a process with the given command name. (this option is present only if iptables was compiled under a kernel supporting this feature)" 38.111.64.107 (talk) 17:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)