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April 20

Cloud storage

Will cloud storage replace USB sticks? Clover345 (talk) 16:14, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Not unless there is a way to guarantee to always be online when the data is needed. Looie496 (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Also there's the issue of it possibly going away in the cloud, if the company goes bankrupt or you don't access it often enough, etc. Then there's the question of how private such data is. I sure wouldn't want to have account numbers and such there. And there may also be a question of ownership. The fine print might well say if it's on their server, then they own it. StuRat (talk) 18:04, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

BCD to decimal

I'm trying to make a clock on an Arduino Uno. I have a real time clock where I'm getting data from. Page 11 of the datasheet has the table of values such as seconds, minutes, hours, etc. I'm having trouble with the BCD to decimal conversion though. In my fumblings, I've been able to get the date set on the RTC. The time was set at one point but is now several hours off.

So, I'm trying to display this on an LCD. The time displays fine. Well, I think it does. I haven't watched it for a full 24 hours but I've seen the hours/minutes/seconds tick over like they should during a day. So far I haven't seen anything unusual like more than 60 minutes in an hour. I'm having trouble with the date though. I can't get the numbers to display correctly. For instance, the clock shows that we're on the 25th day of the 16th month. So, here's what I have for the time:

seconds = (((seconds & 0b11110000)>>4)*10 + (seconds & 0b00001111)); // convert BCD to decimal
minutes = (((minutes & 0b11110000)>>4)*10 + (minutes & 0b00001111)); 
hours = (((hours & 0b00100000)>>5)*20 + ((hours & 0b00010000)>>4)*10 + (hours & 0b00001111)); // (24 hour mode)

And here is what I have for the date:

day = (day & 0b00000111); //convert BCD to decimal
date = (((date & 0b00110000)>>4) + (date & 0b00001111)); 
month = (((month & 0b00010000)>>4) + (month & 0b00001111)); 
year = (((year & 0b11110000)>>4) + (year & 0b00001111)); 
 

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong with the conversion? There's obviously something that I'm not getting. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 16:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you sure you're reading the right registers? You forgot to multiply by 10 in the expressions for date, month, and year, but I don't see how that could give you the output you're seeing. Looie496 (talk) 17:24, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I was being dim. That got it. Dismas|^(talk) 20:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Cyborg-vs-stronger-computer chess

Our article Advanced chess deals with computer-assisted humans playing against other computer-assisted humans. Have any organized matches occurred where a human and a weaker computer face a stronger computer opponent that has no human help? To what extent can the human provide an advantage? NeonMerlin 19:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't this question just asked and answered ? StuRat (talk) 20:37, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Right here. --Yellow1996 (talk) 18:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

So Neon, how did you come to think of this identical Q so soon after somebody else asked it ? Was this the theme from some recent TV episode or movie ? StuRat (talk) 21:41, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

It was inspired by this Forbes article's claim that "computers don't play 'human-level' chess" (I'd initially agreed with the Anissimov quote). NeonMerlin 16:45, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I see. The person who posted the previous Q on this must have read the same article. StuRat (talk) 21:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Also worth noting: the archived question doesn't say anything about the human's presence being able to compensate for a hardware handicap. I see it as an interesting extension of the idea of heterogeneous computing. NeonMerlin 00:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

April 21

need a java book

Hi!
I am a beginner of java
Now I am studying multi threading.
I wanted to know relationship between sleep and interrupt status flag".
I have referred so many books before asking this question here.
But I could not find the relation between sleep and interrupt status flag.
Finally I asked that doubt in wikipedia onj april 19 with heading "relation between sleep and interrupt status flag".
Not only that for somany doubts i have asked questions in wikipedia.
I need a book which explains such type of depth topics.
Can u suggest such type of java book?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Me shankara (talk • contribs) 01:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

string inversion

A few years used a little utility that inverts strings; fed a text file containing

my

brain

hurts

it would output

ym

niarb

struh

which of course could be redirected:

utilitywhosenameiveforgotten sensible.txt > inverted.txt

But I now can't remember what it was called, am surprised not to spot it within GNU Core Utilities, and am not having luck googling for it. Please jog my ageing memory. (Oh, it was and is for GNU/Linux, if this matters.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're looking for "rev". See [1]. I don't know if it comes from GNU or not. My Mac has the BSD version. Another web page I found implies the package on Linux is "util-linux", but that source didn't specify which distro that was for. RudolfRed (talk) 02:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes! And wherever it comes from, it seems that Debian installs it by default. Thank you. (But "Four Completely Useless Linux Commands"? Hmmf! These are definitely not useless.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

rev is distributed as part of Linux (in the util-linux folder). tac (the backwards concatenater) is distributed as part of GNU Coreutils. Nimur (talk) 03:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Odin and Naval network. what are they?

In a meeting that happened between Assange and Google's Eric Schmidt, they mention naval network and Odin along with Tor. What are they referring to? Or is Assange poking fun at Schmidt's apparent lack of understanding? On the linked Wikileaks page 10th. 11th and twelfth fragments of the conversations have these things. Can somebody explain them to me? --Thirdmaneye (talk) 06:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

As our article on Tor (anonymity network) states, Tor was developed out of software created by the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory. I'm not sure about the Odin reference. There are lots of things called Odin, but this may be a joke based on the fact that in Norse mythology Odin was Thor's boss. Looie496 (talk) 22:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Software to record my voice?

When I study, or learn lines, I like to record myself reading the things I want to memorise, and play them back through headphones while I'm travelling anywhere.

That was fine in the days of cassette recorders, but now what I need is to be able to record my voice on the computer's microphone then save that as an MP3 or similar. I used to subscribe to the upgraded version of RealPlayer, which had that function. But it seems ridiculously expensive when that's the only thing I used it for.

Can anyone recommend some software which does this? Sound quality isn't an issue, within reason, so something free should be fine. AndyJones (talk) 06:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

See List of free software for audio. I like Audacity. I also still use "Messer Memo Session Sound Recorder"which is ancient and simple, but still works. I also use GoldWave (though it's not freeware). Dbfirs 07:22, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

They also make portable digital voice recorders, which might be easier to use. They fit nicely in a pocket or in a lanyard around your neck, and are quite inexpensive. Many cell phones also have this capability, so check if yours does. StuRat (talk) 18:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

International characters

If support for international characters is required, what should I use?

• Code page 1252 (ANSI Latin I)

or

• Unicode

I'm not sure about this. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 10:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Short answer: Unicode. Unicode covers vastly more characters. Unfortunately it can make life a bit more complicated. That means that sometimes it isn't practical, but if you can, use Unicode. KarlLohmann (talk) 11:59, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, sounds to me like both answers are right? That's the point I stuck. It's from a Microsoft exam question and I've to choice between Unicode or Code page 1252. The requirements are just 'support for international characters', so it's hard to decide since both are correct. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 12:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Basically Windows-1252 is legacy stuff, and you shouldn't use it for new programs unless something forces you to. So the correct answer is clearly Unicode. Looie496 (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Unicode is the answer they want. Microsoft uses UTF-16 for this, see Unicode in Microsoft Windows Dmcq (talk) 15:32, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, if the question comes in the exam, I'll take Unicode, although the exercise answer is "Code page 1252". However, I was in doubt about it, therefore I asked here. Thank you. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 15:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Might there be some context here? If you were writing something that needed to work with Windows 98 or an earlier version of Windows, you would have to use 1252, because NT was the first version of Windows to support Unicode. Looie496 (talk) 16:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

No nothing. It's just about using the right option in the 'Export Wizard' of SQL 2012. It's even not mentioned where the export file is supposed to import, it's just about the export and the export file should be support international characters. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 16:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, hmmm. First you say "No nothing", and then you proceed to give an important piece of information. This makes it hard to feel confident that you have given all the relevant information even now. The fact that this is SQL 2012 is relevant because (a) Windows-1252 is the default character encoding in SQL Server 2012, and (b) lots of companies run old database software, so it is safer to use a backward-compatible encoding unless it will lose crucial information. But even so, I suspect that there is more information either in the exact wording of the question or in the directions for that section of the test. Looie496 (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Any modern SQL works perfectly well with unicode strings and that's what one would use for internationalization unless international just means European. You do need to declare the fields as holding unicode strings rather than just strings. I really don't see how code page 1252 comes in to this at all unless it was "if you don't require internationalization" and the "don't" went missing. Or perhaps they want an ANSI file that doesn't support internationalization used for transfer with the unicode characters turned into hex? That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Dmcq (talk) 10:47, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

SQL: Replay Trace with Extended Events?

Extended Events is suppose to replace the SQL Profiler. There are many advantages to use the Extended Events, see here. The SQL Profiler is even set in deprecated status. However, is Extended Events also able to replay traces it has recorded? With SQL Profile that's possible, but I didn't found any information Extended Events is also able to do that. I'm just wondering because if the SQL Profiler will really be missing in the next version of MSSQL, there is no possibility to replay traces?! --77.239.46.74 (talk) 14:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Blowing on Video Game cartridges

I recently learned that on the back of most cartridges it is clearly stated "Do not blow on the connectors" - this is news to me. Isn't that what everybody does? I saw this on the back of an N64 cart, by the way. I think this may be the cause of some mysterious losses of save data I have experienced over the years, as I remember blowing on the connectors a lot before my Earthbound save file finally went(and I know it wasn't the battery because I was able to save on a new file afterwards.) Same thing on Mario Party for N64. So my question is: how does blowing on the connectors mess with the save data and lead to corruption/deletion? Thanks! --Yellow1996 (talk) 18:07, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Human breath contains moisture, which can gradually increase corrosion and contamination of the pin connectors. You can read more at an article seen here. AzureCitizen (talk) 18:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Whoa, I read the article - scary stuff! I'll definately never blow on the connectors again. Thank you! :) --Yellow1996 (talk) 01:01, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Shift key behaving as a quotation mark key

Ever since I arrived here in France (although it could be a hardware problem), my Left Shift key functions as a quotation mark key (meaning that every time I press the Left Shift key, it instead types ' or "), although my Right Shift key still works properly. Is this a software or hardware problem? If so, is there a quick way to fix it? By the way, my laptop is a Sony Vaio E series laptop, which is only around four months old. The model is SVE141D11L. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 20:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing, but you might want to check whether something has modified the language settings on your computer. In the Control Panel, find "Region and Language" and then "Change Keyboard or Input Method" (maybe different wording, depending on exactly what version of Windows you're using, but there should be a keyboard item in there somewhere), and check to see that it is set to the US keyboard and to English. Looie496 (talk) 03:13, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

On a proper French keyboard, the top row starts AZERTY (compared to the more usual QWERTY you find in the English world). However, some places use the freaky international english setting with a QWERTY keyboard. In that case, the shift sometimes acts as a dead key for typing things like accents. Astronaut (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

April 22

Pentax sensor cleaning and battery

My Pentax K-x DSLR has a menu option for sensor cleaning, where it raises the shutter so you can clean the sensor. But it will refuse to do this if there is "not enough battery", which it seems to generally define as about 2/3 or less. I'm curious, why does it take so much battery to open the mirror and keep it there when it can open and close it 1000 times (plus process the images captured) on the remaining battery life? -mattbuck (Talk) 02:55, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

It rather sounds like a spring holds it closed, and it must constantly use energy to hold it open, against the spring. Not a problem when it's only open a fraction of a second, but holding it open for several minutes might drain the battery. StuRat (talk) 04:47, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I worked whit the kx once (or the kr)… and don’t remember ever had this problem

Is your battery retaining the charge normally?

Other thing… don’t remember very well, but I think it not only opens the mirror, it has to shake the sensor too

Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

FORTRAN read statement

I wrote a program where you navigate a maze. I use the numeric keypad for movements. Unfortunately, after hitting a direction key, you must also hit <Enter> to pass that input to the program and actually move. So:

1) Is there a way to get FORTRAN to work without requiring the <Enter> key for each read statement ? (Any version of Fortran will do.)

2) Is there a way to redefine the keystrokes so that, for example, Numeric Keypad 8 = 8 + <Enter> ? (This is at the Command Prompt for Windows 7.) StuRat (talk) 04:58, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

to 1) Compaq Visual Fortran (you did say "any version of Fortran") had GETCHARQQ. See [2] (or google the command). Not fluent in Fortran, but if you want to avoid waiting for an Enter key, watching some kind of input queue would be the most logical approach. Also this thread [3] contains some useful hints. GermanJoe (talk) 11:49, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but your first link is in German. Let me also ask about a 3rd alternative:

3) Is there some type of keylogger program which will add each keystroke to a file, and then close the file, as it's pressed, so my program could read it from the file ? Or, how about adding it to an environment variable ? StuRat (talk) 16:58, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I would perhaps try to call 'getc' from the standard C library. Calling non-native functions could certainly be done under VMS, but I'm unsure about other environments. Failing that, you are perhaps looking at directly interacting with your hardware. Astronaut (talk) 19:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I do have a C compiler (gcc). So you're saying I should write a C program which will call getc and return a single character to the calling program (which will be my FORTRAN program, in this case) ? StuRat (talk) 21:19, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I just tried this in C, and the program I wrote also waited for me to hit enter there. Does someone want to provide me a bit of C which doesn't wait for the enter key ?(I figured this part out.) StuRat (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

on Linux, you can do stty -icanon which will turn off "canonical mode" for the terminal which will make it return single chars without waiting for a newline (getchar() will return upon pressing any key, not just Enter). in Windows, I think you could call SetConsoleMode to reset the ENABLE_LINE_INPUT flag (probably from a C wrapper program.) If it's in Windows I think the language's runtime ultimately calls ReadFile or ReadConsole, which are the functions the console mode affects. If however it's the runtime, not the OS, that waits for a new line (kind of like calling fgets() instead of getchar() in C), then I don't know. Regards Asmrulz (talk) 21:52, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Are you using Cygwin? Cygwin does emulate a UNIX-like API, so may be it has the terminal i/o stuff as well. I found this: this (second answer from top) (or you can just do system("/usr/bin/stty -icanon"); and then exec() your program (all in Cygwin's shell)) Asmrulz (talk) 22:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Another approach in Windows might possibly be to use the GetAsyncKeyState function, [4] and check the relevant keys explicitly. The snag with that is that the key presses would still register as input, and eventually fill the buffer. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:13, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

and you can't easily pass the keypresses so read to the child process. the idea was to just set the console mode and call the other program Asmrulz (talk) 22:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I have my solution. I followed the suggestion to use C. Here's the C code, named "getch.c":

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
  { 
    char keystroke;
    FILE *file;
    file = fopen("keystroke.txt","w");
      keystroke = getch();
      fprintf(file,"%c\n",keystroke);
    fclose(file);
    return (0);
  } 

And here are the relevant bits from my FORTRAN program which calls it:

     character*1 KEYSTROKE
             .
             .
             .
     call SYSTEM("getch.exe"  )
     open (unit=10,file="keystroke.txt",action='READ')
       read (10,*) KEYSTROKE
     close (10)

Thanks, everyone ! StuRat (talk) 23:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Can't you eliminate the file altogether though?

"getch.c":

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
  { 
    return (int) getch();
  } 

FORTRAN:

     INT KEYSTROKE
             .
             .
             .
     KEYSTROKE = SYSTEM("getch.exe"  )

(I've not programmed in FORTRAN, I'm not sure of the syntax of the last bit). AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I doubt if it's that simple. FORTRAN and C have a number of incompatibilities, as I recall, such as passing addresses, versus pointers, versus values. Using a file insulates them from having to communicate directly. StuRat (talk) 02:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump's solution should work. He is creating a C program that returns the character as an Exit status. When executing the file from FORTRAN, he checks the exit status. The C code is still being executed as a stand-alone executable, this solution just eliminates a bunch of file reading and writing.

However, most compilers allow you to specify a calling convention at a per-function or per-file level. You have a solution that works for you, but it could be an interesting learning experience to figure out how to make the two languages speak to each other. You should be able to build an object file from your FORTRAN source and one from your C source, and then use the linker to create your final executable. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 12:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Help with Mozilla Thunderbird

For the past week or two, the calendar function of my Mozilla Thunderbird (running under Windows 7) hasn't been working. Every time I open Thunderbird I get the error message: "An error was encountered preparing the calendar located at moz-storage-calendar:// for use. It will not be available." The error code it provides is 0x80570015. Any ideas how I can fix this? I've considered simply reinstalling Thunderbird, but I'm worried if I do that I'll lose all the e-mails currently in my inbox. Can anyone plausibly reassure me that that won't happen if I reinstall? Thanks. Angr (talk) 07:36, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

If you want to avoid the risk of your emails being destroyed (by a reinstall or anything else) you should regularly be backing up the Thunderbird profile folder. The location of that varies between Windows versions - it's explained at here. Your error sounds like there's a corruption in one of the SQLite database files used to store the calendar info. Deleting the specific calendar file will probably force Lightning to rebuilt it - but obviously that will wipe your calendar out too. You'd probably be better describing this error on the specific support forum, as listed at the Mozilla Calendar FAQ, where people will be familiar with the specifics and hopefully will have a less nuclear solution for you. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:58, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I wound up simply uninstalling the Lightning add-on and then reinstalling it, and now it works again. It even remembered my old appointments. I did also back up my profile too, just to be on the safe side. Angr (talk) 20:44, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Difference between two LCD panels

What exactly is the difference between the LG IPS277L and the LG 27EA73LM-P? One difference is that the latter has integrated speakers. Is that the only difference? Is it the same panel, or is there any difference in image quality? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the s277l has an IPS panel an dthe 27ea73 has a VA one. Both have a very high price for just a 1080p monitor

and this Dell is beautiful http://www.amazon.com/Dell-927M9-IPS-LED-27-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B009H0XQPA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362155424&sr=8-1&keywords=Dell+S2740L+927M9-IPS-LED+27-Inch+Screen

Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. Is there any information, or qualified guess, as to which panel has the highest image quality? As for resolution, I certainly do not need more than 1080p in this case. Maybe high price simply means high quality? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Since the links you provided are to a Swedish site, I presume you live in and intend to buy the monitors in Sweden. That being the case, links to US prices are likely fairly useless for price comparisons purposes. Nil Einne (talk) 01:01, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

You are very correct, Nil Einne. Still, I don't really care about the price; I'm more interested in image quality and other aspects of the quality of the products. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 10:37, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Understood. But another part of my point is more that the that I'm not sure if the LG monitors you mention are really more expensive then the Dell one. In other words, there's no reason to think they're particularly expensive compared to the Dell one. Perhaps they are where Iskánder Vigoa Pérez lives which I don't think is the US or perhaps they are in the US, but there's no guarantee they are elsewhere as local price depends on a lot of factors so not every monitor has the same relative price. This is one of the reasons you can't really say much about the LG's perhaps being better because of the possibly higher price. Another somewhat related reason is that while there is some correlation between price and quality, there are a whole host of other factors including some which I presume you don't care about like brand name and others which you may not care about like connection options, scaling options, webcam, speakers etc which affect the price.

BTW, while I don't think you're likely to get much help here as direct product comparisons and recommendations isn't something the RD tends to be good at, but you'll likely need more info if you want decent recommendations. For example you say you definitely don't need more than 1080p. Does this mean you only want to use the monitor to watch movies, TV, videos etc? Or are you planning to use the monitor at a distance? These sort of use cases may affect the recommendations. I ask because many people consider 1080p a fairly low resolution (low pixel density) for a 27" monitor, 2560x1440 is considered a better resolution, particularly for productivity work and browsing. For gaming, it's a bit more iffy, 2560 would be ideal but may require a good graphics card or quite low settings. But then again, if you can't normally even achieve 1080p, then 2560x1440 isn't generally going to be worse (unless perhaps you always run at 960x540) and could be better in some cases. Of course if you just don't want above 1080p because you don't have dual link DVI or DisplayPort or a suitable HDMI port then that's a different consideration. (Another issue would be price, but you seem to suggest price wasn't a big factor. Of course in that case you could take a risk on one of those South Korean LCD monitors everyone is talking about like Catleap etc.)

Unfortunately I don't know how much luck you'll have with comparisons. In my recent searches for 23"-24" monitors, I didn't find much. Many of the reviews aren't direct comparisons making it difficult to draw useful data. For example they say this monitor is about average or isn't as good as some other reviewed product but it's often quite unclear what they're comparing them to. On the other hand, I was looking at the lower end of the IPS market, so perhaps you'll have more luck (although I think the 1080p is somewhat the lower end of the 27" market).

BTW, VA, particularly AMVA will often have better (real, not dynamic) contrast ratios and better blacks, than an IPS. But IPS will win out in side to side viewing angles, and possibly in response times (but this depends greatly on the panel and how over-driven it is). VA panels I believe were somewhat dead for a year or two, they seem to have come back partially because of their usage in TVs (again the contrast ratios are probably a big factor here). There are more difference and you can find more comparisons online, and it depends greatly on the panel. For starters, IPS is a loose term as there are a few types of IPS in common use (I'm including S-PLS). With VA I'm not sure if SMVA or PMVA or whatever are common in monitors anymore, all I've seen is AMVA and that seems fairly rare compared to IPS and TN. (There's also the various PVAs but while these are still common in large TVs I don't know if they're found much at all in present model smaller monitors, well excluding extremely high end professional ones like say the Eizo.) But anyway I don't think there's much point elaborating further since I don't believe the panel is VA, e.g. [http://pcmonitors.info/lg/lg-27ea73lm-1920-x-1080-ips-monitor says it's AH-IPS).

Presuming you can't get much of reviews, you may want to produce a narrow list of what seems most suitable for you, check out the brands and individual monitor warranty and dead pixel (if that matters to you) policies for your country, look at the official specs with an eye to the often misleading data, and then ask for opinions in more suitable forums. If you can find VA you like, you may want to consider it, particularly if watching videos etc is a big part of what you are planning.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for you reply. In fact, I intend to purchase a unit as a gift to a (younger) relative, and it will mainly be used to watch movies (probably mostly standard-definition DVB-T television) from a distance of slightly less than two metres. Hence, there is really no need for more than 1920×1080. My understanding, too, is that both panels are AH-IPS (at least that's stated in my original two links). I believe any of them will do just fine, but I don't know how to choose. Maybe I'll just flip a coin. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

programming using qbasic

what is the effect of the following when using the print statement(give an example of a code to support your answer) 1. if you type PRINT without any variable,or text after it? 2.if text you wnt is to be printed 3.if you want values of the variable to be printed accompanied by text . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.223.142.34 (talk) 15:45, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The example program in our QBasic article will help you answer two of these questions, and the resources linked from that article will probably answer the third question. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:53, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. StuRat (talk) 16:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

How do I get rid of this political spam in my e-mail inbox?

I have no idea how long this has been going on or when did this begin occurring, but I do know that the Democratic Party somehow knows my e-mail address and has been sending me spam about Barack Obama and stuff like that. I tried to e-mail them during the re-election campaign about the problem. They never replied, and they never stopped. So, I created a filter in my Outlook Web App inbox. That only raised one problem. All the messages go to my junk folder. I want to know how can I create a filter to automatically delete these messages. They are annoying and also a reason why I am apolitical. Plus, my Outlook Web App inbox is really my academic e-mail inbox for academic/professional purposes. If they had sent me spam through my AOL account, then I wouldn't mind, because I rarely check it. Sneazy (talk) 18:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what options Outlook has for blocking spam, but here are some common ones:

1) A blacklist. This blocks any mail coming from a particular address. If they always come from the same set of addresses, then this is ideal, as it shouldn't block anything you want.

2) A whitelist. This only allows emails in from a list of addresses you provide. This is far more likely to block good emails, as it's difficult to list every address from which you may ever receive a legit email.

3) Searching for keywords in the title or content, and blocking emails which have those. For example, you could have "Democratic" or "Obama". This might also block legit emails, though, since those terms might occasionally show up in them: "I can't finish my report right now, since I have to fill out some Obamacare health insurance forms." StuRat (talk) 19:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Double-check that there isn't some sort of unsubscribe link or instructions at the end of the message. Most legitimate mailing lists will make it easy to unsubscribe, but simply replying to the email and asking to be removed might not be the right procedure. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 12:40, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

silly computer science question

is there something like "lambda assembly"? I mean, lambda calculus is "but" a model of computation as are the register machine and the stack machine, and compilers produce code for the latter two. If there were a computer that ran LISP or something, natively, the way a PC runs x86 assembly, what would its machine language look like and could one make a C compiler that compiled to it and what would its output look like (as opposed to "ordinary" assembly)?
C : register machine : x86 assembly
Java : stack machine(?) : JVM assembly
LISP: lambda machine(?) : ?
Sorry if the question's confused:) Asmrulz (talk) 21:01, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Graph reduction machine, for which the "assembly language" is a combinator graph. Lisp machines were actually sold commercially, but I'm not sure that's quite what you're looking for since most dialects of LISP are thoroughly imperative. -- BenRG 21:42, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It's a bit clearer now. An article linked from that article's page was interesting, too Asmrulz (talk) 23:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Academic research document papers contains mistakes

I thought Academic research documented paper is the most reliable sources. There is four authors who published the abstract research documents are they all reliable predictions or each one have error bars in there. There are four main authors who presented the calculations of death of the solar system [5] [6] Rasio et al. (1996) and [7]. is this possible some of their works to calculate the inner planet's fate can contain lots of mistakes. Do some of these guys likely to make alot of mistakes in their calculation or the best answer is all of everybody including Schroder and Smith's calculations contains some mistake lines. I thought they use computer simulations and solar model to make the calculations. Is this possible computer simulations can produce alot of mistakes or more mistakes than accuracies. Basically what do astronomers put in the computer simulations? After primary sources publish out do people criticise the authors may make some mistakes in their calculations and when editors creates the website, they tend to correct the authors who wrote the primary sources? Is secondary sources mostly summarizes the primary source?--69.226.42.116 (talk) 23:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, many research papers contain mistakes. If they make a dramatic claim, like the existence of cold fusion, you can bet others will check their work. On the other hand, if they make a claim nobody cares about, then it may very well go unchecked. StuRat (talk) 01:09, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

If you have a group of papers that make predictions and they arrive at different results, the likely explanation is that the predictions are based on different assumptions. There is almost never enough information available to make perfect predictions, so the only way to do it is to make guesses about the information that is missing. Different people make different guesses. As long as the authors are careful to explain the assumptions they have made, there is nothing wrong about that approach. This is how science works. Looie496 (talk) 02:02, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

So, basically research paper documents and computer documents basically involves speculations and alot of uncertainty. Is this the same things happening for years. Editors and websites will just check their work and correct what their work according to what they think is right. Do computer simulations involve alot of mistakes? I thought computer simulations looks accurate that is why I thought they don't have that much error bar.--69.233.255.83 (talk) 02:09, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Ever heard the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" ? That means the results of the simulation are based on whatever data and assumptions they supplied to the program. For example, if you use a calculator to do some math, you can still make mistakes by entering the wrong numbers, forgetting the decimal point, hitting the wrong buttons, or using it improperly (say taking the hyperbolic cosine when you wanted the regular cosine or log e when you wanted log 10). In most cases, the calculator won't tell you you made a mistake (with a few exceptions, like if you try to divide by zero). StuRat (talk) 02:45, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• Let me try to give a clearer answer. "Mistake" is the wrong word. Think about weather prediction. If the weather report predicts a 90% chance of rain tomorrow, and it doesn't rain, do you say that it made a mistake? No -- weather reports are made using imperfect models, and the data that goes into them is imperfect. Therefore the predictions are imperfect. The same thing happens in every type of science. The requirement for a scientific paper is to accurately report on how the results were obtained. There cannot be a requirement that the results be perfect, or nobody would be able to do any science at all. Looie496 (talk) 04:29, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe mistake was a wrong word of choice, but "error" sounds better. So every scientific papers have some threads of errors, could be they neglect an important variables. So every scientific paper will only tell me some accuracies, some speculation guesses will contain some errors.--69.233.255.83 (talk) 05:17, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but this shouldn't be surprising. **Every** detailed and complex document likely contains threads of errors. No one suggests that the scientific method always reaches the right conclusions, but it's been dramatically helpful to learn more things about our universe, and much better than our other methods of learning things. Chris M. (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

This still doesn't quite hit the mark. Think again about weather prediction. When I try to predict the weather, I use a computer simulation of the atmosphere, and feed it data from measuring stations. But my simulation is only a crude approximation of the real atmosphere, and I only have data from a few places, so my predictions are often wrong. That doesn't mean I made a mistake or an error, it only means that my prediction method is imperfect. It is certainly possible for me to make mistakes, for example if I make a programming error in writing my simulation program. But incorrect predictions are usually not the result of mistakes, they are usually the result of imperfect models and limited data. Looie496 (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Each prediction will have an interval of confidence. A weather report won't be right in more that 95% of all the time. If your model fails to deliver (that means, you predict 90% of rain, but are wrong most of the time), you'll need to find a better model. That's not a mistake, you just keep improving your imperfect model, basically forever. Are the mistakes that you found in the study in this direction? Are they a restriction of possibilities towards the right answer? Or are they cherry picking, typos, excel error or the like? OsmanRF34 (talk) 15:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Looie496, you used the weak analogy, I live in Los Angeles, I sometimes look up weather forecast when I hear threats of rain, when the weather forecast on TV said 80-90% of showers, it always rains, the weather forecast never bullshits, every-time when I get 70-80% of showers it always rains in Los Angeles.

You are lucky that LA lies in a region with predictable weather. Where I live, the weather forecast is often wrong, but when it is wrong here, it can be correct for a place just a few miles away. Weather here just isn't predictable with more than 60% accuracy. (To be fair, they did get it right for today, except that the showers are hail, not rain.) Dbfirs 09:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Note in addition in the cases our anon IP mentioned, the weather forecast appears to be wrong. If they are giving predictions of 70-80% chance of showers but there every time there is rain, then this is also wrong. They should be giving 100% chance of showers. Nil Einne (talk) 06:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• • I try to predict when will City of Irvine remodel the traffic light bulb by just see what happened in the history. I try to go according to what the City Department e-mailed me. But 92612 remodeled the three-colored traffic bulbs 5 month earlier than what the City Department e-mailed me. Now I try to predict 92604 and 92606, they will do it July 2013 I guess because 92618 done it in May 2012, 92612 done it in December 2012, that is based on what the data we had. Can I try to guess by using the computer simulation to figure out 92614 and 92620 if I want to. I know for sure 92618 will have a repeat of TL vehicle relamping in 2016-2017 fiscal year. I try to predict Central Orange County like Westminster, Garden Grove, Tustin, all of these sister cities when will they remodel yellow lights according to the history of yellow traffic light relamping in South Orange County's history. All I can tell myself if nobody knows, I can just write on paper 2016(????)2017(????)2018(????)2019(????) maybe one these cities, or some of these cities, maybe all of it or none of these cities. Can I myself use computer simulation to do it. I thought only scientist can use computer simulation to predict futures. I don't think any ordinary person can use computer simulation, since traffic lights fascinates me alot, I don't think I can use computer simulation to predict the changes of traffic lights.--69.233.255.83 (talk) 01:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Anyone can make such simulations provided they have the necessary training and knowledge of the subject, and enough programming skill to create the computer model. That's the hard part: for example, if you aren't trained in weather science, you're unlikely to make a good weather simulation. You'd also need one hell of a fast computer. Other systems are much easier to understand and program for and don't require nearly as much computing power.

Traffic lights are actually a good example. Most urban traffic lights are actually computer controlled to change based on models of traffic patterns. For example, if the city planners know that westbound traffic on 4th Avenue always increases at 5 pm (people going home from work), they can set the lights on that route to prefer traffic going westbound; eastbound traffic and cross-street traffic would get longer red lights, because you want to get the high-volume traffic going west out of the way first. They can also make the system account for other things, such as a sudden closure of a street (due to an accident), and it will adjust the "best" pattern for the lights.

Of course, if they lose connection to the central system that monitors these things (or are just plain old street lights), they can just revert to their default settings (which may vary at different intersections, again, based on city planning and known traffic patterns). If you know these patterns, and how the city planned to respond to them, you could make a pretty good predictive model for the traffic lights. There are also systems which have pressure sensors under the asphalt, which can detect the weight of a car stopped at the intersection, and trigger the light based on that. That's getting off-subject, though...

I really recommend you read a book called The Signal and the Noise. The author created a model that accurately predicted both the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential and Congressional elections. Not perfectly, I think one or two Congressional seats were wrong each, but that's a damn impressive accuracy rate. He does a great job of clearly explaining how this kind of system works, and the challenges involved in making it work reliably (but never perfectly). — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

April 23

Smartphones: resistive or capacitive touchscreen

Why does the capacitive touchscreen dominate almost completely the market of smartphones? The resistive touchscreen is cheaper and user-friendlier (you can write on the screen, and women can type with their fingernails on it). I know that the latter can poorer resolution and can be scratched more easily, but this second concern can be deal with. And if I remember well, the PDAs were more oriented toward resistive touchscreen than capacitive screen. OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:38, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Did you not read the latter article? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:46, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Reisio: your comments as always are not very useful. The articles don't say why people flocked massively to the capacitive screen. OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

it's just the style Gzuckier (talk) 04:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad I flocked. Typing this on my old resistoscreen would be out of the question. This Galaxy Tab's capaciscreen, suported right now by my temorarily crippled arm, is the closest thing to a real keyboard without the hassle of carrying one around and finding a flat space. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Windows 7 default file filters

In Notepad + Open/Save As, the default seems to be to only list files with the ".txt" extension. I can change it each time with a pull-down menu, but I'd prefer to correct this annoying default in the first place. I believe I see the same behavior elsewhere in Windows 7, too. So, is there a way to stop such file type filters from being the default ? StuRat (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I do not beleve there is a simple way to change this default, but you do not need to use the horrible drop-down menu if you have a keyboard attached to the computer. Indeed, if you have, you can simply write *.* followed by Enter. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Just * is enough. You can also type the beginning of the name of the file you're looking for and select it from the resulting drop-down list. -- BenRG 20:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes it a bit quicker to change. But there's still that moment of panic when I don't see my critical file and wonder how I managed to delete it, until I think to check for a file extension filter. StuRat (talk) 21:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

You might consider this a useless response, but have you considered getting a real editor (if you edit enough that this is a problem of any sort)? I imagine that most such have less rigid behavior. --Tardis (talk) 04:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh hell, the emacs versus vi wars have begun! Run for your lives! ;) — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

If anyone starts posting about vi, somebody will probably yank it. StuRat (talk) 02:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

"The Cloud"

Can someone please explain to this very aged non-teche about" The Cloud". I am prepared to believe that data is not actually sitting in a fluffy lump up there, but where is it stored? A massive server (or two) somewhere, if so where. Who maintains it, who funds it? I'd love to know 'cause I seem to use it a lot!85.211.192.200 (talk) 15:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Cloud storage is the relevant article, but will probably make things less clear for you. The succinct answer to your question is: on a bunch of disk arrays in a giant data center owned by a large company like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Baidu, Microsoft, or the like. Usually that storage is sold by the big company to smaller companies (using names like Amazon S3), and the smaller companies (like say Dropbox) resell that to consumers with a friendly interface. The storage is paid for by whomever is doing the storing (things like Amazon S3 charge so much per month per megabyte stored, plus so much per megabyte sent or received from their service). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Right. Don't be misled by groovy names, they're just renting you an online hard drive, no more no less, with no particular warranty of their still being in business at any given time in the future, or that they will continue to wish to do business with you at any given time in the future, or that they will make any effort to allow you to get your data back in these cases, as I have discovered more than once. Not dissimilar from the public parking structure which takes no responsibility for your vehicle or its contents. Gzuckier (talk) 17:14, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

A storage contract may include such guarantees, of course, but you will probably have to pay extra for them. -- BenRG 20:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

They say storage (and computation) is "in the cloud" when they mean that the responsibility for organising exactly where things are kept is devolved to the storage company. Previously a given piece of storage might be on a specific server; the idea with the cloud is you pay Amazon to store some data for you, and they can move it around or duplicate it however they like, so long as they give it back to you when you ask. Frequently, businesses pay for "high availability", meaning the data is replicated in multiple (geographically distinct) places - so if Amazon's datacenter in Palo Alto, CA was eaten by Godzilla, your data would also be in Jacksonville, FL, or South Bend, IN - and when you asked Amazon for it, you'd get it back just as if the Palo Alto datacenter was still working. If that works okay, it's a good thing for a modest sized business - it means they can keep working even if one facility is unavailable (realistically due to a powercut rather than Mothra), but they don't need to have lots of their own technicians in each datacenter around the world, making sure all that data gets seamlessly copied around. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

If you aren't paying for the storage, it's likely funded by advertising, as a loss leader for a paid service, or by venture capitalists who hope the company will become profitable in the future. -- BenRG 20:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Although, last I checked (admittedly a while ago), “cloud” services were still more expensive than ordinary shared counterparts (not that this doesn’t mean it can’t be a loss leader. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Finlay has covered the idea or intent of “cloud” stuff, but you shouldn’t confuse that with what you might actually get. It is not necessarily synonymous with redundancy or reliability or high access. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

then there's Clod Storage, where your files are kept in an Israeli kibbutz. Gzuckier (talk) 04:41, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, well thanks for all this, I'm a bit wiser now. 85.211.192.200 (talk) 05:47, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

April 24

Trojan Autorun.inf

So my computer's been infected by a trojan or a worm or whatever you call it. Everytime I insert my flashdrive, there's an autorun file there, which keeps on regenerating no matter how many times I delete/ quarantine it. Microsoft Security Essentials was no good in detecting it, so I used Eset NOD 32 and then a small trusty software called Autorun eater to remove it. But everytime it gets removed, it comes back again and it keeps creating shortcuts to the folders inside the flashdrive, and hiding the actualy folders instead, so that if I delete the shortcut, the actual folders with the data in them (which are hidden cuz of this autorun file) gets deleted along with it. I've tried scanning the entire computer (C: and D:, the only two drives I have) but NOD32 didn't detect the autorun thing in the computer harddisk. So I'm not sure where it keeps coming back from if it's not on the computer. Can anybody help me get rid of this thing please? It's terribly annoying, and has caused Explorer to stop working everytime I try firing up Control Panel. I can't access stuff like "add or remove programs" or "folder options" either, because they're in the control panel and everytime I try bringing them up Windows Explorer crashes. I had disabled the "hide extensions for known file types" options, which means I could see the file extensions before, but ever since the worm attacked all the extensions have been hidden and I can't go to folder options to fix it. La Alquimista 04:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I regularly deal with these particular viruses/trojans and they are typically not easy to fix. Often the OS itself is compromised and even after removing the malware you still have problems. This can range from corrupted files (.exe and .dll) and/or corrupted registry entries. It is often quicker to reformat and reinstall than to fix it. But let's try anyway. I would start by downloading the latest free version of Avast!, installing it and running a boot-time scan. What OS are you running? 196.214.78.114 (talk) 06:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I use Windows 7 Home Basic. I did a complete in-depth scan with Eset NOD32 and it found and quarantined 3 files, but it's still not fixed. Are you saying I might have to reformat and reinstall Windows itself? But that would lead to loss of all the data on my hard disk (which doesn't have backup, because there's music, movies, pictures, all that sort of thing)... La Alquimista 07:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Related question: Is there a program with which one can catch "rogue" processes, in the sense that it prevents all processes from creating certain files? I always wished there was such a thing after I ran into an autorun-generating malware. It turned out that THAT "malware" (the one I had) came with a flash drive and caused malfunctions on 2000p.

No. Compiling a database of safe and rogue processes would be practically impossible. There are MILLIONS of .exe files out there and more being created every day. So you database would have to be up to date - just like any AV. There is also the distinct possibility that rogue processes get listed as safe and vice-versa. The best workaround is to run as a restricted user with no admin privileges. To install anything you would have to log off and log in as an admin user type. 196.214.78.114 (talk) 08:25, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

So, while it was malignous, it could have been on Avast's exception list, so (as I understand it) Avast didn't stop it because it thought that process was allowed to do that kind of stuff. And that could be what keeps puzzling Alquimista, too...

To Alquimista: yes, try to backup all data files first. Your troubles are most probably in an EXE or DLL, so backing up the rest is quite safe.

217.255.138.5 (talk) 07:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Your main objective here is to get the system stable enough to make a clean backup of all your stuff without inadvertently copying the malware to your backup. Whether or not you need to reinstall everything will depend on the damage done by the malware and the cleanup process. The first step is to stop the malware from launching. Unless you know the name of the specific malware it can be a challenge to find it. Many (older) viruses and such launch using a startup registry entry - such as HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\current version\run or HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\current version\RunOnce. This is good place to start. Make sure you back up your registry before editing anything. see: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/back-up-the-registry. Editing the registry is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and could render your system unusable if you mess it up. Unfortunately there are many places in the registry where it could launch from. Anyway, just browse the above registry keys and see what is being launched. You can use a site like http://www.processlibrary.com/ to check what each process does. I still recommend you try Avast! Boot Time Scan. Different AV software scan in different ways using different Heuristic_algorithms. To have any real chance of fixing it you need to know what the malware is known as by one or more AV vendors. Once you have that you can search for specific cleanup instructions. There is no one-fix-for-all. 196.214.78.114 (talk) 07:57, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Word of warning. There are many cleanup tools out there that are NOT cleanup tools but trojans or Ransomware_(malware). Be very careful - you could just make it worse. 196.214.78.114 (talk) 08:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

You have a virus, and yet you haven't backed up your data? Forget the virus. Back up all your important data NOW, using either an external hard drive or cloud storage like Dropbox. Trust me, make a backup now, not tomorrow, and you won't regret it. --128.112.25.104 (talk) 22:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

What is Wikipedia's current domain name registrar?

Resolved

 – ± Lenoxus (" *** ") 15:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it MarkMonitor? That's what I'm getting from this whois but I might not be reading correctly. Also, is MarkMoniter the registrar for Google, Facebook and others? ± Lenoxus (" *** ") 14:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Wikimedia changed from GoDaddy because of that company's (initial) support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:15, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

GoDaddy's support for SOPA reaffirmed Wikimedia's decision, according to the link above. The wording implies to me that there were other issues with GoDaddy. OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! ± Lenoxus (" *** ") 15:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Google ads

For the last couple of months, things I search for on Amazon later show up in Google ads. What is going on? Is Amazon giving that info to Google? Is google snooping on me? Is Firefox snooping on me? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Even if they aren’t, the answer is yes. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

• Amazon openly shares some of your data with third-parties.
• Google openly tracks your web browsing behavior, including when you are visiting sites that are not operated by Google, including when you enable "private browsing," delete cookies, or otherwise try to minimize such behavior on the client-side.
• Firefox openly shares your web-browsing history with Google (by default). In addition, it also shares this data with Google covertly, for the purposes of "security").

Just this last weekend, I tried to download Firefox source-code with the intention of building a "scrubbed version," in which I would remove all portions of code that transmitted my private data to Google.com - or in fact, to any web server other than the one I type into the location bar. I found myself in dependency hell and decided to delete Firefox, and downloaded the source for Chromium, the free software alternative to Google Chrome. After reading the instructions to get the code and deciding that I did not want to download "hundreds of thousands of files" - a number of source-code files that I can only assume the disinterested developer intentionally obfuscated using automated code-generation - I realized that my prospects for modifying a free software web browser were really limited to lynx (web browser). Lynx does not surreptitiously upload your user-data to Google. It does not require hundreds-of-thousands of obfuscated source-files to build. It does not contain user-interface elements that are sponsored by web corporations; it does not automatically upload your user-data and browsing history to Google by default under the guise of securing your connection from phishing attacks.

It is disappointing that internet technology has taken such a dire turn towards built-in surveillance. It is more disappointing that even with free software and advanced understanding of technology, it is prohibitively difficult to "out-gun" the opposition, who are very well financed and very interested in preserving the status-quo. Nimur (talk) 23:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

You can disable all built-in Google services in the standard builds of both Firefox and Chrome. Neither Firefox nor Chrome is intentionally obfuscated. Modern web browsers are a lot more complicated than you realize. A large fraction of those 100,000+ files are for testing. The number of files containing source code that is actually compiled into the browser is relatively small, though still large. In any case, you're being oddly selective in your paranoia if you think a custom build will help you. You can't audit all of the code; what good will it do to remove the overt surveillance? And you can't trust anyone else to audit the code since they might be in the pay of the Enemy.

Firefox does not send your web browsing history to anyone (nor does Chrome), unless you use the cloud sync service. The phishing/malware protection downloads a database from Google and checks URLs locally against the database. If you visit a blacklisted URL, it pings Google (anonymouslyGoogle cookies "may be sent") to see if it's been taken off the list since the last update. [8] So Google's internal logs could be used to associate you with URLs of reported phishing/malware sites, and not any other URLs. I think this is a pretty minor privacy violation since even if visiting a known phishing/malware site somehow reflected badly on the victim, you could always claim believably that you'd been tricked into visiting it.

Google does track, using cookies, web sites that you visit that show Google ads, which can lead to your seeing ads relevant to one web site on another one. If you block the cookies, their ability to correlate visits to different sites is seriously limited. If you block the ads entirely, they don't know that anyone visited the site. There are quite a few Firefox and Chrome extensions that can help here.

I wasn't aware that Amazon used Google ads or any Google service on its web site, and I seriously doubt that Amazon sells users' search histories or that Google would buy them, so I'm not sure what's going on there. -- BenRG 07:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I was going to say something similar about phishing earlier, but changed my mind as I found info suggesting the details in that URL are outdated or confusing. See [9] for example (also [10] but more confusing). As I understand it, while that was true in FF2, in FF3 it's more complicated. There is only a local list of part hashes, I presume this was either to reduce storage space and transfer time of the list or to make it more difficult for people to know what's on the list. If the hash matches the partial hash, FF requests the full hash (and possibly 4 more at random). This means two things, number one is Google doesn't actually know the full hash and possibly doesn't even know what the partial hash is. But it also means there will potentially (I don't know the figures involved) be some URLs which were never labelled phishing but match the partial hash.

As for the Amazon thing, presuming the OP ever used Google for the search, that's an obvious explanation. In addition, Amazon has a habit of sending emails about what you were looking at (I guess you can disable it, I never bothered). If the OP is using Gmail, then this would likely mean related ads may start showing up in Gmail (but while they use search data for Gmail ads [11], I don't believe they use Gmail data for search ads at the moment [12]). Also even if they never searched on Google for the same products, is the OP sure they didn't search for the same stuff elsewhere, like in places that do partner with Google.

(Targeted ads can perhaps be a bit scary at times, but they can also be funny, like how Google seemed to be convinced I was interested in childcare despite having no children and only one closely related child who I've never really looked after.)

Nil Einne (talk) 17:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not using gmail. To the best of my recolection, these are things I looked at specifically on Amazon, but I could be wrong about that. (I also might have looked on eBay and I might have done a google search, but I don't remember doing that.) They are the exact items I looked at on Amazon, not "external hard drives" in general, for example. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:18, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Microsoft Word Help

I am trying to copy some text from a PDF file to Microsoft document file, the PROBLEM is that the text written in PDF file is written in 2 bands, and when i copy the text to paste it in microsoft word file, it appears in a single band,i.e. short lines

Someone will help ,if there is any way that when I paste the text in Microsoft word file,, it should appear as a complete line,that reaches margin of paper, I am preparing an assignment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.220.215.12 (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably there is nothing you can do. The PDF file format was never designed as a way to store text for editing. It was designed for printing and for displaying with a specific layout. Copying and pasting from a PDF file depends on special tricks, and if those tricks don't work, you are probably out of luck. You could try using a different PDF reader, but it probably won't help. The only real solution is to find a file that contains the text in a proper format. Looie496 (talk) 17:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Looie that the PDF format was not designed for this. However, there probably are some ways you can do it. It depends on whether you'd rather spend your time wrangling new software, or spend that time manually reformatting in Word. Anyway, I've used this ExtractText program before for this purpose [13]. You can also google /pdf text extraction/ for other packages that might work. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

If by two bands you mean two columns the only solution I have ever found is manual. μηδείς (talk) 02:03, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's an idea you might try: Copy the text from the PDF file and paste it in Word. In Word, go to the Find and Replace window. In the Find box put in ^p and in the Replace box put in a single space. (This tells Word to replace each Enter with a space and might help you combine the short lines into a single paragraph.) Click Replace a few times to see if it does what you want, then try clicking Replace All. --Bavi H (talk) 02:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Bavi,Formula works,,,,, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.220.215.12 (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Bowling and Blu Ray

I need a new blu ray player, and want to get a game-player that has a bowling game similar to that you get in the sports package with the Wii. I know Wii doesn't play blu ray, or believe it doesn't, in any current version. Is there another gaming system that will play blu rays well and which offers a similar game to the bowling offered with the Wii sports starter game? (I.e., one stands up and goes through the actual motions of bowling with a controller)? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:20, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

The Wii does not support blu-ray, correct. Neither does the Xbox 360. The PS3 is the only (current) system that supports blu-ray. They do have a "wand" accessory for the kind of motion detection you're talking about, but I don't know how many bowling games there are which support it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I see the PS3 has bowling in one or more versions, but the Brunswick Pro Bowling gets bad reviews for the remote interaction. Any relevant reviews for sports packages or different versions of the game? I am looking for something that will appeal to a 75 year-old so she will get exercise and be able to watch new movies. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like you may have to wait for Xbox 720 or PS4 I'm afraid. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Neglecting, for a moment, the specifics of your situation, in general I'd think it is now wise to decouple the choice of console from its Blu-Ray-ness. When Blu-Ray first came out, players were hella expensive, and a many people bought a PS3 because it was a decent player as well as a decent console, and because Sony effectively subsidised it. But those times are long gone, and you can get a decent name-brand Blu-Ray standalone player for £40 (and some mystery-meat Chinese brand for £30). So I'd recommend someone bought the console that they wanted, with the games that they knew they wanted, and buy a separate Blu-Ray player as well (if the PS3 wasn't what they decided upon). If I were buying a console for a septuagenarian with no gaming background, who I wanted to get moving, I'd certainly buy them a Wii, as I've seen how well such people take to Wii Sports and Wii Fit. The only problem that leaves is that it's two boxes, two sets of cables, and the extra bother of picking the correct AV channel on the TV - if you can get them past that (my lot get a set of laminated instructions with graphic logos) then two boxes are better than one. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:09, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

My ulterior motive is to sneak a blu ray player into my parents' house. My mother enjoys bowling on my Nephew's Wii immensely, but she hates seeing the lights from the VCR and the cable box under the TV set. Were I to get her a Wii she would accept it. Were I to get a blu ray player (I can't just replace the DVD player since it is a DVD VCR combo and she has a lot on VCR) she would freak out. Thoroughly set in her ways and intractable. I'll probably get her a Wii in any case. Next time they go on a long vacation I'll go install a blu ray, tell my dad, and insist to my mom it was always there if she notices it. μηδείς (talk) 01:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Out of curiosity I checked, and there actually is a Blu-Ray VHS combo device available! However, it seems discontinued and sells for over a grand on a few sites. Bing shopping did find somewhere offering it for $230. It's the Panasonic DMP-BD70V. I found it by searching for blu-ray VHS combo on Amazon, where that was the only one, but there may be other models out there. 38.111.64.107 (talk) 14:39, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

April 25

Downloading woes...(I need a good, free paint program but Internet Explorer won't let me!)

A couple of days ago I tried to download Paint.NET and I was given the message "<filename> (can't remember what it was exactly - it is the installer file) contains a virus and was deleted." I tried again but got the same result. So I thought to myself "Ok, I'll try another program..." so today, I tried GIMP. And the same result!! I seriously doubt both these programs come with viruses. I'm running IE9. Does anyone have a clue as to what is happening here? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! --Yellow1996 (talk) 01:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I had no problem installing Gimp with Safari and Windows 7. You might try downloading Safari and using it, even though it's no longer being supported or updated for widdows. (I am using Safari now on a computer I bought April 1.) μηδείς (talk) 02:06, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Seriously? ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As in, am I actually using Safari? Yes, it works fine and never glitches on me as IE does. Only time I use IE is to download with realplayer. I long for the days of early Netscape, it was wonderful. μηδείς (talk) 01:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like you have an overly strict virus scanner. For example, it might view anything with an unrecognized certificate as a potential virus. StuRat (talk) 02:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

My guess is you have some kind of badware installed, do a scan. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

• Where are you trying to download them from? There are many sites that purport to offer downloads of free software but actually add nasty stuff to it. If you are trying to download from the official sites, that shouldn't happen, but you didn't say. Looie496 (talk) 16:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Windows usually comes with the Paint program. It is in the Accessories folder. If you want to use Paint.NET it has an official site (see our article), which is where you should load it from (keeping an eye out to make sure your are not fooled by adverts posing as download links). Astronaut (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Whoa! Thanks for such a large turnout! :) Now, I'll explain further. I am sure that I am downloading them from the official websites (as linked from their respective Wikipedia articles.) As for changing browsers, I'd like to avoid that if at all possible! ;) - as for the virus scanner I think StuRat is on to something. I have never had this problem before, and these are the only two things I have tried downlading since upgrading to AVG's 2013 edition (though I've been using AVG for years.) I think I'll check in AVG's settings and see if I can adjust them? I don't think I have any viruses but I'll try a scan if the settings thing doesn't work. And I probably should have mentioned that the only reason I am not using mspaint is because what I am doing requires transparent-background PNGs, which mspaint cannot do. I'll post back with the results. --Yellow1996 (talk) 22:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, here's what happened: first, I tried to look in the settings for AVG. There wasn't anything obvious which could be causing the problem, so I just outright disabled the whole program. I then proceeded to try and download Paint.NET, with the exact same result as before. So I re-enabled and started a full computer scan. This - to my suprise - returned 8 viruses. I removed these and tried again, with the same result as before!!! So I'm beginning to think this is a problem with IE itself. I'm going to try and install Firefox and see if I can get it from there. Edit: Wonderful </sarcasm> - I can't download Firefox because it "contains a virus and was deleted". So it looks like the problem is IE won't let me download anything. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do now? --Yellow1996 (talk) 00:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC) and 00:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Can the CSS of a transcluded template be overridden?

I've tried {| style="font-size: 10pt before the transclusion but that didn't change anything. So, I was wondering, is it at all possible? -- Mentifisto 16:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

April 26

Buying a used SSD -- pros/cons?

What are some of the pros and cons of buying a used SSD? --Navstar (talk) 00:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Can’t say I have ever met someone who has bought a used computer drive before, but:

• Earlier model SSDs were not as reliable as those you can get new today.
• A used drive will probably be more used and therefore have a theoretically shorter lifespan after you acquire it.
• Potential data remanence issues*.

As ever, if the price is right, it’s right. :) ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

pro - if you're a criminal they may not have erased their bank details and passwords properly or left incriminating evidence or something you can sell to the papers.[14] Dmcq (talk) 03:34, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Quantum computers disprove Church-Turing thesis.

Do quantum computers disprove the Church–Turing thesis. Look at Grover's algorithm for instance, which can search an unsorted database in $O(N^{1/2})$ time, but a Turing machine can only do it in $O(N)$ time. Although Grover's algorithm only gives the correct answer with high probability, any $O(N^{1/2})$ unsorted database search algorithm on a Turing machine can only find the correct answer with meager probability $1/{\sqrt {N}}$. AnalysisAlgebra (talk) 03:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The Church Turing Thesis is that a function can be computed by algorithm iff there is a turing machine that computes that function. It doesn't matter that quantum computers may be able to do things faster, only that they can't solve problems a turing machine can't. If P != NP, you would have NTM's that are faster than regular TM's, but there is no problem an NTM can solve that a TM can't; same idea with QC.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Choosing 'favorites' in Imgur

In Imgur, how do one choose a picture into his 'favorites' folder, technically ? It might be simple, but somehow skiped my eyes. Thank you, BentzyCo (talk) 04:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Click on the heart icon below the image. Or if you prefer to use the keyboard, type a zero. You'll see a heart appear over the image when it gets favorited. There are also some keyboard shortcuts here. Dismas|^(talk) 04:47, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

A Wikipedia-like clickable "contents" section in Wordpress

I'm not yet well versed in the art of our office website's Wordpress so I need your help here.

Anyways, one of my colleagues asked me if it is possible to have clickable words or phrases in our relatively long FAQ that will point to the reader's desired section. Anyways, I think what he was saying is that I do a "contents" like section in the FAQ similar to the way clicking "Nature" in the Wikipedia article redirects the reader to Wikipedia#Nature.--Lenticel ^(talk) 07:50, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

That's called a hyperlink, or just a link. If it's an HTML page, then it's doable. StuRat (talk) 07:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I want to do it within the same page. Its easier to link outside the page but I'm not sure how to do it within the same page. --Lenticel ^(talk) 07:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah it seems that the thing that I wanted to get is the HTML Anchor. Thanks for the lead StuRat.--Lenticel ^(talk) 08:05, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. Can we mark this Q resolved ? StuRat (talk) 10:16, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia turns Section headings in an article into a Table of Contents (TOC) at the top of the page automatically when there are more than a certain number of sections, which is cool. Maintaining this sort of stuff (creating such links manually) is not much fun. It would probably be possible to run WordPress and Wikipedia together on the same site—with WordPress looking after some pages and MediaWiki looking after others—but you probably don't want Wiki pages that anybody can edit ;-) I don't know if anybody has modified the MediaWiki software to restrict editing to members only. There is third-party Wiki software, but I don't think it has MediaWiki's automatic TOC feature. LittleBen (talk) 10:38, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the Wordpress plugin Table of Contents Plus is what you're looking for: "A powerful yet user friendly plugin that automatically creates a context specific index or table of contents (TOC) for long pages (and custom post types). More than just a table of contents plugin, this plugin can also output a sitemap listing pages and/or categories across your entire site. Built from the ground up and with Wikipedia in mind, the table of contents by default appears before the first heading on a page." - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Old form of email address

When I first got access to email in the mid-1990s, I remember that the way I sent email to people was different to how it is today. The email address was always quoted in the usual format i.e. localpart@domainpart, but I was not able to enter that format directly into my email client (which was text-based). Instead I had to enter some long string of characters which was essentially the email address in reverse. I can't remember the exact format, but it went something like uk:name of network:something else::username. There were definitely colons involved. What was all that about, then? Email address doesn't seem to mention it. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 09:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps UUCP mail, which used "bang paths" separated by ! and written in a range of orders including the reverse of the RFC 822 format. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 09:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Another scheme was JANET NRS, which again used "big endian" addresses, but with periods (still not colons). Really, before Internet-working RFCs were adopted, individual networks and individual platforms used a variety of schemes - and even once the RFCs were adopted, for a while things were translated from the local scheme into the RFC scheme for Internet transmission, and then back translated into another local scheme at the other end. So you probably need to specify what network you were on, what platform (e.g. VMS), and perhaps what institution. I do seem to recall having a decnet email address back in 1987 with colons in, but I can't be sure. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:29, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm thinking you were on a VMS cluster using DECnet node addresses as Mail addresses (before they added SMTP address support to the Mail program): examples of mail using that format are in this PDF (p36-). An example of OpenVMS mail showing how SMTP (RFC 822) email addresses were represented in the VMS Mail client is shown at the bottom of this document. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the abbreviations VMS and VAX ring bells so I think it was that last one. There were no @ symbols and there were definitely colons, not periods or exclamation marks. It was a UK academic institution and I remember my lecturer telling me that it wasn't necessary to have as much information for JANET email addresses as it was for those outside of JANET. Thanks Finlay. --Viennese Waltz 12:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)