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May 9

Good note taking application?

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here could recommend a good application that can be used to take quick notes and doodles, perhaps emulating standard paper and pencil. I've searched Google quite a bit but I seem to only come up with text note apps, but missing the feature where I can draw shapes and diagrams, or maybe even drag text boxes around. I'm on Windows but a web-based application would be great too. Thanks -- penubag  (talk) 04:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I use EverNote pretty heavily. The "paper and pencil" approach is one I've used a little, but don't have much practical need for. There are Moleskine notebooks designed by Evernote specifically to be easily digitized (quite expensive, though) and Skitch interfaces with it well for the kinds of graphical tasks you're talking about. It has decent OCR. You can use the web-based client, but that will quickly become cumbersome; the Windows client seems pretty reliable and is frequently updated. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  05:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I was mostly looking into free options. Free as in free lunch not necessarily GPL. One that I can use on my computer to storyboard and take notes. Can I draw on Evernote for free? I tried it and it looks like it only takes keyboard text. -- penubag  (talk) 07:13, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I have and use Evernote as well. I'd recommend it. And to answer your question, I can't see anything that says you need a premium account to be able to draw. Though I think it might best be done in Evernote's sister application Skitch which, as Rhododendrites mentioned, works seamlessly with EN. Dismas|^(talk) 13:36, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

OneNote can do all that, and Microsoft recently made it free for everyone. It has a web version, an offline version, and phone/tablet apps. —Noiratsi (talk) 09:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I used to use OneNote pretty extensively at university where I had free access to it. It's good to hear that it is free now. Katie R (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Digital paper (available from various places) has some ardent aficionados. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 00:19, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I lost my PC's screen commands

Hello Wise Ones ! I recently found in a dump a rather good-looking Medion Notebook PC, hosting an XP OS who had been asleep for some 6-7 years. As its screen had been gouged in, I plugged my new PC to a monitor, & it worked OK, though slowly; but, the image being blurry, I tried to make it more crisp, and got on my screen a very widened panorama of the Blue Mountains, with no commands at all. Figuring they were somewhere & not very far, I tried to click outside the screen, but nothing changed. How can I go back to the former screen ? At length, by switching power in & out several times I got a "failure-less boot" which did not give me back a normal screen but allowed me to surf a little, & enter WP to consult it , but not to edit...Thanks a lot beforehand for your help ( though I'm an old timer (& entered in comput. just before retirement), I can hear geeks chuckling from afar ;-). If I can get this Medion to work, it'll offer it to one of my grand-sons, & it'll learn him to keep his fortitude in front of his pals' sneers ) Arapaima (talk) 09:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I have something similar happen when I plug my vintage laptop (Windows 98 !) into an external monitor. The first time I boot, it tries to come up at the laptop's native resolution, but the next time it comes up at the external monitor's default resolution. Then, if I go back to using the laptop's own screen, it's on the external monitor's res until I reboot again. Some suggestions in your case:

1) Are there screen controls that come with the monitor that allow you to change the width and height of the display ? Those were common on CRT monitors, but not on newer, flat screen LCDs. If you have those controls, you may be able to bring the "Start" button onto the screen that way and use it to adjust the resolution from there.

2) If not, try another monitor, preferably an old CRT with a big screen.

3) There should be some keystrokes to get you to the control panel, from where you can pick the Display icon to change the resolution. I don't know the keystrokes to get you to the Start button in XP, but hopefully somebody else does. From there, you may have to pick Settings, then Control Panel, then the Display icon. (They removed the Settings layer some time between Windows 98 and Windows 7, but I'm not sure exactly when.) Once you get to the Start menu, if the part you need still isn't on the screen, just type in the first letter, so S, then C (or just C, if XP skips the Settings layer). One complication is if your laptop has more than one command that starts with S or C. In that case, you have to type the letter repeatedly to get to the one you want, then hit enter. Of course, if you can't see which one is highlighting, then you just have to keep trying, hitting the letter one more time at each iteration until you get what you want.

BTW, I applaud you for your thrift and Mother Earth applauds you for removing things from the dump instead of adding to it. StuRat (talk) 13:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

(As a thank to both, & a sample of very wild random mental associations & reminiscences )Vietnamese lady, humming a song by Boris Vian she learned many years ago from her French foreign legion lover, and turning the viands over on the spit : "Ouch, hurt me, beat me, give me pain – I love painfull hard love-making..." "Sooo, she adds to herself, cocking frog and rat (sic) together, that'll be very good, furthermore they love each-other's scent, and they were caught while gossiping on the same dump..."

• Start button if you don't have a Windows key: [Ctrl]-[Esc].
• "Run" command: [Win]-R. Without a Win key: [Ctrl]-[Esc], [up] 3 times, [Enter]. If that doesn't work, try different amount of [up]s, e.g. twice or 4 times.
• Control panel: Use the "Run" command and type "control.exe"
• Shortcut to Display properties: right-click empty spot on the desktop, "Properties".

These should work in Windows 98, 2000, and XP. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:08, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@Arapaima: Sorry, I didn't see yesterday how late my reply was. I still hope that you can put some of it to good use. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 05:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

What is (was) Kirk McKusick's net-connected wine cellar?

I read in the about the authors section of the book The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System for one of the co-authors Marshall Kirk McKusick the following: "In his spare time, he enjoys swimming, scuba diving, and wine collecting. The wine is stored in a specially constructed wine cellar (accessible from the net using the command 'telnet McKusick.COM 451') in the basement of the house that he shares with Eric Allman, his domestic partner of 17-and-some-odd years."

I tried the telnet command of course, but got a connection failed message. What originally happened or happens when one connects using a terminal that can connect? Did/does it give information about the current contents of the cellar? Are there commands to control robotic machinery inside the cellar? Or something else? What could be done through the connection? 20.137.2.50 (talk) 17:33, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

More recent autobiographical snippets, from stuff McKusick has done, no longer mention telnet, but instead say the info is on his website. I guess that specifically it means this page, which is mostly the status of various home automation sensors. A photo of the cellar is here; it appears entirely manual - those cables around the bottles appear to be bungee cords, to stop the bottles from bouncing off the rack during an earthquake. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 18:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

May 10

Pollution detector ?

I use fans in my windows at night, in summer, to cool the house down. The problem is that my neighbor will light up a cigarette or idle his car in the driveway or pour lighter fluid on his grill, and my house will be filled with pollutants before I can turn my fans off. Is there a "pollution detector" that could flip an electrical switch when pollution is detected, to turn them off ? (I am very skeptical that such a device exists and is reasonably priced, but thought I'd ask on the off chance.) Ideally the device could also close the windows, but I know that's asking too much. Reversing the fans to blow the pollution back out is another thought (although this assumes that there is fresh air somewhere outside the house to replace the air which is blown out).

A device that just sets off an alarm might be of some use, since it could wake me up so I can turn off the fans, rather than me waking to a house full of pollution and choking as I run for the fans. I did at least get my neighbors to agree to stop putting their rotting garbage under my window. StuRat (talk) 03:33, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Just reverse the fans so they're always blowing outward. They will still cool the house. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 06:09, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Nope. The air has to be replaced, so air will be sucked in from around the edges of the fans, down chimneys, etc., possibly leading to carbon monoxide poisoning. Pointing all window fans out is a bad idea. But, if I point most of them in, then a few could reverse and blow out without causing a problem. I currently have 9 window fans, 8 of which are in use as I type. StuRat (talk) 13:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Growing up in Houston we often used attic fans. Basically just a fan like 4' x 4' x 1' or so mounted face down behind a grill above the central hallway or some such. One switch on the wall turned it on and the other controlled the direction of airflow (one thing you had to remember was to shut it off and allow it to "spin down" before you reversed the thing!). It was a very effective system, I remember, and seemed to outperform most central AC systems even; in "sucking" mode the thing could make the house quite chilly even on a hot summer day and in the reverse mode, with cracked windows, could clear out any smoke or what have you pretty quickly. I imagine it wouldn't be very expensive to install one either, especially so if you were to do most of the work yourself. Sebastian Garth (talk) 14:21, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, fans can be far more efficient at cooling a home than A/C, provided cool, dry, unpolluted air is available outside. However, an attic fan would have the same problem, that it would suck in polluted air, until somebody flips the switch, which can take a while, especially if everyone is asleep at the time. You seem to be talking about pollution generated inside the home, by smokers or cooking mishaps, perhaps. StuRat (talk) 14:44, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

You are aware that Houston is quite hot and muggy much of the time, right? The system still works, I assure you. Until you've actually seen one in action you can't really imagine just how effective it can be. And yes, even odors wafting into the house can be summarily evacuated in literally seconds under most conditions (barring say a huge plume of pollution). Maybe not as cold as AC but better air flow in any case...Sebastian Garth (talk) 16:04, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's not possible to make your house cooler and less humid using fans, when it's hotter and more humid outside. What they can do, though, is cool off the occupants of the house, by blowing the hot, moist air around them away and replacing it with cooler, dryer house air. You might find that a fan pointing directly at you will be more effective this way, in that 100% of the breeze goes into cooling you, and none goes towards sucking in hot, moist outside air to replace the cooler, dryer air being exhausted. StuRat (talk) 19:12, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Darn it, in the time it took to write my answer, much of it seems to have become irrelevant now you've added more details. Nine fans, that's a lot. Well, here's my answer anyway, for what it's worth...

Couldn't you put them on a timer so they don't run during likely pollution? I've been looking for good ways to cool during the summer as well, and I've come to the conclusion that fans won't cut it. Opening windows on opposite sides and the doors in between will usually displace more air. The average wind speed in summer is 9 km/h where I live, or 2.5 m/s; assuming that you get the equivalent airflow of that through a one m² (11 ft²) section (in reality the section will be bigger but the speed lower), thats 2.5 m³/sec or 9000 m³/h (5300 cfm). To achieve the same result you 'd need 5 or 6 table fans (12 inch diameter) or a 36 inch whole-house fan like this one.

A whole house fan exhausts to the attic and since hot air rises it gets rid of the hottest air, but with fans in your windows chances are you're pushing out relatively cool air while the hottest air stays inside. And while the wind will move all air in the same direction, your fans could be blowing against the prevailing wind direction and reducing the natural air flow.

I've tried numerous setups with "table fans" over the years, I found blowing air out to be somewhat more efficient than blowing air in, and the best position for the fan was at a distance of some five or six feet from the window, maybe because the air stream pulls additional air along with it, or because the cone of air expands to cover the whole window (the air slows down so the diameter must increase, since it's the same amount of air) so no air is coming in through the same window, which would happen if you put the fan on the window sill (I hung a blanket in front of a second window as a crude measuring device, the angle it made an indication of the amount of air coming in). This works well with a second window facing the same side to let in fresh air, because wind direction wouldn't effect it.

Problem with a fan in front of the window blowing air inside is that in the window plane, you've got a disk through which air is flowing in while around the disk the air is flowing out, so the intake of the fan is surrounded by air coming from inside.

As for pollution detectors, the only affordable thing I can think of is an ionizing smoke detector re-calibrated to a more sensitive setting, but I'm not sure that would work in practice.

I'll probably get me an airco this year, because despite all efforts, every summer the temperature in my room reaches 30°C (86°F). Hardly a surprise, with a flat roof above... Ssscienccce (talk) 14:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, fans work amazingly well, but only when conditions are right. In that respect, they behave like a heat pump. I find blowing air in on the lower floor (where I sleep) and out on the upper floor, works best, as it uses the natural tendency of hot air to rise, and also ensures that the bottom floor will be cooled first, which is where I live. On days in the 70's (F, or course), the fans are all I need. When it hits the 80's, I need to switch to A/C in the afternoon and evening. When it's too hot, even at night, for fans, I must run A/C all night, and that gets expensive. Also, my window A/C units tend to blow mold spores out when I first turn them on, and fans don't do that. Fans can also blow directly on you, and cool that way, but that doesn't cool the house, only you, and the part of you away from the fan, like against the back of the chair, still gets sweaty.

Regarding air slipping back outside around the edges of the fan, I try to only open windows where the fan fits snugly, and I also cut and add sheets of plastic to the corners, to prevent air from slipping back in there. The effect of all this is rather like a wind tunnel. StuRat (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

multiple address books outlook 2013

Hi,
I got Outlook 2013, and I cannot create another address book.
When I try, there this message box saying:
"this account or directory already exists and cannot be created twice".
If it is not clear I would like to maintain 2 address books or more.

Does anyone has a solution?
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exx8 (talk • contribs) 15:09, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like you may be limited to one address book per account. Have you tried creating another account ? Or perhaps you can do what you want be defining groups within one address book, like "Work", "Friends", and "Relatives". StuRat (talk) 18:55, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

PC-VIRUS - Exploit:Java

Hey, for the last day or two my laptop was strangely slow, so I decided to run my Anti-virus program and discovered two "potential threats". I removed them, obviously. It's certainly not the first time I have picked up harmful malware or whatever one calls it. So it's not really something new.

Both of them were called "Exploit:Java" and something more.. It seems my computer is back to normal speed again after removing them, no lagging, but I'm just wondering; the name/classification that my anti-virus program gave them, does it mean that it exploits my computer through the much used Java-program that probably most people have on their computers? I assume "exploit" means that the malware aims to steal e-mail-addresses, passwords, and usernames that I might have used on the web-sites I frequent... (if so, it might be annoying to me but the thief is probably gonna be left disappointed when finding little of interest)

After removing the viruses I decided to renew my IP-address and erase the "temporary-files", logbook and net-browsing-history, passwords and everything of that sort. I'm not at all an ace on computers, so I'm not sure if it actually does any good. Would there be any point at all in re-installing my Java?

But now that I have removed the viruses, there will be no way for the bas*ard to connect or link or whatever to my computer, right? Especially when I have also renewed my IP-address? Or is it possible that the snake have gotten everything he/she needs to continue "exploiting"? I don't think I have much of value to any of these jerks, but I still want to know, or at least get a decent idea of the situation 109.247.62.59 (talk) 18:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Exploit:Java/whatever appears to be used for files that, if run, would break Java sandbox security by exploiting a bug (the specific bug being the "something more"). This could be used to install malware on your computer if you visited a malicious web site with the browser's Java plugin enabled. But it doesn't tell you anything about what that malware would do once installed, and getting rid of the exploit wouldn't get rid of the malware. I don't even see why the exploit would still be present on your computer, unless it was in the browser's cache. So this doesn't make much sense to me. It might help to have more information: what the "something more" was and where it said it found these threats. -- BenRG (talk) 00:00, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

"Something more" (the rest of the name) was just a bunch of numbers. I don't remember them. I'm thinking my Anti-virus program may have found them in "temp files" (the one that stacks up more and more the more you use internet to visit various sites, don't know how better to explain), but I really don't remember for sure and I may be wrong about the location. But if it wasn't really a virus program, but rather something that was meant to help install malware when and if I entered the wrong site(s), as you say, then surely there's a good chance things never got to a point where I actually picked up anything of the really nasty stuff - and now that I removed the two "exploits" there won't be a way for those types of Java-exploiting bugs to break through ? The real danger, I'm thinking, is enter to net-banks to pay bills or ordering items for delivery over net etc. where there will obviously be sensitive information. Makes me wary. As I said, I don't have any more info on the two exploits, as I have deleted them. 109.247.62.59 (talk) 00:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Here's an analogy (not a perfect one, but good enough). Imagine your antivirus is a police officer patting down all the people (files) in your room (system). The police officer finds some lockpicks (code to make use of a vulnerability in Java) on one of the people, and flags it up to you as potentially suspicious. The officer has no way of knowing whether the person intends graffiti (adware), to squat in your house (viruses), or is actually a locksmith (benign programs). You throw the person out, and you can be reasonably sure that noone left in the room is carrying that kind of lockpick. However, no changes have been made to the lock (Java), so it could still be picked if someone else came in with the right lockpicks (if another file is downloaded which can take advantage of the vulnerability). Your police officer (antivirus) pats down people as they arrive, so he should find any new arrivals carrying lockpicks, but criminals always find new ways to hide things. MChesterMC (talk) 11:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Hehe, I really like your analogy. Good one ;) I'm aware of these things - obviously new stuff that could potentially be harmful can "find its way" to my computer again in the future. All I can do (with help from anit-virus) is to stay vigilant. Thanks 109.247.62.59 (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

AVG update

AVG unable to update data base on Vista machine. Any suggestions?--109.151.101.168 (talk) 18:42, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

May 11

Free email forwarding with no strings attached?

Is there a free service that will give you an email address and forward email to another address, with no strings attached? I signed up for Bigfoot's free account, but when I opted out of receiving email from them and their partners, they suspended the account. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Why not just sign up for any free service. Then when you see emails like those that you've mentioned, just set up a filter to send them to the trash? They still think their advertising is getting through, you have a free address, and everyone is happy? That said, I haven't paid a dime for any of my Gmail addresses (of which I have three) and they never send me anything. Dismas|^(talk) 02:06, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe, but their "partners" are anyone they sell the address to. There might be a dozen new ones each day. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:21, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Google doesn't sell Gmail address lists to anyone. -- BenRG (talk) 05:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Will Google gmail forward them to my regular ISP email address? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:13, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't want webmail, but it looks like I can configure Thunderbird to work with gMail. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

mailnull.com, spamgourmet.com, The Ultimate Disposable Email Provider List —Tamfang (talk) 08:19, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

These don't do what I want. I want a permanent email address that I can use for many years, and anything sent to it will be forwarded to whatever my current ISP email address is. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I got me a gmail address and configured Thunderbird to work with it. (The last time I looked at gmail, I think it was webmail only.) Thanks. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Note that gmail scans the content of your email and uses it for marketing purposes, e.g. to decide what ads to show you including when you surf the web. I'd expect it also uses the content to build up a marketing profile of the person who sent the email. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 19:28, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Then I need to read up on it more. It said that email was 100% encrypted... Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:27, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The email is encrypted in transit (https) when you view it with a web browser and also opportunistically encrypted over SMTP with other servers that support transport layer security (i.e. some servers, but not all). But it's stored on Google's servers as plaintext, and more relevantly, they examine the content for advertising purposes since that is their revenue model. Gmail#Privacy has some more info. Generally speaking, your whole mission seems a little bit doomed since any other "free" service is likely to operate in about the same way. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 22:02, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I could pay bigfoot $10/quarter and avoid it. Google seems to have me anyway. I can go directly to a website and look at something, then later ads for it come up in google. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:49, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe you can prevent Google from using your email contents to serve non email ads like search ones but you'd need to check how. Note that Google can be set up to forward emails as they arrive via the webinterface although you will need to confirm the destination once. This means emails should still be forwarded even if your client is working for whatever reason. Nil Einne (talk) 02:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

BTW I believe outlook.com and the other MS services support automatic forwarding and I think they finally added IMAP support and MS makes a big deal about not scanning your emails to serve ads. They will still scan your emails for malware, spam etc though AFAIK. They also scan or did scan Live Drives for porn but I don't think they do that for emails. They may also allow someone at MS to view your emails if they supposedly think a court order will be granted if the emails were under a different company. And I think they still require occasional logins or they will deactivate your email. Nil Einne (talk) 02:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

fastmail.fm is $10/year (basic account) and as such things go, their privacy policy is a thing of beauty.[1] 70.36.142.114 (talk) 02:35, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that will work for me. Let me explain. I use a mail client (don't like webmail, in general). I have an email address with my ISP, but I'm not going to have that forever. My college gives alumni permanent email addresses that simply forwards email to another email address for you. These days you have to give out your email address in many places. It is a pain to change. If I want to have an email address on file that will be valid as long as I need it, I give out my college alumnus one. The problem is that it is 27 characters long. I asked the college if I could keep it (since it is used in dozens or maybe hundreds of places) but also get a shorter one, but they declined to do that. So in addition to the long permanent address, I'd like to have a shorter permanent one that will just forward to my ISP email address. Right now I'm leaning toward the free gmail one, and let them collect data. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not trying to pitch fastmail but they do have an imap service, you can configure it to forward email to other accounts etc. Now that I understand what you want though, I seriously think you shouldn't use gmail or your college address as a permanent one--you should instead register your own domain and make an address on it and use that. Domain registrars often have forwarding or mail hosting services that you can use with your domain, for a small fee or maybe even for free (if you register the domain with them). My residential ISP hosts email at subscriber domains at no extra charge, though of course that means you are already paying monthly for internet service. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 05:23, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll look into it. I think Google and my college will be around at least as long as I am. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:36, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Gmail is the new hotmail, and hotmail is about to be gone. I think you're better off without having your email unavoidably go through someone else's server, even your college's. It defeats part of the purpose of encrypted transport, for one thing. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 06:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd never heard of fastmail until I saw it here. I think Google is more likely to be around for the rest of my life. I'm looking for a solution that I can use and have it work for the rest of my life. More and more places are using your email address for the user name. Then when you change your primary email address, you have a lot of changes to make, and have to keep track of which sites use which email address. And then if you forget your password, and it has the old email address, you have more difficulties. I've had six primary email addresses in 20 years (not counting the forwarding one from the school). Changing is a pain. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:35, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Adobe Flash Player Settings

My homepage is msn.com and currently I use Mozilla browser. When I click on certain links leading to articles I want to see I get this small pop-up/window. It says:

Adobe Flash Player Settings Local Storage. www.nbcchicago.com is requesting permission to store information on your computer. Requested up to 10 KB. Currently used: 4 KB. There are two buttons: ALLOW and DENY but the deny button also has a sign of red brick (I believe this is how they are called) which is a sign of traffic not entering like at the start of one way/wrong way street. And when I try to click on it anyway I can see it is frozen. I consider it is an intrusion of my privacy. How can I get rid of it? --AboutFace 22 (talk) 22:52, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

That sign is probably a stop sign and it signifies "click this to prevent or stop [whatever]". Local storage is an obnoxious cookie-like mechanism in recent browsers and you can empty it out and shut off permissions through the Firefox Preference menu. Go to the "advanced" panel and click the "network" tab, then clear out "Offline web content and user data". 70.36.142.114 (talk) 02:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Go here, move the slider to the bottom, check "Never Bother Again" and uncheck allowing third party storage.

Then here and check Always Deny. Then explore the other six sections on the upper left side on your own. Pretty self-explanatory.

Install NoScript and only let individual sites run scripts when you want them to. Great for reducing ad clutter, nosy robots and pure maliciousness. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:20, May 12, 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks for all your advice. Will try it later tonight since I am at work now. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

How to get the origin link from Blogger?

In this page there are 4 clips from YouTube but when I try to get the origin in YouTube I can not. I tried to find it by "copy video URL" or the same at the corrent time, but it didn't work. I would like to get an advice about, bcz it's important for me. Thank you. 5.28.163.166 (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any youtube links on that page. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 05:32, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you not see some clips? I mean about them. I need the origin of this clips in youtube5.28.163.166 (talk) 09:24, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Just hovering over them with the mouse (Javascript off), I see a lot of code, including a youtube.com URL and a googlevideos.com one. The rest is Greek to me, and when I click it, I get an "Are you sure?" message. I'm not sure, so I don't click OK. If you see videos, do you see titles? Have you tried Googling the titles? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:35, May 12, 2014 (UTC)

May 12

How can I modify the Javascript of a website I visit?

Sometimes websites do quite annoying things with Javascript like disable right-click, play music, etc etc. Is there an easy way (add-on maybe?) for me to edit the Javascript of a website and reload the page with modified JS? I know there are dedicated addons out there that prevent right-click disabling, or writing your own userscript in GreaseMonkey but I'm looking for a broader solution. Something like: Visit site.com > edit javascript source file locally > reload the page with modified JS.-- penubag  (talk) 05:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

You could do something like that with a local proxy but reverse engineering and modifying dozens of chunks of potentially obfuscated JS sounds awfully tedious. I usually just use adblock and figure out the offending JS file by trial and error and block it (in practice, just block all the JS until the problem stops, occasionally making adjustments if blocking a JS makes the page unusable). You can also use noscript to block JS completely on a site-by-site basis, but it's a clumsy add-on in my opinion. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 05:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but if I wanted to modify JS variables the blocking methods wouldn't work. Could you elaborate on the local proxy solution? -- penubag  (talk) 06:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The local proxy just sits between the browser and the internet, rewriting addresses and content as you like. Privoxy is an example. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 06:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't able to get Privoxy to work but I did some research and Fiddler has everything that I need to edit Javascript, POST data, Headers etc. Really glad I stumbled on that tool, it really has everything you'll ever need. -- penubag  (talk) 11:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Cool, I didn't know about Fiddler. It looks like it's closed-source, which may become a pain if you want to do complicated rewrites that make you want to modify the code. It occurs to me, you could also use a caching proxy like Squid to serve your own edited versions of those js files instead of the remotely served ones. That would even speed up your browsing. If the JS is coming from some place like googleapis, maybe you could alternatively use /etc/hosts or the windows equivalent to direct to your own local http server. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 16:58, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Storage on enterprise-class computers or supercomputers

I have never even seen an enterprise-class computer or supercomputer in my life, not to mention getting to actually use one. The closest I have managed to do is getting to see and use a Sun E450 workgroup server in a former job. All the advertising and specification I have seen of such enterprise-class computers or supercomputers on the Internet only talk about CPU power and memory, not about storage. What do these computers use for storage? Do they have internal drives at all or do they use separate storage servers? JIP | Talk 18:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Machines intended solely for computation or pumping data with modest transformation (blade servers, perhaps web servers) might have no disk at all - they might boot off a network boot server and work only with RAM (which they might have a large amount). Others are pretty much headless workstations, with a single hard drive (or perhaps an SSD and an enterprise-grade HD). An enterprise grade HD is usually 10000 or maybe 15000 RPM SCSI device. Beyond that machines can be direct attached to a storage array (a separate device with a bunch of disks in it, which might be configured as a RAID, ZFS, or JBOD); as some applications require high failure-tolerance, you might get several server machines cross-wired with a pair (or more) of storage arrays, where the controllers of each monitor their twin, allowing one controller to take the work of its twin should it fail. Interconnects for this might be iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or Infiniband. Beyond that, storage may be organised into a Storage area network (a fabric) consisting of a number of storage arrays interconnected (again, often with redundancy) with switches connecting to the Host Bus Adapters in the client machines. As one moves up the complexity spectrum (from locally attached storage to a fabric) things become more and more virtualised; the storage system implements a number of volumes (each consisting of lots of logical blocks), but it's increasingly unclear to a client machine where that volume actually is (it can be distributed across several disks in several arrays, and be delivered redundantly on several different connections via different paths). All of this SAN stuff works like virtual physical devices - the SAN supplies volumes and logical blocks, and clients build filesystems on those (much as they would on a local, single SCSI disk). The (well, an) other way to do things is the opposite - for the storage device to implement a file system and export it via a network filesystem protocol (NFS, CIFS (samba)), making it a Network-attached storage solution - a whacking great file server (although again, in practice these are built from components which they virtualise to give the illusion of a single system, built from smaller, redundantly configured and connected components). Perhaps the biggest player in this space is NetApp. Enterprise storage equipment can be characterised by a higher concentration on reliability, on hot-swappable-components, on a higher degree of internal monitoring, on the ability to configure redundant configurations for failover (for reliability), and on integration with enterprise monitoring and configuration tools (so someone can monitor, configure and manage a farm of storage devices from a single screen). All of this redundancy and reliability can mean that things get very pricey (if it wasn't for that, someone might be tempted to say to themselves "hey, I can replace this insanely expensive Netapp things with a homemade Linux box running Samba, a couple of RAID cards, and a chassis full of barracudas") - note the newer expansion of the RAID acronym vs the old one (smiley). Very very large storage providers (e.g. Google Storage, Amazon S3) work differently - they seem to throw lots of cheap hardware at the problem, relying on even more redundancy (the big guys tend not to be so open about their architecture, as that's their value-add); S3's cousin Amazon Glacier appears to be hosted, at least in part, on tape. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 20:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Minor nitpick, but my understanding is there's great debate about whether Glacier uses tape, with some suggesting it may simply be normally disconnected HDs [2]; special low speed, low power HDs; optical media [3] [4] (mentions both).

That said, from what I've read I also wonder if a lot of the 'it's not tape' crowd are reading way too much in to minor comments from Amazon personnel. In particular, I don't see how Amazon telling people they should see Glacier as a replacement to tape and that it uses inexpensive commodity hardware components definitely means they aren't actually using tape. (Actually these would seem to dispute the idea of weird hard disks or any optical media besides standard ones which admitedly may include BDXL, more.) Other issues like climate control requirements and Amazon's durability guarantees will seem to depend more on redundancy and Amazon's plans for long term storage (which could easily be 'rewrite the data every X years' perhaps with different Xs for different copies).

Nil Einne (talk) 18:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Numbering a document with underlined numbers that link to the words

I know this sounds like a strange question but does anyone know how I can set up MS Word 2010 to do numbering like this File:Numbering document underlined first word.jpg so the underlined number links up with the underlining of the first word? Thanks Amisom (talk) 20:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Go to Options > Advanced, and locate Compatibility Options (at the bottom of the list). There should be an option to "Underline tab character in numbered lists." Once that option is selected, you should find that underlining both the number and the first word of the list item causes the space between them to be underlined also. This should work fine in Word 2010. (For Word 2013, you would have to use an older version of the Word file format in order to support this, I think.) —Noiratsi (talk) 09:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

How to bring back tabs and URL

At a library I discovered something that I have rarely seen before. The tabs at the top of the page and even the space where the URL goes just disappear. I asked for help and was told to move the mouse to where I want these to appear, and how long it takes for them to appear varies. It's very annoying. I hope whoever can fix this will be back the next time I go to that library.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:29, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not broken. What it for is to allow more viewable space on the screen. My tablet's browsers all do this, and as a matter of taste, I prefer it. However, I'm surprised that the library you use has this enable as it is not user friendly to inexperienced computer users. As a public librarian myself, anything that confuses them is a very bad (and time-consuming) thing. Any idea what browser you were using? Mingmingla (talk) 22:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Long side thread about Microsoft even though the question was about Firefox

I was helping a neighbour with his Windows 7 machine, and that little "feature" in (ugh) Internet Explorer almost drove me to break it. Hovering didn't help, clicking didn't help, only shortcut keys (the ones I remembered, anyway, and none of the Menus, just actions). I'm a fairly experienced computer user, but I have no idea what Microsoft is trying to accomplish this last decade or so. Convinced my neighbour to at least get Firefox. I suggest you get a better library. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:47, May 12, 2014 (UTC) If you need a refresher on all that Microsoft accomplished in the last ten years, here's a list of important dates provided by their corporate press office. Ten years ago, they began returning 75 billion dollars to shareholders; they launched a series of very popular video game consoles; shipped several major revisions of their operating systems that make billions of personal and embedded computers work; acquired Skype and Nokia; and created a few hardware platforms, like the Surface and the Xbox; and ported Microsoft Office to work on the iPad. The corporation also smoothly transitioned beyond its founder, who stepped out of the inner circle to focus on operating one of the world's largest charity programs, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Not everything Microsoft have done has worked flawlessly, but before you nitpick them, you might want to reconsider what you have accomplished in the last ten years. Nimur (talk) 00:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC) If you knew me, you'd know exactly how unimpressive any of that is. Probably as impressed as you'd be if I did tell you about my days of glory. Didn't mean to touch a nerve, Microsoft is good at what they do. But making a product I want to use generally hasn't been what they do (Hotmail's alright). I'm glad they could help you. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:54, May 13, 2014 (UTC) I'm with Hulk on this one. Let's look at what they actually accomplished. they launched a series of very popular video game consoles: whatever; it's the worst of the Big Three. It lacks both the raw power of the PS3 and the innovation of the Wii. It's a dumbed-down PC By Any Other NameTM. shipped several major revisions of their operating systems that make billions of personal and embedded computers work: With the one major feature of being "new" rather than better. "Lack of innovation" would have been a good thing this time. acquired Skype and Nokia: Who. Cares. As the joke goes, "they could have downloaded Skype for free". ported Microsoft Office to work on the iPad: if they ported to MacOS, that would have been worth writing home about, but an office suite on a tablet is like porting a microwave app to a fridge. Not everything Microsoft have done has worked flawlessly: but before you nitpick them, you might want to reconsider what you have accomplished in the last ten years: I'm pretty sure any Wikipedian would have a hard time trying to waste as much usertime as Microsoft did with Vista. That's my $0.02 on Microsoft's recent exploits... - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 07:03, 13 May 2014 (UTC) Um? Microsoft Office for Mac has existed since 1989 Microsoft Office#Mac and iOS versions which is before the Windows version was released, the current version was released about 3.5 years ago and the next version is due sometime this year [5]. (Even Microsoft Word for Mac was launched about 2 years after the first released.) Office for Mac is sometimes criticised for various reasons, most particularly compatibility problems between documents saved in the Mac and Windows versions, the ?historic poor support for complex scripts and the lack of Microsoft Access. And there's a slight possibility Microsoft may have abandoned Office for Mac in the dark days of Apple were it not for antitrust concerns although some commentators disagree [6]. Either way, your comment above makes little sense. Is the iPad version even derived from the Windows version or is it really derived from the OS X version? As for the PS3 vs the 360, it's well recognised that the many game developers hate/d the the PS3 and the Cell (microprocessor) due to the difficulty coding for it. It's little use having a more powerful processor if few people know, or want to know, how to use it to the extent you rarely get an advantage. (The PS3 did have the advantage of having a Bluray drive and the larger capacity that this resulted in, but this isn't really a raw performance advantage.) It's intended to be a game console after all, not a research device. Sure things may have improved somewhat near the end and perhaps some a few games gained an advantage from the greater theoretical performance but it doesn't seem to have been many. I suspect Sony wasn't helped by the fact there's probably less in house engine development (which is a double edged sword since on the one hand it means the developers don't have to worry so much about the odditys of the Cell but on the other hand a crossplatform multipurpose engine is less likely to be able to do weird stuff using the unique features of the specific consoles it's being targeted at based on the specific needs of the game); a lot less exclusivity i.e. most titles are at least developed with the assumption they may be cross platform (even if it's only PCs running Windows) at some stage; and overall less drive to really push the envelope using weird stuff then there may have been with past consoles when developers felt they were significantly limited by the hardware or could do something really cool. (And I'm not completely sure how much the SPEs really helped the biggest problem for both namely the limited amount of RAM that became increasingly evident.) The biggest sign of this is the fact both Microsoft and Sony chose something which is very like a PC in this generation including with an x86 processor (as ironically was the original Xbox). Actually the PC I'm using right now which is connected to a TV but running Windows 8 is somewhat similar although it has a Trinity and so the CPU may or may not be more powerful but the GPU is much less powerful, and it also lacks HSA. (Memory bandwidth is similar to the Xbox One. It could probably be higher the APU and/or motherboard has problems running the memory at rated speed.) Of course all this depends on what you mean by a PC anyway. When most people in the developed world thing of a PC, they probably think of a x86 device probably running Windows or perhaps *nix. Macs, even now that they are very similar to PCs in terms of hardware often aren't considered PCs, probably because of Apple's successful marketing. Despite the name, very few people would have much experience with something using a PowerPC CPU which they would call a PC by the time the 360 came around (which was around the time Apple was transitioning to x86). Not to mention the Xenon (processor) was as I understand it, derived from the Power Processing Element from the Cell which used the Power Architecture but is distinct from other PowerPCs and note used anywhere besides the Xenon and Cell processors AFAIK. Meanwhile there were I believe some Cell based workstations which could be considered PCs (although more likely people with workstations many simply have a Cell accelerator card i.e. with a distinct CPU if they had any Cell in their workstation). In other words, in many ways the PS3 is as much a PC as the 360 was. And if anything, you could say the PS3 is more like some PCs than the 360. So again this is a fairly odd statement. If anything the current generation PS4 vs Xbox One seems to be a better example where while both choose something that's very like a PC, the PS4 is clearly more powerful on the GPU side thanks particularly to the higher memory bandwidth and more compute units (and perhaps in the future to the the more async compute units). The Xbox One does have eSRAM but this doesn't generally seem to help anywhere enough (possibly because there isn't enough and they couldn't fit more [7] [http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/xbox-esram-small-1080p-microsoft/), and the minor CPU advantage likewise would generally not be significant. And definitely early indications are that the PS4 is winning where it matters, i.e. among consumers. (You could probably say the Xbox One is slightly more likely a PC than the PS4 since GDDR5 as system memory probably will never be possible for anything besides a highly specialised system like the PS4. Although realisticly it's likely DDR4 combined with triple channel may mean you could achieve about equivalent memory bandwidth on a more normal APU in a year or two if AMD stick around with it that long and are able to get the memory controllers up to scratch (although I'm not that sure how good the PS4 one is anyway). And I have doubts AMD is going to do anything like eSRAM on their main APU lineups. This is unlike the last generation where the was no clear winner [8]. Both Microsoft and Sony had various problems. E.g. Sony with supply and cost issues due to their more expensive system and of course the PlayStation Network outage. Microsoft with the Red Ring of Death. Even Nintendo's early success with the Wii seems to have later started to falter. In particular, while they did end up selling more units, they also I believe sold fewer games/unit which is of course significant since games tends to be where they make most of their money. And it's looking like they're even worse off than Microsoft in this generation, although they are somewhat out of sync anyway. (Of course Nintendo probably isn't helped by the fact that a key part of their target market has smart phone and tablet games, and perhaps those Facebook ones, to keep them entertained. And both Sony and Microsoft copied their key innovations in their own way. Perhaps without that much added success but with enough to mean they are no longer so appealing.) In fact, Microsoft attempts at innovation such as the always bundled Kinect, possibly including family game sharing (or at least the earlier plans where it's compulsory with the associated requirements such as regular online checks and games being associated with an account rather than the media [9]) and possibly including eSRAM (although as hinted above, it may also just be the early state of the tools and it's perhaps also likely the Xbox will be a lot worse without the eSRAM) have mostly been abandoned or otherwise unsuccessful. In many ways, Sony stuck to the basics and so far seems to be having success, Microsoft tried something different, and mostly seems to have failed at least at the moment. (Of course it's still early days, too early to definitely declare any winner or loser.) It's of course rather funny that this thread seems to have started based on criticism of a feature which is in most browsers. In fact I've personally encountered it in Chrome and Firefox much more than IE which I rarely use. And while it is slightly annoying it is easy to resolve if you know the F11 shortcut key which I suspect is how it was activated anyway. Even more funny that if I understand the comment below, the OP wasn't even using IE but Firefox. Was this feature even introduced first in IE? I can't really recall (although I do know it greatly preceeded the iPhone and the full sized touchscreen smart phone era). P.S. While Vista has its flaws, it very likely saved me more time than it wasted compared to XP. Nil Einne (talk) 16:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like the Full Screen feature. You should be able to find it in the settings. Where in the settings will depend on which version of which browser your library uses. Dismas|^(talk) 00:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

If Dismas is right and this is just the brower's ordinary fullscreen mode, most browsers use F11 to turn it on and off. Saves having to dig through the settings menus. —Noiratsi (talk) 07:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Noiratsi. It worked. I had dealt with this before years ago and the Computing Reference Desk gave me the solution but I didn't have any idea how to look for it. I forgot to mention Mozilla Firefox. And no, I'm not getting a better library. I can walk to this one. I go to other libraries but not daily.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 12:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

May 13

Adding partition to disk without losing data

I have a 1.5 terabyte drive that is formatted in FAT. I want to add an NTFS partition to it, but I don't want to reformat it. How can this be done. Please understand that I'm not going to transfer the data that is currently on it over to another drive and then transfer it back. — Melab±1 ☎ 01:02, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

You can do this by defragging the FAT partition and then using a partition table editor to add the NTFS, but for good reason, all documentation about these types of operations urge you to completely back up the data before messing with the disk like that. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 02:16, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@Melab-1: <nitpick> Remember that the drive is not formatted in FAT, the partition is. </nitpick>

I gather you have one partition on the drive, a FAT32 one, that occupies the whole 1.5 terabytes, and you want to shrink that partition to make room for another one, which you want to format in NTFS.

If you are running Windows 7, its partition management has the option to shrink a partition without third party tools. It doesn't always offer that (even on NTFS partitions), so it might be completely unavailable to FAT partitions. If the command is unavailable, you could use some repartitioning tool, like gParted or Paragon Partition Manager. I'd use the former; I had much more "fun" than I'd ever expected with the latter, esp. during resize operations.

I'd still backup the whole HDD, even if Windows allows to shrink the partition.

Depending on the tool, you may or may not need to defragment the partition; some tools require that the portion of the partition you want to cut off doesn't contain any files (which usually results in an "Operation failed" – which is time-conuming if you booted from a live CD to run gParted), while others will move the files into the portion you're going to keep if there are any.

Still, defragmenting before running the repartitioning tool is usually faster. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

As others have hinted at, what do you mean 'without losing data'? If you mean I have backups of this data but they are hard to access and/or I need to download a lot of it again which is doable but annoying then you it's probably okay to go ahead. If you mean 'this is important data I can't afford to lose', while you're already doing something that's a bad idea, it's an even worse idea to fool around with the partitions which no matter what tool you use, can go wrong (me an many others have personal experience with this). Particularly since it's more likely to go wrong if you screw up and while data recovery may sometimes be possible, this is difficult if you don't know what you're doing (and the cost of paying someone to do it is likely to significantly exceed the price of an external 2TB HD). Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Pull request

Pull request is a redirect to Distributed revision control but there is nothing in that article that defines the term. This has been noted on the article's talk page, see Talk:Distributed revision control#pull request. I'd be very grateful if someone could add a definition of the term to the article, if indeed it makes sense to include it there. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 07:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't have time to edit, but I suspect github documentation is a fairly WP:RS. Here [10] is their page about pull requests. It could be paraphrased into a definition for our page. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I commented on the article talk page. Pull requests aren't specifically a Github thing and usually they're not a technical feature of version control. Typically you'd just email the upstream maintainer saying you have a patch for him/her to pull, with a pointer to your repo. Github of course took the "decentralized" out of DVCS so they have a dedicated pull request function, but I think that's anomalous. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 03:20, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Not sure about it, but maybe a Pull request redirects here. For takedown requests, see Takedown request. line should be added, too.

OTOH, Takedown request redirects to OCILLA... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 05:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)