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September 23

Icons suddenly changed in XP

File:Vlc icon temp.png

B

Why did my icons suddenly get teeny? The were big like A and now went small and on a slice of paper like B. Thanks if for any help. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:43, 23 September 2016 (UTC) This has happened to media file icons after I messed around with file associations for VLC and Media Player Classic. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:45, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Where are you seeing them? If it's in Windows Explorer, there's a view option that lets you select how you want to see them (big icons, little icons, tiles, details, etc.) Matt Deres (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's also possible that changing the file association has the side effect of resetting the icon to the default size. StuRat (talk) 18:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Matt Deres and StuRat: It's in Windows Explorer and also my preferred FreeCommander. I monkeyed around more with Media Player Classic and those icons went back to regular size. The VLC ones are still teeny, but I imagine it will eventually sort itself out after a while. Many thanks. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:58, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Anna Frodesiak, when displayed icons change, kill the hidden file of the iconcache database, located anywhere in the local or temp folder of an users or systems profile. The icon cache wil be rebuilt automaticly, but this is noting to do with the size. It is recommended when the wrong icon to a file or link is displayed. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 12:57, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The smaller icon shoes a media file to open with VLC, not the VLC player itselves. If this was not done by setting the procedure open with… for this file extension, it might be the problem with the iconcache. VLC can be reinstalled. If this does not fix it and the other icons kept their size, kill the iconcache. Btw, You know the support for WinXP has ended years ago? No good idea to go online with such machine. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 18:08, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Windows 10) GUI program/script to list folders where queried file is missing?

Greeting friends,

(Win10) basically I want to exclude hidden files from the results of the following* algorithm. Can this be done? Moreover, if it possible, I’d like to exclude the parent folders from the code. Namely, I don’t want D:\backup music\ARTIST, conversely to D:\backup music\ARTIST\ALBUM. Thanks!

for /r “D:\backup music” %i in (.) do @if not exist "%i\folder.jpg" echo %i (talk) 20:29, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

September 24

Y Matching Paint Tool

I used to have a program, like paint, that, when you selected a colour, could match the luma of any point you drew. Essentially, it would change the colour, but keep the shading. I cannot figure out what program this was, if you know of any programs that can do this, it would be wonderful. I need to recolour a bunch of sprites for a game I'm working on, it is very tedious doing it without this. Thank you for any help:-) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 00:31, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You mean the luminosity in the Hue-Saturation-Luminosity model ? I should think any number of programs would do that. StuRat (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, the draw and paint tools matched the y in yuv. Do you know of any programs that can do this easily, preferably free ones.72.23.145.236 (talk) 01:27, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ImageMagick, but it's command-line only. Here are example invocations to change the H,S and L channels individually Asmrulz (talk) 03:09, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm poorly explaining what I'm looking for. You know how you can pick the pencil in mspaint and draw with it? In this program, you could do the exact same thing, select Y matching, then, if you click on a pixel it will change it to the colour selected, but keep the luma the same. So, for example, if you had the colour green selected and clicked on a pink pixel, it would turn it to a green pixel with the same brightness as it had when pink. In short, this made recolouring sprites easier since you could change the colour of the hair without having to worry about how bright each pixel was, you just picked a colour and applied it, pixel by pixel.73.174.196.36 (talk) 03:16, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I found it, Ultimate Paint has this feature as part of its fill dialogue.73.174.196.36 (talk) 03:38, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

email addresses on Apple 'Mail'

I have a number of different addresses and want to close/remove them so that I do not receive mail sent to those addesses, how do I do that please? Artjo (talk) 13:26, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Artjo:Are you looking to close the email boxes completely with their constituent services, if so, you would go to those services and request to close your account. If you simply want to delete the accounts from Mail in macOS, go to SYSTEM PREFRENCES → INTERNET ACCOUNT. You will be able to delete or adjust your email account settings there.--Adam in MO Talk 21:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this but it is not accounts that I want to delete but the one or two of the many email addresses that I have created over the years. Any ideas please?Artjo (talk) 21:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Permissions expressed in code

I've noticed that two software platforms that use permissions, a model of security that seems to be taking off, don't use plain labels to mark the, but instead use language objects or classes to signify them. I'm talking about Android and Java. These permissions are associated with source code, but I don't get how expressing the permissions in the code that is managed by a runtime works or why it is necessary. How does the inclusion of a permission's class in a program provide security when anyone can just include it in their code? More over, how does that relate to the runtime that monitors what an application does to sandbox it with a particular set of permissions? — Melab±1 ☎ 20:23, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's odd. Such an interesting Q, and no answers. I'll just venture a guess and say that, while nothing stops you from trying to create any permission object, or declaring permissions you want in the manifest file, the runtime will signal an exception if you don't actually have that permission. Asmrulz (talk) 09:52, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

>> . How does the inclusion of a permission's class in a program provide security when anyone can just include it in their code?

Inclusion of permission's class in program allows programmer to access related class/library functions. When such program is installed on device, these used/requested permissions are listed and user has option to allow or deny any or all of these permission. When program runs and attempts to do anything that is not allowed by user, the run-time system does not allow program to execute it and throws error. manya (talk) 05:33, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

September 25

Does Google Earth "photoshop" trees?

I was looking at Google Earth for coordinates 35°17′44″N 80°43′37″W / 35.29543°N 80.72707°W / 35.29543; -80.72707. When I zoomed in all the way, the tops of some of the trees didn't look natural, as if they were digitally altered. Does Google Earth do this, and why? ―Mandruss ☎ 07:20, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Ok this appears to be part of their "3D" feature, but I don't see why they would have to do it in the 2D mode. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:48, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen them do that on lawns, too. It might be a form of compression. That is, once the software recognizes a tree or lawn, rather than store every leaf or blade of grass, it just notes that region as tree or grass, then redraws it, using a standard texture, when viewed. StuRat (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Photoshop is one particular brand of commercial image processing software; but image processing is a technique that is certainly used in many other applications, including GIS (digital mapping). In fact, GIS was one of the first applications of digital image processing. The first digital cameras were intended for surveillance satellites; the first algorithmic processing of digital imagery was intended for automating aerial images and maps; long before consumer photographers were "photo-shopping," scientists and spies were using computerized image algorithms to process aerial photographs. It's an absolute certainty that modern digital mapping companies like Google (and their data providers) use sophisticated algorithms to analyze and retouch their map imagery.

In Google Earth Engine documentation, Google explains many algorithms they make available to the public: for example, Landsat-specific postprocessing algorithms are explained. They also use sophisticated methods of machine learning to classify and segment the photographs; to discard poor imagery; to retouch, re-expose, and color-balance the pictures; and to compress and rescale the pictures. Surely Google has even more technology that could be applied to imagery that you see on their final products, even if the explanation and method is not made available to the public.

You specifically mentioned tree-tops; trees are a unique thing in aerial digital images. Find any good book on aerial photography, and you'll get chapters on methods for "foliage." There are algorithmic- and image-capture- techniques to see through foliage; to make foliage appear incredibly bright with respect to the surroundings; to use the foliage to analyze climate, water, industrial activity; to monitor seasonal changes in the treetops... the list goes on and on. Once again, it is a near certainty that "tree tops" are algorithmically altered.

Here's one of my favorite papers on digital photography: Multisensor Fusion with Hyperspectral Imaging Data: Detection and Classification. It's a sort of a review paper on how this all works. For those of you stuck on the ground, just remember - even though you can't see the surveillance planes, the surveillance planes can absolutely see you, and their powerful computers can automatically tell what type of tree you're hiding inside of, too.

Nimur (talk) 21:49, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I put "photoshop" in quotes because I didn't mean it literally. To my amateur mind that is an approximate synonym for digital image alteration. Look at the white water tower to the east. That is not the actual photographic image of that tower, but a simulated one to enable viewing it from any angle in the "3D" mode (except from underneath, I assume). Google Earth uses this technique with "hard" structures all over the world (which is cool). You look at Notre Dame Cathedral, and what you're actually seeing is a digital "cartoon" representation of the structure. I can see why they would do that for trees as well, but I don't see why they can't show me the real and true photographic version in 2D mode. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:51, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, Google and other major vendors sometimes use a human artist to "retouch" a complicated scene using 3D models or manual digital image alteration. I wouldn't try to speculate about any particular instance, except to mention that Google has the financial resources to hire individual human artists, at scale, for re-touching their maps imagery; but Google also has sophisticated computer algorithms that may do re-touching automatically. In still other cases, you might be seeing a complicated algorithmic or image-capture "glitch" and projecting your own interpretation onto the image defect. All of these are possible. Nimur (talk) 22:01, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

which country is lagrget in the world

which country is lagrget in the world — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vìvek Dahal (talk • contribs) 15:19, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By population, China. By area, Russia. StuRat (talk) 15:45, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You may be interested in List of sovereign states and dependencies by area from Category:Lists of countries by geography and List of countries and dependencies by population from Category:Lists of countries by population as well as other lists from Category:Lists of countries. -- ToE 21:11, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mexico is the largest citizen (obesity) in the world. 175.45.116.99 (talk) 01:46, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mexico isn't even in the top 29 of obesity rates: [1]. I would have expected the US to top the list, but small pacific islands and rich Middle-East states seem to have taken the lead. ("I'll take a pass on the poi, please.") StuRat (talk) 02:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Per List of countries by Body Mass Index (BMI)#WHO Data on Prevalence of Obesity (BMI ≥ 30kg/m2) (2014), Mexico ranks 32 with the US at 19 and the top seven being Pacific island nations. -- ToE 11:34, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The US is #1 in number of obese people (Roughly ~109,000,000 followed in a distant second with Brazil at ~41,000,000 and Mexico third at ~36,000,000,000.) That is a lot of mass. We also have a list of modern great powers or List of countries with Burger King franchises or a List of rump states, a term I just learned right now. Hopefully all of these help! uhhlive (talk) 22:12, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

September 26

Too much memory!

I recently installed some old software on my laptop (Heroes of Might and Magic III, for the record). The installer came up with a warning saying that the game might run slowly, because it needed 32Mb of RAM, and I only had 4Gb. (I actually have 6Gb). Why would the installer mis-count the memory, and why would it think 4Gb (or 6Gb) is less than 32Mb? Iapetus (talk) 11:54, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would theorize that it's from a time when that much memory wasn't possible, so it assumes an error occurred in reading the amount of memory, and gives you the "not enough memory" error just in case, but still reports the amount it read. As for reading 4GB instead of 6GB, you likely have a 4GB memory card and a 2GB card, and it only read one. (Incidentally, you should use "GB" for gigabytes, as "Gb" is sometimes used for gigabits.) StuRat (talk) 14:44, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As StuRat has suggested, this warning is probably due to a software error. Among many plausible root-causes, the programmer who made the game software might have had an insufficiently-thorough handling for unexpected quantities of memory: 4 gigabytes is a magical number, because it will cause an integer overflow if the programmer used a 32 bit integer to store the memory size. There was an ancient time, long ago when "all reasonable programmers" knew that 32-bits was big enough to count everything, especially bytes of available memory ...

Unsafe version- and resource- checking is a sort of a software antipattern - a design-defect that occurs so commonly, professional software engineers recognize its symptoms from a mile away. The original software-author thought they were being a defensive programmer by adding a safety check - they knew (or thought they knew) the program's limitations and tried to protect their program if the memory was insufficient. What actually happened, though, is that they incorrectly implemented this defense, and introduced a bug. In your case, it sounds like the bug is benign - the program simply warns and proceeds... but there are many, many cases in other software in which the exact same design antipattern causes a program to misbehave or terminate.

The moral of this story is that programmers should think very, very, very carefully about their defensive programming tactics. The intent is good, but the execution is sometimes invalid.

Nimur (talk) 16:16, 26 September 2016 (UTC).[reply]

So here's a lengthier response aimed specifically to readers who are also programmers: how can you tell how much available memory is actually available? Well, you could call some cryptic platform-specific system call; you could hard-code the hardware model identifiers into a look-up table and estimate; you can come up with all sorts of nearly-correct ways to count how much memory you could hypothetically allocate. All of these methods are defective. Instead of "counting," why not just allocate all the memory you need and actually handle any failures only if the memory is unavailable? If the program truthfully cannot run unless X bytes are allocated, then try to malloc X bytes ahead of when you require them, and check if that worked! And if your counter-argument was that you wish to avoid paging, the exact same corollary applies: why do you wish to avoid paging? For performance? How fast is paging on (unknown future computer architecture) where your software now executes? How thoroughly do you really understand modern memory management on modern computer hardware? If you have a performance requirement: execute your code, benchmark it, and handle errors if the benchmark is insufficient. Adding heuristics to your software in the hopes of fixing true performance bugs will inevitably lead to unnecessary preemptive failures the moment your heuristics break. You probably don't know enough about the user's computer hardware to design relevant performance-heuristics at the time you author your code.

Real world example: "my code only runs on embedded systems,..." so it'd be safe to hack up an assumption that my registers are 32-bits wide... until wham! - that exact same code starts running in a 64-bit context. Hacked-up assumptions yield broken code optimizations and are a bad idea!

So, I say again: programmers need to think very very very carefully about why they add each line of code to check such operations. Nimur (talk) 16:30, 26 September 2016 (UTC) [reply]

The above is good advice if the software is written in C or C++ to run on a general purpose computer that has an operating system, but many programs of which it can be said "my code only runs on embedded systems" fail one or more of those criteria. In particular the "written in C or C++" assumption fails on many early video games, and the "has an operating system" assumption fails on the many embedded systems that run the software on bare hardware. Yes, some so-called "embedded systems" are just repurposed PCs, but most of them are not. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

32 bit software can access 4 GB only. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 18:00, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You did not say what OS you are using. In Windows you can try to run this program in a compatibility mode, Windows XP, for instance. Ruslik_Zero 19:41, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7, 64-bit. (I also got a warning about not having (I think) Windows NT or DirectX 6.1). Unlike some other old software I've installed, I didn't get warnings about insufficient disc space ("This software needs X MB - you only have Y GB"). Iapetus (talk) 10:28, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"why not just allocate all the memory you need and actually handle any failures only if the memory is unavailable? " - because on halfway modern computers with virtual memory, you will almost always get all the memory you ask for - thanks to memory overcommitment, the OS will easily not only give you more than your total physical RAM, but even more than physical RAM and swap combined. In the first case, if the program actually need that memory, the computer will swap a lot, running slow, and putting quite a few read/write cycles on the underlying mass storage device (not to good with small consumer SSDs). In the second case, the program, or another program, will potentially crash at an unpredictable time, because then OS cannot actually fulfil the need for physical memory to back the virtual memory it has allocated for the processes. Both are situations that are not very attractive. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:18, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Stephan Schulz, I entirely agree with your statements - but my point still stands: if your program actually requires such resources, and such resources will cause a performance or stability problem, then nothing is gained by delaying the discovery of that problem; nor by obfuscating that problem using broken heuristics. The software is already checking resource-availability to determine if the resources meet minimum requirements - my complaint is that the method by which the software performs this check is frequently implemented inappropriately, as this question exemplified.

Clearly, the original question demonstrated a scenario where the software "incorrectly guessed" the available memory. Which-ever method used by this particular software to estimate memory-size was implemented in a completely incorrect fashion. Nothing about the method used in that software - which yielded a totally wrong size for available memory! - would have precluded memory paging, memory overcommitment, or any of the other ill effects you describe. If there is a concern about paging, the programmer should programmatically query the operating system to provide details about paging strategy. The software should not hard-code an assumption that paging will occur if, say, less than 128 megabytes are available, nor any other similarly-ludicrous arbitrary assumption. Paging can occur whenever the memory manager chooses to use it. Your application software should never try to "guess" at that implementation detail. If it matters, query it programmatically.

But if you want to control the implementation of paging to a backing store, there's some bad news.

On most major operating systems, user-space programs simply do not have permission to request memory that is guaranteed never be swapped to backing-store. Such a memory allocation is possible - trivial, even - for code that exists in the kernel. In xnu, this is called "wiring" memory; in Linux, it is informally called "pinning" or "mlock"ing. Why does this privilege extend exclusively to code that lives in (or interacts directly with) the kernel? Because if your program truthfully depends on the implementation-details of memory management performance, your code belongs in the kernel. User programs should not - may not - care about this detail. Not even on developer-friendly free software systems like Linux. Your user app - a productivity software, a game, a robot-controller, whatever - must rely on the kernel, or on public APIs backed by kernel code, to efficiently manage memory, and you need to trust that the kernel can do this better than you can. If the kernel swaps your data to a backing store, step back humbly, realize that you write code that lives in userland and that you don't know the details of the hardware. Recognize and admit that the kernel managed your memory in this way to improve your app's performance, subject to the contract you agreed to when you decided to implement for a multi-process system. The kernel is trying to improve performance, not to degrade it - and in any instance which you can show otherwise, you have found a bug in the kernel. File a bug report to your kernel's developers, who will love to see examples demonstrating such an error.

Nimur (talk) 05:34, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(EC)32 bit software can access 4 GB only. Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic but this statement is so imprecise as to actually be more misleading than correct. Firstly, memory is memory, 32bit programs can access more than 4GB of Disk, ask your self why? Disk is still memory and still needs "addressing". But even ignoring that, 32bit software can easily access more than 4GB, if it's written that way, the problem is that windows programs rely on WINDOWS for memory management, they can only use as much memory as windows presents. Even ignoring that, even 32-bit windows can address more than 4GB of RAM using software, it's called Physical Address Extension. The ONLY thing stopping windows addressing more than 4GB of RAM (without PAE) is that it was originally written without that functionality. It's NOT any kind of "inherent" limitation of 32-bit architecture. Turing complete is Turing complete. My favorite link that someone posted here recently, which is relevant here too is someone booted a 32bit Linux distro on an 8bit microcomputer running 32bit emulation in software. Granted it took 2 hours to boot up, but there was nothing "physically/virtually" stopping it Vespine (talk) 23:29, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear, this explanation is at least as flawed as what you are trying to correct. With PAE, a single program is still limited to 4 GB of virtual memory. This is unavoidable due to the architecture of the 32-bit instruction set. Address registers, etc. are 32 bits wide. PAE allows the entire computer to have access to more than 4 GB of physical memory. As our article on Physical Address Extension says: "The 32-bit size of the virtual address is not changed, so regular application software continues to use instructions with 32-bit addresses and (in a flat memory model) is limited to 4 gigabytes of virtual address space." You can't write a single program that accesses more than 4 GB of memory, even with PAE. The only way to increase that limit would be to change the instruction set and/or increase register width, in which case it's no longer a 32 bit architecture. Or, to use a segmented (non-flat) address space, but this is rarely if ever done with 32 bit programs. As to why a 32 bit program can access more than 4 GB of disk space, it's because disk space is not addressed with byte-granularity as is used to address memory. Disks are addressed with sector-granularity, so that with a 32 bit disk address register, the program can address 4 billion sectors of disk space, rather than 4 billion bytes. If the sector size is 512 bytes, as is common, disk space up to 2 TB can be addressed (but no more than that without changes to the disk controller architecture). CodeTalker (talk) 00:32, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree with anything you wrote. I was probably a bit fast an loose because soon it would turn into a multi page epic :) "With PAE, a single program is still limited to 4 GB of virtual memory." I didn't contradict that. "PAE allows the entire computer to have access to more than 4 GB of physical memory" correct, that's what I thought I wrote. You can't write a single program that accesses more than 4 GB of memory, even with PAE. yes, because windows can not allocate that memory to the program, not because it's "impossible" to write a program that uses more than 4GB of ram? No? Yes you would need a different instruction set, yes it might be impractical, it might be slow, it might be cumbersome, but my point is it's not impossible, it's not inherent. Vespine (talk) 00:49, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be annoying, my the point I was trying to make is that you could make a computer that had 2 blocks of RAM with 4GB each: 4GB of A memory and 4GB of B memory, it would still be "32bit" architecture, it would not be as fast as having a single dedicated directly addressed block, there are good reasons why 32 bit computers were NOT designed that way, and why there were no "2 blocks of 4GB" designed as an upgrade (that i'm aware of), instead we went straight to 64bit, I guess my only point is that just because something is 32bit, does NOT mean it can't use more than 4GB of memory. It only means that in a computer with a specific OS and a specific architecture, using programs written for that OS, you can't address more than 4GB of physical RAM. Vespine (talk) 01:09, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Putting different blocks of memory in separate address-spaces is essential to creating a non-uniform memory access (NUMA) computer - it is a real thing and it commonly exists. The most obvious example that would be familiar to many readers are certain GPUs that have dedicated video RAM. In some implementations, that video-memory has its own address space. NUMA hardware- and software- designs also appear in lots of other computing applications, most commonly in asymmetric parallel computing architectures. I would agree that this architecture is "annoying" - it is a frequent source if difficult bugs and performance-issues; but it exists, nonetheless, because it sometimes has subtle application-specific benefits. Nimur (talk) 05:34, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Very good example, I didn't even think of that! The force is strong with Nimur.. This was of course not implemented in 32bit windows, where video memory, even if it was separate from the system RAM still counted towards the memory limit. Vespine (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

...one of which I encounter all of the time. In the embedded systems I work with, it is typical to have a largish amount of read-only memory (ROM) and a smaller amount of read-write memory (RAM). --Guy Macon (talk) 06:36, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Checking if there's enough memory is silly, like checking if a file exists prior to opening it. The file might get removed (on a multitasking system) in the time between stat() and creat(), for all the programmer knows. Asmrulz (talk) 14:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But the memory check is just a "system recommendation", it's not halting the process, (in this case). Surely if a game runs well with 2GB of ram, but runs like crap with 1GB, it's not a terrible thing to just pop up a message that says, this game needs 2GB to run well, but you only have 1GB, it will run but might be crap. A bit late in the post but this just reminded me of the old DOS games that would be "timed" off the system clock when most computer ran around 4MHz, running them on a "modern" computer would cause them to race through at thousands of times the normal "speed". Vespine (talk) 23:26, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Help! (windows batch script)

How can I run a Windows batch script without invoking cmd.exe or conhost.exe? Basically I am looking for a non-CLI program that acts like a CLI program, but as far as the OS is concerned is a GUI program so it doesn't invoke cmd.exe or conhost.exe. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Undeservingpoor1111111 (talk • contribs) 19:36, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You can look at Visual Command Line. Ruslik_Zero 20:43, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you are a programmer, you can use the CreateProcess function to spawn an executable. But in your specific request, you want to run a batch file, which is absolutely necessarily going to require an instance of Cmd.exe: for batch files, Cmd.exe runs the commands sequentially. Batch files are not executable - they are executed inside Cmd.exe. Even if you use a tool like Visual Command Line, it will still create an (invisible or windowless) instance of Cmd.exe on your behalf! If you want other behavior, you can not use a batch file - at least, not using the default tools that Windows provides. Nimur (talk) 22:34, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Nimur. A "batch script" it self doesn't actually do anything, is essentially just a list of CLI commands. I think you need to approach this from the other side: WHAT is it that you actually want the batch script to DO? For a very simple example, if you have a batch script that copies and renames a file, you could probably find a program that does that without using CMD. It depends how complicated your batch script is, but a lot of the commands you can do in a batch file, someone's probably written an equivalent program that does the same thing. Vespine (talk) 23:05, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No. I think you both misunderstand. I want an exe to run a batch file as if it was cmd.exe running it, but not actually cmd.exe and not a CLI (which cmd.exe is). Basically a third party program that implements the entire batch script language and can follow batch files but IS NOT cmd.exe. For example lets say you deleted cmd.exe and conhost.exe off your Windows instillation (ignore the fact that the system would be unstable for the moment) and now you try to run a batch file. Obviously it doesn't work. But, ta-da, you have a non-CLI exe program that you can drag and drop your batch file on and it follows it like it was cmd.exe, except it isn't cmd.exe and doesn't rely on conhost.exe because it isn't a CLI. You could also copy the exe to wine or mac and run your batch scripts without cmd.exe. Get it? I'm not interested in if this is a good idea or not or if there are other ways to do it like re-coding the script into bash. The goal is to run an unmodified windows batch file without invoking cmd.exe, but having the script followed and all commands executed as if it were running on cmd.exe. Or to put it another way, I want a cmd.exe emulator that pretends it is cmd.exe Undeservingpoor1111111 (talk) 00:29, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You seek a program that is exactly functionally equivalent to Microsoft's Cmd.exe, but that is not Cmd.exe. In principle, that program can exist; perhaps some hobbyist or commercial vendor has made it; perhaps you have the expertise to make it yourself by carefully studying the documentation at Microsoft TechNet. But I am not aware of any already extant such program that meets your needs. Microsoft's Cmd.exe, like much of Windows software, is not free- or open-source software. It would take great effort to create this program, and if implemented correctly, it would be indistinguishable from Cmd.exe, which already exists and can be used at no additional cost if you already run Windows. Perhaps you might find some insight by studying how the developers at DOSBox implemented their emulator; their software is free and open-source; but it only implements a tiny fraction of all features provided by modern Windows command shells. Our article links to other similar emulators. Note that DOSBox emulates the entire machine - its hardware and system software, not just the DOS command-shell program; but - as their code is available to inspect and modify - you can, with sufficient skill and effort, extract only the command shell logic from their software. Nimur (talk) 04:34, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, such a program does already exist; the cmd.exe from ReactOS is functionally identical to Windows CMD, open-source, and can even replace CMD on a Windows system with no ill effects. However, since it is a clone of cmd.exe and functions exactly the same way, it still requires conhost.exe (either the Windows or ReactOS version) to work, so doesn't satisfy OPs requirements. 125.141.200.46 (talk) 09:28, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added to the title to make it useful. StuRat (talk) 00:22, 27 September 2016 (UTC) [reply]

It sounds like you are trying to reinvent the wheel, while there are sometimes good reasons to create very similar, or even functionally identical software, necessity is the mother of invention is an idiom that definitely holds true in software. You have a program that does exactly what you need, why would someone write the same program? "if you delete cmd.exe"? Well, presumably you have to "load" your other program onto the computer too, just load cmd.exe again. Vespine (talk) 05:33, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have no experience with them, but Batch File Compilers, which turn a batch file into an exe file, exist. They basically change each line in the batch file into an exec system call I presume; adding a bit of extra code for ifs and gotos. Try Googling for Batch File Compiler. Martin. 93.95.251.162 (talk) 13:56, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like yet another XY problem. What is the ultimate goal you are trying to accomplish? --47.138.165.200 (talk) 02:05, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

September 27

Accessing the PivotX Support Community forum

Dear experts: I just made a blog using a free product called PivotX. There is a support community at:

http://forum.pivotx.net/index.php

but I can't find any way to register. Am I missing something? The forum appears active, so many people must have found a way to log in.

Thanks,

—Anne Delong (talk) 00:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Something to try is to attempt to make a contribution, and see if it asks you to register then. StuRat (talk) 03:24, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Anne Delong: Please read http://forum.pivotx.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4837 (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 03:58, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, StuRat and The Quixotic Potato. I guess I have my answer, although not the one I would have liked. I just wanted to change the location of the title to the bottom left on my new blog]; it likely would have been trivial for PivotX hobbyists, but I guess I will just leave it as is.—Anne Delong (talk) 04:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Base price of fitbit and pictures of fitbit models

I want to buy a fitbit but i need base price and the photos of models of fitbit that are avabile brand new in 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.52.13.15 (talk) 23:42, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried fitbit.com? Vespine (talk) 01:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

September 28

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