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February 4

Cable TV ads how do they work?

Are the broadcast to all the subscribers on at least a fairly large segment of the cable? Or can they be targeted to individual viewers? This is about Comcast in an apartment complex. My mom was recently treated for a medical issue, and suddenly we're seeing lots of cable ads about drugs and stuff related to that very issue. So much for HIPAA if these events are related. Thanks. 73.93.155.110 (talk) 00:38, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The commercials are either nation-wide or local to your area. They are not individually tailored. RudolfRed (talk) 03:25, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely the medical incident caused you to notice references to the same condition that previously would have passed by your attention. See priming (psychology). --142.112.159.101 (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you are referring to cable television service, you receive the exact same signal as everyone around you. It isn't customized for you. If you are watching programs on an on-demand service (like Hulu or YouTube), the ads can be customed just for you. They probably aren't, but they can be. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 15:35, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Force Quit doesn't show all open applications

iMac11,3, Intel Core i5, 2.8 GHz, macOS 10.13.6

When I go to Force Quit it shows some open applications but by no means all. As examples, I have MagicPrefs and uTorrent open right now, both of which are not (and are never) shown in Force Quit. Why is this? Is there a remedy? My Google search on the issue was not helpful. Thanks--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:49, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mac OS hides system tasks and things that it thinks are background tasks from the Force Quit dialog. However it is it determines what are 'background tasks' (I've never seen it documented), it sometimes has false positives/negatives. You can still force quit them from the Activity Monitor app, or from a Terminal with kill or killall. 100.2.177.74 (talk) 00:19, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I explored Activity Monitor – very useful.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:31, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 5

Server or PC?

I need to setup a simple Internet server. I have an option to purchase, or even take from my old storage a computer and install MS Server software, or on the other hand I can purchase a new Dell entry level server like this one: [1]. I hope it will have server software installed on it. What would be the difference?

Thanks, - AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:34, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hardware:

A server is optimized for reliable, fault tolerant 24-hour operation while using as little power and physical space as possible. In particular, the video will be fine for static 2D (Windows or Lixux desktop, web browsing...) but will absolutely suck at gaming.

For your application, I suggest a used Dell PowerEdge R610.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QJ6WTV7/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HDAGDLK/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R7XMKK5

At these prices you can afford to buy one, set it up and see if you are happy with it, then buy a spare.

There a are a huge number of perfectly fine R610s on the used market because for someone running a server farm it makes financial sense to replace multiple R610s with a single high-end virtualization server. These servers typically spent their previous lives in a climate controlled server room and are in like new condition.

Software:

You do not want to use Microsoft server software with IIS. If you get it with the server, put it on the shelf. Instead, you really want to run a Linux server and Apache.

Here are some good choices:[2] If in doubt, try Ubuntu first.

Here is a good page about setting up the web server:[3]

Questions

Is this going to be on the Internet, or will it be a private server on your LAN?

How many users at once? And what will they be doing? browsing a static website? Minecraft server? Uploading and downloading large files? I can give you better advice if I know more about the load. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:09, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the R610 draws 15W at idle and 260W with all twelve cores running a heavy load. I would guess that in your application it would spend most of its time under 30W with peaks of maybe 100W when a bunch of users are hammering on the web server.

Review:[4][5]

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:44, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon, thank you for a comprehensive advice. I kind of thought along the same lines, except for the Linux server. I do have considerable experience with Linux applications, C++ etc. The purpose of the server is a possible fundraising. I have 4 US patents on a particular invention. They are on the Internet, of course. I plan to collect them all in some pages, write a business plan, post some computational results, etc and limit the access to the website to people whom I consider potential investors and whom I have contacted and offered to check it out with passwords. That's it. I've never done gaming or anything of that nature.

Thank you, - AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Given the above new information, I would change my advice. Get a domain from Gandi.net, hosting from pair.com and email from Tuffmail.com. There are other good vendors, but I have personally tested these three. Prices are OK (not the cheapest, but not bad) reliability is very good, and all three have a reputation for protecting your privacy and not being idiots who keep getting hacked.

I do not advise buying the above three services from a single vendor.

With the above setup, if Pair goes belly up you can buy web hosting somewhere else and have Gandi point to the new web server. If Tuffmail dies you can buy email hosting somewhere else and have Gandi point to the new web server. If Gandi dies you can still access Tuffmail and Pair through their web interfaces even though the domain doesn't resolve, and you can hire a new domain name provider who will go through the special hoops you have to jump through to take over for a dead domain name provider.

Consider what happens when everything is provided by dodgydomains.ru: One day your website disappears. Is it the hosting? You call but the dodgydomains phone is disconnected, the dodgydomains email bounces and the dodgydomains website no longer exists. So you decide to call your domain name service and have them point to a new host. You call but the dodgydomains phone is disconnected, the dodgydomains email bounces and the dodgydomains website no longer exists. Same problem with the email server. This can be a real pain to recover from. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:04, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Guy's given you some good advice re server hardware (and OS), although I'd disagree on two broad points.

- I'm not a fan of this type of deep rack-mount when they're on their own. Great when you have a whole rack of them, but as an individual it's an awkward shape.

- More importantly, I don't think anyone should be running a single internet server. Either run a whole farm, or rent server space from someone who is. There's a lot more to this than just the server and it's nearly as awkward to run one (competently and protected) as it is to run a rackful. For another thing, your staging environment (dev, test and live servers) probably need two or three boxes (only one externally-facing) more than just one.

On the whole, I'd rent space from somewhere that's already hosting stuff. There's a plethora of such places, from Amazon AWS downwards. AWS isn't a bad way to go either, as it's much more flexible than simple server rental. But just buying a server and plugging it into the interweb is just asking for trouble. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:26, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks everyone for incredibly useful comments. AboutFace 22 (talk) 03:15, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that not many hardcore systems geeks run server-class hardware at home. Especially in the age of virtualization, you could easily go get a Digital Ocean droplet and have a nice, well-configured and usable server "out there" on the Internet to do what you want.

Besides the power requirements and exotic hardware of a server, there is another reason you do not want it in your home. Your Internet Service Provider has a Terms of Service that designates your connection for consumer use only. You can negotiate a business-class account with them, and pay lots more, but a consumer Internet connection does not have suitable technical characteristics for handling server-load and their Terms of Use may indeed specifically prohibit the "running of servers" over the connection. Elizium23 (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of geeks run server-class hardware at home, especially if we work from there. We just don't connect it to the public internet. Even if I want it accessible from some of the internet, or only accessible to myself when I'm mobile, I'd host it in someone else's data centre. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want to host some web pages and you don't want to use shared web hosting, the easiest thing to use is a VPS (virtual private server) of which the Digital Ocean (DO) droplet mentioned above is an example. You can get some free DO credit for signing up: search for "Digital ocean signup coupon" or something like that. It will let you test it for a month or so. DO's main competitors are linode.com, vultr.com, and a few others. They all have similar coupons. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:E118 (talk) 04:12, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. Very impressive. AboutFace 22 (talk) 01:15, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is this an antipattern?

I found some strange code at work in the ASP.NET Core application I'm developing.

When a controller needs to report an error situation, it calls a method in another class, giving itself as a parameter. This other class then calls methods in the controller, through the parameter it got, to write the error message in the reply. I changed it so the other class is not needed, the controller calls its own methods directly.

Is the former situation an example of some antipattern? JIP | Talk 21:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's a type of callback and sometimes it is the right thing. Other times it's an additional and unneeded moving part. It's not inherently an antipattern. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:E118 (talk) 04:08, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is not enough detail in the information in the question to give a reasoned answer. It depends. Possible justifications of using a callback include separation of concerns and avoiding code duplication. --Lambiam 11:27, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

More specifically, callbacks can be used for implementing inversion of control, such as needed for the dependency inversion principle, intended at keeping separable concerns separate. --Lambiam 11:41, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@JIP: It's not a big cost to perform one indirect call, especially in a non-time-critical part, whilst it adds one more level of flexibility. See e.g. the UML sequence diagrams at Observer pattern#Structure or Visitor pattern#Structure – both patterns use the scheme of object A calling a method of object B, which then decides if/what A should do. The flexibility arises in that you can replace the B object with another logic implementation, thus modifying the whole solution's behavior without touching the A class.

In your specific case, are you sure the 'other class' is the only class your controller will ever see in this situation? Does the controller class use the 'other class' as the other class' object properties and functionality, or may be it relies on some 'other class base interface'? Possibly in some configurations the 'yet another class' may implement a more sophisticated logic behind the same interface, for example record a trace of an error in some additional log, or send notifications to some other observers, not used in your application. This is more than probable if your controller class is used in other projects, in which it cooperates with different environments. If this is the case, your shortcut is very likely to break those other projects.... --CiaPan (talk) 12:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The classes are in the same project, and the controller is not used from any other project. The "other class" is the only class the controller sees in this situation, in fact it was hard-coded into the controller method, not given as a parameter or read from a setting. And the controller never uses any of the "other class's" properties, all this method does is call the same controller back. JIP | Talk 12:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 6

Superimposing typed text onto a hand drawn map of Chatham, NJ, in 1782

I need to hand draw a sketch/map of the above location. It will be difficult to include all the place names in some sections because of lack of space. Is there a downloadable (preferably free) software package which will allow me to superimpose the typed text onto this hand drawn map (which will simply be drawn on a piece of A4 paper and then scanned into a jpeg document)? Please could replies be aimed at a 3-year old since my IT comprehension is very limited indeed (actual age 75 - yes, I know, the 3-year old would understand better)! Arbil44 (talk) 13:28, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Inkscape 87.112.46.88 (talk) 15:01, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another approach is to use the web-based editor Smallpdf. Then you do not need to download and install any software. Using Smallpdf you can convert the jpeg file to a pdf file, edit it to add text, and convert the result back to jpeg. They have a free 14–day trial, which should be enough for your purposes. Disclaimer: I have never used Smallpdf, so I have no opinion about its practical usability. I have used Inkscape and found it awkward and slow; also, if you use a Mac, you need to install additional software (XQuartz) before you can use it. --Lambiam 20:37, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your replies. I will definitely give Smallpdf a go. Arbil44 (talk) 22:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody know about linking Excel and Word documents?

I have some tables in Excel which I'd like to incorporate into a Word document.
I'd like the document to automatically update if I update the spreadsheet.
I did a little research and discovered that there's a "linking" feature which should do just what I want: you copy cells in Excel, then use Paste Special when you paste them into the Word document, and the Paste Special dialog has a checkbox you can check to create a link.

The first time I tried this, it worked astonishingly well, even better than I expected: Having set up the link, I could go to the spreadsheet and update the value in a cell, then go back to Word, and the value there would update almost instantaneously. (I didn't even have to save the modified spreadsheet or anything.) Perfect! Almost magic!

Except... tragedy. After that first, pleasantly successful test, now it's not working so well. Half the time, "Paste Special" in Word is greyed out, and therefore won't let me create the link at all. Other times, it lets me create the link, but after not very long, changes stop propagating.

I have no idea if I'm doing something wrong, or if the feature is uselessly, nondeterministically buggy, or what.

I've tried this on two different Macs, using Word and Excel 2011 and 2017, and I'm seeing similarly inconsistent results with both.

Anybody have any experience with this? Any secrets you can impart? —Steve Summit (talk) 23:41, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This features is supposed to work... and I have usually seen it work...

By any chance, are you linking documents that are non-local - in other words, stored on shared network file systems or something like that?

Microsoft's official help-page explains how to control when external reference links are updated - and they actually say that "you may run into performance issues..." and it may become "confusing and difficult to manage." Were I experienced in the ways of corporate-ese, I might presume that verbage is a gloss for "nondeterministically buggy..."

Nimur (talk) 16:28, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just curious - is it possible that the Excel pieces that don't work are not in defined tables? When a table is formally defined in Excel, it's a much more robust arrangemnt; it's essentially a database and much more amenable to (at least) other forms of linking. For example, you can query from that table whereas you cannot for a plain Excel document. Even if that's not a specific pattern you've noticed, I would always recommend defining tables in Excel wherever possible. Matt Deres (talk) 19:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Scs: Is your version pre-2007 or 2007-16? Maccore Henni _{Mii! Pictochat Mii!} 22:40, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 7

thermal paste

what happens if you dont put thermal paste on CPU — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vapze (talk • contribs) 09:55, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This site explains why thermal paste is generally recommended.

In short, the CPU could overheat. Ian.thomson (talk) 10:06, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

US tax software for married - file separately or jointly

Is there software for US income taxes for a married couple that will tell you whether it is better to file jointly or separately? It should be easy to do, but TurboTax doesn't do it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:17, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 8

hosted page injected

I use the Firefox console to display the output of toy JavaScript programs and am getting the message "hosted page injected," which is associated with the line <body> line. What is happening? Thank you. --Halcatalyst (talk) 11:52, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]