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September 2

Inverting the Multimedia and F keys on Asus netbook

My Asus Eee PC 1015PX has a set of multimedia keys (Volume up/down, mute, dim screen, etc...) on the top row on the same buttons as the F keys (F1, F2, F3, etc...). By default, when I press one of the keys, it triggers the F keys, in order to trigger the multimedia functions, I have to hold down the Fn keys on the bottom of the keyboard. Is there anyway to invert this such that when I press the keys without the Fn key it will trigger the multimedia functions, while pressing the keys while holding the Fn key will trigger the F keys?

I believe the programs responsible for this may be called "HotKeyMon.exe" and "HotkeyService.exe." However, I can only find these under the process list of task manager, and not in any program folder. Furthermore, task manager lists the user as SYSTEM, rather than my user name.

Thanks Acceptable (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

A family member's laptop has an option to do that in the BIOS. Try looking there. --Bavi H (talk) 21:32, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Also try Windows Key + X. 92.236.250.154 (talk) 20:26, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

weird computer problem featuring //@

Hi all, I have a website that works perfectly well offline with explorer and firefox, but when online, it won't work with explorer. I've tracked the error messages, and explorer is definitely concerned about comments in my code starting with //@. I use //@ in javascript to mark major breaks in my code, so it would be unfortunate to have to change all of them, spread across about 5 or 10 files. Does anyone know what might be going on? I'm using lots of jquery include files from google code. Thanks in advance, IBE (talk) 17:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

In IE, //@ is used to indicate Javascript comments with conditional compilation; see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6s6fab9k%28v=vs.94%29.aspx. So most likely you're screwed. Looie496 (talk) 18:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link - googling wasn't helping me. People can add to this if they have any more detail, but I've put resolved so people know it's basically sorted. IBE (talk) 22:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

It's also discussed in Conditional comment 176.250.67.119 (talk) 01:19, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

You Tube player problems

I normally use Internet Explorer to use YouTube. In the last 24 hours when I click to play a video, the entire screen goes white except for the video itself, which I cannot do anything with other than watch in full, no pausing or downloading. If I do click on the video while it is playing the entire screen will go black, although the sound will continue. At this point, if I right click on the black screen and select pop-out I will get a small viewer showing the video only which works properly, allows me to pause and download. But I have none of the background page allowing me to see related videos or comment, or the like. I have followed the suggestions at youtube's help page,disabled hardware accelerator, and used compatibility view in my browser, to no avail.

I tried using Firefox when this started, but Firefox will not even play the video, it shows me a simulated static screen with the words "An Error Occurred. Try Again Later." Are these problems possibly related?

Should I try reinstalling Flash, or an earlier version?

Can restoring default settings on IE help? I am reluctant to try anything drastic since I have no idea what is going on. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 18:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I had that problem some time ago with Firefox -- not sure about any issue with IE. In my case the problem was actually in RealPlayer. Here is the fix that Mozilla suggests. However, the fix that I applied, which actually worked, was this: (1) Start RealPlayer; (2) Open the Preferences, and select Download & Recording; (3) Uncheck the box that says "Enable Web Download & Recording for these installed browsers:"; (4) Press OK. Looie496 (talk) 18:33, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I definitely don't want not to be able to download with realplayer. I will check if doing so helps, however. μηδείς (talk) 18:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I both disabled and upgraded RealPlayer, neither had any effect. I did upgrade Flash almost a month ago, perhaps I should downgrade? μηδείς (talk) 19:02, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, both problems seem to have cleared themselves up, apparently due to the realplayer upgrade, although it seems to have needed something else to have taken effect in the last 10 minutes for it to kick in. Bizarre. Thanks for the help! μηδείς (talk) 19:20, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

NOT

AGH!!! It's back! I think the problem may be with YouTube. I don't have problems watching or downloading videos from other sites. μηδείς (talk) 19:25, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Whatevert the underlying issue was, I ultimately solved it by resetting to factory defaults wit the option to keep my data, and all is now working fine, although I have to manage add ons and change a few other settings back how I like'm. μηδείς (talk) 04:14, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

GIMP 2.8 takes a lot of memory?

Previously, when I was using Fedora 14, I could open a bit more than 100 image files on GIMP at the same time (the size of each of them was in the order of one megapixel). Now when I have Fedora 17 and GIMP 2.8, I can't open even half that many. Trying to open 40 such files grinds the computer to a complete halt. Opening 30 files is as far as I can get, and even then I experience minor slowdowns. Is GIMP 2.8 really this greedy on resources? JIP | Talk 18:48, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you using KDE? When I ran Fedora 14 and KDE 3.5, I could connect my PC to the TV to watch streaming media. Basically this means I am running two monitors. When I upgraded to Fedora 16 and KDE 4 (on the same hardware), I could no longer do this. When I attempt to run two monitors, the video stream is unwatchable. The only solution was for me to disable the actual monitor and just use the TV. I solved the problem permanently by ditching KDE and moving to IceWM. --TrogWoolley (talk) 14:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

No, I use GNOME, not KDE. I had to install Cinnamon to get some semblance of the usable Fedora 14 desktop back and not that awful crap the GNOME project is officially heading towards. JIP | Talk 17:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

What are you doing that requires you to have 100 images open at once? GIMP was never really designed to be used that way. Looie496 (talk) 17:28, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I regularly download images from DeviantArt. I've found out that since I'm usually only interested in part of the image, I can save time spent viewing the images if I combine the interesting parts of several images into one. I use the GIMP for this purpose. Unfortunately, since I'm too lazy to do this combining work as often as I browse DeviantArt, I have acquired a backlog of more than one thousand images. Therefore it's more efficient to load a hundred or so in the GIMP at once. JIP | Talk 19:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I've done comparable things quite a bit -- my method is to use GIMP in conjunction with gThumb. You can open a directory of images in gThumb and then drag&drop thumbnails one at a time to GIMP. GIMP was designed with the philosophy of being purely an image editor -- it does not try to be an image manager, and isn't very useful for that purpose. There are lots of image managers other than gThumb, and I expect that many of them would work, but gThumb does the job just fine for me. Looie496 (talk) 21:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

MIS (Managing Information System)

How many contents are present in MIS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.52.106.189 (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your question. Does the article Management information system help? Otherwise, please clarify what you are asking. RudolfRed (talk) 22:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Python: from list of strings, to list of integers

If you have a list of strings, like and want a list of integers, how do you do it? Somehow sum(list) won't convert the elements on the fly. I know that I could convert and sum each element with

for i in list:
   a += int(i)

But, isn't an easier, standard way of doing this? Comploose (talk) 23:47, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

sum(int(i) for i in list)

or, to get a list of integers out of list:

list2 = . 

OsmanRF34 (talk) 00:21, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Or, if you are old-fashioned and have a sense of beauty: list2 = map(int, list). Note that all these work because int is not just a type name, but also a function that constructs integers from strings. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:33, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Tangentially, while map in python2 returns a list, in python3 it returns an iterable. The two are interchangable in many practical cases, but if someone really needs a list, you'd say list2 = list(map(int, )) 90.211.231.197 (talk) 13:18, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I realise that yours is a simple example, but in general it's a bad idea to call a variable list, as list is also a built-in function which takes an interable and produces an actual list. Python is forgiving in that it lets you do this, but if you forget and later (in a larger program) you try to call the builtin you'll get TypeError: 'list' object is not callable, which can be hard to understand. 90.211.231.197 (talk) 13:18, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

September 3

Stupid Twitter question

I've tried to use Twitter a few times, and found that when I try posting to it, the tweets are listed in my history, but don't ever seem to turn up on a search by the hashtag I put in them. Is that some kind of deliberate feature, or does it indicate the thing is "hexed" somehow and never really gets posted? Wnt (talk) 03:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

No idea but in these sort of things it always makes sense to log out and see what a person not logged in will see. N.B. This doesn't of course when you want to see things from another logged in users POV, which is usually needed with Facebook but usually not Twitter AFAIK. You can of course create another account if this is needed although it might violate the site's TOS and may theoretically put your main account at risk. Nil Einne (talk) 05:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I think this is expected behaviour. The nature of hashtags is that they allow you to discover what other people are saying about a subject. I've found a few anecdotal references around the web to suggest this is the case, but nothing official from Twitter.

Further to what Nil Einne said above, if you're worried about your tweets disappearing, I'd recommend enlisting a friend to help you test (of course, you could use a second account instead). Send a tweet like this: @yourfriend Hi, I'm just going to do a test. Can you search #test67352hgdui5487 and see if you see this tweet? (obviously replace @yourfriend with your friend's twitter handle). Given what I said above, I'd expect them to be able to see the tweet in a search, whilst it will be invisible to you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:59, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Apparently the solution is not to use Twitter search (which requires login apparently) but use Topsy.com - and apparently no, the Tweets don't show up anywhere but in the account profile. No idea what is up with that site, or how it's supposed to be an improvement on IRC or Usenet. Wnt (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

...or RSS hosted on your own server. Twitter is a member of a generation of "Web 2.0" brand services. The objective of such services is to start with existing free software and either reimplement the feature-set, or simply run it on a server. The objective of such companies is "to go viral," meaning "to pay for the server, bandwidth, and infrastructure costs for millions of people." In exchange for fronting the costs, these companies may show advertisements, or may just try to self-aggrandize their own brand. All the while, they violate the spirit, if not the terms, of the free software that they use to drive their web services. It is for this reason that the GNU Affero license was conceived: to ensure that free software is still free, even if it is executed on a server. Nimur (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not the chat functionality or the ability to spew your thoughts out that makes Twitter interesting/fun/whatever. It's the fact that you can hook your account up fairly directly to famous people, people with similar interests, and so forth. The interactivity level is very high compared to Facebook or IRC or so forth — you are one degree of separation away from the entire planet, you subscribe to them, they can subscribe to you, nobody pretends to be "friends," the amount of interaction is pretty specifically limited to chatting (not tagging photos or whatever) and so forth. You don't have to like it, but at least take the time to understand what draws people to it, rather than just dismissing it as being made up of component technologies that already existed. It's very different from IRC, very different from just hosting your own RSS feeds, obviously different than Usenet. It's a clever service and fills and interesting niche. I was skeptical before I started using it more heavily professionally; it's become a huge way of how I disseminate my own research at this point and is the main way I make interesting professional connections out of my own narrow field these days. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

This has a five blind men and an elephant feel to it... Do you have Tweet Privacy turned on? Are you searching just for hashed terms or other terms? Do you list "all" or just "top" Tweets? Are you using extremely popular hashtags (and thus perhaps just getting drowned out by the volume) or unusual ones? You should be able to search for your own tweets if they are showing up. I don't use hashtags much, but I'm pretty sure you should be able to see your own hashtags. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

[Your comment alludes to blind men and an elephant, which might be unfamiliar to some readers.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)]

Facebook

Trying my luck once again: What is the max size of a file you can attach to a personal message on facebook? 81.218.12.100 (talk) 08:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but since it seems you are having no luck, I can offer this suggestion: try a big file and see what happens, and keep trying various sizes until it doesn't work. Mingmingla (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Outlook 2010 display

I've just had Outlook 2010 installed on my work PC. I have emails from asian colleagues whose name is now displayed in an asian font. In my Contacts list I have them listed with name = asian font name; display name = anglicised name; email address = abc@xyz.com . In the email list they are still "From" the asian name. How do I make it either the display name or the email address please? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe this will help, but it is hard to tell since I probably don't have the same account/exchange setup as you. On my Outlook 2010, under Tools -> Options -> Mail format tab, I have an "International options" button which opens a dialog with settings for fonts etc. Also under the "Other" tab, the "Advanced options" has a setting about unicode. Astronaut (talk) 19:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't even have a Tools menu! I have "File", "Home", "Send/Receive", "Folder" and "View". None have an (obvious) "Options" option. Ah well. -- SGBailey (talk) 08:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I think Astronaut is actually talking about Outlook 2007 or 2003. In 2010, you go to File → Options → Advanced → International Options to get there. To customize how the contact list is displayed, you can go to Contacts → View Settings and then choose what contact fields are displayed in that view. If you want to customize the "display as" name, you can simply edit the contact by double-clicking on it and then change that field.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 09:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Best Dog Ever is correct. I could have sworn we used Office 2010 at work, yet there it is in the about box "Outlook 2007". Astronaut (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Best Dog Ever's paths work, however the contacts option looks as though it will chnage the contacts page display, which is fine (I have all of Asian name, anglicised name and email address showing). The File Options path takes me to a page where I can select the font that is displayed, but not what is displayed in the email list. What I want is to NOT display what in contacts is "Full name" but what in contacts is "File as". I have tried editing the contact to swap them round and that didn't help. -- SGBailey (talk) 09:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

2d car movment

I'm making a little game where you drive a car. It's a 2d top down game. I'm having trouble getting the car to drive correctly. For example I would like the car to accelerate towards a top speed, instead of simply hitting a predefined top speed and stopping its acceleration. Also at slow speeds the car should turn in a tighter circle then at faster speeds. I just can’t figure out the math. Here's what I have so far:

if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_LEFT)){
     Polygon.Rotate(-1 * Speed * elaspedTime.Milliseconds * 0.01F);
}
if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_RIGHT)){
    Polygon.Rotate(1 * Speed * elaspedTime.Milliseconds * 0.01F);
}
if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_UP))
{
    Speed += 0.05F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
    if (Speed > MaxSpeed){
        Speed = MaxSpeed;
    }
    if (Speed < 0){
        Speed = 0;
    }
} else if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_DOWN)) {
    Speed -= 0.05F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
    if (Speed < -MaxSpeed){
        Speed = -MaxSpeed;
    }
    if (Speed > 0){
        Speed = 0;
     }
}else{
    if(Speed > 0 )
        Speed -= 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
     else
        Speed += 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
}
Polygon.Move(Velocity);

86.45.177.178 (talk) 15:29, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you clarify something: do you want acceleration to be a function of current velocity? If so, you just add that in: Speed += 0.05F/Speed, or some similar correction factor. You either have to play around with it, or find a formula on the internet that models the dependence of acceleration on current velocity. If it's not working at all, you have changed your variable from Speed to Velocity in the code above, so I can't quite follow it. IBE (talk) 15:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

PS: you'll probably want to divide by something like (1 + abs(Speed)), because otherwise you divide by zero. IBE (talk) 20:00, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

A car's top speed happens when the force being applied to the pavement balances the drag from wind resistance. If you want to model something similar to that, just reduce the speed by a value proportional to the square of the current speed each time the position is updated. The acceleration will have to fight against that, and it will grow stronger as the acceleration stays constant. Eventually they will balance and your speed will level out. It will also add a slowing down effect when not accelerating or braking. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe

Speed += ms/5000 * (MaxSpeed - Speed);

for forward acceleration (which is basically the same as user 209.131.76.183's suggestion, without the squared part). You can adjust the constants, but whatever you use, make sure that

0 < ms <= 5000 (or <=your constant). (ms is meant to be the time interval in milliseconds, elaspedTime.Milliseconds in your code.)

And I can see a minor 'bug' in your code. Pressing UP while going in reverse will kill the speed instantly, as will pressing DOWN while moving forward.

Your code for drifting is almost fine, but keep in mind that

if(Speed > 0 ) Speed -= 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;

can cause a VERY slow car to reverse slightly, and

else Speed += 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;

will cause a stationary car to move forward slightly.

Two more ifs will catch those cases though. - ¡Ouch! ( / _{more pain}) 09:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Mac OS X Lion: Inbuilt PHP

I enabled Apache (via System Preferences, Sharing and enabling Web Sharing) and entering 127.0.0.1 showed the "It works!" HTML file.

I went to Terminal, entered:

cd /etc/apache2/
sudo nano httpd.conf

After entering my password, I managed to uncomment the following line

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Successfully saved the Apache configuration file and closed Terminal.

Entered the following into TextEdit and saved as phpinfo.php in \Users\user\Sites and \Library\WebServer\Documents:

<? phpinfo(); ?>

Opened both phpinfo.php files in Safari and in both cases, only saw the code.

Restarted Apache by disabling and then enabling Web Sharing, checked both files again, still no luck.

Tried enabling the PHP configuration file by going back to Terminal and entering:

cd /etc
sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini

Still no luck.

Tried changing the code to:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Still no luck.

This was tried on a brand new Mac OS X Lion machine.

What is going wrong? — Preceding unsigned comment added by YoungAspie (talk • contribs) 17:06, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Two things: 1. Are you making sure you are accessing the page via the localhost and not just as a file? That is, what's the URL you are accessing? It should be something like http://127.0.0.1/~username/phpinfo.php (which is where Username/Sites is mapped by default, I think), not file://etc.etc./whatever/phpinfo.php. 2. Have you tried rebooting since changing the files? Always worth a shot. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:29, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

September 4

Router

Routers without wireless functions do not seem easy to find these days. I know many wireless routers allow the wireless part to be "disabled" but I am very suspicious as to whether it still leaks radiation when supposedly disabled. Short of buying an EMF meter and scanning it, is there any way to know for sure if the signals have truly been disabled? I realize all electrical items emit low level electromagnetic radiation, but I would like to minimize excessive exposure where possible. Would wrapping it in tin-foil block the signals, acting like a Faraday cage? 92.233.64.26 (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Almost all devices using electricity leak some radiation, even the wiring in your house and we are all bombarded with radiation all the time. The contribution from a router with the wireless part turn off will be very small, no worse than any other electronic device on your home. Most devices these days carry a FCC Declaration of Conformity notice somewhere on their casing or perhaps in with the manuals and so on. The UK equivalent is the CE marking. These declarations are to certify that the electromagnetic interference from the device is under limits approved by the relevant body. Unless you routinely cover all your gadgets with tin-foil, I wouldn't bother picking out the router specifically. Astronaut (talk) 16:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

As I said, realize all electrical items emit low level electromagnetic radiation. However, the router is being singled out because it emits additional and far stronger radiation when operating in wireless mode, and disabling wireless mode may not disable the radiation. For all I know it might just scramble the signal to prevent other wireless devices detecting and connecting to it, giving the illusion that it has been disabled, but still emitting the same strong radiation. 92.233.64.26 (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that the radiation from your router is even harmful? The Wireless electronic devices and health article says that the UK's HPA says there is “...no reason why schools and others should not use WiFi equipment.” and "Dr Michael Clark, of the HPA, says published research on mobile phones and masts does not add up to an indictment of WiFi." Domestic routers have a signal range of up to 100 metres in my experience (by comparison, the radiation emitted by a mobile phone needs to travel a few km to the nearest cell mast). You might also find Wi-Fi#Safety interesting to read. It is also probably worth pointing out that, even if you shield your router, you are unlikely to be able to shield yourself from your neighbours' equipment - my PC can detect 54 other routers, presumably all the neighbours in my apartment complex. However, I doubt you are going to be able to tell whether your wireless is really and truly off without using some sophisticated detection equipment - you could always ask the manufacturer. On the other hand, if you are "very suspicious" that off is really off, would you actually believe them? Astronaut (talk) 19:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for refuting my irrational fears of electromagnetic radiation. They have been sufficiently placated and I now firmly believe that wireless radiation is entirely safe for all the family. However my two main questions remain unanswered;

1. Other than an EMF meter, are there any ways to detect whether a device is emitting strong electromagnetic radiation?
2. Will tin-foil act like a Faraday cage and block radiation from wireless equipment? 92.233.64.26 (talk) 19:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Astronaut answered your first question in the last sentence of his answer. The second is answered at Tin foil hat. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:00, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

"some sophisticated detection equipment" is a little vague though, and I was already aware of that fact; I know about EMF meters, as I specifically mentioned them in my post - what I was asking is if there are things other than EMF meters which can detect it? Even diy solutions like modifying an old radio or something 92.233.64.26 (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

If you are interested in a practical, professional solution where you get a router which does not emit more EM than is necessary, you should set out to buy a router that simply doesn't have such a feature. It isn't an uncommon for small routers in some business environments to not have 802.11. For example, businesses in some security conscious sectors like healthcare and finance may flatly forbit any wireless-capable equipment to be on the premises, and places where EM interference is an issue (such as medical imaging or explosives) forbid all things radio. Makers like Draytek (I'm not recommending them specifically, but they're pretty well regarded) feature wireless and no-wireless versions of the same router, for this reason. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the link, and the information about environments where wireless equipment is universally considered unacceptable. That is very useful information and will hopefully help avoid the "it's safe/it isn't safe/you're a crackpot" debate in the future. Indeed I should have known better than to give background to my question here, as it is obvious in hindsight that was the direction it would go. 92.233.64.26 (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

You can easily find non-WiFi routers at e.g. Amazon. Or at Cisco ;-). But you need to specify if you want an ADSL or Cable modem with it, or a pure ethernet router (in which case you probably really want a switch), or something else. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I have an 8 port ethernet switch already but it doesn't have its own mac address as far as I know, so the problem would be that if I plugged the cable modem into the switch it would see several computers might lock onto the wrong ones mac address. And even if it locked onto the right one, the traffic for the other computers would have to go through the computer the modem locked onto and back out the same port into the switch again before reaching the other computers which would reduce the available bandwidth 92.233.64.26 (talk) 23:09, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

How to access a WPS wirelessly?

If you have the PIN of your WPS (it's enabled, and it's not push-buttom), how do you connect to the router? Do you need anything else? Is there an IP like http://192.168.1.1/ to change the settings? Comploose (talk) 19:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

it's absolutely impossible to connect through wireless with WPS only. You always need a cable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.78.62.32 (talk) 19:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Not according to Wi-Fi Protected Setup it isn’t. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:08, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

starting a new internet forum

So, I want to attempt to host an online forum, maybe with some other parts attached too when I get around to it, however I'm not sure how. I was reccomended webs.com, but my site might have a little 18+ material at times, and it seems that is against their terms of use, so I'd need somewhere else. I do have a website, but I have no idea what I'm doing there at all, I'm not even sure how to get into the part where I say what I want on the site. So, what do I do?

79.66.110.76 (talk) 19:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

You could create a new sub-reddit on Reddit (details). Or you could create a mailing list on Yahoo Groups. I think you could do this on Facebook too, but I don't understand their content and privacy policies well enough to know whether that would match your requirements. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

There are free forum hosts available. I am a member of a forum which is hosted at http://www.zetaboards.com/ although with free hosts, you will most likely be restricted as to what you can post. For example http://www.zetaboards.com/ have a no pornography policy. Another option is to use your own webspace and host the forum yourself using PhpBB. This way you can pretty well do what you want. --TrogWoolley (talk) 12:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Share internet connection with ad hoc network

Two computers: A with linux, B with windows 7. B has an internet connection, A does not. I would like to connect A to the internet via an ad-hoc network on B. This works fine if I set up an open (i.e. without password) ad-hoc network on B with "share internet connection" enabled and then connect to it from A. However if I try the same with a WEP or WAP protected ad-hoc network it does not work, i.e. I cannot connect to the internet. Is there anything extra I need to do in order to make it work? On linux I am running the following commands: "iwconfig wlan0 essid adhoc", "iwconfig wlan0 mode Ad-Hoc", "ifconfig wlan0 192.168.137.5 up", "iwconfig wlan0 key s:secret", "route add default gw 192.168.137.1". I read that connecting to a WAP ad-hoc network with linux is tricky, but I'd expect that at least the WEP would work. bamse (talk) 20:48, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I figured it out. bamse (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Learning C# after Java / C++

I already routinely use C++ and Java, and I have a good OO foundation. However, an upcoming project will require me to use C#. What is the best way to go about learning C# programming, without stating from a "novice programming" level? I'm mainly concerned with "How is this different from what I already know?" I'd prefer on online (especially free) solution to buying a dead-tree book, if at all possible. Also, this project will be done using Mono (which I will also need to learn), not Visual Studio. Thanks! - SigmaEpsilon → ΣΕ 22:48, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) is the best resource I know for C# documentation; especially if you're already familiar with fundamental concepts of programming. There are C# "Walkthroughs" that will familiarize you with the APIs and methodologies for common tasks; there are "Getting Started" guidebooks; and there are API references for the standard libraries in .NET. I'm not specifically familiar with Mono; but the language is the same, and the system libraries are similar (they are intended, at least, to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET system); I'd start with the official Mono Start webpage. They have links from there to the API references and several getting-started documents. Nimur (talk) 02:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Strange delimiters in HTTP?

When I go to cloudflare.com and go to view source. I can see that the start is <html> and the end is </html> but, when sending a raw HTTP request I can see there are some numbers at the beginning between the headers and the content, and:

1
0

at the end of the content.. Am I missing something? 190.158.212.204 (talk) 23:39, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

That's the chunked transfer encoding. -- BenRG (talk) 23:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

September 5

Bluetooth

If two identical cell phones were fixed in place mechanically so that, to the submicron level, the relevant components were the same distance from a bluetooth headset, and the headset were then turned on, how would one cell phone acquire the headset over the other? Peter Michner (talk) 12:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Every bluetooth-capable device has a unique identification number (BD_ADDR). Using this they can unambigiously identify one another by this means alone. BD_ADDR is used during pairing and authentication so you know which headset you're connecting to, and so no-one can spoof that headset and impersonate it. If both of the headsets in your example have already been previously paired with the phone (meaning it's stored their details) and they're both turned on simultaneously, it's up to the phone to decide which it prefers. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if I wrote it wrong, but I was saying if you have two phones and one bluetooth thing to which neither phone has ever been linked, how would one of the two phones get connected with the one bluetooth earpiece. I know with my Jabra bluetooth earpiece, the first time I ever turned it on in close proximity to my iPhone, my iPhone immediately showed the little bluetooth icon in the upper right corner, meaning my iPhone linked with the Jabra earpiece. What if two cellular phones were precisely the same distance from one bluetooth device that has never connected to either and the bluetooth device was turned on? Peter Michner (talk) 13:55, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Bluetooth has a sophisticated protocol, because it is a fairly modern form of digital communication. This is a special case of the more general problem of resolving collisions in a shared transmission medium. Each type of wired or wireless technology has a mechanism for handling this case; some similar methods are carrier sense multiple access with software-controlled re-tries that are timed randomly to avoid repeating the collision. Other schemes use address-based coding, so that the message is only decipherable to its intended recipient. In some communicaton systems, like aviation radio, voice procedure is used to handle collisions (at the "Application Level" of the OSI stack): you simply say who you want to talk to, and if the message gets garbled, you try again. For a very specific answer to your question, we'd need to dive into the details of the Bluetooth protocol specification. Often times, the solution is a mechanism designed to guarantee a strict ordering among devices, even if the individual devices are unaware of others on the shared radio channel. Nimur (talk) 13:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Hard Disk Docking Station vs 'Portable' HDD

I am considering the puchase of an external hard disk drive (HDD) for storage/backup purposes for a laptop with a 500 GB internal HDD. (I am recording TV from a digital USB TV 'stick' and it takes a lot of space, about 5+ GB an hour!)
One possibility is a 'portable', USB powered HDD of about 1.0-1.5 TB. Another possibility is a USB interface HDD docking station, the type that takes 'bare' (uncased) HDDs, as I have a spare 3.5" 1 TB HDD available.
Any knowledge, experience, reviews etc. of the merits of such a docking device vs a more portable 'cased' type HDD? Regards, 220 of 17:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The cased HDDs are usually nothing more than a docking device plus a normal consumer HDD, although the cased HDD may actually be cheaper than a docking device plus HDD, because they're produced in much greater volume. A merit of a cased model might be simplicity - it saves you the trouble of putting one together yourself, and (especially the 2.5" models) may be able to work off the power provided by a USB port, saving you the trouble of carrying both the drive and a power supply. Unilynx (talk) 18:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Unilynx, Concur that "cased HDD may actually be cheaper than a docking device plus HDD". It certainly seems to be true. However, next week(12/Sept.) my local ALDI store will have a USB 3.0 dual "HDD Docking Station" for SATA drives going for A$30. I actually have a lot of 'miscellaneous' HDD lying about, so it may be useful for purposes (ie. HDD testing) beyond backups. - 220 of 18:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Typically docking stations do not offer any protection to the hard drive and are not intended for constant use. The hard drive will be more susceptible to damage and dust as it is exposed rather than being shielded in a case, and the interface connectors (especially IDE) are not designed to be regularly attached/detached and may break. A disk enclosure may be more suitable. Worth noting; some external hard drives such as the FreeAgent GoFlex have a detachable base so can function as both a cased hard drive and as rudimentary docking station for other SATA hard drives. I would not recommend this for constant use however, but if you only needed to access the spare 3.5 drive very occasionally it may be useful. You might also consider encoding your video into a more efficient codec such as h.264. Recordings from DVB will probably be mpeg2, so the space savings in using h.264 can be considerable as it will produce similar quality at lower bitrates. AvrillirvA (talk) 19:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually in plenty of countries DVB transmissions are in h264, the OP didn't seem to specify where they live either in the question or in their user page. Also despite the OPs choice of words, I suspect they're referring to standalone portable hard disk enclosures which still exist. However IMO such devices often no longer make sense. In a number of countries 3.5" based portable hard disks, when on special at retail stores are often cheaper then internal ones. And ironically with the terrible internal HD warranties nowadays the portable ones often have longer warranties. Anyway I have to question whether the OP has considered their requirements properly. If they only need portable within a house I would suggest they should set up a dedicated media server and use their laptop as a client. They could also use their laptop with an NAS but I don't see why you'd want to record stuff on the laptop unless you plan to take it around and still be able to record while on the move. If they want to content to be available, perhaps provide some local caching of important content? Nil Einne (talk) 06:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

@ AvrillirvA, I have one of those enclosures ... somewhere! though actually more of a slide in/out tray type for a tower PC. I have been considering the FreeAgent GoFlex as a possibility, but they seem rather more expensive per Gb. I can get the GoFlex 'dock' for 'only' ≈A$25. See also my rpy to Unilynx re "HDD Docking Station".
• I don't think I have any choice about the encoding of my saved video. It is MPEG (.mpg file extension). According to the specs it is MPEG 2. One recorded movie from GO! has a video 'Data rate' of 3135kbps,' total bit rate' of 3391 kbps, Audio bit rate of 256 kbps, if that gives you any more clues about the encoding used. The software is ArcSoft TotalMedia, bundled with a MyGica brand MY-T803 DVB-T TV stick.- 220 of 18:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

@ Nil Einne, I am in Australia(Oz), southern end of Sydney. I would like the HDD to be pretty portable, rather than a 'Desktop' type, so a USB powered 2.5" external is what I had in mind, though noticeably more expensive. Currently JB Hi-Fi have Seagate/ Western Digital 1Tb for A$99. Very tempting, or Dick Smith has Seagate 1.5 TB available for $149. A 'desktop' 3.5" not intended to be carried around is about 2 Tb for $A135.
A media server is certainly a possibility, one which I had not considered. I have plenty of unused computer hardware lying around to build one (or even 2!). (Perhaps you can also advise me why I can get 'Gem' digital TV video, but no sound! I also cannot receive 7mate or similar channel 7 stations, and GO! channel reception can be very spotty, though sometimes it is perfect!) Oh NZ I see, thought you were in 'OZ' ;-) - 220 of 18:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion for reader-controlled highlighting in Misplaced Pages articles

Dear Misplaced Pages,

As I don't know where to put my this question, however I arrived here.

Since I read wikipedia most of the times, and wikipedia pages are open for many hours a day. So when I change my tabs, I loose my sight from important lines in previous tab. So I want you guys to add some facility, so that I can highlight my important lines with some colors. ( Here I want to tell you that in a wikipedia page, you can highlight ONLY one continuous line with blue ink (as it happens in all the pages, if it is wikipedia or any other ), what if I want to highlight many lines on the SAME page.)

Please add this facility to Misplaced Pages, so that everyone can take advantage of it.

All for One and One for All.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.62.52 (talk) 17:45, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The place to make suggestions like this is WP:VPT. Making them here won't lead anywhere even if people like them. Looie496 (talk) 17:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC) (PS, I have removed your email address, as it makes you a target for possible spam.)

Here we answer questions relating to computers. For instance, if you wanted to know how to make multiple discontinuous selections on the same page in Firefox, the answer is that you hold down the ctrl key.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

You might also be interested in the Awesome Highlighter, which will allow you to highlight text on many sites, not just Misplaced Pages. There's a Firefox extension as well as a browser-independent web-based version. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

What's the point of LaTex?

It's nerdy, complicated, ugly (apparently like the people who love it). And on the top of that, when you submit an article to a magazine, they want a rtf or Word file. Comploose (talk) 18:00, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

It's important to realize that Template:LaTeX was created in the early 1980s, and Template:TeX even earlier. If somebody was starting from scratch nowadays, they wouldn't create a system that works that way. Even so, it still has some nice features for some people: (1) it is excellent for complex mathematical formatting; (2) it still produces very nice looking output in comparison to Word. Looie496 (talk) 18:05, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

It was created at a time when printers were capable of displaying fancy typography but computer displays could not display anything fancy. Think monochrome monitor and IBM 3270. Since then, various ways of WYSIWYG have become possible, but they are proprietary and incompatible. So LaTex remains as a platform-independent way to produce fancy typography. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Compared to word and similar products, LaTeX has: 1. superior looking output; 2. smaller file sizes of documents; 3. needs only a text editor to write, i.e. no need to install programs (of course creating pretty output will require installation of LaTeX); 4. encourages the writer to focus on content and the logical structure of the document instead of on the formatting, 5. free of charge; 6. wide variety of packages (from Klingon to typesetting chess boards); 7. in my experience more robust particularly if you use labels/references/citations; 8. potentially quicker for experienced users to write documents (might depend on type of documents)

As for complicated, I find it easier to use than word (which I only use irregularly). Some magazines actually encourage the use of LaTeX submissions. bamse (talk) 20:03, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Bamse gave a pretty good list, but left off a couple of the points that are most important to me:

1. The "source code" is human-readable, not a binary file.
2. The format is open and stable; it won't go away because some company decides to stop supporting some version of an application (this point may have been somewhat addressed by the XML-based versions of Office; I haven't really looked into that).
3. If you want to use the same content in a completely different style of document, it's often as simple as changing a single line in the preamble. You don't have to figure out what exactly you have highlighted, whether it's content or formatting, and worry about the vagaries of "smart paste".

The principal downside is the heavy learning burden. That's a legitimate objection. If you don't want to shoulder that burden, just say so. Don't insult the people who are willing to do it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I would throw in an additional downside, which is the immense diversity of different implementations of TeX and LaTeX from site to site. There does not seem to be, in actual fact, a "standard" form of TeX; both its toolchain and its format and layout packages vary hugely from place to place, user to user. For this reason, I find claims of simplicity dubious. As an example, ask a friend or colleague from another university to please send you their last-published paper's TeX source; and attempt to compile it on your system, without modification. It's clear to me that semantic markup has great merit, but I find the TeX ecosystem to be lacking, compared to competitors. Even HTML provides a more standardized mechanism to separate form and content. LaTeX users will quickly attack HTML because it "cannot" nicely render mathematical equations; but this is counterindicated by numerous examples. And, it is my contention that if you're actually concerned with separating presentation and content, you should not be so worried about whether your integral sign renders at full height. Thanks to the engineered precision of the Unicode standard, there are a wide array of representable mathematical symbols: "∭∮∀" and literally thousands of other mathematical symbols and operators ... which are all semantically distinct, and easily representable or renderable with the appropriate choice of font, glyph, and layout. All of those layout issues can be resolved using, for example, CSS - cleanly separating content from presentation, in a standardized format, free of any proprietary technology, and most importantly, easily readable on every modern computer platform in common use today. Nimur (talk) 20:36, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what you mean that you shouldn't be worried about how your integral sign looks. To address one possible interpretation of your words, of course separating content from presentation doesn't mean you don't care about presentation. It just means that you want the program to take care of presentation automatically based on the logical structure of the content, and you want it to automatically look nice. Does HTML ever do that? I haven't seen it, at least without extensions such as MathJax. LaTeX mostly does a pretty good job of it (the main exception is the somewhat awkward treatment of floats; if you really don't want them to float, which I often don't, it can be a pain to get them where you want them).

As to the proliferation issue, yes, it can be a problem if you try to skimp on what you install, but when I install full tetex or TexLive I haven't observed it being too much of an issue. At most you might have to google around for a .sty or .cls file or two, at least providing the other person isn't using some mutant version like PCTex.

To me the Unicode symbols really don't look as nice, at least on any rendering system I've ever seen. Also the relationship between two similar Unicodes is harder to discern than it is with TeX defines. --Trovatore (talk) 21:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

TeXworks automatically downloads and installs 'whatever' on the fly when you try to compile a document that has \usepackage{whatever} that is not on your system. 67.163.109.173 (talk) 22:06, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I forgot one:

4. If you work on a TeX or LaTeX document in a revision control system such as CVS, the diffs are meaningful — you can see exactly what was changed between two revisions, not just that it was changed. --Trovatore (talk) 22:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, it's easy to generate or modify (La)TeX source programmatically. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

WK seems to use both html and LaTex: Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Mathematics#Typesetting_of_mathematical_formulae. OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:32, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

See here for the reason it was created. Zoonoses (talk) 04:18, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

JPG not working in a WIki

I've been uploading some files to another Wiki. Most of them are OK, but some completely fail to show up, producing a blank screen. They all look OK viewed on my PC at home, and there's no obvious difference between those that work and thoses that don't. You can see one of the images at http://www.foxearth.net/Halfway_to_Heaven.JPG. Any suggestions as to what the problem could be and how to overcome it?--rossb (talk) 18:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I presume that's one that doesn't work. There isn't much to go on here. Would it be possible to give a link to one that does work, for comparison? Looie496 (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, try renaming it from foo.JPG to foo.jpg

Secondly, downscale to a web-sensible size - for online display a 3448x2195 2.7MB image is unnecessarily large, and the server has to downscale it when its shown in a page (at least on MediaWiki sites) - you may be running into a conservative file size limit

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:51, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I think it must be the size - I've scaled it to half the size and now it works OK. I'd been assuming that all my images were about the same size but they obviously weren't: some of them ended up much bigger than others, probably because they'd needed less cropping, and this had probably put them over some limit. --rossb (talk) 20:55, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

You might also take a look at your server's error logs. If it is a cheap server host, you often have a limit to processor monopolization — your site only gets 1% or so of all CPU attention on the rack, and if it tries to get more, it gets temporarily stopped. For most web stuff you don't need a heavy server load, but in my experience, anything that has to do with image processing can be a heavy load indeed. So it may be that when PHP tries to make thumbnails of those big images, it is crapping out the server, and never completing. Just a hypothesis. You should be able to confirm or eliminate this possibility by looking at error logs or CPU usage logs. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:29, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Tech help

Ok, so I realized I couldn't access http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu recently and so I sent an email to them. Apparently the IP address I was trying to access the site from (one of the University of Oklahoma ones) tripped their Denial of service filter. They sent me an error they were receiving:

Sep 5 15:59:43 iemvs104 httpd:
Invalid URI in request GET HTTP/1.1

I have no idea what I could be doing that would cause this (I don't even know what the error means). My best guess is running an mIRC script to relay messages from the iembot RSS feeds into my Freenode IRC channel, but I've been doing that since at least the beginning of April with no problems. The script I have been using is http://www.mircscripts.org/comments.php?cid=3585 . Is this something that could be causing the error they sent me, and if so what can I do to correct it? Ks0stm 21:40, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I can access the site listed at the top of your post. StuRat (talk) 21:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

If there's a place where you entered a URL, try http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/ (with the closing slash) rather than http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu. I think this is caused by a bug in the script, specifically in the lines

     sockwrite -n $sockname GET $regml(2) HTTP/1.1

which end up sending a bogus request to the server when there's no slash after the host name. It would be worth reporting this to the author if you know how, although it looks like the script hasn't been updated in years. -- BenRG (talk) 23:11, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I would think that may be it except that all the URLs I have the script using are RSS feeds with URLs in the form http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/iembot-rss/wfo/koun.xml (with the exception of all of them combined, which is at the URL http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/iembot-rss/wfo/botstalk.xml). I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing, but are there other possibilities? Ks0stm 00:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Shadows on green screens

My local TV weatherman stands in front of a green screen and we see the weather map digitally substituted in for the green screen. One surprising thing, though, is that his shadow appears on the digital substitution. How ? (I would either expect no digital substitution or normal shade digital substitution.) StuRat (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Broadcasting not being my focus in meteorology I'm not for sure, but my best guess is that the darker shade of green the shadow produces isn't replaced as efficiently by the computer as the rest of the green screen...most commonly in my local market it results in a slightly fuzzy, static looking reproduction within the shadow he casts rather than a crisp, clear map or graphic. Ks0stm 21:57, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

One thought I had is that they may intentionally reproduce the shadow, to make it more realistic, by substituting a darker digital version where darker green colors are detected, indicating that they are in shadow. StuRat (talk) 22:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Now that chroma keying is performed by digital computers (in software, or in specialized image-processing hardware), it is possible to perform arbitrarily complex operations to make the image look nice. For example, a bilateral filter can be used to perform color-masking that is weighted by "amount of green-ness." Nimur (talk) 23:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I've used the hardware used for this. http://www.ultimatte.com/ is the website of the people who make it, if you are interested. 217.158.236.14 (talk) 10:53, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

September 6

Laptop cooling pads

Can anyone recommend some reliable brands of cooling pads? Thanks in advance. 70.52.79.25 (talk) 04:38, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I have no specific recommendations, but I recently fixed a friend's computer that had massive overheating issues by setting it on top of a 8" fan while I worked on it. Seemed to do the trick. Many laptop overheating issues have to do with build ups of dust on the heat-sync components, so you might start there (some vigorous canned air can sometimes work wonders). Beyond that I'd just suggest getting something small, quiet, and preferably powered by the USB on the computer. Shadowjams (talk) 06:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you clarify "on top of" ? I picture the fan either blowing away from the computer of blowing no air at all, if it's intake side is flush to the floor. StuRat (talk) 10:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

A lot of them are just short flat platforms the laptop is meant to sit upon. I agree they're not usually very efficient, but results are results. You could also get something that attaches to a side vent port and cycles air rapidly in/out, which seems much more logical to me. They're pretty annoying whether they're quiet or not, get a desktop for heavy computing. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Just propping up the laptop only helps slightly. For compute-intensive tasks on a laptop, you need something with fans (the fan usually plugs into a USB port for power). I have one by Rosewill (newegg.com house brand) and it works, but there are a lot of models to choose from and I don't have a specific recommendation. 67.119.15.30 (talk) 04:56, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

1. An overheating laptop will usually shut down to protect your CPU. If it is not shutting down, verify that it actually is overheating before proceeding using Speedfan.
2. Place the laptop on a flat, hard surface. That should be enough to allow air to cool the device. If the laptop still overheats, proceed to step three, below.
3. Verify the fan works. If it never runs, replace it. Laptop fans aren't always on, but it should come on from time to time.
4. Disassemble the laptop and remove any dust inside.
5. Remove the CPU, clean it off, and apply a fresh coat of thermal grease to it. Then, insert the CPU back into the socket.

Laptops often feel hot. This is normal as hard drives always get very hot to the touch -- even in desktops. The difference is that desktop hard drives aren't touching your lap, so you never know how hot the metal is enclosing them. In other words, just because a laptop feels hot doesn't mean it's too hot.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

iPhone apps exit immediately after opening.

So one day, I got a quick succession of notifications on my Facebook iPhone app, and after that, every time I try to open it or all other third-party apps, it closes immediately. Apple apps work fine however. Is there a way I can solve this without wiping it clean? Trying to close them in the multitask thing doesn't work. Narutolovehinata5 12:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Try downloading a new app or replacing an existing app. Or connect it to a computer and select the restore option in iTunes. They (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

CloudFlare: how big is the cache per free account?

I assume free accounts are unable to use infinite amounts of cache-space, so I was wondering, is there is an upper limit to the size of the cache-space used per site (for free accounts)? My website is well over 300 gigabyte... They (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The terms of use says:

SECTION 10: LIMITATION ON NON-HTML CACHING

You acknowledge that CloudFlare's Service is offered as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites and is not offered for other purposes, such as remote storage. Accordingly, you understand and agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of hosting and serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent technology. CloudFlare's Service is also a shared web caching service, which means a number of customers' websites are cached from the same server. To ensure that CloudFlare's Service is reliable and available for the greatest number of users, a customer's usage cannot adversely affect the performance of other customers' sites. Additionally, the purpose of CloudFlare's Service is to proxy web content, not store data. Using an account primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a disproportionate percentage of pictures, movies, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited. You further agree that if, at CloudFlare's sole discretion, you are deemed to have violated this section, or if CloudFlare, in its sole discretion, deems it necessary due to excessive burden or potential adverse impact on CloudFlare's systems, potential adverse impact on other users, server processing power, server memory, abuse controls, or other reasons, CloudFlare may suspend or terminate your account without notice to or liability to you.

Exactly how this section should be interpreted probably strays into legal advice territory, and hence is unsuitable for discussion here. Contact a lawyer if you need to be sure how this affects you and your site. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:55, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

4G LTE = simultaneous voice + data?

Does 4G LTE technology allow simultaneous voice and data? If so, do all US mobile carriers features simultaneous voice and data on their 4G LTE networks? I'm coming from a 3G phone, where only AT&T's US network has this functionality (Verizon and Sprint cannot do simultaneous voice and data on their 3G network). --157.254.51.253 (talk) 18:29, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't give a precise answer, but can provide some relevant background. LTE and 3G handle voice in a fundamentally different way. In 3G it's carried on a dedicated circuit. In LTE, it's just regarded as another form of data, and is carried as VoIP. So there's no fundamental reason why voice and data can't be carried simultaneously on 4G - it would simply depend on the 'phone's capabilities and how the network has been designed.--Phil Holmes (talk) 08:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Downloading website

I've been informed that a website containing lots of information, which I use daily, is going to close down shortly and that I should download as much of it as I can before it goes. Is there a simple, non-geeky way to do this? I should make clear that I have the owner's permission to do this by the way. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Do a Google search for "website grabbers" or "website rippers". If you are using a Mac, check out SiteSucker. --157.254.51.253 (talk) 18:49, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

httrack is probably the best option. The filter system is quite complex, and if you do not specify the filters correctly it may start downloading other websites as well, or miss the pages that you wanted to download. If you post the website I can post filters which should ensure a good download. AvrillirvA (talk) 19:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

www.aetw.org is the site. Thanks for the offer, I'm really totally ungeeky. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Download this and extract the folder contained in zip file. Open notepad and copy the following;

@echo off
httrack.exe -F "Mozilla/5.0" --footer "" -#L20000000 --sockets=2 -%%c35 -T60 -R3 -s0 -C0 -I0 -z -v --near http://www.aetw.org/ -O ".\download" "-*" "+http://www.aetw.org/*" "-*?*=*" "-http://*http://*"
cls & echo Download complete! & pause

Save this file to the httrack folder with "download.bat" (without quotes) as the filename and "all files" as the save type. Then double-click the "download.bat" file and the download will start. The site seems relativly small so the download should not take long, maybe half an hour depending on your connection speed. And that's it! The entire site should now be saved in the "download" folder AvrillirvA (talk) 19:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Image processing question

I have 92 PNG images that I have taken as screenshots from my computer. Every single one of them contains the same window at the exact same position and size. I want to mass process these images, taking only this window in the resulting images. In other words, I want to mass process 92 PNG images, cropping a rectangular area, which has the exact same coordinates and size in every single image, as 92 resulting PNG images. Can, for example, ImageMagick do this, and how? JIP | Talk 20:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I usually resort to chopping off edges, but there are many other ways you could go about it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

No personal experience here but sounds like Irfanview can do that sort of thing.. Vespine (talk) 23:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

How do I post a link on Facebook?

How do I post a link to a webpage on Facebook these days? Earlier, entering a URL in a Facebook status automatically added an extra box in the status update offering a link to the page, with a preview of the target page, including part of the text and one image. Earlier still, there was an explicit "add a link" option. Now, entering a URL in a status update only adds the URL (which Facebook automatically turns into an HTML link), and adding any text after it adds the text as normal. Of course, there is no explicit "add a link" option any more. It seems still possible to post links from external sites who have a "post on Facebook" option, but do I have to create an external web site and install "post on Facebook" functionality just to post a link on Facebook? JIP | Talk 21:01, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

My Facebook does the "automatic" conversion you mention in the beginning when pasted into the status bar. Sometimes the AJAX fails to recognize when I've pasted in a link, but usually a refresh fixes that. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

As Mr. 98 said, I just add the link in the status box and FB autogenerates the link and, usually, a thumbnail. (Though sometimes I'm flummoxed as to where it gets the image) After the link and thumbnail are generated, I generally delete the URL in the status box and put in my own comment. After hitting Post, both my comment and the link are posted. I don't know why there needs to be a paste and delete step to the process but that's the way it is. Dismas| 01:42, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Just as an aside, the image is either some image on the page (typical outcome) or an image specified in the metadata of the page as the image Facebook should use that may not display on the page at all. So some of the weirder images are actually ones that the site master have suggested FB use, though perhaps unwittingly. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:53, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Recovering deleted songs on iPod

I attempted to sync a friend's iPod to my computer, completely forgetting that doing so requires erasing the songs on the device, as my intention was to transfer the files from the iPod to the PC. Since it's been so long since I used iTunes for that purpose, I couldn't even figure out how to sync it, it would only play the music from the iPod while it was connected. I thought this was an error on iTunes' part, so I uninstalled then reinstalled the program several times, then finally gave up on it. So I turned to Windows Media Player and installed MGTEK dopisp on it to enable syncing with an iPod. I did the whole process, it asked if I wanted to erase everything on it, and I specifically selected NO. So after it finished syncing, all the songs showed up in the Media Library and played fine. Well, I unplugged the iPod, then replugged it again as soon as I noticed that the playlist disappeared when it wasn't connected, then to my horror saw that the music on the device was completely gone. I don't know how that happened, but I have to rectify this error quickly as it isn't my iPod. 70.52.79.25 (talk) 21:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

September 7

Domain name pricing

Someone has made an offer for a domain name that I own and I'm trying to guess a fair price. I haven't found much useful online. Okay, it's interesting that sex.com was sold for $13M, but I'm not in that ballpark. More like soccerballs.com or thursday.com. Any suggestions? Charles Horse (talk) 01:36, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Do not trust sites like buydomains.com, they are crazy, they list AAdIThyAaTravels.com for $280. My advice would be to try and figure out how much they depend on this particular domainname to make their dreams come true. Some people write a whole businessplan about their brand before discovering that the domain was taken by someone else. Other people are more flexible. In order to determine how much it is worth to them you should try and figure out what they would use it for, and how much it would make if that was done correctly. But if it is any good, why sell it now? Selling a domain without a website is pretty stupid. By building even the most basic website you can inflate the price and sell them something they don't need at the same time. Artificially inflating the visitor stats is childsplay, and of course you present the facts as favorable as possible. Forget the fact there is a difference between hits and unique visitors. Invite all scrapers/spiders to your site. Tell them that 15.000 people visited the website last month, but don't mention the fact you hired a xrumer service. If the URL contains a productname or productcategory and you want to make the domain even more expensive you can consider becoming a "competitor" to them by having a site that looks like it offers the same product/service. They (talk) 02:04, 7 September 2012 (UTC) p.s. Calling their competitors and asking them if they would like to own the domain and, if so, how much they would be willing to spend on it may also get you valuable data.

Computer keyboards with brightly colored keys used for video editing

I've seen computer keyboards with brightly colored keys that are used for video editing. The keyboards look like they have regular qwerty-layout. Do these keyboards have a specific name? (I can't find any images of them in either Computer keyboard or Linear video editing nor on Commons so if anyone has an image they'd be willing to upload, that would be appreciated.) --Bensin (talk) 01:41, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I usually call them video editing keyboards or audio editing keyboards. You can simply convert your regular boring keyboard to a video editing keyboard by using stickers. There are different stickersets for different programs: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 - Final Cut Pro 7. Some of those things with brightly colored keys are more than just a regular keyboard (see pictures). The habit of making certain keys brightly colored in order to more easily remember shortcuts is very old, and not restricted to audio/video editing, for example stockbrokers and gamers do it too. They (talk) 02:16, 7 September 2012 (UTC) p.s. Do not click here.

Thanks They! I also found this image. --Bensin (talk) 12:38, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Some of the primary schools that I work in use these sim computers 2/280-7472471-6129949 --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Parsing guides.

I want to know how it's possible to parse something, If I search for 'parsing tutorials' I usually get non-useful results. I'm talking about parsing Starts and ends. when they're stacked. I think the best way for parsing them is getting them into arrays. So for example if I have.

Start content content content Start content start start end start end end end start end

Or something similar, if I want them to get into arrays, how/what should I do?

Your example contains 6 "start"s and only 5 "end"s. You should explain what you are trying to do with that example. Do you want nested loops ? StuRat (talk) 03:44, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you want to create a nested data structure? I don't understand how you want to parse them given your example.

However you want to split up a flat list though (this would be like taking any delimited file) you probably can do it fastest using some regular expression to split where you need to. Shadowjams (talk) 06:16, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Most comfortable NC headphones

Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I'm in the market for the most comfortable noise cancelling headphones. Comfort is the primary attribute because after about 30 minutes or so, my ears start to hurt. I'm not sure why this is, but I've had this problem all my life. Ideally, I would like to be able to wear them for more than an hour without worrying about comfort. I'll be using them for listening to academic lectures and podcasts (iTunes university, news, etc.), jazz, classical music, and for apps like GarageBand, etc. If possible, I would like to be able to use them on both my desktop and my iPhone/iPod, but primarily for my mobile devices. Viriditas (talk) 03:45, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

And what noise are you trying to cancel ? Also, have you tried traditional (noise damping rather than noise cancelling) headphones ? (Those are the big headphones that enclose your ears.) If so, why are they unsatisfactory ? StuRat (talk) 03:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Outside noise. Cars, trucks, and of course, use on airplanes. I've worn them so I know how big they are. The unsatisfactory part comes from the shape of my ears, possibly due to their anatomical structure. I need a pair that are known primarily for their comfort. Viriditas (talk) 03:51, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I've always used Bose headphones and can wear them for an entire evening (quality comes at a price). Don't know about NC with that brand but their simulation of ambient sound is amazing. Anything else makes my ears hurt after a few minutes. Sandman30s (talk) 10:37, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Mmm. I use Bose QuietComfort 15 NC headphones; the ear pads grip the skull around the ear rather than compress the ear; I find them comfortable enough to wear all day & night. Suffice to say I'm on my second pair, my last ones having disintegrated after years of harsh use. (And when that happens, the Bose people let you buy a new pair at about 30% of the normal price :). --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:34, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

For the penultimate in noise reduction and comfort, you have to shell out for the Bose A20 aviation noise-cancellation headset]. It combines the active electronics available on the stereo headsets, with extra passive noise-reducing padding; it has per-ear volume controls, and a main volume control, and a noise squelch control; and is among the most comfortable and rugged headsets I've ever used. The fit is snug but adjustable. It's a little bit pricey, and it you plan to connect it to a computer or stereo, you'll need at least one (possibly two) adapter cables to convert from aviation-jack to quarter-inch, and then to 3.5mm standard audio connector. But, the request was for most comfortable, not most reasonable choice. Nimur (talk) 15:13, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Problems playing a Windows 98 game on a Vista computer

I am attempting to play Impossible Creatures on my Vista computer, and keep getting an error where we can't create a profile, it says "unknown error." We own a very old hard copy, but after this wouldnt work we even tried an online version. Strangely, the demo version available on the official website works perfectly, though it appears to have been a very different game when that demo was made.

We've read the threads on the internet detailing this problem, and we can't figure out what exactly they want us to do with ICconfig. Every other solution has not worked. We have tried disabling anti-virus, editing in all forms the Profiles folder, reinstalling, and running in Compatibility Mode. We'd appreciate any solutions that don't involve ICconfig as well, as ICconfig works in the demo. 174.253.245.104 (talk) 05:19, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Try right-clicking on the application and choosing to run it as an Administrator. Also, are you using the 32- or 64-bit version of Windows Vista?—Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:37, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

You are the best dog ever! Running as Administrator worked! :D 174.253.245.104 (talk) 06:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

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