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July 18

Another Arduino Problem, kindly help

It has just two or three, or may be one more grounded terminal (for negative D.C. output) but several positive terminals, so many that they need numbers to be told apart. But the project I'm working on needs only one positive output (for a certain anode in the project) and lots of, literally dozens of negatives, for cathodes that had to be fed negative DC. Of course, I can't feed all the cathodes from a single Arduino source, since the whole meaning of using the programmable micro-controller is to provide different cathodes at different times. Any solution, please ? 203.134.197.96 (talk) 00:28, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

you tie the anode to Vcc and each of the cathodes (is this a common-anode 7-segment?) to an I/O pin (through a series resistor.) Then pull the pin low to light the segment and high to make it go out. Asmrulz (talk) 08:17, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

you can use a single current-limiting resistor at the anode if you make sure only one segment is lit at any instant (multiplexing.) Asmrulz (talk) 08:19, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The OP might also want to consider an open-collector inverter (such as a 7406) between the Arduino output and the load - driving the LEDs (assuming that's what the load is) directly off the outputs may not work if the outputs can't sink enough current. There are dedicated 7-segment display drivers (such as the 7447) that the OP might want to consider as well. Tevildo (talk) 18:56, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

There are many approaches. The general concepts you need to wrap your head around here is current source and current sink. This might also be a perfect opportunity to use and learn about transistors. You can buy a handful of little BC338 for literally a few bucks and learn how to use them to source or sink current. Vespine (talk) 00:35, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

On some pages about Head Mounted Displays, you see a list of games suported by some brand of HMD, what does this mean?

On some pages about Head Mounted Displays, you see a list of games suported by some brand of HMD, what does this mean? Can't we just open a game while using HMD?201.79.79.49 (talk) 01:36, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Assuming the general technology hasn't changed much... I used to work on device drivers for an HMD. I also made sure that the HMD worked with whatever version of Doom was released at the time to show it as a compatible game. While you can display the video of any game inside the helmet, translating the movement of the helmet to controls inside the game is not always seamless. So, it is probable that the list of supported games are those that work as expected. Other games might not work as expected. For example, you turn you head, but it doesn't register as a turn in the game. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 12:06, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

While you can display the video of any game inside the helmet, I own a HTC Vive and you can't just display the video of any game inside the HMD, there isn't a native "mirror monitor mode". To mirror your desktop into the HMD you need to buy some extra software. I've bought it and it's cheap but personally I think it's a but of an oversight that there isn't a native mode that supports monitor mirroring. Vespine (talk) 00:16, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Artifacts of apps

Does installing and uninstalling apps on a smartphone affect the phone's memory? In other words, when an app is uninstalled, does the available memory go back to what it was before it was installed (assuming no other changes, of course)? Or are little artifacts of the app left in the memory permanently, like little bits of debris?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 14:42, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

It probably depends on OS. Ruslik_Zero 20:35, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

And obviously depends on the app. If you are talking strictly about the "app" it self, then theoretically the app "model" is supposed to keep the app like a "self contained" little bubble. The app is not supposed to "interfere" with other parts of the phone except through APIs. Removing the APP should be quite clean, (cleaner than a PC anyway). However any application CAN write things to your storage, for example a camera app can save photos to your photo roll. Those photos might remain after you delete the camera app, that's just an example, there's all sorts of data an app can write out which you might not be able to guarantee is removed when you delete the app. Vespine (talk) 00:12, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Aha! Thank you. So that explains why when you go to the delete screen there are two buttons, "Clear Data" and "Delete App". (For the record, I always clear the data before deleting.) Thanks again.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 12:13, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

In case there's some confusion, "clear data" simply clears the data that has been stored via the standard APIs for storing data. It's somewhat similar to do a clean install of an app on a PC except that as Vespine mentioned, cleaning install an app on a PC is complicated since uninstall an app may leave more data than you want. "Delete app" will "clear data" and also uninstall the app. Neither of these will remove any extra data the app has stored elsewhere by accessing the storage since the OS doesn't really monitor these properly. Also as a minor clarification to Vespine's point, if we're talking about Android while any app can access the storage, it does need permission. So if your app didn't require permission to access storage, then it shouldn't have been able to store content elsewhere. (If we're talking about iOS, while I haven't paid much attention since iOS6 I'm pretty sure apps still have very limited ability to store data outside where the OS places it unless the device is jailbroken.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:08, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Availability of security updates for Windows 7

Has Microsoft stated for how long security updates will continue to be available for Windows 7? Thanks. --134.242.92.97 (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

A Web search for your question gives this page as the first result. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 03:44, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

July 19

Can Ipad Pro 12.9" watch netflix?

I wanted to buy a Ipad Pro 12.9" to watch netflix but when I looked into the wiki article about ipad it did not mention whether ipad pro 12.9" can watch netflix. I rather not spend $969 just to find out that it cannot watch netflix. Has anyone managed to watch netflix on it yet? 175.45.116.99 (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Any iOS device, including the iPad, should be able to watch Netflix streams using the Netflix app. iOS is a platform officially supported by Netflix. (You need a Netflix account of course.) --71.110.8.102 (talk) 03:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I see. But can I watch Netflix using the split screen function where I can watch Netflix on one half of the screen while playing Pokemon Go on the other half of the screen? 175.45.116.99 (talk) 06:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Netflix is definitely available on iPad, including iPad Pro. It works perfectly well in full-screen mode, and the Netflix software app has limited support for some of the newest iOS multitasking features.

Presently, (as of Netflix 8.9.1 (9)) for iOS, split screen is not supported by Netflix's software application. The iPad Pro hardware is powerful enough to smoothly display other video applications in split-screen or in Picture-in-Picture mode, and you can multitask (including using the camera or playing Pokemon Go) while watching videos from other apps (including web-based videos in Safari). Here's official documentation: Multitasking on your iPad....

But Netflix will pause video playback when you enable any multitasking features. As far as I am aware, Netflix requires full-screen playback on all other competitive mobile platforms, too. (I really suspect this mandate for full-screen-only playback is a bizarre artifact of their content license agreements, but I have little actual evidence to support that suspicion).

Perhaps in the long term, Netflix will make software changes to permit split-screen multitasking. If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can provide feedback to Netflix's customer support team to politely ask them to expedite this feature, via their in-application feedback system.

For now, when I need to watch Netflix while playing Pokemon Go, I have to use two iPad Pros, which can be a bit of a handful.

Nimur (talk) 13:02, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Folders in Eclipse

Hi, I have a lot of Java projects in Eclipse, and I want to organize them into categories, using "folders" (maybe there's other name for this in Eclipse?). For example, in one folder I'll put Java projects that I've created for homework, in other folder I'll put Java projects that I've created just for fun, etc. How to create such folders in Eclipse? Thanks in advance!31.154.81.50 (talk) 07:10, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

In project view, right click > New > Folder.Hofhof (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Development environment for remote text-only linux system

I have custom software that runs on a remote linux-based system without X windows enabled. Most of the time when I am doing development I mirror the software on a local machine and use a natural development environment for whatever I am working on. However, it isn't always practical to run everything locally. So sometimes I end up either repeatedly A) editing locally, saving, copying to the remote machine, then running, or B) editing on the remote machine using a basic text editor. Either approach works, but isn't wonderful. In the first case, I have extra steps copying over files constantly and in the second case I'm stuck with a basic editor without syntax highlighting or other helpful aids. What are some tools to make this easier? I'm thinking an editor that allows files to be opened and saved directly over SFTP might just be a good start. I'm supporting three different programming languages right now, so something more general would probably be best (perhaps with plugins that aid specific languages). Dragons flight (talk) 13:19, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Just to throw out some options you might not have already covered:

• GNU Screen permits session persistence and terminal multi-tasking (on the remote server). It is incredibly powerful, but it has the user-friendliness you would expect from a mishmash of emacs- and bash-. GNU Screen is not for novices; novices will invariably confuse themselves amidst the numerous invisible backgrounded contexts.
• rsync lets you efficiently synchronize data and documents between machines, transferring only the changed parts of large files (if bandwidth is an issue). It can work over ssh, so it is as secure as the rest of your system.
• sshfs works very well (on some versions of *nix, *dows, and other *OSes...). It makes any ssh server appear to be a local file system. It has a great user-experience if and only if you have a very fast, low-latency connection to your server
• Lots of text editors support sftp out of the box. Kate (text editor) works on KDE and has fantastic and intuitive shell integration, too. This simple editor is the core of my home-made integrated development environment when I need to work on "other-than-default" languages and operating-systems, because it's very lightweight and can easily be modified or scripted. Basic syntax highlighting for "unsupported languages" can be easily added: it is trivial to create a brand-new syntax highlighting file and you can make that process as simple or as complicated as you wish, from providing a custom, simple list of keywords that should be colorized, all the way up to whatever level of language parsing theory you want to learn and apply. Shell integration is easy, so you can write a script to, say, rsync local data to the server and then execute it remotely - all from inside your text editor. (If you have a Sun keyboard, by default, the special Enter key on the numeric keypad turns any line of any text-file into a bash shell! This feature can be emulated on some other operating systems and keyboards - use with caution!) You can muck with the command line and the external tools plugin. Similar text editors, like gEdit, provide comparable feature sets - it boils down to user preference.
• If you have not yet mastered the art of ssh public key exchange (for initiating secure, password-free ssh sessions), learn how to use ssh-keygen (or your *nix system's equivalent, if you're using a different SSL tool set). Here's one tutorial from Berkeley, SSH Public Key Authentication HOWTO (or check your system's man page). Next, be sure you're comfortable with remote command-execution using ssh: this lets you seamlessly blend local- and remote- execution in scripts that execute on your development machine.

A lot of people use fad-of-the-week tools to deploy scripts and executable code to remote programs; but the old tried-and-true methods of source-code management like git and svn tend to be more reliable.

Nimur (talk) 13:36, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Nimur, that's very useful. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

In addition to all of Nimur's suggestions:

• Some people advocate tmux rather than GNU Screen
• Both emacs and VIM have pretty nice text-mode features, including syntax highlighting, and neither is remotely basic. Personally I use emacs in text mode (emacs -nw) even when editing locally, as I find its X11 interface rather naff. You you can just plain ssh to the remote machine and run either of them and have a nice enough experience.
• Emacs has tramp mode, and vim has netrw mode, which work like the feature of Kate Nimur describes.
• If the "remote" machine is still pretty local (such as a server in a chilly server room downstairs, that you'd rather not spend the day beside) you can forward X clients from it (to your desktop's display) with ssh -X. That requires that the remote machine have X libraries, but not that it have a graphics card, display, or a running X server. I can't say I'd recommend running a heavy IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans over that, even on a decent LAN or CAN, but needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle.

In general, ssh and rsync are really powerful - combined they are the giant Japanese robot of productivity. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:14, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Server is about 9500 km away. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

July 20

Partitions and Disk Images

I have two computers that I would like to upgrade from windows 7 and windows 8.1 to windows 10, then, having already made disk images of them, and a restoral disk for the 8.1, return them to 7 & 8.1, and restore the C drives on each to the state on the disk images I intend to create. My understanding is that these hardrives will now be registered with MS for an upgrade to 10 any time in the future, so basically I will stay running 7 & 8.1 for now, but be able to upgrade at my leisure, in say a year or 3?

The computer running 8.1 has only a C Drive, 500GB, of which only about 120GB are used. The Computer running 7 is more Complicated. It has a 100GB SSD "C" and a 1T HD, "D", noth almost full. The question is, if I purchase a 1TB external drive and partition it into a 750 and a 250GB pair, will I be able to create the 100GB disk image in the 250GB partition and the 500GB disk image into the 750GB partition without inherent problems?

And when I create the disk image of the 100GB SSD "c" will it not drag along the 1TB HD "D" unless I click on "D" to do so?

Finally, since I will be restoring the disk images as soon as I have downloaded WIN 10 and then restored WIN 7 ^ 8.1, is there a preferred free software to do this efficiently?

Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 05:37, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I used Clonezilla to clone a single disk image of a working PC to a USB drive, and then used that cloned image to recreate the same working OS on two identical PCs - so not exactly what you're proposing, but the same method. Despite it appearing rather difficult to use, providing you are methodical and follow the prompts, it works very well. And the answers to your questions: clonezilla only copies used parts of the drive, so you will be able to get your 500GB drive into 750 very easily, ditto 100GB into the 250. Similarly, it will only clone the C drive if that's what you tell it to do.--Phil Holmes (talk) 11:30, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Ehxcellent, thanks. μηδείς (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Note that it's not the hard drive that is registered for the "digital entitlement", but a fingerprint of various hardware (most importantly the motherboard). If you have a product key for the Windows installations (typically there's one on a sticker somewhere if the OS came with the machine), a spare internal drive of any size (well, at least 20GB), and a DVD burner or small USB drive, and you don't mind opening up the machines, a faster and safer approach is to unplug the hard drive(s) in the machine, plug in the spare drive, do a clean install of 10, and activate using the product key. This works starting with update 1511. You can use Microsoft's media creation tool to make a bootable DVD or flash drive for the clean install. (Or download an ISO image and burn it to a DVD or use Rufus to put it on a USB drive.) -- BenRG (talk) 18:38, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I get what you are at, but we tried opening up his machine to change to clean the fans, and just getting the back off it was a nightmare. I'll have no problem with the above method, and he's already ordered the external hard drive for friday delivery.

• Follow up question, if I use @Phil Holmes: method withe clonezilla, will the external harddrive it uses as the target for making the disk image actually need to be partitioned ahead of time? Or will it just create a folder? Would trying to partition the drive later wipe out such a folder? (I.e., does partioning blank the drive?) μηδείς (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

It creates a folder on the target drive with each "disk clone" information. So no need to partition the drive at all - just format it ready for use.--Phil Holmes (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Virtual memory without hardware support

I have read that it is possible (or I might I have read that it is possible to have virtual memory without an MMU). Is this true? — Melab±1 ☎ 06:17, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Virtual memory can be implemented (slowly) with software. It is not effective. Software is commonly used to enhance virtual memory, not replace the MMU. The real question should be: "Why would you try to implement virtual memory without an MMU?" 47.49.128.58 (talk) 12:43, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I think that's absolutely correct - software can simulate anything the hardware MMU can do, by application of the Turing equivalence principle. A pertinent follow-up question to this statement might be, "how (in)efficiently could that software be implemented?" That is a much trickier question and it would be architecture-specific; it would also entail a lot of subtle analysis and benchmarking. Software that emulates virtual memory would profoundly affect memory access patterns, which may wreak havoc on any heuristics about spatial locality that are built into the cache hardware. So, a VM simulator that might superficially appear to add only a small fixed performance overhead may actually yield a terrifically bad performance slow-down due to cache thrashing, for example.

As noted above, MMU hardware is widely available, and if the application requires virtual memory, it ought to be running on appropriate hardware with appropriate system memory management software. Nimur (talk) 13:04, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

See to see someone who emulated a 32-bit ARM CPU and MMU on an 8-bit microcontroller and then booted Linux on it. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:32, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

To implement VM without an MMU basically requires emulating every memory reference instruction. Every instruction that touches memory would have to call a function to determine if that memory location is resident or needs to be loaded from disk. To do this, you'd need to either emulate EVERY instruction, or do some kind of compilation-like step that converts the code into different code, replacing every memory reference with a function call. Either way, the performance will be abysmal compared to running the native code with an MMU to handle nonresident pages, probably many times slower. So while it's possible, using an MMU is vastly preferable. That's why MMUs were invented in the first place. CodeTalker (talk) 16:46, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

A real-world example is the Z-machine used for Infocom interactive fiction. The original implementations (on the Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.) used software paging to load ~128K of code and text into machines with <64K of RAM. I remember reading somewhere that they used 256-byte pages, but I can't find a source for that now. According to this post they used LRU eviction. -- BenRG (talk) 17:38, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

You might want to look at bank switching. This is normally used when the amount of physical RAM is larger than the address bus, but it can also be used for virtual memory. However, bank switching is usually co-operative, bank switching on each context switch is likely to be expensive. LongHairedFop (talk) 18:01, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

There's also overlays. DOS programs used them a lot. Asmrulz (talk) 18:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

July 21

Increasing computer speed

Where are scientists working on to make computations faster? Where is the bottle neck in computer nowadays? Where was the bottle neck 10 or 20 years back? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hofhof (talk • contribs) 00:02, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

That's a massive topic... how about checking out the most recent issue of XRDS, the ACM's magazine for students interested in computing machinery? It's the premiere review magazine for students in this field, and a good place to start to help you get oriented towards more specific current research topics. Nimur (talk) 00:58, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

CPU power dissipation is the main obstacle to faster sequential computation. The main obstacle to parallel computation is that we're bad at designing parallel algorithms (except for embarrassingly parallel problems). -- BenRG (talk) 07:07, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could say that the obstacle is that many interesting problems are simply not amenable to parallelization. Kind of tough to say what could be done if we were cleverer, and could develop parallel routines analogous to e.g. god's algorithm. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:48, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

You might be interested in Supercomputer. Vespine (talk) 02:11, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Oscilloscope

Is it OK to test 220 volts AC on a single channel Oscilloscope ?124.253.247.191 (talk) 01:48, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

No it is absolutely not OK to test mains voltage on an oscilloscope, unless you know precisely what you are doing and what safety measures to take. If you need to ask here, don't do it. To answer the question, there are oscilloscopes that CAN be used on mains voltage, it should say on the scope, if you can't see a max voltage, or are uncertain how to read what is written on the scope, don't do it, seek assistance from someone with experience / qualifications. Vespine (talk) 02:05, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

(ec)Probably not. You should check the manual to see what the rating is. A knob on the front for adjusting the gain should also give a clue. Such a voltage is dangerous and could kill you, so you would need appropriate earthing and probe insulation. Instead you could put the mains AC through a step down transformer, say to 5 volts which is likely to be workable with your oscilloscope. Mains AC also has much higher voltage transients due to electric motors turning on and off, so the rating of equipment needs to be much higher to avoid damage. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:13, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Live household electric wires at 220 volts can kill you. Do not work with live mains. Do not connect them to your test equipment.

For the most part, there is no good reason to hook up mains lines to an oscilloscope - that type of test equipment is normally used for analyzing much lower-power signals - it's rarely needed for analyzing power lines.

In the exceptional case where detailed analysis of high voltages or high power is required, a special probe called a current clamp is used. This allows a skilled engineer to investigate the high-power system without ever making electrical or physical contact with the mains wire. If you don't know what this is, or how to use it, call an electrician to help you. Death by electrocution is very easy when you're dealing with 220 volt mains lines. Death by electrocution happens very fast, is very unpleasant, and is generally irreversible, so don't play with wires if you have any doubts about the correct safety procedures. Nimur (talk) 03:52, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

July 22

Audio software

I have hundreds of film songs which are named as 001, 002, 003...and so on. I want to rename them such as the song file name should be the opening lines of the song. (e.g. If the song begins with 'oh my god' then the song file name should be oh my god.) Is there any software which can do this? Thank you.175.157.6.165 (talk) 03:00, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

There is software that compares a song against a large database and changes the title to the actual title of that song. It would then need to take an extra step of looking up the lyrics and renaming it as you say. Seems possible, but I doubt if it exists yet. Something else to consider is that the opening lyrics aren't always the most memorable. StuRat (talk) 03:29, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Further, the opening lines of songs are often used repeatedly. I immediately thought of three songs that begin with "Hit me." That doesn't get into covers of songs that will obviously use the same lyrics. So, this tool will need to have a method to handle making file names unique when the opening lines are the same. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 12:50, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

True, but the actual titles are often reused, too, and they may or may not be remakes of the same song. For example, look at all the songs named "Maria". StuRat (talk) 14:08, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

SRMv2: System Restore Manager v2

1) The Disk Space to use for System Restore based on the top-right-hand-side of the software's window, the GB increments whenever I do a System Restore. Note: I don’t/didn’t install anything for quite some time now, and my Windows Update system is off.

2) Selected Fixed Drive drop-down-list of the Disk Space to use for System Restore section, is allocated in C drive. Where is this place located in the C drive, and, would it create problems if I delete files from this location?

Apostle (talk) 09:24, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

1) I suspect it is doing a backup of the backup. That is, the file it creates with the restore info is itself backed up the next time it is run. To avoid this, either the software needs to be smart enough to not do that, or you need to store the backup files some place other than the partitions being backed up. StuRat (talk) 14:13, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I deleted the 'manual recovery point' than recreated it again, decreased a lot of GB but didn't make it zero; probably because there are two more early recovery points existing... -- Apostle (talk) 05:19, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Crystal Oscillator

All my search on Google and at other places on the Net was only enough to ensure that the thing is a Crystal Oscillator, the numbers etc. on the top proved to be useless, was unable to find any data-sheet or even a pin-out diagram. The vendor, who (methinks) has no reason to lie, says it's a 16 MHz Crystal Oscillator (And that's ALL he knows about it). Can anyone please draw me its rough blue-print showing where and how to fit it in what type of circuit, power source be AC or DC and how much volts, what type of resistors (or other components like transistor(s) etc. ) should be fitted, and where. And how to bring its rate below 10 Mhz (if possible). Thanks 124.253.146.87 (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

• Is the vendor a shady character in an ill-frequented bar? Otherwise, any info on who manufactured the chip would probably prove useful.
• :OP is in India, and has himself received Amazon(.in) and the regional Ebay packages full of nothing but old newspaper cuttings ! This happens when Amazon etc. is in no position to dispatch and hence directs one of its contracted vendors to deliver detailed item(s) to the address they provide.

I cannot claim to understand it all, but going by this, it would seem the "crystal oscillator" is a passive two-terminal linear electrical component and the frequency comes from the eigenmode. In that case, frequency cannot be changed (except by opening the case and replacing one of the components). Tigraan 16:08, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

It look remarkably like an MEC crystal oscillator, 16 MHz. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 16:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

July 23

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