Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 December 3

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 3

No interface to Parse method in C#

Why aren't methods such as int.Parse() and double.Parse() in C# (each of which takes a string as its only argument, is static, and returns an instance of the class it belongs to) part of an interface so that they can be invoked with generic type? NeonMerlin 01:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

That's easy: because they are static methods. Interfaces are contracts for instance methods. Bendono (talk) 01:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Then why aren't there any contracts for static methods? On a related note, is it possible to specify that a method's return type is the class it belongs to, and that this must be true of all overrides as well? NeonMerlin 03:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about some of the more complex uses of C# and .NET, but in general Object-Oriented Programming, you rarely need to invoke a static method polymorphically, so the concept of a "static interface" wouldn't be that useful. That is, you wouldn't normally have a class without knowing what class it is, only that it satisfies certain contracts - you would normally have an instance of that class (even if it's a singleton), in which case the methods wouldn't be static. - IMSoP (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

DIAS

Please add content about.Direct Internet Access System(DIAS).Thanks

Put your request at WP:RA. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:24, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested Article is not currently the correct place. Direct Internet Access System exists. It's just too short to be helpful. Taemyr (talk) 04:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Internet. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 06:44, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

cheapest ICANN registrar

I am looking to register a domain name with an ICANN registrar. Does anyone know the site/registrar that charges the least amount of money? I've Googled this a bunch, but all I found was like 20 different sites all claiming to have the cheapest domain registering service. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 06:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

.tk? --Ouro (blah blah) 12:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a domain name, not a registrar service. I think he wants to be able to register his own arbitrary domain names. Personally I don't think haggling over domain registrar prices is worthwhile unless you are planning to buy in bulk. GoDaddy is pretty cheap, as far as they go, and often has "specials" if you are registering in bulk (e.g. 20% off all domain names if you register more than $50 worth, or something like that). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you might be right there. Well, in this case I wouldn't know where to start outside of Poland, I'd turn to my local registrars for this I guess... Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 20:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

One and one^link seems to have it for four dollars. I have never tried them and cannot offer any recommendations, though. Kushal (talk) 23:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd avoid the cheapest companies: they're often not as cheap as they appear to be. Either they add on fees, or they don't give you ownership of the domain you register, forcing you to stay with them if you want to continue using your domain. --Carnildo (talk) 23:45, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

turing machine and ucon model

HELLO,

I WANT TO ASK ABOUT HOW TURING MACHINE IS UNDECIDABLE AND HOW THIS DECIDABILITY IS SIMULATED WITH UCON UNDECIDABILITY?

I think you are looking for the Halting problem article. -- Tcncv (talk) 08:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

A suitable wiki for an Insurance company's internal manuals?

Hello, I work for an insurance company and I am trying to persuade my bosses to move to using a wiki for our insurance manuals. I’ve got agreement to look into this in more depth and to make an argument for it so I am exploring the technical requirements and trying to find a wiki software which contains those features which we would require in order to overcome management’s likely objections and concerns. As such I wanted to ask here for some suggestions and advice.

The wiki would be used as an underwriting manual (though I also plan that it can be used to give users contact & personal info, general discussion like the refererence desk, and recording underwriting authorities for users) and would be used regularly by I estimate about 300 people who would require different levels of access/editability.

First of all the main requirement is that it be available at no cost and able to be used for commercial purposes, as if they have to pay for it I doubt if I’ll be able to get it agreed. Similarly it should be capable of being modified & tweaked by our IT guys. I don’t think this should be a problem but the other requirements are:

• Only logged in users should be able to edit, so that all edits can be traced if necessary.
• It should be purely internal to the company and unable to be viewed by those outside.
• It should be able to run on Windows 2000, if possible through our group intranet (which runs through windows explorer)
• It should be able to support categorisation of pages
• There should be the ability to restrict ability to edit pages – that is to restrict the editpower of particular users or groups of users (eg sales people shouldn’t be able to edit pages containing rating data). I’m thinking of categorising users & pages & restricting access based on this. I believe this would require Access Control Lists.
• There should be the ability for authorised users like admins to lock certain pages, like on wikisource.
• It should be able to support the use of templates and bots to facilitate rapid & easy multi-page changes.
• It should be able to hold pictures and other files

Also, though we could probably get by without it, I would like one which can also do the following:

• Use PHP scripting language like on wikipedia, if not some easy or well known language would be required without a lot to learn by casual users.
• It would be handy to have the ability to be able to set certain users or groups of users to be able to make edits but to require these to be checked by higher authority users before they go live
• I would also like it to have the same functionality as wikipedia does, including history pages, talk pages, what links here, related changes, watchlists, ability to easily revert edits, compare different versions of the same page & if possible the same visual format as wikipedia.

I realise that a lot of these requirements go against the general ethos & principles of a wiki, full editability by everyone, though due to the nature of the insurance industry and my particular company, and general management and regulatory concerns I’d never be able to get agreement for a completely wikipedia style wiki manual (and there would be too low a user base to ensure vandalism/self-serving edits to insurance rates were corrected speedily) so I want to try to get as many benefits of a wiki as I can while addressing our concerns over the security & integrity of sensitive date (like rates).

I’m currently only in the exploratory stage and I would appreciate any advice, or suggestions as to the best software and features to meet our needs. I would also appreciate any info you may be able to provide on the benefits & problems experienced by other companies in going down this route. Much thanks in advance AllanHainey (talk) 09:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

You can use MediaWiki along with compatible server software. I tried it via XAMPP, although you need to tweak the settings to make it more secure and easier to manage. Blake Gripling (talk) 09:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I had seen on http://www.wikimatrix.org/wiki/MediaWiki:ACL that MediaWiki doesn't support Access Control Lists, is this inaccurate or is there a way to get the required access/edit restrictions on MediaWiki without ACLs? If so how would I do this? AllanHainey (talk) 11:36, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I heard TWiki is pretty good -- better than MediaWiki. It's free, has ACLs, better watchlists, better page histories, a much better page editor, and works in Win 2k. It uses Perl, but doesn't need mySQL. The support is better, too.--Rjnt (talk) 12:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a specific recommendation, but none of your requirements seem particularly problematic. Wikipedia (and hence to a great extent Mediawiki) is rightly very big on fully-open editing, but ACLs, permissions, types of users, etc are the norm in business wikis and so fairly well supported. The wiki software my company uses has a very configurable permissions system that's hooked into our LDAP server, but unfortunately it's commercial (paid-for) software and therefore outside your scope.

To be honest, I strongly suspect that your biggest problem is not technical but social. It's easy to set up a wiki, but it can be very hard in a traditional business to get people to use it in the way we who are used to wikipedia expect them to. Some people will be flat-out scared of change, and object to it on principle. When they do look at it, early on, and find there's not much content, they'll consider their reactions proven, and refuse to change them forevermore. Most people probably won't bother to write anything (the ratio of readers to editors at Wikipedia is huge too, but we have so many of both it doesn't matter), and then when they find there's not much to read they'll stop checking. I do wonder who you think will be answering questions on your version of the RefDesk - and will their bosses think it's time well spent? (It probably is, assuming most of the questions are business-related, but bosses probably don't see it like that). You're unlikely to get any significant amount of "wikignoming" or "wikigardening" - the quiet background actions that keep pages up to date. My team has embraced its wiki really quite well, but even so most of it is out of date as there is no culture of correcting things or even marking them as obsolete. I don't want to paint too dark a picture here, but you really need to put the social and political aspects of effective wiki adoption in business at the top of your list, with the actual technical implementation an easy second. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 00:46, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments, I'm now leaning towards Twiki, though I'm going to explore MediaWiki to see if it gives suitable access controls. I take your point that the main problem will be social and getting people to adapt to and accept the new system of a wiki manual and I think my company would need to manage this aspect very carefully & explain the thinking, expectations & procedures carefully. As far as content goes what I'm thinking is to transfer our current manuals, with some specific stuff written by HO and then throw it open to wiki editing so that'd remove the initial lack of content problem. I recognise that a lot of folk won't bother to write anything but I've got the idea of spinning it as a staff development tool for the branches to encourage branch uw management to get staff to research & contribute for the manual as part of their general career/knowledge development so this may go some way to dealing with that issue.

As far as the reference desk page goes, ref desk is probably the wrong exampl, I was thinking more of a discussion page for issues affecting the business - initially I'd expect it to be answered and commented on by HO underwriters but I'd try to encourage people to check it regularly if there are any issues being discussed which affect them or which they have knowledge of. We have a lot of uw & sales agents who're often pushing an agenda on particular issues of uw (what business we write & how we deal with it) so I'd expect a number of them to approach this with relish as another way of getting their views across and having a 'big discussion'.

I recognise there won't necessarily be that much organised wikignoming - categorisation, general maintenance, etc - but I want to do as much of this as we can with bots & templates & to just try to encourage staff to get involved, though I recognise some of this would need to be done by HO at least initially.

I'd welcome any other thoughts or comments on the social & cultural problems and how these could be addressed, particularly by folk with some experience of this in their own companies. AllanHainey (talk) 10:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

insurance company IT departments are pretty "conservative". ours decided the only wiki software they would trust was MS Sharepoint. If your IT has the same idea, don't bother trying to set up a wiki with Sharepoint. It is doable, but so is using Excel as a word processor. Neither is worth trying.

that said, your need for different levels of control, which is necessitated by the fact that as a manual this is an important thing with big real world ramifications, makes it sound like Sharepoint might be what you need. I've not found a huge amount of googlable support for it, but it's certainly a big item in the corporate software universe with lots of articles about how Sharepoint is the future of corporate collaborative software, so I assume the support is all via MS for $. Maybe your IT guys already know about it.

back to wikis though, the next issue is that apparently everybody on earth has a different idea of what a wiki is. you wouldn't think so. but you'll see every idea from setting up a departmental blog where people tell everybody how wonderful their last vacation was to a calendar where people post the date of the departmental picnic to an official departmental web page where the department crows about all the recent projects successfully completed and has links thereto. Oddly enough, the one thing people are least likely to imagine as a goal for the wiki is a place where end users can quickly and easily post their thoughts/ideas and share bits of information/knowledge/experience, however big or (especially) small for others' benefit. which is what i had in mind; and of course, that's not at all what you are looking for, for an official corporate manual. Gzuckier (talk) 00:22, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

We won't get MS Sharepoint, if for no other reason than that we'd have to pay for it & I suspect the company would rather just continue as befor with the same sort of HO generated manuals than pay for a commercial wiki software. I agree that IT conservatism may be an issue though, along with general company reluctance to do something 'new' and 'untested'. I'm going to try to make the case for it though and see how it goes.

I suppose the wide variety of ideas of how to use a wiki is just testament to its great number of different uses, though I'd aim to keep it fairly limited as a manual & place for sharing thoughts and experiences at first to avoid overwhelming folk with different functions and tools. AllanHainey (talk) 08:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Javascript checkbox, input text, text area

I need to write a very simple javascript program in which the user inputs their name, number of objects they wish to order in a text input, then 2 checkboxes for additional options for their purchase. Then I need the name to appear in a text area with the total price added up from the text inputs and check boxes. I have very very basic knowledge of javascript so I just need a basic bare bones description of how to get started to I can work out this project. I have all the check boxes, inputs, and text area layed out on the page I just need to know how to make the code work. Thanks --143.200.137.158 (talk) 19:16, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

you will need to use something like an onchange or onclick tag on your form items that tells the javascript to execute. Build up a text string from the input values. Then set the form.textboxname.value to what text you want there. You may want to put your script as a function rather than just code in quotes. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Reading in XML in Google Maps

I am trying to create my own google maps from scratch using Javascript, HTML and XML. What i want to do is create maps that automatically update themselves by reading from an XML file. One example of this would be weather information I am not the most code-savvy person, as this semester I am taking my first computer programming course (C++) Any help is much appreciated Jastman (talk) 19:34, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Well you really need to dig into the Google Maps API. They have examples for this sort of thing. I would go about piece by piece. First write something that shows Google Maps. Then write it so that it'll load a static XML file (something you can make in Google Earth, for example). Then see about loading dynamic XML. Each step will have a little learning curve, but the main trick of programming something complicated is to break it into component parts and tackle them individually. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The part I'm having trouble with is DISPLAYING the XML file 67.194.159.149 (talk) 00:00, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Total win/loss records

I suffered a brain injury 22 years ago after being hit by a drunk driver. I mention this because I'm having major trouble navigating this website. I'm looking for the all time win/loss records of The Washington Redskins and San Antonio Spurs. My local paper gives a brief box every gameday of the football matchups ie. date, time, who's favored, the score of the last meeting and the all time win/loss records. These stats are always inaccurate. If someone can please help me find this info. I'd be grateful. Thank you!

Greg Tattini

You can check out the Spurs record at San Antonio Spurs seasons (the total record is at the bottom of that pretty table). The Redskins are at Washington Redskins seasons and that is actually a Featured Article, which means it is among the best articles on the site. If you're looking for in-depth historical stats for teams, I doubt you can beat Football Reference and Basketball Reference (and there are related sites for Baseball, Hockey, etc.). Matt Deres (talk) 21:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Unfair bandwidth distribution?

My internet connection is ridiculously slow right now; is it possible to determine whether one of my housemates is getting more than their fair share of bandwidth? ----Seans Potato Business 21:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but you'll need a device or something capable of doing so. A router with some sort of QoS and traffic monitoring, probably. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Wireshark, but I think your housemates won't like it as you can intercept both passwords in cleartext and their favourite porn site. HardDisk (talk) 23:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I used to use wireshark (ethereal) back in the day, when our house network was based on a hub. But assuming the OP's network is switched, none of the other users' packets will be going anywhere near his NIC. My former ISP used to produce usage graphs per IP address (and every machine in the house had a public IP...) - very very cool, but also highly unusual in home networking. So the best bet, as the crustacean said, is monitoring in a router of sufficiently high specification. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 00:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Correct. Ethereal doesn't work anymore because all those "hubs" for home connections are actually switches. All you get is your traffic. Even in work places, everything is usually switched. You're lucky to see 3 other computers. I used to run ethereal with webcollage as a screensaver. It showever every picture that passed my nic. But, it only shows pics I view now since there's no other traffic going past my nic. -- kainaw™ 02:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure of this (someone else ought to confirm whether this is the case), but I've been told that the tomato firmware can do this. So you may want to check to see if the router you use can run it.--droptone (talk) 00:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)