Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 25

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November 25

Google Books results

What accounts for the variability in Google Books results? I was able to find two sources the other day that now, will simply not come up no matter what I do. They are fairly old books, so I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. Viriditas (talk) 10:13, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Google's search algorithms are proprietary - they are not explained, and they can change any time Google wants. The variability could stem from a variety of technical issues (e.g. database server temporarily unavailable) or algorithm changes (new server software version doesn't recognize your keywords) to malicious censorship (Google noticed a search trend with that search result, and decided to censor it in order to promote commercial competitors). In fairness, it is also plausible that you aren't searching with the same exact query (or you were logged in last time, etc.) Google is known for location-based, login-based, and other context-sensitive results. Because Google's search algorithm(s) are proprietary, there isn't any way to know for certain which is the case. Nimur (talk) 13:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's the same query and I wasn't logged in, but my location did change, approximately three times. And I did get three different responses for a few days. However, after repeatedly searching and receiving the same results for almost a week, the two books disappeared from view and can no longer be retrieved, as if they never existed. I have managed to track one down in my area, so that's a hit in RL, but the other one is gone. I've been using Google Books for a while, and this has never happened before, but I did notice that the one that disappeared is a foreign-language edition. Viriditas (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Why did my CD/DVD Drive Disappear from My Computer and Device Manager?

Please forgive me if this has already been naddressed elsewhere. If so, I'd be grateful for the link. I searched and didn't see anything resembling this, though.
I have a HP Pavilion DV6646US laptop computer-- 160gb HD, 2gb RAM, running Vista (64). I have owned it for around two years. I still have a little over a year left on an extended warranty. (Phew.) Here's the story:
On three different occasions in these past two years, my CD/DVD optical drive (E:, on my system) has simply disappeared from My Computer and Device Manager. Nowhere to be found. The first time it happened, a little over a year ago, I presented my problem to the extended warranty people, and they had me send it in for service. I think they replaced the motherboard and the hard drive. They returned it in almost brand-new condition. I reloaded all my programs and data and everything seemed to be OK. Then, about four months ago, it happened again. I called the extended warranty people again, and the representative was convinced that it was a driver conflict with a Windows Update,and basically chewed me out (!) for installing all suggested updates (setting my computer to "automatically update"). He recommended either doing system restores, stepping backwards, until my CD-DVD drive reappeared, or uninstalling Microsoft Updates individually until I found the "culprit," or if neither of those worked, doing a complete system restore. I tried what he suggested, and it didn't work, so I did a system restore from a partitioned "D: Drive" used exclusively for recoveries. To my relief, the CD/DVD drive was back, and working-- but a week or so later, it disappeared again. I called the warranty people back, and they had me send it in again. When I got it back, the invoice said that the motherboard and the hard drive were replaced (again). I was smooth sailing, doing automatic updates from Microsoft and HP, until a few days ago when I noticed that once again, the CD/DVD drive was missing.
I would certainly prefer not to send it in a third time if I don't have to. It's not a question of cost, as it's covered under warranty-- I'm just not convinced that it's a permanent fix, AND, it's a round trip of about 2-3 weeks. I checked the HP website for a fix, and they seem to mention it here, but neither clicking on the "fix it" link, or following the provided instructions, will fix the problem (in my case). This is because it's not even FOUND in the device manager, and choosing "scan for hardware changes" doesn't find the missing drive, either. I would say that it's a dead or dying CD/DVD drive, and I could support that theory, but it IS getting power-- the light blinks when I'm booting up, and it opens/closes OK. (I realize that there's more to it than that....)
So here's my question: Has anyone else out there had this same problem, with a different result? And what did you do? Or what should I do? Could it be something with the BIOS? I'll check it when I get home from work tonight, and update accordingly (but I'm not too confident in that....)<br.> Sorry this is so long. Thanks a million-- Kingsfold (talk) 14:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried the steps here? Looks like the likely source is a conflict with bad DVD burning software. The KB includes instructions to fix the problem. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 14:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I tried the "fix it" link there a few days ago when I first noticed it, but I didn't try to fix the registry myself. (Not afraid to, per se, I just figured that the "fix it" thing would do the exact same thing.) I will check my registry when I get home tonight and see if it does any good. Thanks for the link. Any other suggestions? Kingsfold (talk) 15:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if the software fixes found online don't work, you might take a stab at replacing the DVD drive and related cables. A new DVD drive runs about $20 last I checked. The tech support morons apparently made no attempt to replace your DVD drive, they just replaced the motherboard and hard drive. Try getting a new DVD drive (from a different manufacturer just to be certain) and installing it (borrow a neighborhood geek to help if needed). This way, if the problem is either the specific hardware, or the manufacturer's drivers, you've replaced both, and should have a decent test bed for comparison. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be a wobbly cable/connector? Most of the time it's connected, but it gradully works itself loose with temperature changes and transporting the laptop. Sending it away for a new motherboard fixes it for a while because they have to reseat the connector when putting your laptop back together. I've no idea what you would do about it if that was the problem ... ask HP for a new DVD drive, perhaps? Astronaut (talk) 19:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's connected, at least to the power, because it blinks and opens/shuts. But yes-- perhaps the connector itself has worked itself loose. Hmmm. Interesting thought. Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, damn. Didn't notice it was a laptop. With frequent movement, a bad connector, or even a bad case (a little warped, so the drive isn't fixed in position properly) could easily be the problem. And it also means a replacement drive will cost a bit more than $20 (and may not be possible if the computer isn't built for swapping). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk)

Right. And thankfully, it's under warranty still, so I'd rather not get too deep into the nuts and bolts. Literally. Good thought, though. Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I had a similar problem at a customer's house a while ago. I fixed it by doing a system restore (Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> System Restore). You should also look in the Device Manager to see if the drive has an exclamation mark next to it (right-click on My Computer and choose Manage). If it does, then try uninstalling the device from there and rebooting. Windows will automatically re-install it.--Drknkn (talk) 19:38, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Appreciate the idea and the input, but the system restore has been tried, with no luck. The drive isn't showing up at all, exclamation mark or not, in Device Manager.  :-(

I mentioned to the warranty guy that next time I buy a laptop, it might be one of those mini ones, and I may just get a USB CD/DVD drive along with it. He said, "Yeah, you could do that." Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Update: I did a complete system recovery (reformat drive, reinstall everything) and it's still not appearing. Guess it's about time to call the extended warranty people again. (!) Kingsfold (talk) 14:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Illegal content uploaded to website

I'm looking for links to relevant articles for the following scenario. Note that I'm not asking for legal advice, only links to articles.

Hypothetically, someone in the UK hosted a small website on their home computer which allowed anyone in the world to post text and images, like a forum. An illegal image was uploaded to that site, and the site owner deleted the offending image as soon as he / she noticed it, and banned the ip address of the poster. What consequences could the host face? Would they be jailed, fined etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.114 (talk) 16:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A similar question was asked on November 18. As before, it's virtually impossible to answer your question without giving legal advice. But, as before, you might be interested in the following academic review of prior cases: Liability of System Administrators. This paper points to a lot of related articles of both academic and legal interest. Nimur (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

You might find The Pirate Bay trial of relevance.

Are you talking about copyrighted material or illegal material such as child porn? Most sites I've encountered say in their terms & conditions that copyrighted material will be removed on sight or on request from the copyright holder; and uploading of illegal material will be reported to the police. As to how binding the T&Cs are or whether a website owner can use their published T&Cs as protection from the law, you will need to ask a specialised lawyer. Astronaut (talk) 18:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A shame that you're living in the UK; in the US, system administrators are explicitly not liable per law for the content posted by internet users if they make a good faith attempt to avoid the posting of the content and remove it on sight. Too bad I can't remember the name of the congressional act. Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Best computer?

Short list of laptops from Newegg

Hello, I am in need of a new laptop computer and I was wondering if you could help me out. I will give you guys a short list of laptops and then if you have the time could you suggest which computer is the best bang for the buck out of the provided list? Thanks, I REALLY appreciate it!! --96.230.224.100 (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The 2.8 GHz 15" MacBook Pro with 8GB main memory, 256GB SSD and antiglare screen. The extra 300,- for the 3.06 GHz processor are not worth it. ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A more serious reply is that it depends greatly on what you are using it for. If you plan to play games or do serious video editing, you'll want dedicated graphics (which rules out all the Intel GMA machines). Every one of the machines listed has 4GB of RAM; more than that is unnecessary for 99.99% of tasks, so you're fine on that score. CPU speed rarely matters anymore, and every one of them is at least dual-core (the extra core is handy for when a process goes haywire, but more than that isn't usually needed). Hard disk space is up to personal need; I've got 1.7 TB on my home machine, but most people don't even use a tenth of that. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If I were buying a new laptop, this is what I'd buy: [1]. I'd choose the RAID-0 option with a quad-core CPU.--Drknkn (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If you intend on carrying it anywhere, get something small and light. You will soon get sick of carrying a 15lb, 17" monster around. You can always get a large desktop monitor and external keyboard for use at your desk. And check how big the power pack is - it's no good having a 4lb laptop with a 6lb power brick! If you are using it at school and don't have access to a power supply, you might need to consider battery life. For gaming, forget it and get a desktop machine optimised for that purpose. Astronaut (talk) 18:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed on weight and battery life. If this is a desktop-replacement laptop it doesn't matter, but if you're toting it everywhere, every ounce counts. Ignore the people lusting after over-powerful machines. Alienware and Mac Pro laptops are *massive* overkill for anyone not using them for gaming, video editing or similar CPU/GPU intensive tasks. Heck, for most people, even the laptops you indicate are excessive. A light, quasi-netbookish machine (it's a little large to be netbook, but smaller and lighter than most laptops) like the the Asus UL30 series will do virtually everything you need, while weighing only 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb) with a 6 hour battery life (advertised, probably an hour less), or for slightly more weight, a 12 hour battery life (again, probably a little less in practice). The UL30A and UL30Vt differ only in the presence of a dedicated graphics card, so my earlier notes on the intended usage remain relevant. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I have a 15" MacBook Pro (the tongue-in-cheek suggestion above is what I hope will become affordable by next spring, when it's due for renewal - but I won't hold my breath ;-), and use it as my sole computer. I'm very happy with it. It's great in a hotel or on the train. But it's too big for flying (coach class) or longer cycling trips, and while sufficient for most tasks, I would very much like a bigger and more ergonomically placed screen when stationary. And while it's quite reasonable value for money, it's hard to rationally justify the value when I can get a EUR 400 Acer laptop with Linux that is sufficient for 95% of all my tasks - web surfing, programming, email, photos, music, movies, writing. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for your suggestions and advice so far, I appreciate it! I wasn't really taking into consideration the weight but I will definitely factor that in now. The laptop would be used primarily for standard applications like web surfing, word processing, etc. but occasionally would need it to play games (maybe) and video/photo editing. --96.230.227.148 (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Javascript: Resetting a Form

Hi All,

I have a search-form with some <select> elements which are filled using ajax (drill-down search?). It's working fine for the most part but I want it to reset (ie as if the reset button has been pushed) whenever the user navigates back (using the browser buttons/shortcuts) from the search-results-page. I tried putting "document.getElementById('myFormsId').reset()" but it doesnt work. The site im developing is here.

To replicate what I'm trying to do, just select a manufacturer,make,model, hit submit, then from the search results use your 'back' button (or alt+left,etc). I wanted to make it that if the user goes back the whole form is set to its initial state.

Side question, why doesn't disabled="true" for the <select> work on firefox? PrinzPH (talk) 18:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There is probobly an easier way to do this, but have you tried just using onLoad to set the select to a specific item?--TParis00ap (talk) 01:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The correct syntax for disabling an element is like '<select disabled>', not '<select disabled="true">'. --Sean 14:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

My screwed up SVG file

Hi there, I recently wrote a python script to colour in maps with specific colours. The code for it is here. Unfortunately, while it seems to create state maps correctly (see here), the county maps it creates can be rendered by firefox, but not Inkscape or GIMP and apparently not whatever Wikipedia uses to display it in articles. Gimp says it has an "XML parsing error". The map is File:US Poverty Rates.svg and can be viewed here. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem? Thanks a lot, TastyCakes (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If you can tell me where I'd get the CSV file you used to generate it, I'll have a look see. In the meantime, I note that it is a very big SVG source (it's nearly 40 times bigger than the blank map) and renderers will likely allocate a fair amount of memory during rendering. The problem may simply be that the SVG renderers in libsvg (which I think MediaWiki runs) and the others are just running out of memory (or another resource), either due to design limitations or to a hard limit to avoid denial-of-service attacks. If that's the case, the first thing to to is to run it on just a subset of the CSV file, and see if size, rather than content, is the factor that kills it (if I'm wrong then it should fail even with a handful of counties). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:28, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I also notice that the SVG contains non-ASCII characters, and doesn't declare a character encoding. Viewed in emacs you see "C:\Users\Emil\Desktop\Matt<E9>'s Work\Pix\svg" - that E9 character should probably be escaped, or a compatible encoding specified. The W3C validator barfs for what I think is this reason here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm sorry I wasn't entirely clear, I made the screwed up map using this blank map, which is actually bigger than the screwed up output map. If you go and look at the blank map, I think you see the same non-ASCII characters... TastyCakes (talk) 22:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm the validator seems to have some problems with the blank map as well... TastyCakes (talk) 22:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

But the blank state map does validate... TastyCakes (talk) 22:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, the "40x" thing was a snafu at my end. The character literals in Matté aren't the same in the two: in the blank one that é is encoded as c3 a9, but in your one it's just a naked e9. So I think you need to get the thing emitting the XML tree to force utf-8 encoding (and emit an svg header to that effect). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah you're totally right, that seems to be the problem, and now it works! Thanks a lot, I was at a total loss on what to do. TastyCakes (talk) 23:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to help; it's an interesting problem. I hope you'll keep (and ideally augment a bit) the process and script for producing the diagram; there are all too many machine-generated pictures in Wikipedia that we don't have the scripts for, making anyone who wants to fix or improve them rewrite the script again. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:09, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ideally I'd like to make the svg code it produces prettier, but my attempts at doing that were a disaster. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully the same script will work to colour in blank world maps as well. Do you have any suggestions on improving it? And is there a central repository somewhere that I could link my script to? Hopefully one where I won't find a script that does the same thing already there? ;) TastyCakes (talk) 23:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I just put the source on the commons description page (like commons:File:Wfm_floodfill_animation_queue.gif). The base one has a decent-looking SVG header (doctypes and stuff) whereas yours doesn't (again, I think that's probably a setting for the XML generator). On looking at both, the massive size is partly due to the (probably excessive) precision given for each vertex, and the (probably excessive) number of line segments used to represent the areas (most of which are, after all, just squares). Given the resolution we'll reasonably be rendering them, almost all the zones could stand to be 6 or 8 sided. But to do that properly would need some Douglas-Peucker polygon simplification, and I'm not volunteering for that ;( -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, well thanks a lot. Maybe the easiest way to get the size down would be to just make it in inkscape and then convert it into a PNG? I guess it's not quite as elegant ;) TastyCakes (talk) 23:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

adobe digital editions

I'm trying to install adobe digital editions on my computer, in english. My computer happens to be in the Netherlands, but I don't speak dutch. Somehow adobe seems to know I'm in the Netherlands and the installation program comes to me automatically in dutch. I can't figure out how to install in english instead of dutch, or to change the language to english once the app is installed in dutch. The adobe site assures me that the app is available in many language now, including dutch...but how do I download and install it in english? Thanks for your advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 23:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Try changing the countries/language settings in control panel?F (talk) 05:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)