Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 January 15

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January 15

Malware keeps opening webpages

At random intervals during computer use, certain spammy webpages open such as www.drastic news.com and www.medic tales.com (I've broken the URLs so they're not registered by spiders). I'm running up-to-date Avast antivirus and Adaware anti-malware programs with frequent scans but neither have been able to resolve this issue. Is there any way I can trace from what program the command to open a webpage originates? The pages open in Firefox, which is my system default, so it's not IE related. As a workaround, stopping Firefox from stealing focus when a webpage loads, would also suffice. ----Seans Potato Business 02:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Install Microsoft Security Essentials. Ariel. (talk) 04:31, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I would run a Windows Defender search. Windows Defender is probably installed on your computer. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:29, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Try doing a series of different scans, such as those by Malwarebytes, Superantispyware, AdvancedSystemCare, Spybot Search & Destroy, to see if they detect something. Clean the computer with Ccleaner before doing a scan. If that does not cure it, find a forum that studies HijackThis reports.

89.243.221.49 (talk) 23:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I've had the same problem, reformated the hard disk drive and reinstalled windows, yet it still happens and it's always on the default browser, either IE or Firefox.

DFD FOR BMC REMEDY USER TOOL

i need to draw dfd for BMC REMEDY User tool.any help thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by Priyankaranigmail (talk • contribs) 06:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

? 220.101.28.25 (talk) 14:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that DFD means Data flow diagram. The article has some general information on creating such. I'm not personally familiar with BMC Remedy except by name. --LarryMac | Talk 14:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Automatic image search?

I would like to be able to click on any image and have all related web-pages come up. Is there any search engine or software (preferably free) which can do this, perhaps by image analysis? Clicking on images or copying and pasting image URL's usually yields poor results.Trevor Loughlin (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you used TinEye? -- kainaw™ 15:43, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I have, but all TinEye does is match the exact picture - every pixel must be the same or it will come up with nothing. There's no attempt at image analysis. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That's not true -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected and thank you! I didn't read the FAQ. I was thrown off by the message that Tineye gave me after I uploaded a picture that it was unable to find any results for: "TinEye looks for the specific image you uploaded, not the content of the image. TinEye cannot identify people or objects in an image." Still true, but the ambiguity of the wording led me to the wrong conclusion. Sorry. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't begin to tell you how many photos of Claudia Schiffer I had to look through before I found an example this clear (the last 2 on the 2nd page of TinEye's search are particularly impressive). It's a terrible job, but someone has to do it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there are any search engines that can do what you want if you mean that they analyze the image for content and make sense of it and look for other content. Google Images can do very basic things like looking for "related" images that are defined by the fact of the textual content that surrounds them being similar to other images, and it can restrict images by virtue of their size and even color, but that's about it. We are not really at the state where you can take an image and tell a computer "what's in this" and have it give reliably correct results, unless the possibilities of what could be in the image are very constrained. You could probably make something that could spot dogs in an image, for example, and if the possibilities were only dogs and people and cats. But to make something that could figure out what any given animal was just from a photo would require not only some very savvy visual analysis abilities, but basically some kind of pretty smart artificial intelligence to make sense of it. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That said, here is a short blurb from April 2008 about Google's efforts in this area. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)