Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 April 23

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April 23

Laptop problems

I have a laptop running on six years old that appears to be slowly failing. What triggered this post was a problem that I've had in the past, but after a reboot I've been fine. Before I begin, I must admit that I do keep my computer on 24/7 and reboot it when it gets to a point of uptime-induced instability, but this is now happening even after a reboot.

I went to watch an MKV H264 480p file, but when I do, CPU usage goes through the roof (80%+) and the video desyncs from the audio. After a few days of uptime, but sometimes soon after a reboot, the audio will fail. Programs that rely on it working fail (Winamp reports "Bad DirectSound driver", Media Player Classic gives an AudioSwitcher:Out pin failure [I think that's what it says]). Similarly, CPU usage recently tends to go high for programs that aren't supposed to be using that much CPU, and sometimes to the point of crackling audio or lagging mice (I physically move the mouse, it doesn't move on the screen for 500ms-1000ms), which tends to be at 90%+. It gets to the point where I keep Javascript disabled for smooth browsing on sites that use it.

Even at idle, CPU usage is up around 40% and Task Manager lists items that should not be using that much CPU (e.g. Taskman itself using ~30%) and windows are lagging when I switch between them (e.g. between Firefox at this editing box and Taskman, elements from Taskman are left behind as it "unloads from view" [yeah, not the right term]). Printscreening and using scrollbars in Paint (mspaint) does not scroll smoothly anymore, but redraws lines so slowly you can see it as it moves to the new window position.

As I speak I can't play songs in Winamp without it causing 90%+ CPU usage, nor emulate (yes, I own them) at 60 fps; I get <10 fps in the emulators I try. It's so bad, I don't even want to try a resource-taxing game like The Sims or Portal. It's taking many times longer for programs to load than it usually does.

Specs:

- P4 2 GHz dual core (the dual core, in my first few years experience with this laptop, limits the high CPU usage to one core, but the 90%+ recent usage seems to not)
- 1 GB RAM
- 85 GB internal HD, two external worth 2.72 TB and 931 GB (yes, deceptive metric system advertising)
- GeForce Go 7300
- Sigmatel integrated audio

What I would like to know is if anyone can discern what is causing my problems. I understand it is incredibly difficult to do so using third-party information (e.g. you can't try it yourself, I'm telling you). Which component of my PC is likely to be causing these problems?

As an aside, while typing this post, I noticed my keyboard's repeat rate appears to have gone down. I went to the Control Panel's keyboard config, but it's up as far as it can go. It was fine before the most recent reboot. The aforementioned problems are even causing my keyboard input to lag as I mentioned my mouse does. -- Tohler (talk) 00:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

After a failed shutdown, I thought "I wonder what process is holding the shutdown" and became frustrated enough that I began killing them. For a little while (15 minutes), everything worked fine again (yes, even with a failed shutdown) except for Firefox 3 couldn't load pages (my primary is 1.5; yes I'm extremely outdated). A little more insight into the situation... -- Tohler (talk) 00:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes very difficult to discern, but it seems to me that Windows (I presume XP?) needs a complete reinstall. What I mean is: backup, format, install from scratch. After six years of usage there could be any amount of spyware/clutter/etc. floating around and this is even with a decent antivirus installed. There may be other ways to fix it but these could be long-winded. If the laptop still displays strange behaviour after a fresh install, then you can look at trouble-shooting hardware issues. Sandman30s (talk) 12:54, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

^ I agree, most Windows installs just get more and more crufted over time, eventually forcing a reinstall. You could switch to Linux, too. :) If you decide it's a hardware issue, after six years you should probably just replace it — you can probably get a new laptop with more than twice the processing power and probably quadruple the RAM for around $350 (at least in the USA), which is probably less than half what you paid for this machine six years ago — one perk of living in the future. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

If you want to continue with your current laptop, the complete Windows reinstall is the way to go. Small improvements that would work out cheaper than a new laptop are more memory and a bigger hard drive, but you might struggle to find compatible components at the best prices and hardware limitations might restrict how far you can upgrade. However, that doesn't help improve the CPU speed and screen resolution, which is fixed for almost all laptops, and I wouldn't mind guessing the battery life is almost zero if you dare unplug it from the mains power. Astronaut (talk) 16:22, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you have reason to believe H.264 480P will work on your computer? If your computer is really dual core pentium-D it may, although I wouldn't guarantee it. It also depend on the profile of the encoded video of course. If its single core with hyperthreading (if it's called a Pentium 4 it's probably the later since NetBurst were always officially called Pentium-D) there's a chance it won't. You can try CoreAVC and see if it improves matters or you may just have to upgrade. In any case you should expect high CPU usage. With a Very weak CPU and GPU, the inability to run even old games like Portal at 60fps is hardly surprising. Nil Einne (talk)

I've made h.264 work up to 1024p on my 2004 single-core p4. Required the following setup if I can remember correctly: Nvidia pure video (not needed any more), Sonic HD Decoder, latest CCCP drivers and the only player that could play it reliably was Media Player Classic. I even managed to play raw bluray files via this setup, and bluray discs via an older version of PowerDVD (I think 7.3) with a HD playback kit. I think at the time I had a 6000-series nvidia card in it. Of course currently there are tons of software and media players that can play MKV but you'd be surprised at the power of computers of ten years ago and how much can be squeezed out of them. Sandman30s (talk) 19:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

- Sandman & Resio: Yes, I am running XP. I have actually thought of multibooting with Ubuntu the next time I get a new computer. What distro do you use? Similarly, do you multiboot, and if so, what steps/programs do you recommend? I have no experience multibooting in the past. I plan on multibooting with XP, Vista/7, and Ubuntu; I'd also enjoy running 98 or 95 non-VM for the nostalgic factor but I'm wondering if the differing filesystems will cause a problem.

- Nil Einne: Yes. In the past I have been able to run 480p with no trouble. Even 720p worked fine most of the time. When I mentioned I didn't want to run Portal or The Sims, what I meant was that I didn't want to run items with even higher requirements given that light usage as described caused all these problems.

- Astronaut: By resolution do you mean display resolution? I'm running 1680x1050 with an external monitor. You are semi-correct about the battery - it can't hold a charge for as long/as much of a charge as it used to.

- Six years ago I bought my laptop for my college career. Today I have no need for mobility with my computer. With today's technology, is there a large difference between a tower and a laptop? (I do have a tower, but it's even older - 2003) However, I would be interested in a $350 laptop for those instances where I may be required to travel for my job; do you recommend a specific brand/company that would give said specs/price?

- Do you guys recommend the buying of individual parts/self-assembly or the buying from a company like Dell (where my tower and laptop came from)? Do you recommend any other companies?

- One thing I would like to do is keep the data that is currently on my hard drive. If I get a new system with a new HD and the OS installed on that, would it be wise to hook my current-laptop HD up as a secondary HD, or copy the data over to the new one?

- One minor unrelated question that I don't want to start a whole new question for. For example, on the TV Tropes site, when describing a fantasy TV show with doppelgangers/fakes, I see phrases like "Real!Joe" and "Fake!Joe". It's quite obvious the form is (descriptor)+(name), but why is the exclamation mark used? Where did this "tradition" come about and why is it used in place of something like a dash ("Real-Joe")?

Thank you all for your help! -- Tohler (talk) 20:14, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

wrong fonts?

why my computer is not able to display some languages? like in this example (look at double squares):

search • suchen • rechercher • zoeken • ricerca • szukaj • buscar • поиск • 検索 • busca • sök • 搜尋 • tìm kiếm • пошук • cerca • søk • haku • hledání • keresés • 찾기 • cari • ara • جستجو • căutare • بحث • hľadať • søg • serĉu • претрага • paieška • poišči • cari • חיפוש • търсене • іздеу • bilatu • suk • bilnga • traži • खोजें

Thanks, John — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.231.47 (talk) 01:32, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that's more of an issue with your browser, rather than your computer in general. Are you using Internet Explorer? See the following page for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928847. I use Firefox and those characters display without any problems. This page should be in UTF-8, which supports those characters. If you set the font manually, it should display in your browser, like this:

search • suchen • rechercher • zoeken • ricerca • szukaj • buscar • поиск • 検索 • busca • sök • 搜尋 • tìm kiếm • пошук • cerca • søk • haku • hledání • keresés • 찾기 • cari • ara • جستجو • căutare • بحث • hľadať • søg • serĉu • претрага • paieška • poišči • cari • חיפוש • търсене • іздеу • bilatu • suk • bilnga • traži • खोजें

—Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

This image shows what it looks like in Firefox 3.0. It also shows how to get to Firefox 3.0's character encoding selecter. -- Tohler (talk) 04:58, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Depending on which squares you're seeing, you may simply be missing required fonts. http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I have no squares; these all look fine, which sugests that, yes, you are simply lacking the required font sets. Mingmingla (talk) 22:36, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Name for digital projection concept ?

If I project an image in such a way that it is foreshortened, this results in multiple pixels on the original mapping to the same pixel in the projection. This produces the following ugly image when I project a grid:

If, however, I don't project the background pixels, this avoids overwriting any foreground pixels, producing a much better result:

So, is there a term for this problem, and/or this solution ? StuRat (talk) 05:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The problem is a kind of aliasing artifact. The solution in general is to use spatial anti-aliasing techniques. Looie496 (talk) 06:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Any name for this specific technique, or the related technique of projecting colors closer to the background color first ? StuRat (talk) 14:10, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You just worked around the aliasing and moire, by intentionally not drawing the entire image at the same time. This worked for simple line art, but the technique does not work in general. I'm not aware of a name, other than line drawing with a paint order. Several algorithms specify a paint order, like any z-buffering technique or the painter's algorithm, but those are intended to solve clipping problems, not antialiasing. If you want to get this working in the general case, you do need to actually use spatial antialiasing. There are many names for specific implementations of antialiasing filters. Nimur (talk) 15:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm more interested in high-speed rendering of wireframe animations than slow, shaded image rendering, so this method works best for me. StuRat (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

If your wireframe animations contain high spatial frequencies, they will also alias. You got lucky this time. If you are using hardware acceleration to render, (e.g., OpenGL running on almost any reasonable GPU), there is no speed-penalty for enabling antialiasing, using e.g. glHint(GL_LINE_SMOOTH_HINT, GL_NICEST). Your mileage will vary, depending on your graphics driver; of course there are better ways to antialias in special cases. (With due respect, StuRat, I'm really expecting you to come back and tell me you're using FORTRAN code to software-render pixel-values into a text-document, which you convert to GIF using a Windows program; in that case, you're fooling yourself if you think antialiasing has any performance impact on your workflow). Nimur (talk) 18:46, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Almost. I'm using a FORTRAN program to create PPM panes, which are then stitched into an animated GIF using ImageMagick. Each pane takes about 7.5 milliseconds to render, at 400×400 resolution. That seems plenty quick, to me. I have a low-end CPU (Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, running Windows XP SP3), and hardware acceleration is not available. StuRat (talk) 18:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's a wireframe animation I created which requires red-blue 3D glasses:

My 3D animated grid (2 corners appear to peel up). For best results, pick on it, then select full resolution, below.

I intend to add more frames to it, later. I've also created shaded animations, where I render the shading first, then add a grid on top:

Fountain animation.

Morphing 3D graph.

19:10, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

StuRat, these are very nice animated plots, but you're really going to a lot of effort because you're using the wrong tools for the job. For example, GNU Octave (which is totally free software, and runs on Windows), can generate 3D plots using the mesh() functions. In fact, you can plot many different types of wireframe and smooth surfaces; you can perform animations, output as discrete image frames, or compress as a movie file, all using free and open-source software that even runs on Windows. A task that will take you hours of FORTRAN programming can be accomplished in mere seconds if you select a reasonable toolkit. If you're just doing this for the joy of re-implementing the mathematics of elementary shaders and lighting and projection geometry, then your efforts are not in vain (but, you should spend the effort to learn how to do it right - antialias!). If you're simply using your program as a means to generate nice animations, you should reconsider your toolkit. Your Pentium 4 is a fine processor. It can easily handle these sorts of calculations. Almost certainly, your system has some capability to hardware-accelerate OpenGL, even if you lack a discrete graphics daughtercard. Almost every Pentium-class system has a simple GPU integrated into the system. If your Pentium 4 is outputting to a monitor in any way at all, then it's a sure bet that your motherboard has one of these Intel chipsets, which includes one of these graphics units, which support at least OpenGL 1.4 - which contains an advanced feature set far beyond you need for simple surface rendering, wireframe animations, and other graphics and animation. Sure, it'll cough and stutter when you try to run the latest and greatest games, but accelerating your 400x400 pixel wireframe renders will be no problem. Nimur (talk) 23:16, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a hobby of mine. Your comment comes across a bit like telling someone who likes to garden that they can just get flowers already grown, so they should stop wasting their time. It's not just about the results, it's about doing it for myself. I also disagree with the idea that there is only one right way to do things. If that was the case, we wouldn't have wire frame, surfaced, and solid models. The reality is that different methods are better for different purposes. StuRat (talk) 03:17, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

If your hobby was painting model airplanes, and you were using water instead of paint thinner to clean the brushes, I'd tell you the same thing: you're using the wrong tool for the job. There are many ways to clean a paintbrush, but one works better. Similarly, you can render images in n different ways, but some methods work better. I can appreciate your goal; I also enjoy hobby programming and working with 3D images; but I think you're expending a lot of unnecessary effort. If you make the effort to learn the most powerful tools available to you, you will be able to produce more results in the same amount of time. Even if you're dead-set on using a particular programming language and software toolchain, you should at least ramp up on the mathematical tools of image processing: aliasing is important to understand because it will affect your renders. You can ignore it for now, as you have done by implementing your workaround, but it'll catch up to you at some point. Nimur (talk) 06:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

To use your paintbrush example, different paint thinners work better, depending on if you use latex paint, oil paint, or watercolors. And water is the best choice for cleaning the brushes, if you happen to be using watercolor. So, even there, your one-size-fits all approach doesn't work.

Also consider that I learn better by doing than by reading. This is true of many people, perhaps most. I could read about something a dozen times and not understand it, or do it once, learn it, and remember it forever. StuRat (talk) 06:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

"X" Power button light of Xaser VI

Hello there, yesterday I cleaned up my pc and disconnected two optional fan inside the case that has been damaged for a long time. After that I turned on pc by pressing power button "X" and noticed that "X" power button light does not blink though my system is running smoothly. The HDD light blinks. I reopened the case and made sure the peripherals are connected properly. But the button still does not blink. How can I address the problem? Am I missing something? thanks--180.234.236.182 (talk) 09:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Power buttons don't normally blink, they are steady on when the device is on. Is this how it behaves now ? If so, this is what it should be doing, and the damaged fans were likely causing voltage drops making it blink. If the light isn't on at all, then something else is wrong. Perhaps you accidentally disconnected the power cord to it. Or, perhaps it just burned out, coincidentally, at this time. StuRat (talk) 14:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• You are right. The light is not On when I press on it and even it stays in same situation when pc is turned on . I checked the disconnected power cord but couldn't locate it. Does it look like two pin cord? I read the manual of thermaltake Xaser VI where case LED connections are mentioned: Power Led, Power SW, H.D.D Led and Reset SW. I found all of them except Power led cord (two pin). Is the power Led cable responsible for this? I overlooked it but couldn't find that cable. Is it really burned out? Can you please tell me which cable is responsible for power button light. Thanks--180.234.238.230 (talk) 17:33, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• I'd expect it to be a two-pin power cable, yes, but I'm not certain. Is it possible you removed it, thinking it went with one of the fans ? If not, it should still be inside the computer. If you can't find it near the on/off light, look for where the other end should plug into the power supply unit (which is where the cord from the wall outlet plugs go into the computer). StuRat (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• One more thing is that I disconnected my hard drive and reconnected it. Does the light of power button have to do anything with connecting and disconnecting with harddrive?--180.234.238.230 (talk) 19:17, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• OK, I bet what happened is that your PC lacks an ON/OFF light, and the hard drive has a light that is on whenever it is powered (which was whenever the PC was on). By disconnecting the hard drive, you also lost that light, which was your only visual indication that the PC is on. When you reconnected it, you probably didn't get the plug all the way in, so it doesn't have power to the light. Try pulling the plug all the way out, and completely reseating it. Also check that you didn't bend any of the pins. If so, try to bend them back. StuRat (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• I have just rechecked inside the case and finally, yes, I found that four-pin power cable. Actually that cable was associated with damaged case fan and was connected to PSU power cord. While disconnecting the fan I mistakenly disconnected it from PSU power cord. Now the light is back again. Thank StuRat for helping me out.--180.234.198.76 (talk) 20:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• You're welcome. StuRat (talk) 20:26, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Wouldn't it be nice if...

a blogging programme checked some bit of metadata on an image to see how big it is, before making me wait several minutes while it tries to upload it, only to realise the image is too large?

Wouldn't that seem like an easy/obvious feature to add to, say, Blogger?

Adambrowne666 (talk) 10:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The HTML support for file upload just lets the user choose a file, and sends it across. Allowing scripts to interact with the process would threaten to create security holes. Paul (Stansifer) 13:53, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course, you could always check yourself how big the file is - after all it is being uploaded from the computer you are currently using isn't it? Astronaut (talk) 16:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Both good points, but you neglect to factor in the datum that I'm very lazy, too shiftless to care even about security issues.Adambrowne666 (talk) 23:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not so much security for your blog, but browser security in general. If your browser started giving information about arbitrary files on your system to anyone who could get you to click on a link that will pop up the file dialog, you'd start shifting plenty (is that how the metaphor works? I'm not sure.) Paul (Stansifer) 20:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

LaTeX figure numbers

I am trying to number figures in a certain way and am having difficulties. What I want to achieve is the following.

1. Number as (chapter #).(section #) if the figure is not within a subsection (meaning that the subsection counter is set to zero), and (chapter #).(section #).(subsection #) otherwise.
2. Follow this with -# if the subsection has more than one figure, and nothing otherwise.

I have achieved the first bit with

\newcommand{\figureplacenumber}{ \ifnumequal{\value{subsection}}{0}{\arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}}{\arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}.\arabic{subsection}} }

\renewcommand*{\thefigure}{\figureplacenumber-\arabic{figure}}

However, this leaves a space between the (sub)section number and the hyphen, and this space does not disappear with

\newcommand{\figureplacenumber}{ \ifnumequal{\value{subsection}}{0}{\arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}\xspace}{\arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}.\arabic{subsection}\xspace} }

or

\renewcommand*{\thefigure}{\figureplacenumber{}-\arabic{figure}}

and I haven't a clue how to achieve the second part. What should I do? Thanks.--Leon (talk) 10:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Private email communication

How can I communicate privately through email? I don't want commercial providers snooping through my emails to offer me stuff. XPPaul (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I note that Gmail is now reading the contents of my emails and advertising based on it, which rather sucks. I assume this is what you mean. Some type of encoding could work, but the recipient would need to be able to decode it. StuRat (talk) 14:04, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Does Google do this when we get the mail, or when we read it in a browser? (I almost always read my G mail in Thunderbird.) —Tamfang (talk) 08:47, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox. I think it may also happen when I write an email. StuRat (talk) 15:04, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Encryption. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:05, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You use an email provider that snoops through your mail in oder to advertise stuff to you????? That has never happened to me in 20 years of using email, not even webmail providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. I suggest you change your provider immediately. I expect it would be easy to find a provider who won't do this. On the other hand, many email providers have a clause in their terms to allow them to release your emails to the relevant authorities under a legal request (for prevention of terrorism and so on) and have a means to store your mail for that reason. Astronaut (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You realize that any email providor has "a means to store your mail" right? That's sort of how they provide an email service to you. Also, yahoo does this as well, can't find anything specific on hotmail but I'd be surprised if they don't. Chris M. (talk) 13:37, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

If you securely encrypt your mail (really securely), your email recipients will need to securely decrypt it. This requires technical knowledge (not much, but just enough that many people will not bother to do it). To the uninitiated, a secure email using, e.g., S/MIME, appears to be an almost-blank ordinary email with a strange binary attachment.

The sad reality is, if you wish to communicate securely, you must seriously limit who you communicate with. Nimur (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

As Mr.98 suggested, encrypting your emails is the only way to stop email snooping (through something like PGP). It's not particularly difficult to do, but as Nimur suggested, it severely limits who you can talk to. The other comment I wanted to make was that pretty much all email providers will read your mail contents, not just GMail. As this is how they filter spam. - Akamad (talk) 22:47, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Webcam formats?

I wonder in what format typical webcams transmit video to the computer. Is it some standard format that the OS knows, or is it some camera-specific raw format that the driver converts in real-time to a standard format? In the latter case, what format does the driver present to the OS? AxelBoldt (talk) 18:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Frequently JPEG, AIUI. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:24, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The standard for USB video is called USB video device class, and as Reisio points out, often involves JPEG-compressed frames. Your webcam can do anything it likes if it uses a non-standard device driver.

For example, Video4Linux 2 defines several types of uncompressed and compressed formats. It is the responsibility of the device-driver and kernel-driver to negotiate the format so that meaningful video data streams from source to destination.

The source-code for Video 4 Linux, including the USB driver, is distributed as part of the kernel, available at http://kernel.org and documented in linux-(release)/Documentation/video4linux/uvcvideo.txt - you can download it for free and read all the technical information you need, with no details left out. Nimur (talk) 19:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Some Computing questions

1)Using VoIP, the person who receives the call, gets a random and weird number on his caller ID.Such way, if a person threatens a person over phone via the VoIP, Can the law enforcement trace the location of the phone using the weird number?

2)While the torrent sharing website provide illegal software and other stuffs, Why the government is not taking any action against them?

3)Is there any Xbox 360 emulator available for Windows?Max Viwe | Wanna chat with me? 19:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

(1) I don't know. Perhaps your VoiP provider can answer this for you. (2) Copyright is often enforced in civil court via lawsuit by private parties. For example, see the article on the Pirate Bay trial and also the RIAA. (3) This page claims to have an XBox 360 emulator: [1]. RudolfRed (talk) 20:33, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The Xbox 360 emulator is probably a scam. The "newest updates" bullet points are copied from pcsx2 checkin comments ([2]). See also WP:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 19#Xbox 360 emulator.

It has been difficult to take legal action against torrent sites because nothing that they host (torrent files, torrent descriptions, torrent tracking data) actually infringes on copyright. The copyrighted data is sent directly from peer to peer, and the web site is not a peer. -- BenRG (talk) 23:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

According to this, the weird number appears if the caller hasn't set their number for caller ID. You can report abusive callers to Skype[3] or many other VoIP services, who should be able to identify them. Or if you're called on a phone, your phone company should be able to handle it (or failing that, contact the police or a lawyer). People have been caught in the past when Skype calls were traced[4]. --Colapeninsula (talk) 08:59, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox Addons that can make browsing quick by using alphabet

Hi there, A few days ago I installed an addon which make browser easier by using alphabet. User can press ctrl+spacebar or ctrl+shift to bring a small interface which can show the name of the website along with an alphabet (e.g. facebook f) that can directly lead user to that particular website in a new tab if user presses the alphabet associated with the website. For example: http://www.facebook.com = f, http://www.wikipedia.com = w, http://www.youtube.com= y. User can add any website by go to the option of that interface and add web address with certain alphabet that is convenient for user. Can anyone help me to find that addons. Thanks in advance--180.234.198.76 (talk) 20:36, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You can do the same with Firefox's bookmarks. Open up the Bookmark Manager and to the New Bookmark prompt. Add the Name and Location of your choosing, then put the letter of the alphabet you want in the "Keyword" section. Hit Add to make your bookmark. Now you can use the alphabet as you wanted. -- Tohler (talk) 21:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Vimperator? There are (as usual) one or two alternatives, too, IIRC. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Apparently it's not that one I am looking for!--180.234.198.76 (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You're right, it's one of the ones listed in Vimperator's external links section. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:15, 24 April 2012 (UTC)