Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 April 9

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April 9

Android Tablet

an Android Tablet is a new kind of tech, like an ipad but smaller ?

Android tablets come in many sizes, but the most common are 7-inch and 10-inch screens. iPads have a 9.7-inch screen. While iPad started the current tablet computer popularity, and Android responded to the demand, both are evolving. I have both a 7-inch Android tablet (which I upgraded to version 4.0.3 yesterday), and a 3rd generation iPad. They're both nice, but I use them for different purposes - the Android mostly as an ebook reader with the capability to browse the web, and the iPad mostly as a web browsing device plus a few more specialised applications.-gadfium 01:51, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not particularly new, no. It's relatively new for a Linux distro (of sorts) like Android to be backed so greatly by such a powerful organization as Google. Apple focuses on a few specific form factors and tightly controls their OS, not allowing it to be used on any devices but their own. Since Android is free and largely unregulated manufacturers and distributors are naturally using it on a number of different form factors. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Windows Explorer remembering CD/DVD info even after rejecting

I have a problem with Windows Explorer. After ejecting the DVD or CD in the DVD/CD drive, Windows Explorer still shows the volume info of the disc that has been ejected. It doesn't matter how long you wait, Windows Explorer never seems to show updated information. When I try to do an "eject" on the drive, it will take an unusually long time before the disc tray ejects. I seems that Windows is checking the drive for the disc that was there before (and will actually eject the disc tray only after it has failed to find the disc).

I don't know what might have caused it, but I remember having made some registry changes a few months ago while fixing/troubleshooting some issues. Is there a registry setting that, when set a certain way, would explain the symptoms that I'm seeing? If so, how do I reset it back to the normal setting?

If it doesn't look like a registry problem, what should I check to troubleshoot? --108.52.38.199 (talk) 01:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

This sounds like a very old behavior when you ejected a floppy disk. At least you don't get the infamous Retry/Ignore/Abort prompt (all of which repeat the same prompt). StuRat (talk) 02:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Did you mean Abort, Retry, Fail?. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. StuRat (talk) 05:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Running a windows program on my mac

I have access to a free (legal) version of Turbotax--my father's purchase covers everyone in the family, up to five downloads, but I have a mac and the purchase is Turbotax for Windows and the download, no surprise, is an .exe file. How can I use this on my mac? I know there are programs that allow you to spoof/run the Windows interface but I have no idea what they're called (and I want this to be free). Any help?--108.54.27.24 (talk) 03:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Look at Parallels Desktop for Mac. You might be able to get a demo version or free trial that will let you run Turbo Tax. Or you can ask Intuit if your father's licence includes the Mac version. (The version sold in stores has both). RudolfRed (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the demo version will be pretty much useless on its own since AFAIK and as per the article, Parallels is simply a virtualisation program. You need a copy of the OS you want which is obviously Windows here and it sounds unlikely the OP has a spare licence for Windows to be used on a VM. You can sometimes get Windows trials but I'm not sure if the trial licence extends to running it on a VM. And in any case, it seems fairly pointless if the OP needs a long term solution (and it sounds like they do) and wants something free as they mentioned. If the OP does want to run Windows in a virtual machine, particularly since there only seems to be a single non demanding program they want to run (so any possible issues like limited GPU virtualisation shouldn't matter), it would seemingly make more sense for them to choose something that's free like VirtualBox or QEMU (possibly in the form of Q (emulator) although from what I can tell that hasn't been updated since 2008) both of which, from what I can tell, support Mac OS X in some fashion. Then at least they only have to worry about finding a Windows licence. Nil Einne (talk) 03:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Wine and Mono are the first ones I can think of. →Στc. 03:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm I'm lost. I downloaded Wine and Wine bottler and then tried to Open the Turbotax and after about 100 errors it closed down. According to the wine database and some things I googled it's not going to work. Maybe I just have to try to get the Mac version.--108.54.27.24 (talk) 04:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Any chance that you're a student? If so, you can get free versions of Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 (which are the server equivalents of XP and Vista) from dreamspark.com. Then use VirtualBox (also free) to boot into your legally licensed new copy of Windows. I use this setup on my Mac and it works very well. There is near-seamless integration so I can continue to work on my Mac as normal while running Windows as just another app/window. Julia\^talk 10:22, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Typically licensing is separate from downloads — you might at least attempt to apply whatever licensing information you have to a Mac OS trial download (try to match the version as best you can). You could also call them up and see what your options are. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Solid state holographic data storage

I saw this, Holographic data storage and this, Holographic Versatile Disc, and it intrigued me. But I'm wondering if there's a holographic data storage medium that is solid state with no moving parts. ScienceApe (talk) 05:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That'd severly limit the space (or require an incredible amount of redundant parts). Holographic storage systems already have many fewer moving parts than a traditional hard disk, and the medium itself does not have to come into as close contact with anything that could easily physically damage it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Very interesting. Silentmidnight7q (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Mains Adapter for iPod Touch

Is there such a thing as an adapter that I can plug into the wall socket and recharge (or keep charged) my iPod Touch? The battery doesn't seem to last very long - 5 hours or so of continual use - and I tend to use it a lot when I am outside. It would be nice to be able to plug it in when at a restaurant, for example. Googling has only got me hits for 'USB mains adapter', which makes no sense. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, my iPod Touch came with such a thing - which is indeed a USB mains adapter. It's just a wall-wart with a usb socket, which plugs into the usb-ipod cable you surely already have, which plugs into the iPod to charge it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 09:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Mine came with the same thing. You can get them here if you've lost yours. Dismas|^(talk) 09:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

OP here. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I do indeed have a USB charger. I am looking to recharge from the mains - the household electricity supply, for example, not via USB. 145.236.189.201 (talk) 10:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we know what you mean. This thing plugs into the mains outlet on the wall. It has a transformer, which produces the normal USB power level. It then emits this on a usb connection (which carries no data) into which you can plug an iPod. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:20, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't clicked on the link Dismas provided. I did not get one with mine, and that is indeed what I need. Now I just need a European and UK version. Thanks, I will look around. 145.236.189.143 (talk) 10:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Here you go. Straight from Apple. Dismas|^(talk) 10:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The standard adapter comes with interchangeable power pins for different standards. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

How do I live-download to YouTube?

I would like to put up a live broadcast from a digital camera (or a cameraphone) to my YouTube channel. I don't like to wait until I go to a computer, or even wait until the recording is done. I want the footage to be placed on the site as it's being filmed. Then the live broadcast has a set length once I stop recording.

How do I get this to happen? Thanks. --Tergigress (talk) 09:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Youtube can't do this, you may want a live stream. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

A better tool for doing this would be Bambuser, which does pretty much exactly what you describe. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:59, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It can be done on YouTube, but I think you need a sponsered or paid account to be able to do this. Mrlittleirish 10:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I mostly hear of people using ustream.com for this rather than youtube. 67.117.147.20 (talk) 06:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Processor iddle

I would like to know if there are side effects when the processor is not iddle? (I mean when it's always being used). Current;y I'm bruteforcing a tripcode but I don't know if this is bad to the processor, thanks. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:05, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Processing is what processors are designed to do. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

So It doesn't matter if the processor is 100% being used than or if it is iddle most of the time? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:25, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It depends on your system. In general, a processor that runs hotter will age quicker and may develop faults earlier. However, in a well-designed system, the temperature should remain well below the point where this effect is noticeable. So unless you have a very crappy thermal design, you should be fine. BTW, the processor state is called "idle" (one "d"), as in "idling away your live" ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It looks that I'm going to have to pause it.. cause I can feel warm.. of it.. Thanks.. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 14:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You shouldn't have to worry about it, the processor will take care of itself, in the worst case it'll shut itself down before any damage is done. I'm really confused how someone could know enough to have a legitimate reason and the capability to bruteforce as you're suggesting but doesn't have the knowledge about how a processor works. Chris M. (talk) 14:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I didn't wrote the brute forcing program. But I'm constantly learning about programming... And I don't really know much about hardware.... 190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you consider a side effect but busy processors usually use more electric power. Some people only crunch numbers when they would otherwise turn up the heat. Electric power is an expensive heat source. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If just the processor is being used, then heat would be the main concern, yes. However, if it's also using the hard drive, then those moving parts might wear out much quicker than you would expect. Similarly, since flash drives have a limited number of read/write cycles, they might wear out quickly, too. StuRat (talk) 05:27, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd expect several years of use even if it's running constantly. By then you will want a new computer anyway. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 18:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

IE8 converting numbers into telephone numbers

When the death of my Windows Vista computer in November forced me to buy a computer equipped with Windows 7, I made sure to go back to the same IE8 that I'd been using on the old computer, as I have to use IE9 at work and I hate it. However, there's one "feature" that changed that I don't know how to undo: whenever it sees a string of numbers in certain formats, the browser renders them as a telephone number, complete with a link that will call the number if I click it. How can I turn this off? It's mildly annoying when the browser does this to things that really are telephone numbers, but it's downright confusing when it gets confused, such as when it converts the DOI in citation #7 of Micro black hole into a link allowing me to call a telephone number in Spain. Nyttend (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It's an add-on, maybe Skype Click to Call. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For an example of this, see "Unix Time" section (2 questions below). Number right after "Then subtract the seconds of..." as my Internet Explorer 8 under Windows 7 is also showing this odd effect. Any 8 digit number is affected? - 220 of ^Borg 12:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

Hi, I've had this error for about a week, have tried everything, and am now at a loss for what to do. I uninstalled Firefox, and reinstalled it, but it didn't work. I uninstalled it, deleting all preferences, then deleting the Program Files folder for Firefox, then reinstalled, but it didn't work. Uninstalled Thunderbird too, as it's also made by Mozilla, but it's still not working. The file profiles.ini looks right. I made a new account on my laptop (which is running XP) and installed Firefox on that, and it works fine. I copied the new accounts Firefox folders (including the profile) into my normal account and it's still not working. I am using Firefox 11. I even tried to install Firefox 3.6, but that didn't do anything, so I just uninstalled it, and reinstalled Firefox 11. I broke my normal laptop, and so I'm using this, my old laptop, now, and so I've edited a lot of things to get it working as I want. I have edited the registry, so thought it might be that. I have tried to restore to previous positions in the registry, but every restore point cannot be restored to. I have run CCleaner to the registry, but it's still not working. It isn't a virus causing this because I've run Malware Bytes, and AVG to check there are no viruses. I've done everything I can think of, and now I'm stuck. I know that I cold just switch to using the new account, but the reason I've spent a week trying to fix this is because it's a lot of effort to install everything for the new account (a lot of things are installed for this account only), and to set up preferences, etc. I have googled the issue, and I'm unable to fix it from the help I have found via Google's results. I am also unable to run the Firefox Profile Manager as I am unable to run Firefox. Thank you for any help that you can provide. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 18:05, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Can you start the profile manager by running firefox from the command line (with no firefox windows hanging around) as described here? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:53, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. No, unfortunately the same error appears. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Assuming you don't want anything in the profile you've already created: Read this page to find your profiles folder (you might be looking in the wrong spot), and then rename the affected profile to something ridiculous, like "324tvgdsvcw". Then try restarting. If that doesn't work, move said affected profile folder out of the main profiles folder (onto your desktop, for example), then restart again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:11, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I had already done that, to no avail. I have a copy of my profile, which I am using for my temporary account, and it works fine. I have changed the profile, deleted the profile, edited the profile name and correspondingly edited profiles.ini, and even deleted profiles.ini expecting Firefox to create a new one, but unfortunately none of that has worked. Now it is just installed with the standard profile that is created on installation. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried going into the affected profile (make sure Firefox is not running), copying the folders/files inside one-by-one ("extensions", "bookmarkbackups"; I use 1.5 and 3.0 but you should know what I mean), and pasting them into the standard profile folder, then restarting after each one? It's time consuming, but you'll likely find out what file is causing the problem with that method. -- MegaGuy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thank you again. No I haven't because the the standard profile and my customised profile both work on the temporary account I've made on my computer, but both the standard profile and my customised profile don't work on my usual account, so the issue doesn't appear to be within the profile itself, but with Firefox recognising that the profile is there. The profile is in the default location, and profiles.ini correctly describes that location, so I don't understand why it isn't being recognised. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misunderstood your original post. So, a complete delete of the Firefox profiles folder, and a complete uninstallation of Firefox, then a reinstall of Firefox and the standard profile it creates will not work on your usual account? -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 20:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a full deletion of the profiles folder, a full uninstallation of Firefox, and deletion of any remnants of the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox folder, then a reinstallation of Firefox, with its standard profile, still results in the same error. Thanks for your help. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried going back any further with the Firefox installations (namely, before they began using SQLite for a lot of the files)? I'd do a complete delete of the profiles/Firefox again, install 1.5 and see what it does with its standard profile, then try 2.0. Perhaps your usual account has some issue with newer versions. Another possibility is that your usual account is somehow installing incorrectly. Copy the profiles and installation that was created (and accessed) successfully on your temporary account to your usual account. -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 21:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Unix time

Hello, I was interested in making a Unix time calculator with Excel. However, it seems to be slightly off (it returns a timestamp for April 30 when I enter today's date). Could you take a look at these formulas and tell me where I'm going wrong? (I'm using a time of 20120409, 12:51:00.)

2012 in seconds = 31536000*2012
04 in seconds = (31536000/12)*4
09 in seconds = 9*(24*60*60)
12 in seconds = 12*60*60
51 in seconds = 51*60

Then subtract the seconds of 19700101 00:00:00 (62125920000) from the total seconds of the above equations. Am I supposed to be doing something else with 1970 other than getting the seconds of the year alone? Thanks for your help! -- MegaGuy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.85.199.242 (talk) 19:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You can't calculate the number of seconds for April 9 the way you are trying. First, there are only three months passed so far (Jan, Feb, March), not four, and second there is not an equal number of seconds per month (March has more seconds than February, for example). After you fix that, you then need to account for all the leap days between 1970 and now. RudolfRed (talk) 21:24, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You forgot that days in seconds has the same issue as the months -- 9 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute is 9 whole days. You can use the years to seconds calculations, but that figure doesn't include leap days (like RudolfRed mentioned). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:33, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

And leap seconds. Also things like time-zone. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Unix timestamps do not account for leap seconds, so you don't have to worry about those.

But Unix timestamps are most definitely in UTC, so yes, you certainly do need to worry about the offset for your local time zone. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:56, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Easily confused letters/numbers/glyphs

I need a list of easily confused glyphs, either numbers or letters. I mostly care about Latin character-sets, but the others would be helpful too. I've found a list for certain ones used in domain fishing, but I'm interested in ones within-language that would be confused. Thank you. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 21:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you read IDN homograph attack? Nimur (talk) 22:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. That's the list I was referring to above. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Homoglyph is much closer to what I'm looking for, but something more comprehensive. ImoTimoTurbo (talk) 22:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, unicode.org maintains tables of easily confused chars; I'm afraid I don't have a direct link handy, though. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:27, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The technical name is Unicode equivalence - characters that are semantically equivalent, or interpreted equivalently (or rendered as equivalent glyphs). This is heuristic; it is domain-specific, and corpus-specific. As it would happen, companies like Google (who process large volumes of text in many languages and encodings) maintain proprietary lists of equivalency characters. In C#, you can use Character Classes; in Java, you can design a custom class implementing Character Comparable<T> interface for use in string recognition. You can also read about unicode normalization straight from the source: "Unicode Technical Report #15" - Normalization. This is an "unsolved problem" because ultimately it depends on how people are using the encoding and standards out in the wild. All the APIs, libraries, and specifications only go so far; people play silly games with domain hacks, incorrect encodings that mismatch their languages, and other non-ideal usage of binary-representations-of-characters; so any functional implementation of text normalization is going to use a lot more improvisation and hacking than most Unicode-junkies would like to admit. Let's not even bring in the nightmare of glyph representations in various fonts: the simplest example is the confusion of "i" and "L" in some case-forms in some fonts. In some fonts, these are the same glyph, and in others, they are totally distinct and dissimilar glyphs. Needless to say, "i" and "L" are semantically distinct; so should their "equivalence" depend on font and page-layout? And of course, what to do about ligatures and combined forms... control characters, accent-marks (single byte precomposed é or control-character accent + 'e' (combined by the layout engine?), ... it gets quite horrible quite fast. There are literally hundreds of thousands of potentially equivalent ("canonically equivalent," "compatible," or just plain "confusing.") Nimur (talk) 02:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Transferring 50 MB to a friend

I have a stack of 20 or so high-resolution JPEG images (about 50 MB altogether, they don't .zip any smaller) that I'd like to send to a friend several thousand kilometers away. Without reducing the resolution or quality of the images, what are the tools that my fellow would Wikipedians use to move moderately large image files from one person to another? (That is, files too large to comfortably attach to an email, but too small to justify mailing a DVD, USB stick, or SD card.) Something free (gratis) and online, that doesn't require too much in the way of relinquishing privacy, personal information, or my first born (always check the fine print of the EULA) would be ideal. Thanks! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Most instant messenging protocols/clients of note (including IRC, often) can transfer files. There are also one-off services like http://justbeamit.com/ and other slightly more involved things like Dropbox. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:30, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For the purposes of this question, let's say I'm not using an instant messaging tool to communicate with this friend. You can assume that we both have a live broadband internet connection and email access, but no other applications installed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Why not create a free account at a photo-hosting site? Personally I use Flickr but others are available. There is often the option to make your uploaded photos private or viewable to family / friends only. Once your friend has downloaded and saved the images, you could then, if necessary, delete them. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 22:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Flickr's okay, but it doesn't support sharing the full-resolution original files unless one upgrades to a 'Pro' account. (I'm also hoping to be able to transfer a .zip file or similar so that my friend doesn't have to click through and download each image individually.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If e-mail is the only application you have access to, then you'll need to send it by e-mail. How are you posting this question? RudolfRed (talk) 23:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Don't be a smartass, RudolfRed. (Or, if you must, use small type or a smiley so that you're less likely to distract from the helpful responses.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

For you: split (Unix) (which, despite its name, is available for Windows) or HJsplit: split the files into handily email-friendly sizes, mail 'em, counterparty reassembles. Email is rather inefficient use of bandwidth because of the way binary files are attached, but it'll work. If it was me: rsync over ssh. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

MediaFire 82.45.62.107 (talk) 22:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to Reisio, justbeamit met my needs this time around. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I notice you've found a solution you're happy with, but I'll just let you know my way of doing it, which is to upload the file in question to Dropbox, place it in my 'Public' folder, then send the download link in an email/IM. If you feel you will send files to this friend on a regular basis, you can share Dropbox folders with them, and anything placed in the folder will be visible to both of you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)