Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 March 15

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March 15

phone internet access

My new phone contract allows me 250Mb of internet a month, and I have no idea what that means. How long can I use it for, then, and what sorts of things can i do on it, does the amount it uses up vary with different sites and applications?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 01:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

The amount of time will depend on what you're doing. Downloading apps, songs, and movies might use it up fairly quickly, but that would provide almost unlimited (text page) surfing time. StuRat (talk) 01:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Also note that when Sturat talks of downloading songs and movies, that includes listening to online radio or watching videos on websites like Youtube. - Akamad (talk) 02:14, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

And when he says "almost unlimited surfing time", I'm guessing that he means news and information sites that don't have streaming videos and other multimedia content... Like most of Wikipedia. But yes, it's hard for most people to judge 250MB of data usage just on a whim. I would suggest taking your browsing a little easy for the first month, check to see if you were near your limit at the end of your billing cycle, and then adjust accordingly. For instance, I might use my phone to do some GPS navigation but then will wait till I get home to check Facebook for the next couple of days/weeks to offset that GPS use. Dismas|^(talk) 03:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Curious why GPS would use your internet allowance. Aren't GPS frequencies a totally separate system from any 3/4G internet provision? Astronaut (talk) 07:28, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

GPS alone can tell you your coordinates, and shouldn't take up many resources, but coords alone aren't that useful. Most systems will allow you to download maps along with info on which businesses are open near you, what the current prices are at nearby gas stations, etc. This type of info makes the GPS far more useful, but can also suck up the Mb quickly. StuRat (talk) 07:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, GPS alone doesn't even need an internet connection, so doesn't use any of the allowance. It is also possible to download free (or paid-for) maps using a different internet connection such as a library, so that the co-ords are displayed usefully, but, as StuRat says, most GPS apps use on-line resources and so can be expensive in megabytes. Dbfirs 13:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't mean just the GPS coord's. The map applications that use the GPS function gobble up the MBs.  :) Dismas|^(talk) 01:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

250MB is not very much if you're a frequent web surfer. This page we're on right now is around 200KB, and other pages with more graphics are often in the 1MB range. 250MB is a good amount for occasionally checking your email or looking up directions, that sort of thing. If you're into media downloads, you'll burn through 250MB in no time flat. But that's not really a good use for cellular data in my opinion. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 04:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

This table uses information from here:

Use type	Average amount of data used
Facebook	2MB per hour
Internet browsing	15MB per hour
Music downloads	6MB per track
Movie trailers	50MB per video
Twitter	0.5MB per hour
TV streaming	500MB per hour
YouTube	8MB per video
Apps downloads	10MB per app
Google Maps	10MB per hour
Email	0.25MB per email
Radio streaming	100MB per hour

Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

"New Tab" button in multiple places in Firefox

In Firefox 9, is it possible to have a "New Tab" button in both a toolbar (next to navigation buttons like back, forward, and refresh) and at the right edge of the list of tabs simultaneously? Is there an add-on that enables this? Daram.G (talk) 01:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/new-tab-toolbar-button/ adds a new tab icon to the toolbar items you can select. See http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-customize-toolbars for how to place it where you want. I have tested it in Firefox 11. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:14, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Daram.G (talk) 04:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

How to let VB2005 print a+b+c+d=24 ?

Like

If a + b + c + d = 24 Then
 Label1.Text = a"+"b"+"c"+"d"="24
End If

a, b, c, d are var, "+" and "=" are char.

Like a, b, c ,d all equal 6, I want to show "6+6+6+6=24" in label.

But I changed

a"+"b"+"c"+"d"="24

to

a&"+"&b&"+"&c&"+"&d&"="&"24"

label1 also show "Ture"? Why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 纯粹手机浏览 (talk • contribs) 07:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

It's easier to see what you're doing right or wrong if you space it out:

Label1.Text = a & "+" & b & "+" & c & "+" & d & "=24"

The above ought to work fine. Many of your previous ones have the operators in the wrong order or missing (notice how the parser above is coloring yours incorrectly — variables should be black, strings should be dark red). I suspect you have a typo in the actual code so that it is actually evaluating part of the statement. I also believe, though can't require remember, that if you bunch up variables and concatenation operators in VB, it can often throw an error. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Warning e-mail senders about unintended recipients

Can anyone recommend a solution — I'm thinking of some sort of Outlook plugin — that could be installed on the computers of HR staff to try to make sure they don't accidentally cc sensitive information to people who aren't supposed to receive it? I suppose the best way for a plugin to try to detect this would be to check domain names of all addressees, and to keep a database of "trusted recipients" based on previous e-mails sent and based on manually marking e-mail addresses. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:45, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the best system might be to use one email system for trusted recipients and another for non-trusted. The non-trusted one could just be Gmail, for example. This would make it quite difficult to accidentally send sensitive info to non-trusted individuals, and wouldn't require creating, testing, and maintaining any code. You could go through and remove all non-trusted individuals from the address books of the trusted system and redirect any emails coming from them to the non-trusted system. StuRat (talk) 02:37, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft filing.

Hi there,

Is there available any advice on how to arrange Microsoft Windows 7 files into an orderly civilized way that allows you to access them easily? Do realize that only a complete novice would need to ask such a question.

Hamish 84Hamish84 (talk) 19:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I use deep hierarchies of folders with reasonable, but long filenames that are human-readable and meaningful. For many of my documents, I further sort by date; I have found that by prefixing folders with the date, (e.g., "2012-03-15--Hike-Photos/") I can easily sort them. (This is called ISO 8601 format, and can be totally standardized, but you can use whatever works for you. See also, more information). I find that consistent naming of subfolders is very helpful. When I was in school, I always used a prefix of my user-name, the class, and either the date or assignment descriptor; I always used a "year/class/assignment/" subfolder structure. So, I would have, (e.g.), "ncsu/2003/py401/nimur.py401.hw-set-13.pdf", which would be a print-out of a computational quantum-mechanics homework set from Physics 401, in 2003. Because of this easy scheme, even many years later, I am able to quickly locate, e.g., "that quantum mechanics set from a long time ago when I solved the wave function for a singly-ionized Helium electron," or "that history paper I wrote about sailboats in the Arabian gulf." Because I am a programmer, I also have some sophisticated tools to help me search deep hierarchies; when I use Unix-like systems, grep and find are very helpful; but on Windows 7, you have a powerful "Search for Files" utility built in to Windows Explorer. Here's a video from Microsoft explaining how to use the Files Search tools on modern Windows. I have always found that well-organized, well-named file-structures are easier to search, even if you're planning on using a "query-based" search tool like Find or "Google Desktop," that purport to search "everything" on your computer. Nimur (talk) 19:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Nimur, First of all thank you for the information - will follow up on Microsoft help files. Strange coincidence that I have come across your profile by accident, twice. As an elderly layman am impressed with your extensive qualifications. You may be interested in 'imperative observations'on the web. It keeps my mind active. Again thank you for your time.

Hamish 8403:52, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

iMovie

Having made my iMovie, I find that it is too big to fit onto a 4.7 GB disc, so wonder if I can put it onto a memory stick. To buy one of an adequate capacity I need to find out how big my movie is; how do I do that please as I cannot see any obvious way to get that info. Any help will be much appreciated since I need to remove the movie and all the original slides and movies off my nearly full hard disc. Thanks in anticipation.--85.211.130.94 (talk) 21:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

If you're on a Windows computer, right click on the file and choose the "Properties" option. That will give you the size of the file. On a Mac, click on the file and hit Command-I or go up to the file menu and choose "Get Info". Dismas|^(talk) 01:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this Dismas, however on my MacPro Cmd -I gives me a mirror image of myself from the built-in camera and under File, there is no option "Get Info" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.130.94 (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Make sure you are selecting the file from within Finder, not from within iMovie. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you have to do this from the Finder. Find where you have saved the file and then do what I said. Not from within iMovie. Dismas|^(talk) 19:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Got it! Thanks fellas.--85.211.130.94 (talk) 11:02, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Direct use of SSD within virtual memory

Dear Wikipedians:

With the blazing fast speeds of SSD and SATA III nowadays, I was wondering if the CPU could directly use data from virtual memory pages stored on the SSD without loading them into physical RAM first?

Thanks,

70.31.158.164 (talk) 23:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

No. SSDs are blazing fast compared to spinning-platter hard drives, but they are still glacial compared to RAM speed. RudolfRed (talk) 00:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Speed is not the point. RAM (and BIOS-flash, and PCI option flash, and PCI adapter RAM) is accessible via the CPU's bus (in the case of the PCI ones, by means of the PCI controller), whereas memory in an SSD is at the end of a SATA/SCSI bus. 87.113.187.167 (talk) 01:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the problems are speed and the fact that flash has to be erased in large chunks, and fails after a relatively small number of erasures. SSDs aren't exposed to the processor like RAM because they aren't suitable as RAM, not the other way around. -- BenRG (talk) 03:26, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. And note there are plenty of PCI-express SSDs. There are some highly specialised PCI-express SSDs which support CPU DMA access of the flash and treating it as another tier of memory (their words), specifically Fusion-io products [1] [2]. But we're talking about extreme performance (see [3] for example) and price products here, not some measily SATA III device. And with people who (hopefully) know what they are doing choosing and developing a specialised solution that fits well in to their requirements [4]. Even then, I don't believe competitors like Texas Memory Systems or Virident Systems are doing the same thing (in fact the RamSan-70 seems to emphasise how it has a CPU [5] as evidentally they have historically done [6]). While I suspect patents and market focus play a part, it's also likely that they don't feel the concept is that important at the current time as other methods will work as well if not better for sufficient segment of market to keep them successful, whether they are right or not only time will tell. (While I'm not aware of market share numbers and despite what the marketing info in the Fusion-io links suggested, I don't believe they're really that dominant.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I am enlightened now. 70.31.158.164 (talk) 23:24, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Resolved