Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 March 19

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March 19

Thin x86 tablet

Do there exist any x86 tablets that are as thin as any of the Android tablets already out on the market? I ask because pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down some how and I would rather have one that isn't, which is where x86 comes in. --Melab±1 ☎ 00:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22intel%20tablet%22, though I'm sure you can find ARM tablets that aren't "locked down" if that's truly your only concern. ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I would also note that if it were true that all ARM tablets are locked down (which I agree with Reisio is questionable) then it's resonable to assume many x86 ones are as well. Nil Einne (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Most of the good ARM tablets are locked down. There are no x86 tablets that I know of that are marketed like a Samsung Galaxy Tab or an Asus Eee Pad Transformer, so I would think most x86 tablets are not locked down. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:17, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like what you're saying is any good ARM tablet is marketed in a certain way and therefore is locked down and while there are plenty of tablets which aren't marketed in that way and aren't locked down, you only want them if they are x86. In which case I'm confused (as I expect is Reisio) why you want a 'good ARM tablet', but will settle for any old x86 tablet.

It may help if you would better explain your requirement, from your previous comments, it does appear you often have an inaccurate understanding of the market which may partially be why you're asking for an x86 tablet when a more logical question would be to ask about good (as you define it when asking) unlocked tablet.

It will probably also help if you define what exactly you want 'unlocked'. A very large number of people including those making custom ROMs and doing weird stuff like installing Ubuntu [1] (and possibly in the future Windows 8) are able to get by with what's out there even from the name brand vendors such as tablets with bootloaders unlocked either via official methods [2] or by taking advantage of exploits [3] [4]. (Since you apparently want to develop stuff on the tablet and have no qualms about weird stuff like trying to physically modify the chips, I presume you have no fear about taking advantage of well documented exploits of the various tablets out there as so many people who can't program for squat do.)

It's apparent you're not satisfied with these options but why isn't clear. If you actually want an x86 tablet for whatever reason or you have a philosophical opposition to anything that is locked even if official methods are available to unlock it (such as with the Transformer Primer) let alone where you have to take advantage of exploits (ala tivoization) or you want more then the bootloader to be unlocked I think you need to specify this. (This also applies to phones.)

In any case 'Most of the good ARM tablets are locked down' is quite different from 'pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down'.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

When I said "pretty much all of the ARM tablets out there are locked down" I meant to say that almost all of the good ARM tablets (i.e., Samsung Galaxy Tab, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Sony Tablet S, HTC Flyer, Acer Iconia, etc.) are pretty well locked down. While some have unlockable bootloaders, those same bootloaders are signature checked by the hardware and I want to use a tablet whose boot ROM does not perform signature checks. I want to experiment with bootloaders and features I could play around with like. I do not expect an x86 tablet to be locked down because, so far, few Intel devices have ever come with hardware-based signature checks. --Melab±1 ☎ 21:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Internet Explorer cannot ...

I’m using two computers, both with Windows XP Professional and Internet Explorer. On one, I frequently get a red error box message “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site ____. Operation aborted. OK?”

Which, takes me to, “Internet Explorer cannot display the web page.”

The site easily loaded in the past, and still does on one computer but not the other. I tried clearing the cache, but no luck. Is there some other simple change (aside from updating the software; I’m not the admin) that will deal with this problem? DOR (HK) (talk) 08:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable or have the admin update them, there's no good excuse for using software that old. ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:14, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I've gotten that message in IE8 (which, for XP, is not old) before (though it was a year and a half or so ago and an update probably fixed it). - Purplewowies (talk) 16:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

OP, I did a search for your problem and found a support article from Microsoft here. There are several workarounds to the problem further down that page, "Workaround 2" looks like the best option, assuming you are using IE 6 82.45.62.107 (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for a really useful answer. "Workaround 2" works long enough to get off the front page, which is better but still irritating.DOR (HK) (talk) 01:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Just having a quick look, microsoft say that the site is trying to change the parent container. If you don't have the rights to modify on this computer, but you do in the other, this could be the reason. Can you give us a little more information about the setup? Are the computers on a domain? Are they standard build or has the people who build the operating system made some changes to the build? Group policies. Things like that could help us determine a more perminant fix for you. Mrlittleirish 16:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Victor adding- listing model 110 year 1921-1925

Hello my name is Jim. I, cannot seem to find any pictures, more info about this model..they stated only 100,000 made? However, did they make the same model longer than that? I have seen 2 different model 110. I have a different or modified version. However, once again I cannot locate any others68.117.208.225 (talk) 11:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC) thanks Jim 11:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I've just adjusted the formatting of your question slightly in order to make it easier to read. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

In case anyone doesn't understand, this question is about the Victor Adding Machine. Here are some pics: [5]. StuRat (talk) 19:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

What happened to this website?

File:Jay Timo.jpg is marked with a cc-by-sa-1.0 tag and sourced from http://www.vriendenvantuvalu.nl/index.php. Since most websites don't release images under any CC licenses, I wanted to go to the page and see if they really did have a license statement — however, when I go to the page, it keeps automatically refreshing: after about half a second of displaying the URL in the tab, it switches to "Connecting", and then half a second later back to the URL, and it keeps repeating indefinitely. Any idea what's wrong with it? Please note that the URL at the bottom of the {{information}} template redirects to the same page and thus has the same problem. Nyttend (talk) 13:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't have that problem. See here for a screen-shot of the license page. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 13:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it's my browser. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I had this happen a couple times when my computer's time was screwed up (would jump to the UTC time, then the time would sync to EST over the internet). Posts on a forum I visited were erroneously marked as unread, and whenever I would click into a thread I had previously read, it would do what you describe. I don't know if this was due to my computer's time problem or something else entirely (though the only thing I can think is an ad of some sort), but I felt it was worth mentioning. I'm not having that problem with the site, either (on IE8). - Purplewowies (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

something that falls betwween twitter notifier and goole alert

It would be really useful! You set some topics/hashtags and it makes notification appear on your desktop: maybe a feed reader? thanx! Ulisse0 (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I think TweetDeck does what you want. There's a Chrome webapp and an Adobe Air desktop app. Either should allow you to set up a column with a hashtag or plain text search, and enable desktop notifications on it. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Finding index of substring in less than square time?

Is it possible to find a starting index of a substring in a string in less than $O(n^{2})$ time, assuming comparing a single character against another takes $O(1)$ time? The way I see it, a naïve but sure implementation would be:

• For each character n in the main string:
  • For each character m in the substring, compare character m in the substring against character m+n in the main string.
    • If they don't match, start over from the next character from the main string.
    • If all of the characters do match, an index has been found.
  • If no match has been found for any character n in the main string, there is no index.

But this takes $O(n^{2})$ time in the worst case. For example, assume we want to find the index of the substring aab in the main string aaab. With this algorithm, we have to go through the entire substring at the first character in the main string, only to find that it doesn't match. But we can only advance one character in the main string, because right at the second character, they do match. Is there any way to make this more efficient? JIP | Talk 20:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

See Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm, which has time complexity of O(k+n) (where k is is the length of the query and n is the lengths of the string), and String searching algorithm, which has a table with different algorithms. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

If you were going to do many substring searches within a given string, it might be worthwhile to create sorted lists. In your example, the list of all possible 3 letters words in "aaab", sorted, would be "aaa" and "aab", while the list of all possible 2 letter words, sorted, would be "aa" and "ab" (if it's important to find all matches, then it would be "aa", "aa", "ab"). If the location of each match is important, then the index for each subword would also need to be stored. A binary search or hash search could then be done within this list. This would make for far more work up-front, but, if enough searches were done, it would pay off in the end. This is especially true if the set-up work can be done when the system load is low, and the substring search is done when the load is high. StuRat (talk) 20:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually the original method you give is not that bad in practice. It is O(mn), where n is the length of the whole string and m is the length of the string you are searching for. It is possible for m to be O(n), but usually m<<n, and is usually bound by a small constant. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)