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May 3

Browser add-on to redirect from academic paywalls

Are there any add-ons for Firefox or Chrome that will detect when I'm hitting an academic journal paywall, search for an open-access copy of the article, and redirect me if one is found? Neon Merlin 02:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. When I don't have institutional access for whatever reason, I just use google scholar on the title, which often enough finds an un-blocked pdf. Note that this is not "open access". If an article is published in e.g. Science, and the author posts it on her homepage, that does not make the article open access, which is something different. Technically, getting a research article without the proper access (and payments) could be construed as copyright violation. Many academics engage in the practice of posting their articles on personal or departmental websites, under the belief that it constitutes fair use. However, e.g. Springer disagrees with that interpretation, and will on occasion compel the authors to remove their own content from freely-accessible places. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:23, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should clarify a little further. It is possible to publish an open access article in a Springer journal. In this case, there is no paywall, and anyone can get the document from Springer, and post it anywhere they please. This costs ~3000 USD, paid by the authors. If the article is behind Springer's paywall, then they own the copyright, and you are not legally entitled to a copy unless you, or your institution, have paid for access. (Whether this state of affairs is fair, reasonable, or ethical is a different matter entirely :) So, I imagine that if such a plugin/add-on existed, the creators would soon face nasty letters from the big academic publishers and their highly-paid legal teams. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:30, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What costs ~3000 USD? To make one article, that you wrote yourself and provided it to Springer free of charge, open access? XPPaul (talk) 15:57, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I just recently got an article accepted into a Springer journal. That is what they asked me to pay them in return for them publishing the article under an open access agreement :-/ SemanticMantis (talk) 18:10, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the point of this: some people who write articles in pay-journals also put the articles on their personal web pages; sometimes articles on the big pay-sites will be reprinted in free-access publications, or in books that are on Google Books, or displayed for a period on the journal's own website; and some sites like JSTOR charge for access to works that are so old that they're in the public domain. But I don't know of anything that does this. Most of the popular plugins for accessing/searching/managing journals are created by universities (examples are LibX and Zotero) and they wouldn't have much incentive to do this. As already mentioned, you could search google for the article title or author, but maybe it's not trivial to automate that process. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Turing completeness

Does the Bohm-Jacopini theorem imply the Turing completeness of a programming language? If not, can you explain why, and give a counterexample? --151.75.39.16 (talk) 04:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. --Trovatore (talk) 04:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't homework. My personal understanding of the theorem makes me guess it implies Turing completeness, however I think this is such an important implication that it would have been written in the article, where it isn't, so I'm asking here. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK. It was worded like a homework question, but I take your word for it. Unfortunately I'm not really familiar with the theorem you mention. --Trovatore (talk) 05:00, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of the theorem is this: imagine a program in flowchart form, that program can be replaced by a flowchart that is structured only by the three rules that they give. Essentially, any type of "flow" can be gotten using a goto, so you could, basically, look at it by saying that you can rewrite any program by replacing the gotos with the above three control statements; the point being that goto does not add any additional expressibility. However, it seems that there is an underlying assumption that the original unstructured language is already Turing Complete; indeed, it's not hard to imagine a nonTuring Complete langauge that has these three structures. For example, suppose that you are only allowed to recieve a single input at the start of execution and from there you can only increment variables by +1, declare variables larger than the current largest, compare for equality, the above control structures, and exit returning a given variable; then no program can return a value larger than its input, obviously, this is not complete. Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:18, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The theorem states that your example language can implement every computable function, so maybe the theorem is wrong?

Meanwhile, I found another counterexample: a structured programming language that imposes an upper bound on the amount of memory is not Turing complete.

--151.75.39.16 (talk) 10:15, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the statement of the theorem assumes that you are dealing with a Turing Complete language that includes goto, and, then, goes onto say that removing goto and replacing it with the controls above still gives a turing complete language. Essentially, I think that the way the theorem is stated in the article is not exactly what the theorem says, but that as applied to most things that would be considered a "programming language" it would be accurate.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the article glosses over the question what exactly those subprograms are, but I assume that the original publication is a bit more rigorous. KarlLohmann (talk) 16:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The theorem is talking about algorithms, not programming languages, and you don't normally say that a particular class of algorithms is Turing complete; instead you say that it can compute any computable function. It's essentially the same thing.

Note that this theorem is not actually very interesting, since any spaghetti-code algorithm of the form

   label1:
       do_stuff;
       goto label17;
   label2:
       ...
   labelN:
       return;

can be rewritten as

   label1 = true; label2 = ... = labelN = false;
   while (not labelN) {
       if (label1) {
           do_stuff;
           label1 = false; label17 = true;
       }
       if (label2) {
           ...
       }
       ...
   }

in which form it uses only while and if and new boolean variables, but can hardly be called "structured". Getting rid of all gotos without introducing new boolean variables is a much more interesting problem. -- BenRG (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done Reworded the head of the article, now it is expressed in terms of algorithms rather than languages. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 05:44, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So it turned out that it is the wording in the article and not the theorem itself - thanx to you all. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 18:09, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly relevant: the lambda calculus, a differently-flavored, but also Turing-complete system. Paul (Stansifer) 22:07, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assembly instruction

Hi, I'm new to assembly, I understand that the first "thing" after the mov instruction means the memory address to copy it, so what does it mean: mov [eax+edx],esi That would move esi to.. Where? 190.158.212.204 (talk) 05:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's the "Based Indexed Indirect Addressing" addressing mode of x86 processors. See [1] section 5; [2] section 1.2.4. I guess it's the memory location whose address is the value of eax + the value of edx. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 06:07, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I want to find a qualified and reliable Ethernet switch,router supplier for my online business

I am a online website owner and I want toEthernet switch,router from China to enrich my product line, and I was heard that there are many cheaters in China, I don`t know how to choose a good reputation supplier. Could anyone give me some advice? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enoepoch (talk • contribs) 06:43, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well Huawei is Chinese and big. I don't know if their business model fits people like you in though. You may need to find a manufacturer that can put your brand on their product. The way I normally check for bad products is by forum posts to see what complaints there are about different products. or the company. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:43, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why did my speaker blow?

Not sure if this question belongs here but the header said "Electronics", so...

I bought an integrated amplifier and two bookshelf passive speakers. It seems I've managed to blow one of them: all the bass and mid on that channel is gone, leaving only treble.

I'm wanting to replace them, but I want to make sure I buy the correct speakers so that I don't blow them again. Here is the specs of my equipment:

Amp model: Cambridge Audio A1 mk3
Max power consumption: 150W
Valid impedances: 6-16Ohm
Rated: 30W per channel into 8Ohm.

Speakers: Wharfedale Laser 100
Impedance: 6Ohm
Amplifier requirements (no clipping): 15 to 105W
Power handling (continuous): 70W
Power handling (programme): 105W

Those figures are from the units themselves. Now using this site: http://www.marktaw.com/recording/Electronics/OhmsAmpsandSpeakers.html

I figure this out as such, since the speakers are wired in parallel (that is they have two separate inputs on the amp for the left and right channels):

Resistance = (Speaker A x Speaker B) / (Speaker A + Speaker B)
Resistance = (6 Ohms x 6 Ohms) / (6 Ohms + 6 Ohms)
Resistance = 36 / 12
Resistance = 3 Ohms

Amplifier Output = Amplifier Watts x (Amplifier Rated at Ohms / Speaker Chain Ohms)
Amplifier Output = 30 watts x (8 ohms / 3 ohms)
Amplifier Output = 30 watts x 8/3
Amplifier Output = 80W

Now from reading forums, I got the impression that the danger is not in having too *high* an output from the amp, but rather too low an output. So although this looks like too much power for the 70W continuous power the speakers are rated at, it actually is possibly too little for the peaks. So my conclusion was that the amp is underpowered relative to the speakers. I read that as a rule of thumb you want around 2x the rated output to ensure the speakers aren't underpowered, so I would need an amp providing around 50W @ 8Ohm for these speakers. Conversely, as long as I keep this amp, I would need to use speakers rated at around 40W at 6Ohm or 30W at 8Ohm.

To summarize this ridiculously long post: Am I completely off base? Is this likely the reason I blew my speakers? Would I be wise to buy new speakers/amps with the described specs? Amoe (talk) 17:11, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not really answering your question, but why would low power levels blow your speakers? If that was the case, wouldn't the speakers blow in the quiet bit between tracks, or if you fell asleep while listening and it got to the end of your music selection? There is a reason why Wikipedia considers forums to be unreliable sources. Perhaps seeking assistance at a decent hi-fi shop would give better advice. Astronaut (talk) 17:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some people seem to think that a low-power amplifier turned up beyond reasonable volume produces excessive clipping that damages speakers. I'm sceptical about the claim. By the way, your speakers are not wired in parallel, they are connected to separate amplifiers (one per channel), so your calculations are incorrect. Dbfirs 18:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just reading this for interest because I can't add anything helpful, but I have a question of clarification. What does "to blow a speaker" actually mean? HiLo48 (talk) 17:47, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It may have just blown a fuse, or it may have melted the wires on the speaker. Really an amplified speaker should hvae some overload protection and not drive its speakers too hard. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But that's not an answer to "What does to blow a speaker actually mean?" Has it blown up? Has it suffered some problem unique to speakers, and not other pieces of equipment, or has it simply stopped working, or...? HiLo48 (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The only speakers that I've ever "blown" were the old-fashioned variety with compressed cardboard cones, and these could be physically torn (producing a distorted sound) by putting bass through them at too high a volume. This was quite common in the sixties when playing sixties music through hi-fi speakers designed for classical music. Dbfirs 11:43, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Blown" is widely understood to mean "suffered some unspecified permanent physical damage that causes either distortion or complete nonfunction". From a bit of research, overpowering will commonly blow bass cones -- the situation Dbfirs describes above -- and underpowering will cause clipping which can damage the voice coil because of the heat generated. Underpowering seems to more commonly damage tweeters. I seriously doubt that this is some kind of urban legend, googling on any related phrase turns up thousands of non-forum references to this phenomenon. Amoe (talk) 17:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One comment: I never turn the volume all the way up on anything. I find that it's risky to do so. Distortion is likely, and permanent damage is possible. Yes, they shouldn't sell anything that can be damaged by turning it all the way up, but they seem to do so anyway. StuRat (talk) 17:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AWB Regex

I'm new to regex, but it looks like the sort of thing I'd be OK at once I get going. I'm trying to do some find-and-replace in WP:AWB, and hopefully someone can help. I'd like to change instances of digit-hyphen-digit to digit-endash-digit, like:

4-9 to 4–9

It seems that using "\d-\d" finds the string, but I'm stumped as to what to put in to do the replacement. Cheers, matt (talk) 17:19, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Regex: (\d)-(\d)

Replace with: $1 endash $2 (what is an endash??)

The parentheses make the regex capture the digits in so-called "capturing groups" $1 and $2. The name of a capt. group in the "replace with" string is actually called a "backreference" and is just replaced with the value captured by the group.

See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular_expression for more information. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks... I'll see if that works. I looked around at WP:AWB for a page/section on regular expressions but obviously missed that one. And re: en dash – see here. Cheers matt (talk) 18:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look at WT:AWB/T as well, as there's a group of editors very familiar with regex and AWB working over there. Shadowjams (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My MacBook Pro has been running ridiculously slow

It's odd; Activity Monitor is showing much more activity than it normally would, even when the computer's at rest (no applications really open except the aforementioned. Here's a screenshot; anyone have any ideas? Thanks. Ab e g92contribs 17:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it slow immediately after booting up? ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's slow booting up, afterwards, and shutting down. (Also, physical damage may be a factor, but I can't see how that would do this.) Ab e g92contribs 21:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it running very hot? This post is an interesting discussion of the apparent fact that kernel_task goes nuts if the temperature starts to spike, which could be related to the aforementioned physical damage. Just speculation. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is really intriguing; thanks. Gonna try to run the computer in a really cold environment - but any ideas on how to do that beyond just a bottle of frozen water underneath it? Ab e g92contribs 06:44, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The environment won't matter. Download something that shows you the temperature of the CPU (I use iStatPro, which can show you a ton of temperature readings from the CPU, various heatsinks, etc., to help diagnose the issue) and the speed of the fan. Look at it when the computer is running slow. What does it say the CPU is? If it's significantly upwards of 80ºC, and the fan is not roaring (and even if it is, potentially), the physical damage in question may have damaged the cooling equipment in some way, and that could be causing the issues. The solution there is not to try and run it in a cooler environment but to have someone take it apart and fix the cooling system — if you don't do that, you can easily cause irreparable harm to the processor. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm nodding along as I read your post - I'm not sure if the fan has been running or not, or what the temp is (it's only been like this for a bit) but I suspect you've probably hit the nail on the head. I'll check, and I guess I'll end up taking it apart myself ([ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1270#link1 using these instructions]) because I'm flat broke. That's probably not a Really Really Bad Idea... right? Ab e g92contribs 23:08, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try disabling items from starting automatically by going to System Preferences → Accounts → Login Items. Then, restart your computer. I'd also check the Activity Monitor to see if any programs are hogging your CPU. You can find that program in your Utilities folder.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 16:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's the thing - Activity Monitor seems to be showing kernel_task as taking up all the CPU, and it's slow like that even before login. Ab e g92contribs 06:44, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. Well, I guess now you know that I didn't read a single word of your original post. The kernel handles hardware interactions, so that makes me suspect an issue with a device in your computer or perhaps a corrupt driver.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:55, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Search file for numbers

From the command line on Windows 7 I need to find a way to parse a text/rss file for instances of <link>http://twitter.com/ EXAMPLEUSERNAME/statuses/RANDOMNUMER</link> and return the lowest (ie smallest, not furthest down the page) number from the "randomnumber" part. For example, the file contains;

Extended content

  <item>
    <title>twitterapi: If you're exploring the @twitterapi, be sure and bring this new field guide along. https://t.co/5av8rKW4 ^TS</title>
    <description>twitterapi: If you're exploring the @twitterapi, be sure and bring this new field guide along. https://t.co/5av8rKW4 ^TS</description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2012 16:24:10 +0000</pubDate>
    <guid>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/198085550136229888</guid>
    <link>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/198085550136229888</link>
    <twitter:source>web</twitter:source>
    <twitter:place/>
  </item>
  <item>
    <title>twitterapi: Twitter Site Issue - Some users may currently be experiencing site issues; our engineers are working on... http://t.co/8mJhxmBu</title>
    <description>twitterapi: Twitter Site Issue - Some users may currently be experiencing site issues; our engineers are working on... http://t.co/8mJhxmBu</description>
    <pubDate>Tue, 01 May 2012 08:17:02 +0000</pubDate>
    <guid>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/197238186861264896</guid>
    <link>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/197238186861264896</link>
    <twitter:source><a href="http://www.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">Tumblr</a></twitter:source>
    <twitter:place/>
  </item>
  <item>
    <title>twitterapi: Developer Teatime is coming to Paris - please sign up to join us on June 16th! https://t.co/pQOUNKGD  @rno @jasoncosta</title>
    <description>twitterapi: Developer Teatime is coming to Paris - please sign up to join us on June 16th! https://t.co/pQOUNKGD  @rno @jasoncosta</description>
    <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:16:17 +0000</pubDate>
    <guid>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/197011505181507585</guid>
    <link>http://twitter.com/twitterapi/statuses/197011505181507585</link>
    <twitter:source>web</twitter:source>
    <twitter:place/>
  </item>

so the script should return "197011505181507585". I am not familar enough with grep and other command line text tools to do this on my own and I need help. Thank you! 82.45.62.107 (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an expert in shell scripting, however it's what it should look like:

read file | grab only lines matching the format 'http://twitter.com/.*/statuses/<digits>', and print out only the sequence of digits at the end | sort lines from lowest to highest | grab only the first line of output (i.e. the lowest number)

where | means piping, and .* means zero or more characters. I do not know how to do that on Windows. On Unix/Unix-like you could try with

cat < file | grep 'http://twitter.com/.*/statuses/[[:digit:]]*' | sort | head --lines=1

but it needs to be fixed, as the grep part prints out the whole lines, instead of printing only the numbers, and I don't know how to do that. (here you find documentation for grep [3])

Hope it helps though. --151.75.39.16 (talk) 18:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

sed can edit the line on the fly. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:33, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

cat < file | grep 'http://twitter.com/.*/statuses/[[:digit:]]*' | sort | head --lines=1|sed 's/http\:\/\/twitter\.com\/.*\/statuses/$[[:digit:]]*$.*$/\1/'

You could probably make use of the 'cut' command to extract just the numbers you are after before piping the result to sort. Take a look at the manual page for cut to see how best to use it for this application (I'm thinking here that perhaps there is an option to extract just the bit between a defined delimiter - "/" in this case). The final command would therefore look like (with the "???" filled with the result of your looking at the man page):

cat < file | grep 'http://twitter.com/.*/statuses/[[:digit:]]*' | cut -????????? | sort | head --lines=1

Astronaut (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to my graphics card?

I don't really know much about hardware.

So a few years ago, I bought a graphics card. Used it for a good long time, then I had computer problems which I figured were graphical in nature. When I took the graphics card out, some of the little cylindrical metal things on it had burst/cracked open. I replaced the card; all has been well.

I realise it's probably a little strange to ask so long after it happened, but does anyone know what might have caused this? Is there enough information to know? The card has since been discarded of. I had it for a few years before this happened, and I've had my replacement for over a year with no problems, too. But I figure, if it's something I could have prevented, I should probably find out. 90.195.196.58 (talk) 20:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's unlikely to be anything you did. Those cylinders were capacitors which can fail for a variety of reasons, but perhaps in your case it was the dread capacitor plague. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is an example of Planned obsolescence where an item is designed to destroy itself so that you must purchase another one, which you have done. Repair of the display card would have been possible if it was not disposed of. The best defence is education, to study the kinds of cards available and their reputation is most people's first line of defence. Only purchasing hardware with specifications you need at the time of purchase is another way, people are usually tricked into purchasing too much speed or memory than they need at the time, thinking that they can use it later on. Moore's law makes this an impossible to do, because keeping the money in your pocket means it doubles in purchasing power every two years. Repair of products that use capacitors as planned obsolescence is a hobby for many, and a small business for others because it is very easy, simple and cheap. I link to a forum in a section below that is set up for just that purpose. Penyulap ☏ 10:51, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info. 90.195.196.44 (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Planned obsolescence is verging on conspiracy theory, it has really nothing to do with the question here. It's pure speculation whether there was any "planning". As with ANY product, it's a cost vs. benefit/risk evaluation. I find it very hard to believe the video card manufacturer intentionally planned to put in capacitors so they would fail in a few years. The far more likely scenario is they used components which were cheaper because the vast majority of people won't pay MORE money for computer components even if they know they will last a few years longer. Some may argue that's almost the same thing, but I don't buy it. Any product can be made military spec by using only the highest quality components, but what you end up with is a product that costs several times as much and will probably, as you correctly note, be obsolete in 2 years anyway. And even THEN you are not absolutely guaranteed it won't fail... Some cheap caps were used in the video card and they failed, I work in IT and I witness components fail all the time, it happens, it's the nature of life, things wear out. In the case of computer components, it's cheaper to replace the few faulty ones then to manufacture ALL of them to be less susceptible to failure. That's the answer to the question, no need to invoke conspiracy theories. Vespine (talk) 01:20, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

90.195.196.XX, you are most welcome, I am glad I could assist.

Vespine, No no, you are confusing my planned obsolescence commentary with my conspiracy theory commentary. Planned obsolescence is a mainstream business model which itself is fought over by 'theorist groups' which have schools of thought about whether there is a need to destroy the planet in order to make money. Personally I lean towards the German parliamentary position whereby saving the environment is the most profitable way to fuel a national economy, rather than the United states consumerist approach. If I wanted to stay away from the appearance of conspiracy theory I would avoid looking at regimes that focus on enslavement of a population itself as the best foundation for an economy, because of the sound of that.

Planned obsolescence is something accepted as a sound business model across most of the United States, it's so culturally ingrained that names like The rust belt are a monument to it. Considering most editors are from the US, there can't be any shortage of reputable RS on the matter. You will find it explained in the simplest terms no doubt such as "Why sell one item for USD$10 every 50 years, when you can sell one every 5 years for USD$100 total, that's ten times the profit." Maybe I should take a look at our article on the subject and see if it is a good representation of the topic. Penyulap ☏ 03:14, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

well the rust belt article is in quite a mess, I'll have to put that on my list of things to do, no conspiracy theory about suppressing the truth there, it's just poor editing to leave out entomology of the term. Penyulap ☏ 03:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not American and I still call bullshit. We're not talking about a car that can still drive on a freeway whether it is 1 year old or 10 years old, we're talking about computers where a 10 year old computer is practically a museum piece. I dispute that it is a mainstream business model, stuff is made cheap and not made to last because that results in the lowest cost and the highest turn over. YES you can argue that it is wasteful and that "hidden costs" like pollution, waste and natural resources are NOT paid for but have a "cost", I completely agree with that, but that's NOT what planned obsolesence is. The very idea (and the recent documentary which I suspect you watched) completely ignores the OTHER sides of the story, i.e. cost vs benefit, you can't have your cake and eat it too: If everyone was buying $5000 computers every 10 years instead of $1000 computers every 2, we'd probably barely have pentium processors by now. I maintain that planned obsolesence has nothing to do with why the OPs video card failed. Vespine (talk) 05:23, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My education is somewhat broader than any recent doco, which I haven't seen, and am not interested in to tell the truth. But hey ! rather than drag into an argument with a person who understands the subject with such confidence, I'll just say you are right, I am wrong, and any capitalist who suggests Planned obsolescence is one brilliant way to roll around in ten times the cash is just a conspiracy nut. Vespine win, Penyulap lose, end of debate. Penyulap ☏ 06:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Review that link on capacitor plague - it is informative. It's less that the capacitors were made to fail as that they were not made to last. The problem is, "planned obsolescence", like any philosophical construct, tends to come apart in your hands like a piece of rotten cloth when it is closely examined. Wnt (talk) 20:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Penyulap. I apologise if I upset or insulted you. The main issue I have with Planned Obsolesence is that a lot of the time it presents a false dichotomy; it shows a "black and white" picture of a very complex situation and in doing so leaves out whole swathes of the issue. It basically proposes that if something/anything fails, it was designed to fail. I don't say that is never true, or has never happened, but sometimes a burned out capacitor is just a burned out capacitor. there is no need to read agency into it. I've made circuits for myself and I've burned out an LED or a capacitor, did I plan obsolesence into my own design? Proposing a theory that says every burned out capacitor is the fault of our over indulgent consumerist lifestyle doesn't explain why a video card failed. In fact your reaction, the sort of "faux-indignation" basically accuses ME of presenting a false dichotomy, I never said if you don't agree with capitalism you are a conspiracy nut, that would ALSO be a falsly black and white picture, I'm saying the very opposite, I'm saying there are lots of shades of grey. Vespine (talk) 23:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look you haven't upset me, but your not doing yourself any favours by throwing it back in my face either. The matter is a simplistic capitalist theory, short sighted and juvenile in my opinion, like I said, I favour the German approach.

Caps come in a great many varieties, different construction methods, different dielectrics, different insulation, different casing and they all have their own service life characteristics. Some of them last longer than others, measured in two ways. Individual caps and production runs for example. Pick one kind of 100uF 16v cap for a production run of 100,000 television sets and the power supply will yield say .5 % failure in 12 months for 5 hours a day usage, 4% failure in the next 5 years, 11% failure at 10 years.

Pick a cap of the same value and rating, 100uF 16v with a different dialectic and construction method and you'll get a different set of failure figures. Then you just pick which one you want for the product. Are you trying to build a reputation for long term reliability for a premium market, or a re-badged economy model ? Which market is it for ? Indonesia, India ? if it breaks down it will be repaired for sure, so the only thing failure will do is prevent new sales by damaging the products reputation and you just won't get any advantage in increased new sales regardless of failure rates as it will be repaired by the customer. The United kingdom ? pick a cap that will last the warranty period because it's at the budget end of the market, labour cost in the UK is too high to allow repair of the set, so the customer will replace the set with a new one and you make more profit, you balance warranty returns against the customers willingness to blame 'cheap Chinese garbage' rather than anything related to the manufacture.

You see where I am going with this ? It's the first thing they teach you at greedy little capitalist scum school. Remember light bulbs? They used to be manufactured from methods which produced Longest-lasting light bulbs, which have burned for more than 100 years. Get a gun, and every customer that comes into your light bulb shop, sell them a lightbulb and then blow them away. That way, you'll never get another dime out of them. Same as selling a lightbulb that lasts 100 years. Do you think that company got repeat business ? The entire industry came up with different ideas for how long to make a lightbulb last until they finally reached a consensus that 1,000 hours was the best balance between robbing the customer of the most money possible without them complaining too much.

L.E.D. lighting is precisely the same, you can get the crystals to last for 80 years or more continuously, all LED's used as indicators fall into this class. High lumen output LEDs fall into two classes, those overdriven so that they will burn out in a set number of hours and those not driven or designed that way.

Anyhow, I talk too much, I should go stick this all in an article so someone can get a kick out of deleting it as OR because their fingers are broken and they can't use google. Penyulap ☏ 12:43, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See you're doing it again. "greedy capitalist scum school" ? lol. Dude, that's some chip on your shoulder... You're going to bring up the light bulb thing?? And precisely as I said, you reduce it to a dichotomy: Either we get lightbulbs which last 100 years or lighbulb companies are greedy scum! It completely ignores the ACTUAL issue which is efficiency vs longevity (without even factoring initial cost). When making a light bulb, there's no free lunch! It's SIMPLE to make a lightbulb that runs 100 years, get a 1000W rated lightbulb and run 100W through it, you'll probably get as much light as a 20W lighbulb (if that) but it will last for ages! And if it's not obvious, you'll be paying for 100W. When lighbubs were first mass produced, every company had their own idea of what the ideal "ratio" of efficiency vs longevity was, all that happened is they got together and made a STANDARD. The result is when you buy a 100W light bulb you didn't have to worry whether you buy it from company A or company B.. WHOA, those greedy assholes! Do you really think there isn't a single cheap chinese knock off company that wouldn't bat an eye lid at undercutting "big lightbulb" companies by making lighbulbs that last 100 years if it was that simple?? /soapbox Vespine (talk) 23:28, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How to choose hosting and domain registrar

How? I know review the reviews, but it seems that every hosting provider has some enemies writing review about why they suck. And price: not too expensive not too cheap, but all seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper and I don't need the more sophisticated services. OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:01, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In a sense you do get what you pay for, unless you overpay. (I have never seen a reason to pay a lot for domain registry, in any case, and the higher-priced ones there just seem to be taking advantage of the ignorant.) If you are just looking for something middle of the road, Dreamhost and Bluehost will do just fine. Sure, there are people who are bugged by them or are unhappy or whatever, but for <$10 a month, they provide a lot of options, a lot of bandwidth, a lot of space, and they host huge numbers of sites, so they can't be all bad. (I've used BH for years and never had a significant complaint; the only area I ever run into any difficulty is with processor throttling when running scripts, but it basically does that silently and it doesn't seem to affect very much on my sites.) If you are really going for bare-bones, there are cheaper schemes (e.g. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well I was going to suggest Godaddy because wikipedia used to be registered with them (and they are the default registar of google sites), but due to some controversies regarding Godaddy's support of SOPA, wikipedia has moved their registrations to Markmonitor. Vespine (talk) 01:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Missing gadget

A while ago, I installed a real time currency exchange rate display that parked itself on the right side of my screen in Vista Home. For some reason, a few days ago, it disappeared. Is there some record of what it was (so I can search for it and try reinstalling it)? Or can you recommend one? Clarityfiend (talk) 21:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does it still show in the folder C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets? Maybe it was removed from the desktop by mistake. You can also check in C:\User\<Your name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsSidebar\Gadgets. Sandman30s (talk) 18:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~It's there in C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\Currency.Gadget, but I don't know how to get it back on my desktop. There's an icon, a drag, and an en-US folder.~~ Figured it out. Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:05, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 May 3

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