Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 April 21

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April 21

need a java book

Hi!
I am a beginner of java
Now I am studying multi threading.
I wanted to know relationship between sleep and interrupt status flag".
I have referred so many books before asking this question here.
But I could not find the relation between sleep and interrupt status flag.
Finally I asked that doubt in wikipedia onj april 19 with heading "relation between sleep and interrupt status flag".
Not only that for somany doubts i have asked questions in wikipedia.
I need a book which explains such type of depth topics.
Can u suggest such type of java book?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Me shankara (talk • contribs) 01:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

string inversion

A few years used a little utility that inverts strings; fed a text file containing

my

brain

hurts

it would output

ym

niarb

struh

which of course could be redirected:

utilitywhosenameiveforgotten sensible.txt > inverted.txt

But I now can't remember what it was called, am surprised not to spot it within GNU Core Utilities, and am not having luck googling for it. Please jog my ageing memory. (Oh, it was and is for GNU/Linux, if this matters.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're looking for "rev". See [1]. I don't know if it comes from GNU or not. My Mac has the BSD version. Another web page I found implies the package on Linux is "util-linux", but that source didn't specify which distro that was for. RudolfRed (talk) 02:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes! And wherever it comes from, it seems that Debian installs it by default. Thank you. (But "Four Completely Useless Linux Commands"? Hmmf! These are definitely not useless.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

rev is distributed as part of Linux (in the util-linux folder). tac (the backwards concatenater) is distributed as part of GNU Coreutils. Nimur (talk) 03:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Odin and Naval network. what are they?

In a meeting that happened between Assange and Google's Eric Schmidt, they mention naval network and Odin along with Tor. What are they referring to? Or is Assange poking fun at Schmidt's apparent lack of understanding? On the linked Wikileaks page 10th. 11th and twelfth fragments of the conversations have these things. Can somebody explain them to me? --Thirdmaneye (talk) 06:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

As our article on Tor (anonymity network) states, Tor was developed out of software created by the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory. I'm not sure about the Odin reference. There are lots of things called Odin, but this may be a joke based on the fact that in Norse mythology Odin was Thor's boss. Looie496 (talk) 22:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Software to record my voice?

When I study, or learn lines, I like to record myself reading the things I want to memorise, and play them back through headphones while I'm travelling anywhere.

That was fine in the days of cassette recorders, but now what I need is to be able to record my voice on the computer's microphone then save that as an MP3 or similar. I used to subscribe to the upgraded version of RealPlayer, which had that function. But it seems ridiculously expensive when that's the only thing I used it for.

Can anyone recommend some software which does this? Sound quality isn't an issue, within reason, so something free should be fine. AndyJones (talk) 06:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

See List of free software for audio. I like Audacity. I also still use "Messer Memo Session Sound Recorder"which is ancient and simple, but still works. I also use GoldWave (though it's not freeware). Dbfirs 07:22, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

They also make portable digital voice recorders, which might be easier to use. They fit nicely in a pocket or in a lanyard around your neck, and are quite inexpensive. Many cell phones also have this capability, so check if yours does. StuRat (talk) 18:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

International characters

If support for international characters is required, what should I use?

• Code page 1252 (ANSI Latin I)

or

• Unicode

I'm not sure about this. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 10:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Short answer: Unicode. Unicode covers vastly more characters. Unfortunately it can make life a bit more complicated. That means that sometimes it isn't practical, but if you can, use Unicode. KarlLohmann (talk) 11:59, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, sounds to me like both answers are right? That's the point I stuck. It's from a Microsoft exam question and I've to choice between Unicode or Code page 1252. The requirements are just 'support for international characters', so it's hard to decide since both are correct. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 12:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Basically Windows-1252 is legacy stuff, and you shouldn't use it for new programs unless something forces you to. So the correct answer is clearly Unicode. Looie496 (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Unicode is the answer they want. Microsoft uses UTF-16 for this, see Unicode in Microsoft Windows Dmcq (talk) 15:32, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, if the question comes in the exam, I'll take Unicode, although the exercise answer is "Code page 1252". However, I was in doubt about it, therefore I asked here. Thank you. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 15:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Might there be some context here? If you were writing something that needed to work with Windows 98 or an earlier version of Windows, you would have to use 1252, because NT was the first version of Windows to support Unicode. Looie496 (talk) 16:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

No nothing. It's just about using the right option in the 'Export Wizard' of SQL 2012. It's even not mentioned where the export file is supposed to import, it's just about the export and the export file should be support international characters. --77.239.46.74 (talk) 16:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, hmmm. First you say "No nothing", and then you proceed to give an important piece of information. This makes it hard to feel confident that you have given all the relevant information even now. The fact that this is SQL 2012 is relevant because (a) Windows-1252 is the default character encoding in SQL Server 2012, and (b) lots of companies run old database software, so it is safer to use a backward-compatible encoding unless it will lose crucial information. But even so, I suspect that there is more information either in the exact wording of the question or in the directions for that section of the test. Looie496 (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Any modern SQL works perfectly well with unicode strings and that's what one would use for internationalization unless international just means European. You do need to declare the fields as holding unicode strings rather than just strings. I really don't see how code page 1252 comes in to this at all unless it was "if you don't require internationalization" and the "don't" went missing. Or perhaps they want an ANSI file that doesn't support internationalization used for transfer with the unicode characters turned into hex? That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Dmcq (talk) 10:47, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

SQL: Replay Trace with Extended Events?

Extended Events is suppose to replace the SQL Profiler. There are many advantages to use the Extended Events, see here. The SQL Profiler is even set in deprecated status. However, is Extended Events also able to replay traces it has recorded? With SQL Profile that's possible, but I didn't found any information Extended Events is also able to do that. I'm just wondering because if the SQL Profiler will really be missing in the next version of MSSQL, there is no possibility to replay traces?! --77.239.46.74 (talk) 14:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Blowing on Video Game cartridges

I recently learned that on the back of most cartridges it is clearly stated "Do not blow on the connectors" - this is news to me. Isn't that what everybody does? I saw this on the back of an N64 cart, by the way. I think this may be the cause of some mysterious losses of save data I have experienced over the years, as I remember blowing on the connectors a lot before my Earthbound save file finally went(and I know it wasn't the battery because I was able to save on a new file afterwards.) Same thing on Mario Party for N64. So my question is: how does blowing on the connectors mess with the save data and lead to corruption/deletion? Thanks! --Yellow1996 (talk) 18:07, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Human breath contains moisture, which can gradually increase corrosion and contamination of the pin connectors. You can read more at an article seen here. AzureCitizen (talk) 18:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Whoa, I read the article - scary stuff! I'll definately never blow on the connectors again. Thank you! :) --Yellow1996 (talk) 01:01, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Shift key behaving as a quotation mark key

Ever since I arrived here in France (although it could be a hardware problem), my Left Shift key functions as a quotation mark key (meaning that every time I press the Left Shift key, it instead types ' or "), although my Right Shift key still works properly. Is this a software or hardware problem? If so, is there a quick way to fix it? By the way, my laptop is a Sony Vaio E series laptop, which is only around four months old. The model is SVE141D11L. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 20:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing, but you might want to check whether something has modified the language settings on your computer. In the Control Panel, find "Region and Language" and then "Change Keyboard or Input Method" (maybe different wording, depending on exactly what version of Windows you're using, but there should be a keyboard item in there somewhere), and check to see that it is set to the US keyboard and to English. Looie496 (talk) 03:13, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

On a proper French keyboard, the top row starts AZERTY (compared to the more usual QWERTY you find in the English world). However, some places use the freaky international english setting with a QWERTY keyboard. In that case, the shift sometimes acts as a dead key for typing things like accents. Astronaut (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)