Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 March 22

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March 22

NLP / computational linguistics

Is computational linguistics a subfield of natural language processing, or is it the other way around? The Transhumanist 00:01, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually it doesn't work in either direction. Computational linguistics basically means using computers or computational methods to study linguistics; natural language processing means using linguistics to make computers work better. In other words, computational linguistics is a subfield of linguistics; natural language processing is a subfield of computer science. Looie496 (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

But note that to a large extent the distinction is about self-image and history of the departments. In practice people often do the exact same things in both. KarlLohmann (talk) 11:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

HP Printer

Hello, does anyone have any good tips on fixing an HP c3410a all in one printer. I've tried two different ink cartridges. The old ones are still recognized but the two new ones aren't. I tried cleaning connectors unplugging and waiting and cleaning everything I can. Does anyone know of another thing I can try to fix it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.55.93.113 (talk) 17:22, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Make sure you have the right kind of cartridges. Many incompatible ones look similar. Look at the part number on a cartridge and make sure the printer can use that specific kind. Looie496 (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

They are compatable 71.55.93.113 (talk) 17:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, then, what do you mean by "recognized"? What tells you that the old ones are "recognized" but the new ones are not? Looie496 (talk) 17:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It says the cartridges for that printer is either misssing or damage and these are the second new ones I bought. The old ones don't give this message71.55.93.113 (talk) 17:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

They are HP cartridges (i.e., made by HP itself)? Or third-party replacement cartridges? Also the HP c3410a is a CD-ROM, not an all-in-one printer. Looie496 (talk) 17:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

HP cartridges and it's c410A. Stupid fingers and lack of proofreading skills71.55.93.113 (talk) 17:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, that takes care of the usual things. Can you take a look at the HP troubleshooting page for your product and see if it helps you? Looie496 (talk) 17:58, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The only thing I haven't tried is replacing the printhead, I wanted to see if there was anything I missed or didn't think of before trying to order it. It is not under warranty plus not sure if it is the problem. and all, and thanks. I posted this at the same time as a thing on HP's forum and still haven't heard anything. If I can't find something out I might jsut replace the printhead and see71.55.93.113 (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Something else you could try is injecting ink into the old cartridges. You can buy the ink and injection system online. This should be quite a bit cheaper than buying new cartridges, and I'm guessing you already sank more than enough money into this printer. One caution though, injecting ink is very messy work, so lay down newspapers everywhere and wear old clothes. Also have lots of paper towels handy.

Also, don't toss out the new cartridges. The same needle you will use to inject the ink into the old cartridges can also be used to suck it back out of the new cartridges. StuRat (talk) 00:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

C.E.O. or executive management of Lionsea Software Ltd in Beijing China

These people sell technological software to recover system information and photographs. They agreed to refund me my money on thye 6th of March, as the product did not work and they have specific claims on their page about refunds not a problem. They said it would take 10 days; I contacted them after 15 days and they claim their "refund system" is broken. Well they are a huge company making all kinds of claims about their technological prowess. I don't believe for one minute that they have not "one employee" with the technical ability to repair their own issues. I want to write the C.E.O.

I am elderly person on fixed income, with a 100% disabled wife dying of Cancer and have not the time nor the energy to argue any longer with the Chinese about a refund they already told me was approved and coming. Now they want me to go to several different websites and links. I do not trust this company as they never sign anyone's name to the emails, nor do they ever provide a phone number to call for problems.

It may be a small amount of money to everyone else but it is one more prescription I can fill for my wife.

I only ordered the recoverypro product as it claimed they could recover lost photos my wife wanted. It does not do that, and their web-pages claim simple easy no problem refunds.

I want to write the C.E.O. can you tell me who that person is or the executive staff in Beijing?

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twoclaws (talk • contribs) 17:52, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about your situation. The address given on the company's website is JianCaiCheng West Road, ShangAo Building, 2B-903, Haidian District, Beijing, 100096, China.

They mention on their website that "LionSea™ is backed up by ClickBank's guarantee of quality customer service, so ClickBank will be happy to help you if there is any problem with your purchase." Clickbanks appears to be a US-based company, so you may have more success with them. Their contact details are at http://www.clickbank.com/contact-us/.

Also, if you purchased something using your credit card, your credit card company may be able to offer some assistance, so you could contact them.

Finally, if other avenues are exhausted, Lionsea appear to be a 'Partner' of Intel. As a multinational company, Intel presumably have an interest in their reputation and those of their partners so you may wish to contact them about your experience. Contact details are at http://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/company-overview/contact-us.html. Best of luck - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:47, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Remotely wake sleeping computer?

I used TeamViewer to remotely access my computer from a distance but it has since gone to sleep. Is there any way to wake it up? --92.28.82.133 (talk) 20:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It could be possible using Wake-on-LAN, but you will need to know the MAC address and for the relevant port to be open on the firewall. If the remote computer is on a company network, the port will almost certainly be closed. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It's my personal computer at home. What determines the port to be used? I'll check that article out now. Thanks! --92.28.82.133 (talk) 21:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, we might be in business. There's a web service at http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx which should allow you to put in your IP address (you need your external IP - for the computer you're currently using it's 92.28.82.133, but you need the one for the remote PC) and the MAC address for your network card (must be a wired card - WoL doesn't work over wifi) along with the Subnet mask for your network (255.255.255.0 is the most usual). You can also specify the port to use, which must be forwarded from your router; see http://portforward.com/ if you need to know how to do that. If you already know of a port which is forwarded, use that, otherwise the default is port 7. Once you've got all the info, just hit the button and cross your fingers! If it fails, either one of the bits of info you entered is wrong, or the router is not set up to forward the 'magic packet', or your computer is not set up to receive it (WoL must be enabled in the BIOS. Anyway, best of luck! - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Wake over WLAN exists too, but it's going to be rare. For this to work the wireless device would have to actually be connected to the wireless network and running when the laptop is in standby, hibernated or even off. Most hardware configurations don't implement this. The wireless NIC would have to remain active and doing varying things for the host, e.g. staying connected to an AP or searching for the network to reconnect. You would have to have configured your computer in advance, so for this time, you'll have to try wake over roomy (WoR) or wake over family member (WoFM). OsmanRF34 (talk) 00:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

TalkTalk (my ISP) interferring with my browser searches

When I type something into my Firefox address bar, I'd like it to be sent to Google as a search query. Instead, my ISP, TalkTalk, intercepts and tells me it can't find whatever I typed and presents me with some bullshit links that would maybe be of interest in some parallel universe. Here is an example of what the URL turns into when I search for "rustoleum": http://error.talktalk.co.uk/main?InterceptSource=0&ClientLocation=uk&ParticipantID=nmum6rqpq5q6gkm3933n3nf9s76onu6r&FailureMode=1&SearchQuery=&FailedURI=http%3A%2F%2Frustoleum%2F&AddInType=4&Version=2.1.8-1.90base&Referer=&Implementation=0

Are TalkTalk deliberately hijacking my browser in this way? I've got Firefox and TalkTalk at home (currently at mum's house) and I'm sure this doesn't happen. 92.28.82.133 (talk) 21:26, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

This is a common scummy ISP trick. The attack is not strictly speaking on your browser, and it may be possible to configure it to use a search directly (perhaps with some other gesture than simply typing and pressing Enter). For me, Firefox provides a "search bar" next to the address bar anyway. Also, when my ISP started doing this I found that they were willing to "turn it off" for me (really, mark my account to use different, correct DNS servers). --Tardis (talk) 22:22, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

DNS hijacking is the article on this. The Talktalk error page has an "About this page" link at the bottom of the page, which in turn links to https://www.talktalk.co.uk/optout/index.html, where you can opt out (not that that excuses them). -- BenRG (talk) 22:44, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It's worth talking a bit about how all this works, as what Firefox (and other browsers) do is fairly clever:

• First, lets say you enter cat.com Not knowing how to talk to cat.com, Firefox (well, the OS's name client on Firefox' behalf) issues a DNS A record query for "cat.com". The DNS server will return the appropriate IP address for that, and firefox opens a socket and does an HTTP GET through that.
• Now lets say you just enter cat, and you're on a "nice" ISP, that isn't doing DNS shenanigans. Firefox is fairly ignorant of what is or isn't an acceptable internet name, and has to cope with local names inside your network (which don't need fully qualified domain specifiers to be addressed; you could have a server in your house called "cat", for example). So it doesn't do anything smart, and does a normal gethostbyname call. Equally unwilling to guess, your OS' nameclient does the same DNS A request as before, just for "cat" alone this time. Its your ISP's name server that can't figure out a way to resolve "cat", and so it returns zero entries (that's how DNS says "not found"). At that point this Firefox feature kicks in; rather than say "address not found" it URL encodes "cat" and prepends some stuff to make a google query string. Then it opens a TLS (that is, an encrypted) connection to www.google.com, which it sends that query to.
• For an ISP like yours, the difference is the response to that DNS A query; even though it doesn't know of a "cat" server, it still returns an IP address - one for TalkTalk's own search service. Thinking it's actually talking to the real "cat" server, Firefox builds a usual HTTP request; crucially with the host:cat HTTP header. TalkTalk's server sees that, and the query string it gets in the HTTP request, and figures out what you initially entered. Then it "helpfully" builds a search query based on all of that.
• Lastly, consider what happens if you enter cats like sausages into the address bar. Note that this contains spaces - valid URLs can't contain naked spaces. So Firefox doesn't try to do a DNS query for the server named "cats like sausages", because that's an impossible name. Thus Firefox immediately repackages as a Google query.

In fairness, both Firefox and TalkTalk are trying to be helpful, and for a lot of people this is useful behaviour. But equally, both make money from doing this; Firefox could be bundling the failed request and sending it to Bing or Yahoo! or Baidu instead, and they send it to Google because Google pays them to. Firefox's approach is much safer, because TalkTalk is really misusing how DNS is supposed to work, and it does this for everything, not just web traffic. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, thank you for your very helpful explanation. Even though I'm a bit familiar with DNS (having set up and run a DNS server for many years) I still learned a lot by reading what you say. I am reminded of the "Verislime" (Site Finder} business from a while back which caused a lot of anguish at the time.[1] Thincat (talk) 14:30, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for all the help and informations guys. <3 I especially liked the suggestion that cats like sausages. I liked the information on how to opt-out most of all! Thanks! 78.150.234.51 (talk) 23:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

You could also add a bookmark to Firefox that will force a Google search. In Firefox's Bookmark Manager, create a new bookmark, put "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" in the "Location" box, click the button labeled "More", then put "g" in the "keyword" box. Now, whenever you type "g <search term>" into your browser, it will automatically search Google. -- 143.85.199.242 (talk) 16:29, 27 March 2013 (UTC)