Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 August 27

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August 27

Glassdoor.com

I just used glassdoor.com, and there was a message "Rate two companies and get a free account". Because I like the concept, I went for it. But I was led through a continuing bait-and-switch loop; each time there was a message on top of the page saying something like "just do this step to get a free account", only to pop up a new one when I was done. Increasingly, answers were not optional anymore, and I was forced to enter values that might compromise my privacy. When I got to the screen that asked me to enter an interview experience, I entered "glassdoor" for the company name and used the form to provide my feedback. After that came the request to enter pictures of my work place; I spent some time searching for one, but after after I had selected it, the site returned an error message like "you have no permission to access these data". I am now wondering (a) if I'm the only one having such an experience and (b) if they had a way to check my previous input and blocked me. AnonymousUserAugust2015 (talk) 06:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes they could have checked your previous input and blocked you, but they probably didn't. It was probably a side effect of their recent DDOS attack[1]. The site isn't a scam, but they have yet to show that they have solved the problem of paid editing. Then again, neither has Wikipedia. :( WSJ seems to like them.[2]

We could really use your help in rewriting our page at Glassdoor. It needs some help from someone familiar with the site. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer and suggestion. So the technical aspect of my question can probably be considered solved. I'm still miffed at the way the company treats its reporters, and would like to hear about others' experience. But this is probably not the right place for that. AnonymousUserAugust2015 (talk) 18:48, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

In my experience, the continued "now enter this" is intended to get additional content for their site but you should have been given access as soon as you satisfied the initial request, and you can't access the site (beyond the "free trial") until you do contribute something and validate your account (which you didn't explicitly state that you did). HalJor (talk) 20:11, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I wanted to fix the malformed number of reviewers in the first paragraph ("400,00"), but the cite linked caused MS Security Essentials to identify it as suspicious and kicked me out. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 14:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Unsupported image type on mouseover

I'm using the Chrome browser at University and when I mouse over an image on Wikipedia, I get an error messaging popping up saying that the image type is not supported. [Here's a screenshot]. What's it talking about? If I close the dialogue and mouse over again, back it comes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.47.59 (talk) 09:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware of Wikipedia having any behaviour for mouseover on images; everything works okay (on Chromium on Linux) for me. So I suspect you may be seeing the problem because some extension is rewriting the page and is injecting defective javascript. Try running Chrome with extensions disabled (chrome --disable-extensions) and see if the problem persists. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 10:55, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

It looks like your browser (or an extension) wants to show you a preview of the image when you mouse over the link. But despite the file extension, that page is not the actual image. It's a web page (text/html) that shows the image along with other information. You seem to have a lot of add-ons. Try to find the one that shows image previews and see if you can configure an exception for Wikipedia. Reach Out to the Truth 00:43, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Old URL means computer won't go to new web site

With http://thesunnews.com I get forwarded automatically to http://myrtlebeachonline.com.

But http://news-record.com gives me:

Internal Error: Missing Template ERR_READ_ERROR

When it first changed to http://greensboro.com It went like it was supposed to. Now the old URL gives me the above message until I enter it again.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, it's not happening today for some reason. And normally, I'm on a Firefox computer when it does. At home I get "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". Could be going there from Chrome made a difference, and then when I used Firefox on the same computer it had already been there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:19, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the raw responses, an HTTP 1.1 request to http://news-record.com gives you this:

GET / HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Cache-Control: max-age=900

Content-Type: text/html

Location: http://greensboro.com/

Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5

X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 21:53:09 GMT

Content-Length: 0

Age: 1

Connection: close

Which is a standard 301 redirect.

But an HTTP 1.0 request gives you this:

GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK

Cache-Control: max-age=900

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5

X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 21:54:38 GMT

Content-Length: 225

Age: 28

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<html>

This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.

<!-- pageok -->

<!-- 04 -->

<!-- -->

</html>

Which should display the "This website is temporarily unavailable..." message, even though the HTML is invalid (missing the head section, which is required).

http://thesunnews.com give a proper 301 redirect for HTTP 1.0 and 1.1

So that may explain the difference.

FF is supposed to use 1.1. To check it:

• Type about:config in the URL bar and hit Enter.
• Type network.http.version in the Filter box.
• Make sure it is set to 1.1
• Repeat, searching on network.http.proxy.version

Also, whenever you test things like this using your browser, go to the history and clear cookies, cache, browsing history, and active logins between each test. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Java class transportability

I have written a Java object for use in someone else's project. I do not want to give them the source code. I assume that I can send them the .class file with a description of the method calls. Then, they can write their code and compile using the class files. My concern is transportability of the class files. I know that class files are supposed to run on any JVM, but what about compiling a new class file? My class file is Benes.class. If the other guy writes Risk.java, which uses the Benes object, should it be expected to compile and create the Risk.class file? 209.149.113.150 (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you can just give out the class file. Or if you are handing out several class files, search the web on how to package them into a JAR file - JAR is a slightly jazzed up version of a ZIP file. Lots of commercial and open source projects ship out a JAR containing only class files. One caveat: your Java versions must be reasonably similar. If, say, you are using new JDK 8 features and the other guy has JDK 7, it likely won't work. He will get an error message about incompatible class file versions if the versions are too far apart. 91.155.193.199 (talk) 18:27, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I expect version issues will be a problem. I am running OpenJDK 1.8 on Centos. They will be using Sun's official Java on Windows. So, I'm just going to try to phrase a way to say "Here's the class file. It should work, but if it doesn't, I can send the java file." I don't want to invite them to immediately say "Send us the java file." 209.149.113.150 (talk) 18:35, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

The javac compiler has a -target parameter that may be helpful; see documentation. 91.155.193.199 (talk) 20:07, 28 August 2015 (UTC)