Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 May 28

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May 28

Non-local online ads

I was planning to ask whether it's possible to disable the "sent from my I-phone" bit in emails, since I'm always seeing it (I don't have an I-phone, so I'm clueless), but a quick Google search led me to this opinion page from The Riverfront Times of metro St Louis, Missouri. Question answered. But while reading the webpage, I was greeted with an ad from a small car dealership located about half an hour's drive away from me — and I'm something like eight hours' drive away from St Louis. Surely this paper isn't routinely running ads from Ohio car dealerships, so two questions.

1. What "services" offer advertising that's geolocated to the reader? This wasn't a simple Google text ad; it featured a big picture of one of the salesmen out on the lot.
2. When your organisation is firmly tied to a specific location, why would you run such ads? Virtually all your readers are locals who will care about local businesses; the local residents getting the wrong geolocation (due to out-of-town ISPs providing IPs that aren't based in St Louis) probably outnumber folks like me who don't care about St Louis ads, and presumably they have to pay a pile of money to some other company to run these ads, money they wouldn't have to pay outsiders if they just ran local ads.

Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

To put it briefly: the editors of many webpages neither know, nor care, what advertisements you see next to their page. They get paid the same amount, no matter what advertisement actually renders on your screen (... and they usually get paid even if the crufty advertisement fails to render at all, due to some undiagnosed technical malfunction - because real, actual, commercially-available web analytics in today's marketplace are even more crufty and broken than the ad-servers they're supposedly tracking). Commercial websites contract with advertising networks and marketing affiliates - glossing over the technical details, the newspaper simply gets paid to have "some" advertisement show up next to their original content. The advertisement company may directly host the ad; or (as is very common) it may re-sell the right to advertise to other affiliates who provide other advertisements. Some of those advertisement affiliates may use geolocation based on the viewer - so that's why the advertisement's locale does not necessarily match the content's locale.

In the old days, websites had no advertisements; and then, in the next phase of that ancient history, advertisers directly contacted web hosts to sponsor the content. Web hosts would host the actual ad or embed the content in to the page. Today, this process is a lot more "robotic," and the advertisement banners that you see are typically never going to have been looked at by anyone involved with producing the page content.

Wikipedia has articles on online advertising, ad exchange, and ad serving, if you want to read about the technology. This stuff is spam on steroids - there's a lot of automation, and surprisingly little human oversight. There's a lot of marketing hype about how much money there is in "internet advertising" and "targeted marketing," but there never seems to be enough money to hire a programmer to make technical stuff work quite right - like good geolocation, or effectively automatically matching content- to advertisement- demographics.

I suspect many large "piles of money" are wasted. Fundamentally, this is an inefficient market due to a massive information asymmetry - there seems to exist an immense knowledge gap between the people who know how advertising works, and the people who actually pay for advertising. That persistent asymmetry - which is clearly exacerbated by the people who are profiting from it - sustains an incredibly widespread and prevalent case of market failure.

Nimur (talk) 05:39, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

I was thoroughly unaware of how most of this works. I just assumed that most online ads were done by means of advertisers contracting with ad-hosting websites for specific placement for a specific period of time; newspapers already do this with printed ads, so it wouldn't be too hard to do it with online ads. I had no idea that there was a gap as big as you describe. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Help Finding Universal Remote Codes

I have bought a 10-in-1 Universal remote control & I'm can't find any codes for my DVD player or any for my TV that work. The DVD player is a ASDA own brand DVD (doesn't say anywhere on it/ in manual if its a Sony or any other manufacture), the only details I've got for it are:
Model No: DVD TL01,
Spec Code: 592/101,
and some unlabeled number, 104723810004506
And if needed, the Universal remote is a cheap one from one of the pound shops, the manufacture is Signalex. Any help ? 194.74.238.137 (talk) 11:23, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

I can't find it. It may be a good idea to call or email ASDA. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 13:30, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Okay then thanks. 194.74.238.137 (talk) 10:17, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
I've tried all the codes in the manual for my TV, an AKAI, & I can't get the remote to work for that either.194.74.238.137 (talk) 10:35, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Ive been up/(down)?graded

Just been auto upgraded to W10.Didnt specifically ask for this so, If I dont like it, can I reverse to W7? Also have they taken anything out of W7 to get W10?--178.106.99.31 (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi IP, you can go back to Windows 7 by following these steps, though in my opinion 10 is mostly an improvement -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 16:50, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Wots the improvements then?--178.106.99.31 (talk) 23:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Here are a few articles detailing the differences between 7 and 10: [1], [2], [3]. Also, Wikipedia's article on Windows 10 has a section about removed features. There's also an article about new features. clpo13_(talk) 23:35, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

If you miss having a built-in DVD player, VLC is completely free, stable and easy to use. Just install it like you would any other Windows software. 82.6.151.23 (talk) 11:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

If you do choose to go back to 7, you'll get reminders to upgrade every so often. The reminders are persistent, but they can be removed by finding the update KB3035583 and uninstalling it. Even then, Microsoft will continue to offer you KB3035583 when sending you updates, and if you are not vigilant in watching for it, you'll almost certainly download and install it again. Then you'll have to do the KB3035583 uninstall thing again. How do I know this? I upgraded one of my laptops successfully to 10, but the other one's video drivers were not upgradable and I was forced to set it back to 7. I've fired off messages to MS ordering them to stop sending KB3035583, but they either can't or won't stop. Akld guy (talk) 01:54, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

This can be prevented by uninstalling the update(s), immediately doing another search for updates, and "hiding" the offending ones from the resulting list. Then set Windows Update to notify you about available updates rather than installing them automatically, because Microsoft is likely to keep pushing the Win10 installer under different update numbers. Or (probably a better solution) use the free Never10 app, as described here: [4] 82.6.151.23 (talk) 11:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

I have always had 'notify me' set. I have on several occasions uninstalled the KB3035583 and hidden the notification, but still MS keeps getting around that and sending KB3035583, so as I said, one must stay vigilant. I've never encountered the Win10 installer under any other KB number. Akld guy (talk) 20:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Microsoft windows gadgets clock Folder

I can’t insert a ".png" file inside it, its asking me for administrator’s permission. What should I do? I’m the only user using my PC…

Note: insert "clock" in the "Search" bar after entering inside the OS/"C:" Folder.

Apostle (talk) 20:24, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

(A) Why do you want to? (B) What version of Windows are you using? (C) What happens if you click on the "Continue" button? Do you get prompted for an admin username and password? Tevildo (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1. To change the design of the clock i.e. displayed on my desktop. The password does not appear. It says I need permission and provides two options on a window: "Try again" and "Cancel". "Try again" doesn't allow it either. -- Apostle (talk) 05:03, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks. You can't edit the installed folders directly, you need to copy them to a working location, modify the files, and create a new gadget. This YouTube video goes through the process. Tevildo (talk) 20:24, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Cleaver Tev...thanks. -- Apostle (talk) 19:34, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Tevildo: My modified clock has the pink hour, minute and second sticks. Any idea how I should mitigate? -- Apostle (talk) 18:04, 1 June 2016 (UTC)