Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 November 18

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November 18

Windows 7 backup -- part 3

If you want to perform a clean reinstall of Windows 7 onto a brand new, completely blank hard drive, is it better to do so from the installation DVD supplied by Microsoft, or from system image DVDs (at least 3 and maybe more) which you have made yourself? (I have both of these.) 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:5917:3E80:D859:DF69 (talk) 11:05, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

It depends on what you want to achieve. If you use Microsoft DVD you will get a completely new (clean) Windows 7 installation and you will then need to re-install all other programs. If you use system image DVDs, you will get the system exactly as it existed at the moment the image was taken. Ruslik_Zero 19:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, I can reinstall all the other programs -- it will be time-consuming, of course, but so will reinstalling from the system image DVDs (plus, I'll be getting basic functionality from the instant I install Windows, whereas in the second case I'll have to wait until everything is installed before I can use anything at all). So I guess when my hard drive fails in a few years, I'll reinstall Windows on the next hard drive from the original installation DVD. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:404:F3D3:C557:159A (talk) 10:53, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd go with the system image. Reinstalling programs manually, and especially reinstalling all Windows updates, is going to take longer than an automated install from 3 DVDs. 93.139.55.105 (talk) 19:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

In my case, it's more like 30 DVDs :-/ 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:404:F3D3:C557:159A (talk) 02:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

migrating firefox open tabs

I have both Firefox 57 and Firefox ESR installed on my computer that's running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I have about 100 open tabs spread across two windows in Firefox 57 that I want migrate onto Firefox ESR. What's the best way of doing this? (The dumb method would be copy and paste each URL into a text file, and then copy and paste it back out again, but I'd like to avoid that if at all possible).

I have Firefox Sync enabled, and have synced those ~100 tabs onto it, and I can see them perfectly fine on Firefox ESR, but unfortunately I can't seem to open all of them at once. Mũeller (talk) 11:09, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Apparently, people have been using this extension, but I've no experience of it myself. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:51, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll give that a try. Though since I'll only be doing this once, installing an extension on both browsers and then deleting them from both browsers is kinda hassle-some. I'm kinda surprised that Firefox doesn't some built-in way of doing this. Mũeller (talk) 13:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

When I did this on my Windows box at work, (Firefox 15 to ESR) was copy the files in the profile directories in AppData to the ESR profile. Worked swimmingly and all my settings and extensions worked fine. I think the extensions might have updated themselves. The only issue was Flash, which advice on the web said that I needed portable Flash. This didn't work for me, but copying the Flash executable into the ESR directory did. --TrogWoolley (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

PC-MAGAZINE code

A lot of the more useful programs on my MS-DOS computer seem to originate from "PC-MAGAZINE" according to their info dialogs. I've been trying to find out more information about PC-MAGAZINE and how these programs were originally distributed in the early 1990s. From what I can tell many were published as assembly source code for the user to compile at home using the DEBUG command in DOS. Is this true? Was the code actually published in a print magazine and then typed by the user into DEBUG or did the magazine come with floppy disks or something with the code on them? Thanks for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dsoqeeee (talk • contribs) 19:31, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

See PC Magazine for our article on the magazine. In the 1990's, programs from magazines were generally distributed on CD (cheaper and less bulky than a floppy) - AOL were notorious for bombarding the entire public with them, and most copies of IE3 were obtained from magazine CDs. The days of typing in listings from magazines, or of loading them from flexidisk, were a decade earlier. Tevildo (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

In the real early days of the magazine they would occasionally print code listings for simple utilities, but they were never one of the magazines that dedicated a large number of pages to assembly code.

In the 90s they would have either been Floppy or CD-ROM. They sometimes would come shrinkwrapped with the magazine.

They also published books (example) that would come with a disk that had a collection of tools in a particular field. (Like programming tools, or file management tools, or whatever.) ApLundell (talk) 00:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Picture with no context

Example: http://i1.wp.com/www.danielseidel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/IMG_0303.jpg

Sometimes I end up at a photo url and want to find the article that it is used in at their website. How would I do that.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:48, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Paste the image link into a TinEye search, and click the "found on" links in its search results. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 23:52, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Another possibility: Go to Google Images, type in a few words describing the image, and add a site: modifier indicating where you hope to find it. For example, nest tree site:wp.com. This doesn't work in this particular case, but it can work. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 03:56, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I've tried that but it's a longshot. But thanks. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Finlay McWalter, good idea. I never thought of that even though I use tineye a lot for tracking down image copyvios. Many thanks. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

For this particular example, there's a bunch of different solutions than the above.

For starters, if you do a simple search for the whole URL on Google, you'll find it comes from http://www.danielseidel.com/nature-walk-in-the-periyar-tiger-reserve/ . Unfortunately Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo don't work so if you don't have access to Google it's a little more difficult. StartPage.com does work although I don't know how likely it is you'll have access to that if you don't have access to Google. Although if you try search for the whole URL in DuckDuckGo image search (I mean a search for the URL not a reverse image search), you will find the image and so can see it comes from the above page.

Further, if you look carefully at the image, it has a water mark for www.danielseidel.com. More significantly, if you look carefully at the URL, it's quite easy to intepret it. The link itself is to a file hosted on wp.com or WordPress.com. But it's hosted for the website www.danielseidel.com. And further, the date of the upload is July 2012. So the obvious solution is to visit http://www.danielseidel.com and look for something from around then. If you visit it, you'll see there under travels, Kerala, India is dated 2012.07. There are about 7 pages, including of course the one above so if you visit each one you'll find the image. Alternatively, you could do a search on danielseidel.com (site:danielseidel.com) for July 2012 or 2012 07. This works on Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo and I assume StartPage.com and Google.

Since we know the file is called IMG_0303.jpg, you can also try to look for that term (well probably just img_0303) on the site with search engines although not surprisingly perhaps it only works for Google (and probably StartPage) but not Bing, Baidu and DuckDuckGo. However if you try an image search for the file name on the site i.e. 'img_0303 site:danielseidel.com', you'll find this does actually work on Bing and DuckDuckGo, although still not Baidu.

As a final point, it's always worth doing a reverse image search on Google, or maybe Bing or Baidu; if TinEye doesn't work. Google unsurprisingly does work. (Note you need to look at the bottom for matching images, or alternatively click on the stuff at top.) Baidu does not at all. Bing sort of works. (It doesn't find the above page, but it does find http://www.danielseidel.com/tag/nature/ which shows the above page. Note as with Google you need to scroll to the bottom to see where the image actually appears as opposed to simply similar images.)

Nil Einne (talk) 14:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)