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December 14

Jython programming

I'm investigating the makeEmptyPicture() function in jython for an assignment which is due shortly. If anybody knows how to incorporate the function into some scripting to do with assigning numbers to produce a picture, please let me know.

Thanks David Smith 14/12/2013. 15:44 Thesmithster (talk) 05:24, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you're using Jython Environment for Students. Some simple graphical code for JES is here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:10, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Stuck on a Java problem

I'm trying to finish up a game of the card game War with Java. I'm getting the following error when I try to run the program and I don't know why. Could someone help me understand why this is happening?

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 52

at Deck.DrawCard(Deck.java:88)

at War.main(War.java:36)

The relevant portions of code are here:

From my Deck class
public Card DrawCard () { Card c = _deck[0]; int _numCards = _deck.length; for (int i = 0; i < _numCards; i++) { _deck[i] = _deck[i+1]; //This is line 88 } numCards--; return c; }

From my War class
warDeck.loadDeck(); warDeck.Shuffle(); while (!warDeck.DeckEmpty()){ playerOne.AddCard(warDeck.DrawCard()); //This is line 36 playerTwo.AddCard(warDeck.DrawCard());

Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 06:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Java arrays are zero-based, and the highest index is therefore the length minus one. You have an array of 52 objects, which have indices 0 through 51. The line _deck[i] = _deck[i+1]; will therefore throw an exception when i has value 51. JIP | Talk 07:33, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I changed int _numCards = _deck.length; to _deck.length=1; and that seems to have fixed the issue. Dismas|^(talk) 07:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

You could just deal the cards from the end of the array—then you wouldn't need that loop at all. That's the usual way of implementing a stack in an array. -- BenRG (talk) 08:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

And just do something like this?

Card c = _deck[_deck.length];

return c;

I suppose I could. It's working the way I have it now though. Maybe if I get it working completely, I'll go back and make it cleaner. Right now I have it playing the first 26 hands and then failing when it goes to move the discards back to the player's hands. Dismas|^(talk) 09:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Annoying Google Chrome Message.

I have been using google chrome to explore the internet for a few years back.Everything was nice until a message started to appear whenever i started the chrome.The message is "Your preferences cannot be read. Some features may be unavailable and changes to preferences won't be saved." I searched for the solution on the net and tried many suggestions but nothing worked.I reinstalled Chrome, deleted User Data,changed permission settings and everything I could find. But the message is continuing to appear. Plz help.It is really annoying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.235.40 (talk) 12:22, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

December 15

getting os x mountain lion to run in vmware on windows

hello, i am running windows 7 and would like to have os x mountain lion running in vmware. i looked at the app store and i can buy mountain lion, but the page says i need to have a mac already. is it possible to buy the cd image of mountain lion, and then mount it & install in vmware? Grandmaester90 (talk) 05:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You can try, but it won't work, as OS X checks for hardware (even a specific computer model in some cases, according to VirtualBox documentation).--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:44, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's definitely possible with the right computer although does generally require some modifications to both VMWare and OS X. The former because VMware disables this sort of thing as it's not supposed to be supported (but they still have all the stuff to support it because Fusion shares a lot of code I think), and OS X largely using OSx86 and similar works to to fix hardware checks and stuff. As said, you do need the right computer, many Intel and some recent AMD can be made to work with Intel ones usually being easier for obvious reasons. (Last I heard AMD wasn't supported on Mavericks yet but this was not long after release. I don't see any particular reason why an AMD kernel won't be released if anyone can bother with it.) However because of the questionable nature of doing this, I don't think you should expect any help here. Nil Einne (talk) 12:00, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

See Hackintosh.-gadfium 00:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Phone model

hi....

i would like to know what series the Nokia 105 is a part off i couldnt find it on wiki and or any place else — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.48.197.73 (talk) 06:53, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

List of Nokia products#3-digit series since 2011.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:56, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

December 16

Wikipedia page decline

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.

Regards, Mirza Abid Ali Baig, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Infoluckyids (talk • contribs) 11:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Please read up on WP:COI, WP:NOT, WP:NOTE, and then WP:RS - there are likely other guidelines and policies that applies as well, but those are of the top of my head. In short, you would probably be better served by waiting until your company is notable enough for someone who is not related to your company to write an article. WegianWarrior (talk) 12:17, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Reliable sources, which show notability. I could make my own press releases, but it wouldn't make my topic notable. Also beware of Conflict of Interest. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 12:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Are there any magazine or newspaper articles which cover your company? For example, you could use this Reuters article as evidence of notability, however, you will need more than one article to prove notability. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 17:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

December 17

How to delete Null Zeros in XML file?

How to delete Null Zeros in XML file?

For Ex:

Input = Premium 00506.0800

Output = Premium 506.08

I want like the Output above. Please connect my name when anyone answer.--Tenkasi Subramanian (talk) 13:26, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

@Tenkasi: It's impossible to answer the question unless you tell us what software environment you're working in. XML is only structure, it doesn't determine process. Looie496 (talk) 17:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Environment Means?

OS is Windows 7 and XML is stored from web (Internet Explorer) as Simplified XML format. Is it enough or some other details you want?--Tenkasi Subramanian (talk) 19:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe you will understand the problem better if I say that the simplest way to do it is to edit the file using a text editor (XML is just structured text), and erase those zeros. If you need to do it on too large of a scale for that to work, then you will need to write a program. But then it is necessary to know what sort of programs you are capable of writing. Looie496 (talk) 20:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

You could load the XML file into your text editor, and then run a global search and replace from " 0" (that's a space followed by zero) to just " " (space). When that completes, run it again and again until you get no replacements occurring. Save the result using a different file name - do NOT overwrite your original file in case this method removes a zero you didn't want to lose. For example, it will turn "Premium 0" to "Premium ".

You will get a better result if you can use a programmers' editor which can search on regular expressions. If you don't understand what regular expressions are, ignore this paragraph. If you have such an editor, ask just below this paragraph and someone more versed in such expressions than I will give you suitable search and replace terms.-gadfium 00:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Can Word be persuaded to open XML files? If so, then the wildcards function in the replace tool is powerful enough for this. find " 0{1,}([1-9]{1,})" replace " \1" (without quotes, note the leading space on both expressions) finds a space, followed by at least one 0 followed by a string containing only the numbers 1-9, or a newline, and replaces it with the string (i.e. gets rid of leading 0s). For trailing 0s: find "(.[0-9]{1,}[1-9]{1,})0{1,}([ ^13^11,])" replace "\1\2" (without quotes, no leading space) finds any string starting with a . followed by at least two significant digits, followed by at least one 0, followed by a space, a comma or a newline, and replaces it with the decimal point and the significant digits followed by the space, comma or newline. find "(.[1-9]{1,})0{1,}([ ^13^11])" replace "\1\2" works for only one significant digit (but not if there is a significant 0 after the decimal point, e.g. 0.01000). More punctuation can be added into the final square brackets if needed (e.g. if you have something like: "process 003.04300;", then throw a semicolon in there. If you can't open the XML file directly, then copying the text into word and pasting it back into the file you want (making sure to keep the old file as a backup in case it all goes wrong) should work. MChesterMC (talk) 10:21, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to ping Tenkasi MChesterMC (talk) 11:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Facebook

Any way to prevent friends from seeing only the recent friends I added? thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 17:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

You previously could, as of now no. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:10, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone still use HTTP 1.0 anymore?

There is a security flaw in older versions of IIS that deals with HTTP 1.0. To fix the issue, one of the options we are considering is to turn off support for HTTP 1.0. My question is, does anyone still use HTTP 1.0 anymore and if so, how many? HTTP 1.1 was finalized in 1997, so I would expect that nobody is still using HTTP 1.0, but how would I know such a thing? This Microsoft Knowledge Base article indicates that this maybe a problem with some Windows XP users. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 17:25, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I've seen some proxies and some programs use only HTTP/1.0, so, I'm sure some would use HTTP/1.0, I don't think most notice, you don't support HTTP/1.0, But eventually someone will. 190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to see if I can gain access to our IIS logs to see if there are any 1.0 requests. (As a mere developer, I don't have direct access to our production servers. I have to go through a different team to see the log files.) AnonComputerGuy (talk) 19:24, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there are still enough HTTP/1.0-only clients out there that disabling it would be problematic (see this thread for example). If you do look at the logs I'd be curious to know what you find (assuming you're allowed to tell). -- BenRG (talk) 08:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I was able to examine our production server logs and the results were very surprising. 70% of our traffic is using HTTP 1.0. I was not expecting that. So, completely blocking all HTTP 1.0 requests is not a viable option. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 18:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Memory Screenshow/Image states.

I wouldn't know how to call this, actually, but in the past, I've used some Virtual Machines, using VMWare, I've noticed it has a pause button, and a screenshot button, (which saves the actual state/image of the computer, not a raster image). So basically it can stop any arbitrary program and run it again from where it was, also some emulators like NES, SNES, WII, PS1 seem to have some "save mode" which saves the whole state as it was.

I wonder if I could do anything similar with an executable, pause it, save it, and maybe restore previous states, is there anyway I can do this? (I'm using windows 7.)190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Normally you would do that by running the program in a debugger. In order to re-start a program from an arbitrary state you need to create a core dump, which is generally more trouble than it is worth. Looie496 (talk) 21:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

And if the program has open files or handles (which it will) then there is pretty much no way to recover it perfectly after completely unloading it. The program doesn't run in isolation - it talks to the OS for all sorts of things, so the OS would need to be in the same state as well. Pause/unpause can be done with a debugger but usable save states won't happen. It works in virtual machines because the entire state of the system, including the OS, is saved. Katie R (talk) 13:16, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Steve Wilson on YouTube

Where is his video where he says "awful suffering" "the world will be in chaos" "it will not be business as usual"? it's almost certainly a may 21 (/may 21 2011) video.--78.156.109.166 (talk) 20:50, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Recovering a replaced file

My laptop is running Windows 7. I accidentally moved one file named "Note 1.txt" to another folder that contained a file of the same name. I accidentally clicked "Move and replace". How do I recover the file that was replaced? Is it deleted and then replaced? — Melab±1 ☎ 23:40, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The contents of the file will very likely still be present, unless you've done other things with that disk in the meantime, but you'll probably need file recovery software to get it back. Meanwhile: don't use that disk. Looie496 (talk) 23:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

How can I recover the file then if I can't use that disk? What software should I use? It doesn't make sense. — Melab±1 ☎ 01:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I believe that he means that you shouldn't use the disk until you begin recovering the files. This is because NTFS "deletes" files by allowing them to be overwritten. The actual information is still there, if one looks closely. But, by using the disk, you run the risk of writing over that information.

I used ntfsundelete on a folder containing several gigabytes of information, once. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Recuva is a good undeletion tool for Windows. The data from your file will remain on the disk until it's overwritten with something new (unless it's an SSD, in which case the data is probably gone already). If you install Recuva on that disk, the files making up Recuva might overwrite the file you're trying to recover. Most other "uses" of that disk will create new files as well (for example, web browsers write files to their disk caches). Your safest bet is to download Recuva on another computer, install it to a USB stick or other external storage, plug that into the afflicted computer and run Recuva straight off the USB stick. You should also save the recovered file to the USB stick. Once it's successfully recovered, you can move it to where it belongs. -- BenRG (talk) 07:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I used Recuva but the files its showing me seem to be ones that HAVEN'T been deleted. — Melab±1 ☎ 19:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Isn't there a possibility that the data has already been overwritten when the contents of the file were replaced with the new contents. If the new file was longer then it may well have been written to a new location, retaining the old contents, but if the new file was shorter, a portion of the old file may have been irrevocably overwritten. Does anyone know the approximate probability of overwriting on a modern hard drive? Old floppy drives tended to use the first available space, but modern file systems and controllers are much more sophisticated. I know that overwriting is unlikely on flash memory where new contents are normally written to new space, even with a file of the same name, but won't most operating systems and hard drive controllers use the same space over again for a shorter file of the same name? Dbfirs 08:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

To partially answer my own question ... I was thinking of the old FAT system where the old contents would almost definitely have been overwritten if the new file was shorter. I think under the NTFS transactional system there is a high probability that the new file was written to new space and then the old file subsequently deleted. Have we an article that explains the process? Dbfirs 08:18, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

"Move and replace" doesn't overwrite the replaced file, it just deletes it and then proceeds with the move as though it had never existed. If you moved the file from another folder on the same disk then it almost certainly just updated directory entries and didn't touch any file data at all. On NTFS that means it just marked the replaced file's MFT entry as deleted/available, changed the parent directory in the moved file's MFT entry, and updated the directory indexes. Directory indexes are stored as files and can overwrite file data when they grow, but in this case neither directory grew in size, so I think that won't happen. Recuva and similar utilities just read the MFT and ignore the indexes, so you can always recover the file immediately after the move in this scenario. On FAT, the directory "indices" are the only record of a deleted file's former existence, and I think there's a good chance that the moved file would overwrite the deleted file's entry, making the file data much harder to recover (though it would still be there).

If the move did copy file data, I think there's a very good chance that it picked a different location on the disk to put the copy, especially if you have a lot of free space. I think you're right that the chance is higher on a transactional filesystem, but I don't really know. -- BenRG (talk) 08:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, and apologies if I seemed to be doubting your original reply. (My brain tends to get stuck in its memory of outdated systems.) I agree that there is a high probability that the original file contents are still there, and that the probability gradually reduces as the disc is used. My old version of Windows (Vista) seems to spend a lot of time on boot-up writing many small files, some of them for reasons that are not clear to me (though I expect it has good reasons for writing them). Presumably any of these could overwrite the sectors where the original file was stored, so booting from a USB or CD will be important. Dbfirs 09:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Recovering a lost file is elementary. Place the mouse cursor on the file name in Windows Explorer, right click and go down the options. You will see "Restore Previous Versions." click on that and it will give you the choice of dates. You should choose the date which predates your unfortunate move and your file will be restored. You can also do it with the whole sub directories as well. AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:15, 18 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

Well, yes, we've all being assuming that Melab-1 has no backup of the lost file. Obviously, the first thing to try is restoring the file from a backup. "Restore Previous Versions" will work only if Windows Backup has been run since the lost version was created (or if a backup was created with a restore point). We've been giving advice on the assumption that there is no backup available. The Recycle Bin will not have a copy of the deleted file if it was deleted as part of a move. Dbfirs 11:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

You are right about that. The backup and restore option must have been set up for that to be effective. I am not sure but is it not a part of a default windows configuration, a part of "Windows for dummies?" AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

I haven't seen it set up as a default, but some suppliers might do so. We all just assumed that Melab-1 was intelligent enough to have looked for a backup before asking the question. Dbfirs 18:48, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

December 18

Why do people still say "w w w dot" when naming websites aloud?

I just saw a commercial for Lumosity, and in the commercial they say something like "just go to w w w dot ..." I haven't typed www. anything in years (does anyone?) You just type imdb.com, or google.com or whatever. Why do people still say it and is there any purpose in actually typing it, like some millisecond faster connection (that would not make up for the time saved in not typing it in the first place)?--108.46.96.174 (talk) 06:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Your IP address geolocates to the USA, which explains a bit. Sites in other countries have country codes on the end (e.g. .uk, or .au), which must be typed, or an American site may come up. You must also only ever go to sites with ".com" on the end, or use other means to get to this site. If you look at the url for this page, you'll notice it's got a ".org" there. Typing the full url still has its place at times for some of us. As for why American advertisers do it, maybe they're not all that computer literate. HiLo48 (talk) 07:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The question is about the www. prefix, which is equally useless everywhere in the world. -- BenRG (talk) 07:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Well to access the uk version of yahoo it's uk.yahoo.com not www.Dja1979 (talk) 10:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

There are plenty of less-popular web sites that only support www.foo.bar (or even only foo.bar). It isn't hard to support both but it isn't automatic either. If foo.bar redirects to www.foo.bar then the latter will be faster (and vice versa). I think that advertisers like Lumosity worry that some people would not know how to "go to lumosity.com" without the www to make it clear that it's a web site, but that's pure speculation on my part -- BenRG (talk) 07:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Human idiocy is unquestionable. About 10 people a day attempt to call our fax number at work every day, despite our business cards and catalogues stating FAX:xxxxxxxx and Telephone:xxxxxxxxx very clearly. I'm sure it's the same people who use email addresses as website addresses. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

"Does anyone?" Well I do, quite often. While Ben points out that www.foo.bar is a different address from foo.bar, not every where automatically redirects from one to the other, therefore I often put the www. in even if it is strictly not needed. Astronaut (talk) 11:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sniggering at Austronaut and his www.-triggered carpal tunnel syndrome.--108.46.96.174 (talk) 14:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I work at a college here in the UK, and we have to type www,www1,www2 and www3 depending on where were want to get to on our website servers. We also have cases were www isn't required, or is replaced with something else, eg vdi. I don't know why but that's the way it is and we just accept it (and yes it can be confusing). --TrogWoolley (talk) 16:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I can go one better; not only do I type in the www, I also usually type in the http://. I'm well aware it's not necessary, but I picked the habit up in the old days when you had to specify between HTTP and FTP on the browser (I'm assuming Netscape Navigator, but possibly other early ones as well). I find it useful to annoy my daughter as well, so the practice is not without merit. Matt Deres (talk) 17:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

• One use of saying "w w w" out loud is to signal to the listener that a URL is coming. In some oral contexts that can be very useful. It may well be that such a signal is found conducive to an audience which also listens to an ad, besides watching it. For a radio ad it's very useful, I imagine, even if redundant. Drmies (talk) 19:23, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The Ali G multiplication problem?

What is meant by it?

Input: two d digit numbers (mostly 9s)
Output: the product of all the numbers

Is it something you would find in the serious literature? OsmanRF34 (talk) 13:32, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems to be meaningless babble. 'd' is undefined and "mostly" doesn't help much. The phrase "product of all the numbers" is odd - you'd expect it to say "product of these two numbers" or something...which implies to me that you don't have the question right. As given, it seems like there are an insane number of answers for any given 'd'. What is the context of the question? Maybe there is more information about it there that would help us to get you an answer. Certainly there is nothing in serious math literature that would be written this badly. SteveBaker (talk) 14:30, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It was from a ppt presentation, in the context of computability. The source is [[1]]. It is from the CS department of the Univ. of Virginia. See [[2]] too for the "10012 Things Every Self-Respecting Computer Scientist Should Know." OsmanRF34 (talk) 14:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem comes from this episode of Ali G. The point made in the presentation (and by Ali G), as I understand it, is that we'll never be able to build a computer that can solve any multiplication problem, simply because the input factors can be arbitrarily long (d has no bounds). --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

One of the Powerpoint slides shows an Excel spreadsheet in which the product of a column containing 999999999 and four 99s is computed to be 96059600903940400 (the correct/exact answer is ...399). The next slide concludes "There are many decidable problems we cannot solve with real computer: the numbers do matter". Yes, they matter, but this is a terrible example. Exact multiplication of d-digit integers for very large d is easy (unlike, say, integer factorization). Excel got an approximate answer because it's using fixed-precision arithmetic. Maybe it shouldn't, but that's not a computer science issue. This example is not something you'd find in the literature; it was made up for this Powerpoint presentation (along with the name). In my opinion the whole presentation is pretty bad. It covers the usual computer science cliches but isn't well researched or insightful. And Ali G is an idiot, of course. -- BenRG (talk) 21:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Ali G is an idiot like a fox. --Trovatore (talk) 05:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem seems more about the input and output. If you could input the two numbers and be able to output the answer then you could write a program to do the multiplication using Arbitrary-precision arithmetic. Such a system would be able to handle any number Ali G could think of but not any number a computer scientist could think of. --Salix alba (talk): 19:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

FORTRAN Compiler

I've posted here recently (To hire a programmer for a job, etc). I've got a few good suggestions and I am grateful for them. I've decided in the end that I will need a FORTRAN compiler. Years and years ago I did a lot of FORTRAN, so I hope the programming part won't be that difficult although now it seems the FORTRAN allows to do graphics, etc. The old FORTRAN of course did not have it.

I think StuRat, one of the participants here stated that he does a lot of his work in FORTRAN. I hope someone will recommend which compiler I should download. I checked the web. There is this crazy Intel FORTRAN "Composer" costing over a grand. I will need the compiler for a single task only so for me it won't be a good investment. There are "free" compilers but I am afraid to download from a website I don't know. So, I count on some compromise. BTW, my Windows 7 is 64 bit. Thanks, AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

Have you looked at gfortran?--Aspro (talk) 16:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a bad decision. The only valid reason to use FORTRAN nowadays is if you have legacy code. Otherwise you are much better off using C -- the available tools are vastly superior. Looie496 (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

If the OP is the guy who was asking how to do a web-page, I'd say he needs neither Fortran (it's not FORTRAN anymore, BTW), nor C. He would be fine with html + CSS + JS. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I am the guy who asked how to build web pages. So what? I tried to do this project with Microsoft Visual Studio and C# recently but could not get the precision I wanted. As a matter of fact the iterative errors were overwhelming. At the same time years ago I did a similar job with one of the old versions of FORTRAN compilers and everything worked fine. I do not remember if I used double or even quadruple precision. Most likely it was double, 16 digits. I am waiting for StuRat's comment. He is using FORTRAN every day in his work. BTW, "Fortran" is highlighted by Wikipedia as an error. Thanks, AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:56, 18 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

So what? Ỹour purpose is not completely clear, but you seem completely lost. Anyway, I don't know what you mean by "highlighted by Wikipedia." Fortran is clear that the name is "Fortran (previously FORTRAN)." Maybe you are confusing your spell checker with Wikipedia. OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

There are still valid reasons to use Fortran these days, mainly computing speed: due to the simplicity and rigidity of the language optimizing compilers are usually more successful with Fortran code than with other languages. This is pretty much only an issue for heavy number crunching that is cpu bound. Precision, however, is not a reason to use Fortran. All modern languages implement floating point arithmetic as per IEEE-754, so the results will be the same in any language. I don't know what your webpage is doing, but if this is some algorithm to compute something that doesn't converge or result in large computational errors, then your algorithm is wrong and not the language used. Maybe you need to talk to an applied mathematician and not a programmer? 86.128.183.4 (talk) 23:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It is an issue of numerical integration with special functions (Spherical Harmonics). The trouble is I need Associated Legendre polynomials of a very high order l about 200 at times. For this I naturally have to use recurrence formulas. If you are familiar with the subject you should appreciate that many iterations will be involved. AboutFace 22 (talk) 01:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

FINALLY you tell us what problem you are actually trying to solve! Finally! It would have saved a shitload of time to say so from the beginning. The Numerical Recipes books -- the bible for people who need numerical algorithms -- contains a section on how to calculate spherical harmonics, section 6.8. There are C and FORTRAN versions of the book, and each of them gives you source code for calculating Associated Legendre polynomials, using a robust method. It also warns against half-a-dozen other methods that seem like they ought to work but in practice are too sensitive to precision (exactly the problem you ran into earlier). Looie496 (talk) 03:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. It is interesting! I will check the book, for sure. AboutFace 22 (talk) 04:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

I just checked the book. There is a copyright snag in there. Just read the customers' reports on Amazon. No, thanks. The thing is programming for this project is elementary. It is a snap. I now have my own code in C#. I had written it in Fortran years ago. I need the compiler. Using so many iterations kills the result unless it is in Fortran, this is my experience. AboutFace 22 (talk) 04:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

The gfortran package could be one option, if you are willing to use Linux, and Fortran 77, maybe up to 95. Alternatively, if it's non-commercial, use the Intel compiler for free [[3]]. OsmanRF34 (talk) 08:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

That book will explain why you're having problems in other languages and how to properly do the calculation to avoid the errors. Even if the code can't be copied, you can learn from the text and write your own implementation of the robust algorithm. It is definitely the best reference you're going to find for this problem. Katie R (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to Osman and Katie (?), the last two contributors for your suggestions. Every drop of thought might be helpful eventually. AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

I know that it's a waste of time, but I'll try once more to explain. YOU ARE USING A BAD ALGORITHM. The algorithm you are using is numerically unstable. If you don't switch to a more stable algorithm, all this other stuff is useless. Trying to make an unstable algorithm work by operating at ultra-high precision is always a losing proposition. The solution is to replace it with a more stable algorithm. The Numerical Recipes section that I pointed to explains what you need to do. Looie496 (talk) 17:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Looie496, I will get the book. I will order it tonight. It is not a problem. The problem might be that there is no way to improve the algorithm. It is a simple iterative procedure, using recurrence formulas. If you look at them (the recurrence formulas) in Wikipedia (Associated Legendre Polynomials) you will see that there is nothing to improve there, since the operation is so straightforward. If you talk about Numerical Integration which is also one of the components of the whole project of mine, then it is a different story. In that area the algorithms have been optimized and improved for years. But this is a different part and I am not discussing it here (yet!). Of course any criticism is helpful anyway. Thanks AboutFace 22 (talk) 17:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

You don't even have to order it, you can read it online at http://www.nr.com/oldverswitcher.html. Looie496 (talk) 18:43, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't see this thread until now (you could have contacted me on my talk page to speed up my response). I concur that gfortran is the way to go, I use it myself. It's a bit tricky to download, as I recall, as the links keep taking you back to the gcc compiler (I think gfortran is bundled with gcc). But, gfortran is free, works well, and supports recent versions of Fortran, as well.

And I would certainly argue that there are many reasons to use Fortran instead of a C variant. Fortran string handling is much simpler, you don't need to include libraries for basic functions, you don't have to worry about pointers and addresses unless you want to, etc. StuRat (talk) 18:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Request assistance from a C++ programmer

I'm attempting to compile the C++ code listed in this article, ISAPI Filter to reject HTTP/1.0 requests. However, I am getting the following error:

Error 1 fatal error C1189: #error :  Building MFC application with /MD[d] (CRT dll version) requires MFC shared dll version. Please #define _AFXDLL or do not use /MD[d]
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\atlmfc\include\afx.h	24	

I'm not a C++ programmer. Can someone please help me to get this code to compile? AnonComputerGuy (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

What this error message is saying is that you cannot compile the code in question unless you have Microsoft Visual Studio. MFC stands for Microsoft Foundation Classes. They have multiple files to support the compilation and then run the code (dll's, etc) MFC is a part of VS. You can purchase the VS with MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) - about $800.00 - professional, 2013. AboutFace 22 (talk)AboutFace_22

I do have Visual Studio installed. I followed the instructions given in the article[4] and I'm getting the above error. Do you (or anyone) know what is wrong? If you (or anyone) have a copy of Visual Studio, can you try it and let me know if you get the same error? AnonComputerGuy (talk) 21:14, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

On a more careful examination it seems the compiler wants a specific header file: afx.h. Could you go down the chain of sub directories and verify that the header in question is there, and if so, open it and check if there is some content inside. Headers are just text files. AboutFace 22 (talk) 21:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

I just found your header on the web. Everything is available! Amazing! I don't know how you post the links. Anyhow, the URL is http://www.cppdoc.com/example/mfc/classdoc/MFC/AFX.H.html AboutFace 22 (talk) 22:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

I don't think that's the problem. But I did check and I have multiple versions of the file, one for each version of Visual Studio installed on my PC. Since this is Visual Studio 2005, I believe the one in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\atlmfc\include\ is the one we. I opened it up and it looks fine. But I just installed Visual C++ 2005 yesterday, so it's unlikely the file would have been tampered with.

Did you try to compile the code? Did you get the same error? AnonComputerGuy (talk) 23:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

File list for afx.h AnonComputerGuy (talk) 23:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

C:\>dir afx.h /s Volume in drive C has no label. Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\MFC\Include 06/15/1998 12:00 AM 60,113 AFX.H 1 File(s) 60,113 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\atlmfc\include 10/01/2002 04:27 PM 55,851 afx.h 1 File(s) 55,851 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\atlmfc\include 11/04/2009 10:43 PM 60,070 afx.h 1 File(s) 60,070 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\atlmfc\include 06/05/2013 09:31 AM 61,674 afx.h 1 File(s) 61,674 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\atlmfc\include 12/01/2006 10:55 PM 62,490 afx.h 1 File(s) 62,490 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\ce\atlmfc\include 09/23/2005 01:23 AM 73,323 afx.h 1 File(s) 73,323 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\atlmfc\include 04/23/2008 05:08 PM 54,980 afx.h 1 File(s) 54,980 bytes Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ce\atlmfc\include 04/30/2007 06:44 AM 61,038 afx.h 1 File(s) 61,038 bytes Total Files Listed: 8 File(s) 489,539 bytes 0 Dir(s) 14,088,654,848 bytes free

Do you have #include statement for this header in your C++ code? AboutFace 22 (talk) 01:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)AboutFace_22

Yes, I have this header in my C++ code. I followed the instructions in this article, ISAPI Filter to reject HTTP/1.0 requests. Can you (or anyone besides myself) try to compile the code? If so, do you get the same error? AnonComputerGuy (talk) 05:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• Often the most effective way to find a solution to a problem is to paste the error message into Google and see what comes up. In this case I find this Microsoft page, which gives instructions for fixing it that hopefully will work for you. Looie496 (talk) 03:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Often the most effective way to find an answer to a question asked on the Reference Desk is to pay attention to what the OP is asking and try it yourself. In this particular case, I am following the instructions given in this article, ISAPI Filter to reject HTTP/1.0 requests. All I am asking for is a C++ programmer to try to execute these instructions and try it for themselves.
  • Are there any C++ programmers on the Computing Reference Desk? Is so, can you please read this article and see if you can get this code to compile? There's not a lot of code, so this should only take a few minutes to try it. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 05:19, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I can get to it later today - I'll use VS2005 since that's what you mentioned above. However, could you try to add "#define _AFXDLL" to the top of your source or turn off the /MD switch? It will be somewhere in your project configuration - each item in the configuration pages mentions which compiler switch it applies, so you should be able to find it. Katie R (talk) 13:16, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Good news! I got it to compile. It looks like the article is missing an instruction. To get it to compile, I went into Project Properties | Configuration Properties and changed Use of MFC to Use MFC in a Shared DLL. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Facebook linked to Gmail, maybe? [moved from "Miscellaneous"]

I had an email exchange with a Gmail user, and to my surprise my original message, in her response to me, had the layout of a Facebook wall post, complete with my Facebook avatar (though it had my real name, not my Facebook alias, next to the avatar). This is odd: the sender has a Facebook account too, but we're not friends, and she's not a member of the only group in which we could conceivably share membership. So, how does she (or her Gmail account) know my Facebook avatar? Drmies (talk) 05:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

You might want to ask this on the computer desk, given the subject and that that desk gets a lot more attention than this one. μηδείς (talk) 17:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Will do (I mean, done)--thanks. Drmies (talk) 19:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Even if you are using Tor, proxying your IP address, using a newly-created email address, and avoiding disclosure of any personal information, it is still possible to uniquely identify which human you are. This is called data mining, and it is a reality of the 21st century. At all times, without even realizing it, you are leaking personal information - in digital form, and in other forms. A dedicated attacker (like Google or Facebook or a government police force) can use a strategy of centralizing trillions of pieces of insignificant information into one common repository for the purposes of producing meaningful connections. The exact nature of the connections, the exact details of which pieces of data forge the connections - are irrelevant. What matters is that if an organization collects enough tiny insignificant pieces of information - it can construct a very complete picture of the whole "situation." Two specific technologies that are used include Facebook Beacon and Google Analytics; these surveillance tools collect information about users on a wide variety of websites, even when the users perceive that they have no interaction with Google or FaceBook. No doubt, there are many, many, many trillions more pieces of information that these corporations use to "complete the picture." Nimur (talk) 20:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's often possible through police work to identify people who are trying to hide, and one way they can do that is by analyzing web server logs. But that isn't an automated process and it's obviously not relevant to what happened here. I don't think there are any companies that go out of their way to do automated forensic analysis of logs in order to deanonymize you for the purpose of inserting a photograph into your email that reveals that they've deanonymized you. It doesn't seem like a winning business proposition. -- BenRG (talk) 00:25, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The case of the Harvard bomb hoax is pretty specific. They had a starting point (all Harvard students with exams approaching and who could use a little bit more time), and, although what goes through Tor is hidden, they can still know who entered the network. PUt on top of it that there are enough human resources to track down this kind of things. A 'normal' user, who fears being tracked for commercial purposes, as it's the case of a user of FB and Google, would be pretty anonymous through Tor or similar strategies. It's important not to get paranoid here. Also notice that the Harvard guy was not caught using data mining, but something more like computer forensics. OsmanRF34 (talk) 08:48, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

1. What email provider and email application (or webmail) are you using? 2. How sure are you that this Facebook information was not actually in the email you sent to her? It's extremely unlikely that Gmail added it. A Google+ avatar maybe, but not a Facebook avatar. -- BenRG (talk) 00:25, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• I'm using Outlook Webmail and my university email, connection courtesy of Charter. I don't use Facebook to email or to make email connections (don't even know how to do it). I'm not friends with this person on Facebook and, again, the name accompanying the avatar in her response was my name, not my Facebook alias. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

December 19

iPhone 5 won't display attachment icon in message bodies

I can download email attachments sent to my iPad but not my i5. In message list there is a paperclip to show the attachment and when I select the message to view a new pane opens and I see the spinning wheel and ...Downloading... but there is no icon in the message body after. I've tried jpgs and docs with the same result. Any ideas? signed... Perplexed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.120.208.98 (talk) 00:23, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

A faster way to edit an OsCommerce website?

I use OsCommerce to update my works website, but it's painfully slow to add, edit, or delete things off of. We already upload a price file each morning to change prices. Is there a way to edit the site offline and upload it, or use a program that can do it? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Cannot watch videos on YouTube

Many videos won't play for me at all. And those that work stop after 5 minutes (stop loading). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2013_November_26#YouTube_.2B_flash_game_problems.--78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC) Could someone send these videos to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s5WGmCKC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRrNvmvTAC4

& a

May 21 2011 video with scorpion sign/billboard (with countdown to may 21) they say in it that the end of the world is just 30 days away and "the mayans said december 2012 but these people say the end is much closer"--78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:33, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The videos will be copyrighted most likely, and so they can't be sent to you. The hyperlink can, but then you already have that anyway. The loading issue may be due to a poor internet speed for streaming video. Have you tried lowering the video quality? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks it worked. How come?--78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Changing the video quality worked? If you're trying to watch a HD video on a poor connection it will buffer slowly and lowering the video quality or upping your internet download speed are the only two options you really have. Glad to be of help ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

What else, young lion? SomE vids still wont play but changing vid quality worked even on some of the vids that wouldnt start.--78.156.109.166 (talk) 19:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

it wasnt hd. it wasnt a hd issue. also, on the higher quality (which made the videos unplayable) the videos didnt buffer slowly, they didnt buffer at all--78.156.109.166 (talk) 19:23, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

What going on with Google News?

I used to find lots of useful information through google news archive. It used to be an option through "advanced search", but the regular search defaulted to the last 30 days. Now, though, there does not appear to be anything called archive search, and now all searches default to results for "anytime". But somethng's wrong. I had done a bunch of searches over the past week or so, and was surprised to find nothing.

Today, though I did a search of which I expected to find hundreds and hundreds of results going back 200 years, and I found only six recent results, even though I made sure I was searching "anytime". I said to myself, "Huh?". So I then tried something I was absolutely sure should have huge results: "Abraham Lincoln" using a custom search of 1850 to 1920 and got no results at all.

My only conclusion, then, is that search is broken, or the archives that used to be so useful are no longer part of google news, or have somehow been separated out. If this was isolated to today, I would just chalk it up to Google News being broken for a few hours or today, but as I said I had started noticing this over the past weeks or so. Anyone know what's going on?--15:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.166.18 (talk)

You are not the only person to have noticed this problem. It was reported at the Village Pump, where it received a response from a Google employee. It appears that they are in the process of replacing the News Archive search, and have disabled the old version in order to reduce the burden on developers. There is some information on how to get results using the standard Google search here, although I am not sure whether it will provide the results you want. --Kateshortforbob _talk 18:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks much for posting that link. Good to know they are working on it and it will be fixed some months down the road. Meanwhile it is really mindblowing that one of the top website in the world (maybe the top?) would have something like that go down without any prominent advance notice, nor any prominent explicit notice on the service that it is not working while it's not working, with the service purporting to work but just not providing any results. There may be scads of technical genius over at Google, but this is true amateur hour conduct from a customer relations and business management standpoint.--71.167.166.18 (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

How to archive this PDF of a journal article?

At http://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r2j122 I'm trying to archive a PDF of a journal article on http://webcitation.org or on http://wayback.archive.org. When I do a webcitation for http://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r2j122.pdf (the supposed download link, URL seen if you hover over the "Download PDF" at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r2j122 , you get redirected to http://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r2j122 WhisperToMe (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

gps

hi all, can anyone suggest/guide me through to get this server coding in php for gps tracking system that I wish to host . if at all anybody have tried please do guide me through it am not going anywhere in this thanks in advance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.210.206.27 (talk) 18:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Cut, copy, paste, delete, select all not working in ie + back/forward buttons

but undo works, in the same menu (rightclick menu)... the functions work in firefox... i was messing a bit with settings but i just imported data from ie to firefox, nothing else iirc--78.156.109.166 (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC) back/forward buttons in ie dont work.. not clickable or blue or anything--78.156.109.166 (talk) 19:14, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Offline pages in firefox & ie

I cant browse offline in ie. work offline button in file menu doesn't get checked when i click it, nothing happens when clicked.. how do i view which pages are viewable offline in firefox, like a list or something? instead of checking all pages i have ever visited to see if any are cached in firefox for offline-able viewing.--78.156.109.166 (talk) 19:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Guessing game

Is there a Wikipedia article for a "guessing game" played on a computer? The idea is that the user thinks of something, and the computer asks a series of yes/no questions about it, finally providing a guess, asking the user if it was right. If it was not, the computer asks for a question to distinguish the right answer from what it was guessing, and adds it to a (presumably) binary tree data structure about how it should ask questions. JIP | Talk 20:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Twenty Questions, Akinator. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:27, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I was just going to post that! 190.156.122.141 (talk) 20:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC)