Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 September 14

= September 14 =

FRACTALS
210.212.239.181 (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)harshagg

I am a begginer and know only few things on fractals.How can i know about them including how to programme.I tried on wiki itself but i am unable to understand that.


 * I assume that you have seen our article on fractal software. If you are a competent mathematician, artist and programmer, I suppose you could "re-invent the wheel".    D b f i r s   11:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To get you started, the "Escape time algorithm" is probably the easiest to code.   D b f i r s   06:24, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Is a really old Webroot Spy Sweeper of any use?
i still the above and Trend Micro Anti-Virus on my Windows XP machine, though the subscriptions for each ended last summer. (Can't afford to purchase updates) I'm using free AVG and also McAfee from AOL, which update regularly, and seem to be getting pretty good results. McAfee seems able to catch any programt hat want to get into my system. I surf the Web little, except for half a dozen familiar places, and almost never watch anything on YouTube, though I will very rarely. Is my spyware protection too redundant?209.244.187.155 (talk) 15:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is usually a bad idea to have more than one antivirus program installed. My advice is to uninstall all of the antivirus programs that are no longer valid as well as AVG (it has a pretty poor detection rate).  McAfee isn't bad, but there are several good and free anti-virus programs out there for you to consider if McAfee runs out.  I know Microsoft has a new program coming out soon that is getting good reviews.Caltsar (talk) 17:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Printing Hotmail emails: tiny text, no word wrapping
When I want to print a Hotmail email a bare window appears with tiny text and no word wrapping. How can I increase the text size and get the text to wrap please? 78.146.163.118 (talk) 16:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What browser and operating system are you using? &mdash; QuantumEleven 18:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 8, Windows XP Sp3. 89.243.184.30 (talk) 19:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Single character key doesn't work
Hello! I have a really strange PC problem, for which I have no idea how to start diagnosing it. My closing-parenthese symbol (shift-0) doesn't work. 0 works fine, as do all the other capital keys (shift-someotherkey), so it's not a hardware problem with either the 0 key or the shift key. I have checked, my keyboard layout is set correctly (English-UK). The behaviour is identical in all programs and doesn't go away after a reboot. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might narrow down the culprit? Thanks in advance! &mdash; QuantumEleven 18:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you have a different keyboard you could try? Perhaps you could borrow a friend's keyboard to see if the problem is on the keyboard or on your computer (either hardware or the OS). That would help to diagnose the problem. Caltsar (talk) 19:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If you are using windows, go to start, run, and type charmap.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 19:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a background program is "trapping" the keystroke. For example, I often have XNote Stopwatch running in the background while I'm working. Although it's a great program, it has one flaw - if you happen to press one of its keys (S, N, or R) while the stopwatch is running, the action assigned to those keys happens whether the stopwatch window is active or not. It was quite annoying, until I found out how to disable keyboard shortcuts. If you use Windows, you might want to check if this is the case. If all else fails, you can always try reinstalling the driver (KB258826, step 3). Basically it's going into Device Manager, uninstalling the keyboard, rebooting, then letting Windows automatically detect and reinstall. Xenon54 / talk / 19:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Caltsar is correct; it is probably a hardware problem with that one key on your keyboard, and the way to diagnose this is to try a different keyboard for a few seconds. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Or as Xenon54 suggested, it might be a software problem trapping the Shift+0 combination. You could try the keyboard at another computer and see if works or not. If possible, both tests (try a new keyboard at the computer with the problem; try the keyboard with the problem at another computer) should help you narrow the problem down and decide how to further investigate. --Bavi H (talk) 23:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Cursor turns into spinning circle on top of Geejo's name
I'm not sure whether this goes on the village pump or not. Here I was moving the cursor across Geejo's name and it turned into a spinning circle. I was dealing with a slow web site on another screen, but the problem continued even after that site came up there--though that site's URL was on the top of the screen where I was on Wikipedia! Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It does that on my computer too. (Ubuntu 9.04, Firefox 3.5.2) GeeJo is still around, so it might be interesting to ask him how and why it does that (if he did it deliberately). Xenon54 / talk / 20:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * He has CSS style that read "cursor: wait;" which does that (on modern browsers). 87.113.10.108 (talk) 20:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I have Explorer 8 and Vista. I can never remember where all this information is to say what my computer is, but that's probably enough in these cases.


 * I've asked this person to respond. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Surely his CSS style has nothing to do with the symptoms you see on other web pages. I recommend getting more RAM for the computer, and you should close Adobe's PDF reader whenever possible.  I regularly see annoying slowdowns when PDF files are open (whether in the reader or in the browser).  Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:00, 15 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes,I had that effect (changing cursor style while hovering over my name) on my signature for a while for a laugh. The effect is only a mouseover, it shouldn't change how the cursor works when it's not pointed at the word GeeJo on some of my old comments. It wasn't long before I decided that the effect was fairly annoying, and I switched to my current signature. I'm not planning on going back through every archived talk page to retrofit my old comments, though. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 07:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Java References
Basically, I am trying to program something like this...

...and I expect next(int i) to return a reference to the original Object, but it doesn't. It just gives me a copy. Is there anyway that I can make it pass me a reference? Furthermore, I am perplexed why this is happening in the first place. I am pretty sure I have passed references to class objects before. Does the array or casts have something to do with it? By the way, this isn't a homework assignment or anything; I'm just trying to familiarize myself with the language. 199.111.182.231 (talk) 23:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm... I think I may have answered my own question. In my implementation, I was using Integers, which do not have the mutator methods necessary to adjust the original value. 199.111.182.231 (talk) 00:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)