Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 January 22

= January 22 =

What countries has the internet not spread to?
Easier to answer than the reverse question. I was surprised to see an Amazon reviewer from Yemen, although I do not know if they were based there. Are there any countries where the internet has not spread to? And is there a list anywhere of the proportion of the population using the internet for various countries? Thanks. 78.147.245.100 (talk) 12:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * See List of countries by number of Internet users and http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm for some info. Nanonic (talk) 13:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Internet in North Korea may also be of interest Nil Einne (talk) 14:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There are certainly internet websites hosted in North Korea, and there is internet infrastructure there. The extent to which it is freely available is debatable, but there is absolutely physical network connectivity.  There are also internal data and voice networks which are not connected to the globally-administered network system with global IPs assigned by ICANN and its collaborators.  At this point, it's worth making a critical definition: "the" internet is just the largest interconnected network.  There are dozens of other large networks - some even using identical IP-based technology - which are not connected to "the" internet.  Nimur (talk) 18:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting...
Nimur: could you give a couple examples of such a large network which is not connect to The Internet? Enquiring minds want to know! (I'm assuming you are not just talking about large company or university intranets, right?) DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Large intranets are not really independent, because they use globally valid IP addresses and rely on the outside internet infrastructure for connectivity. NIPRNet has some connection to the Internet - however, its network infrastructure is entirely redundant to the civilian internet (it does not rely on any routers that constitute The Internet to get data from point A to point B).  SIPRNet comes to mind as one entirely redundant internet that specifically does not connect to the globally addressable internet.  How big is it?  Where is it?  You'll never know...  But seriously, this is used for many in-country and out-of-country data connections, including things as diverse and benign as emails, telephone calls, and web sites, as well as things that we can only speculate about.  Small regional and local independent and unconnected SIPRNets almost certainly also exist, but the likelihood that we will ever hear about them in public is close to zero.  JWICS claims to be "worldwide."  Surely other large organizations with sensitive networks, both inside and outside the United States, have similar systems.  To some extent, any large LAN with more than one internetworked subnet can be called an internet, provided that it has a globally managed IP scheme, at least one or two routers (especially if they are peering using a border gateway protocol), and a unified domain name service which can be entirely unrelated to "the internet" DNS scheme.  Nimur (talk) 02:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I get it -- thanks! DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Some printer trouble
I have been trying to print some work out from my computer, but all the colours are coming out rather different to they are on screen, mostly rather paler than I had wanted, but also dramatically bright, particularly the browns which look orange instead. At the same time, the print quality is rather bad, but the printer is pouring so much ink onto the page that the paper has been bent out of shape. And the margin on one side has gone, the pictures go right to the edge, where there is a row of smudgy triangles, presumably something to do with the way the ink moves back and forth over the paper. Is there any way of fixing all of this rather soon, such that I can get everything printed out nicely?

148.197.115.54 (talk) 12:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing you have an inkjet printer— the manufacturer and model would really help to evaluate the issues. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it's a Canon Pixma printer. 148.197.115.54 (talk) 14:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You may be able to find an option on the printer menu to clean the print head - try that. Or go to the Cannon website and see if they say anything about your problems and how to fix them. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 17:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Pixma is a series of several printers. Try searching for or check http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 03:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

OpenOffice and Firefox - bloatware?
I am not a fan of Microsoft, but. Microsoft Office 2000 is 128mb in size, OpenOffice is 401mb. Internet Explorer is 4.7mb, Mozilla Firefox is 26.4mb. Why the huge difference in sizes? I've heard it said that Internet Explorer is smaller because it is integrated into Windows, but I should'nt think it makes that much of a difference. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 13:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Um why are you comparing a 10 year old version of Office to (I presume) a modern version of OpenOffice? Also it's not clear to me where these sizes are coming from. I have the IE8 download for Windows XP x32 on my computer. It's 16.5mb. I also have the download for Firefox 3.5.3, it's 7.5 mb. Of course such sizes are not particularly useful since it depends on things like optional components, compression used etc. Are you referring to RAM usage when running? If so it'll vary depending on a number of factors. For example, what component of Office? For the browser, did you just open it with a single window, no tabs and no page open? P.S. The integration can make a big difference because the various components can make up for a substanial proportion of the size or memory usage. For example, if I could program, I could surely design a special version of Firefox with a download size of say 250k and memory usage of a few mb even with many windows open but it requires the 'Firefox support component' which is always running and is an additional download of say 10 mb with memory usage in the hundreds of mb with lots of windows open. Would you say this special Firefox is 'less bloated' then the normal Firefox? P.S. I hope you're not considering a version if IE older then IE8 considering what buggy POS they tend to be, particularly IE6 or older. Before someone says IE8 is the same, that may be partially true, but ignores the may point which is that however bad IE8 may be, IE7 and particularly IE6 and older are far worse Nil Einne (talk) 14:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The size is the size of the program. MS Office 2000 is the only one I've got. Internet Explorer is version 8. Now I think of it Firefox may include the size of some plugins, but I recall the plugins were small in size. Let us not let hysteria triumph over an objective consideration of the facts. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind, OpenOffice and Firefox ship not just their executables, but all their support code in one package. By contrast, many elements of IE are common controls in the operating system; you paid the cost for them when you installed the OS in the first place. IE8 is less tightly integrated, but in older versions of IE, IE was just the menu bar and frame encapsulating an instance of the HTML rendering DLL that shipped with the OS, so you couldn't get an exact "size" of IE. Beyond that, we've reached the point where even small flash based hard drives are 32 GB in size or larger. A difference of a couple hundred meg is very little; most people only use a dozen programs or so, so even if you "wasted" 200 MB a pop (and keep in mind, the software may be providing additional features with the space used), you'd still only use up an extra 2.4 GB. My home machine has 1.7 TB of storage space, and maybe 10% of that is programs (and most of that is games, not productivity programs). If Firefox used five times the space I'd still consider the features to be worth it. &mdash;ShadowRanger (talk 15:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My Firefox version 3.5.6 is 17M. I don't have a single size for OpenOffice because you can download each part you want separately.  The core that is always needed is 220M.  After that, the word processor is 73K, the spreadsheet is 61K, and the presentation program is 58K.  If I download everything, I'll never get to 401M. --  k a i n a w &trade; 14:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the word processor is 73M, the spreadsheet is 61M and the presentation program is 58M? Nil Einne (talk) 14:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * According to the download packages, each one is K. I double-checked because I couldn't see it being so small, but it says K.  I figure you are downloading them in the core and then doing nothing more than downloading a launcher for each one with the separate packages.  Rather stupid way to do it in my opinion. --  k a i n a w &trade; 15:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * In defense of the OpenOffice design philosophy, here's the Technology Overview - Component Interoperability whitepaper. Kainaw correctly points out that the ~50 kilobyte packages are separate launchers - formally, these are the "Application Layer."  On account of the nature of modern digital documents, there is a System Abstraction Layer below this - effectively there's no difference between the software which runs the spreadsheet or the word processor, except for the user interface toolbars.  This is necessary - what would you do if you had to open a document which contained a chart or table?  You need the software subroutines which handle those components.  Similarly, if you had a chart or spreadsheet with lots of text in one cell - that would be handled by the Text Processing routine.  So, you need the entire core (technically, though, there are two sub-sets of the System Abstraction Layer, you can install separately).  Nimur (talk) 23:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * On my Mac, MS Office 2004 is 524 MB, OpenOffice is 345MB. I would count these as being pretty much in the same range. Firefox is 50MB, Safari is 102MB. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That's actually a good illustration of my point: On a Mac, the OS doesn't ship with the support DLLs Microsoft can rely on in Windows (for example, the Edit and RichEdit controls), so the program has to include them in the installer, so you see the cost of MS Office more accurately. That said, my point about hard disk space being infinite stands; the only way you run out of space on a home machine nowadays is media files (video in particular); programs really don't enter in to the equation. &mdash;ShadowRanger (talk 15:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OpenOffice includes the Java Runtime, which increases the file size. Also, OpenOffice is significantly slower than Microsoft Office because OpenOffice is written in Java and MS Office is written in C++.--Drknkn (talk) 18:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ! That's a very harsh statement - do you have a benchmark or dataset to back that claim up?  What exactly runs slower in OpenOffice?  And is it because the implementation is in Java?  Unless you can verify this, you should avoid making the claim.  Nimur (talk) 02:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Be careful when measuring the speed of MS Office - if you are thinking about the time it takes to load, you need to make sure you don't have it loading most of it at startup (I'm not sure what the default is now, but it always used to default to loading at startup). If it is loading at startup then obviously it won't take long to load when you actually click the icon. (If you use Office all the time, then you may want it to load at startup, otherwise you should stop it (Start->Run->"msconfig"). --Tango (talk) 02:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * On my Mac, incidentally, both Office and OO.org take about the same time to load up, but OO.org is noticeably slower, almost impossible to use on a regular basis. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This isn't the place I originally read about it, but here is one comparison. It is common knowledge that programs that run inside a virtual machine and that are compiled into bytecode run slower and startup slower than programs compiled into native code. It'd be the same if MS Office were written in .NET and compiled into MSIL. So I'm not picking on Java.--Drknkn (talk) 09:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Apache redirect question.
Is it possible to create a .htaccess file that redirects while keeping the original URL displayed in the browser's address bar, even across filenames? 202.10.91.153 (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid not, any redirect will literally redirect them and the browser will show the new URL. The only way to do what you want is to have an HTML page on the server using a frame or iframe to point to the "real" site. ZX81  talk  17:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, at least as long as the URL you're redirecting to is on your site. What you want is what Apache calls an "internal redirect" (as opposed to an actual HTTP redirect).  With mod_rewrite, you accomplish that by not using the "R" flag in your RewriteRule (and making sure that the redirect target is not a full URL, or at least not one pointing to another site).


 * If you have both mod_redirect and mod_proxy installed, you can also use the "P" flag to issue an "internal redirect" to an URL on another site, at least sort of: what Apache does in this case is act as a proxy server, fetching the content of the URL from the other server and sending it back to the user as if it had come from your site instead. Ask yourself twice if this is really what you want to do, though: usually, it's not.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Good information, but those really strain the definition of "redirect". --Sean 19:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I think it works pretty good if you don't know it is called "mod_rewrite," which isn't exactly intuitive regarding what is going on. That's basically what a redirect is if you want the URL to stay the same in the title bar—not a real redirect, but a rewrite. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

CD players
Many years ago I was told that a CD would outlive a CD player if played constantly 24/7. Is this true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 17:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the statement, but can't find a reference for the expected life of a CD in our compact disc article. (Anyone feel like remedying this?)  Even a recordable CD, though, which is expected to experience disc rot way before a regular (non-recordable) CD, is expected to last from 20 to 100 years, according to the compact disc article.  By contrast, I don't think a CD player could be expected to run for 20 years continuously without breaking.  Again, though, I have no actual reference to cite.  This situation is the reverse of a record player, where the vinyl record becomes scratched as the needle scrapes across the pits; a CD player only physically touches the CD on the inside rim, where there's no data stored.  The data is read "touchessly" via a laser that just reflects off the CD's surface, so there's little opportunity for the CD to get scratched or degraded like a vinyl record in a record player is.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Makes sense to me. CD players have moving parts—moving parts break down pretty quick. The CD in the CD player is not doing anything but rotating—reading data off of it causes no wear. CDs do certainly "die" after awhile but it's not from being used in the player. They can, of course, get damaged when being put into a player, or being outside of the player. But once they are in, nothing really happens to them. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Text-to-speech in Voice Chat for Source Games
(ec w/autosigning bot) My mic sucks, and I'm waiting for my new one to arrive. In lieu of my voice, is there any way to make windows built-in TTS feature speak for me through a driver or something? Like if I type in something then play it it will play in Counter-Strike Source. This is more curiosity if something like this exists and not really life-or-death. Buffered Input Output 20:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

why is Model Mayhem always 404?
? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.100.221 (talk) 21:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you'll have to elaborate on your question before we can answer it. Is Model Mayhem a particular website?  If it's returning an HTTP 404 error, either you are accessing resources which don't exist, or the site administrator is derelict in their duties.  Maybe you can contact the responsible party.  As far as Model Mayhem (the Wikipedia article), we don't have one by that name - it is technically redlinked, not 404'ed.  The technical distinction is that the resource is returned with an HTTP 200 code, but the Wiki software has no wiki content to deliver under that name.  Nimur (talk) 23:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps he means this website, but it seems to be functioning normally from where I am. So far as I can tell, anyway. APL (talk) 23:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec)Are you referring to the website itself being down, or the article that has not been written? In the case of the website it could be any of the reasons stated in the 404 article, or perhaps a mistyped address. I hope this helps. JW.. &#91; T .. C  &#93;  23:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Blu-Ray color sub-sampling
At what color subsample does Blu-Ray movies use? Is it 4:2:0 like DVD or higher quality 4:2:2 or 4:4:4? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This forum says 4:2:2 Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * For the graphics (that's menus and stuff) Blu-ray Disc Format, 2.B Audio Visual Application Format Specifications for BD-ROM says those graphics are 8-bit palletised looking into an rgb8+8+8 CLUT. Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)