Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 August 18

= August 18 =

changing name of wireless router
How do i change the name of my wireless router? 72.235.221.120 (talk) 02:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * In general, you will log on to the router using a web browser on one of your PCs that's connected to the router. The default address is often  http://192.168.0.1/  but this depends on how the router is set up.  If you tell us the make and model number of your router, we can be more specific.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 08:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Geomedia Professional
In Geomedia Professional 5.2 I am not able to laying over the image one to another. Please help me how to do this — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.99.192.246 (talk) 03:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi there, to start a new question, please use the "ask a new question" button near the top of the page. I've fixed the format for you this time. Vespine (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Problem with
When I try to go to with Internet Explorer of any version, it redirects me to. Use other browsers, it does not redirect. How do I fix this problem? 125.235.108.75 (talk) 09:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Use another browser. The owners of the site have deliberately designed it to not be compatible with Internet Explorer.  This has the unsurprising effect that it can't be viewed with any version of Internet Explorer.  What problem do you want to fix? --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Go to http://theie9countdown.com/#ie to avoid the redirect. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't like other browsers because they are not 64-bit. 125.235.165.163 (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * They are 64-bit, and have been since before IE9 existed. The 64-bit versions just aren't well known to Windows users because Windows users wouldn't want it, because Windows doesn't really have 64-bit Flash as other OSes have had for some time. &brvbar; Reisio (talk) 23:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about that? I have used x64 Firefox before (since long before the release of Windows Vista), but it was an unofficial build. suggests things have improved slightly in that Mozilla is now working on and releasing nightly builds of the x64 version but there's still no stable version or official support.  suggests things are no better and probably worse on the Chrome front and  (admitedly undated) suggests the same for Chromium. You can of course use nightly or unofficial builds and I presume you can use a 64 bit version of whatever code base was used for the official build it isn't really the same thing as the officially supported IE6/7/8/9 64 bit versions and so just saying 'They are 64-bit' is IMHO a bit misleading. Incidentally if you want to use unofficial or unsupported builds there is a beta version of the x64 Flash plugin for Windows . Nil Einne (talk) 12:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Cool, do what you want to do. But they've set up the site so you can't see it with IE. So I guess you're going to have to use something else to view it with, if you're going to view it, eh? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Remember, different browsers render the same web page slightly differently. How do I get Trident to integrate it with Firefox? 125.235.165.163 (talk) 14:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * To integrate what with Firefox? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The page in question is an "anti-Internet-Explorer" activist website. It complains about standards-compliance shortcomings in IE9, but makes no specific claims.  Overall, the case presented is very weak.
 * It may interest the OP to note that the page in question does not load properly on Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 8 - nor on iOS with Safari, nor on Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Firefox, nor in Safari, nor on Lion, with Safari, nor in Firefox 6. My friend's HP WebOS phone has an error displaying the banner/countdown.  On Ubuntu 11.04 with Firefox 5, the page loads okay, but the banner countdown times out.  In Lynx, well, ... the page "loaded" but was unusable.  I think what we have here is an "activist" who is very incompetent.  He claims that Internet Explorer is not standards-compliant, but to make his point, he has created a terribly broken piece of ... "HTML" - and then asserted that it's IE's fault for rendering poorly.  And, apparenlty, the user has not verified his own work in many web browsers at all.  I have found that many incompetent web designers blame large organizations, like Microsoft, for the shortcomings of their own web page design, instead of diagnosing and fixing their errors.
 * But http://theie9countdown.com/ie-users-info is valid. That's the point. 125.235.103.251 (talk) 11:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Standard HTML can be validated at validator.w3c.org. As you can see, the creator of your website has malformed script tag syntax - he forgot a quote character.  This page should, and does, fail in most browsers.
 * It's pretty inane to complain about pedantic implementation details of specific web layout engines, when such an egregious and amateurish error remains uncorrected.
 * On the same topic, why do you need a 64-bit browser? Do you (1) know what this even means, and  (2) can you name any specific reason why you need it?  Nimur (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You need a 64-bit browser to view web pages that are longer than 4 Gb. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Why would anyone want to view web pages that are longer than 4 Gb? AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they have a "non-standard" use case. In any case, it is not strictly true that your browser must be targeted for x86_64 in order to use more than 4 GB of memory.  It depends on your operating system, and the desired purpose for such a large amount of memory.  For example, a browser that wants to stream a large video could consume several gigabytes, if the plan was to put the entire video in memory at the same time.  More realistic design patterns stream content, caching to a hard disk drive if necessary.  This allows manipulating several gigabytes of content without requiring simultaneous residency in physical memory.  And, it has nothing to do with 64-bit architecture.  All modern file-systems allow very long file offsets.  The assertion that the machine must be in a 64-bit mode to view a large website is incorrect.  Nimur (talk) 13:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I would note that while 4 GB sounds a lot, I think I've seen around 2GB+ usage when you have a lot of tabs and complex pages. If your browser uses multiple processes like Chrome or IE this should effectively split-up the usage somewhat but Firefox still does not. Plugins don't help although if your browser uses a seperate process/sandbox for that, then it may be a seperate issue. Nil Einne (talk) 12:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

parchive
I might have asked this question before, but I can't remember nor find it in the archives. As far as I understand, parchives can find a missing data from looking at the two bytes either side of the missing one. Would this mean that a parchive could be half the size of the original file and still be able to fully restore it? Sort of like compression? 82.43.90.27 (talk) 10:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Well the parchive article says: "With the introduction of Parchive, parity files could be created that were then uploaded along with the original data files. If any of the data files were damaged or lost while being propagated between Usenet servers, users could download parity files and use them to reconstruct the damaged or missing files."
 * So you need both the original file/s and the parity file/s. The parity file simply is used to correct errors if the data file is corrupted. You can't construct the original data solely from the parity file. So while the parity file may be smaller than the data file, you still need both data and parity to reconstruct the original data if the data file's corrupted, which is more space, not less; therefore ultimately no, it's not really like compression. --jjron (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You can recover a file solely from the PAR files, but only if the total size of the PAR files is at least as large as the original file. PAR files do work by a kind of interpolation, but you need N data points, from either the PAR files or the originals, to determine the correct interpolation function which allows you to recover the N original data points. There's no free lunch. -- BenRG (talk) 20:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Cannot stream video from A&E family of websites
I'd like to see if anybody else is having this trouble or has any advice. I updated to the latest Flash, Firefox, and Chrome, and made sure there was no ad-blocking. This is on XP Pro, and I have no trouble with other video sites like Youtube and Hulu. I'm in the USA, so region should not be an issue. None of the videos at mylifetime.com or aetv.com will play except some very short thumbnail previews that have no ads. The page and video window comes up, but the window is black and the play button doesnt play anything. They use Brightcove, and I went to Brightcove's website and their test videos play just fine. I downloaded their debugger, and get a lot of messages about preroll ads and playing ads in external players, just status messages, no warnings. I'm guessing that it can't get to the ad server or can't find a player for the ad. Anyway, does this ( Russian Dolls, BTW ) work for anybody? Squidfryerchef (talk) 11:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Turns out it needs Flash cookies to work, something which I normally disable. Squidfryerchef (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Zip file
A chum has gathered a number of jpg files together and sent them to me as a zip, using weTransfer.com. In downloading them, the file has got stuck at 1.2mb out of 59 mb. Why might this be happening? How do I recover from this? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  16:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know anything about the service you mentioned, but a file getting "stuck" and never resuming is a 30 year old familiar problem. The usual solution is to cancel the download and start again from scratch.  That was the way you always had to do it with classic FTP; more recent implementations (which I think means "a mere 15 years old" now) would let you identify and resume a suspended download.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There are certain download "helpers" which allow resuming a partially downloaded file, but the host server needs to support it. If the host serves the file through a dynamic link, like a lot of the file websites that offer "premium subscriptions", it won't work. Vespine (talk) 01:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to be caused by a setting which is wrong on my router. What setting might this be? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  11:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Raised this below under "Router settings" Kittybrewster  &#9742;  21:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Can't install Windows XP x86 on Windows 7 x64 as a second partition
I'm trying to install Windows XP x86 on a Windows 7 Samsung RF711 laptop, as a dual boot partition. However, the installation isn't working at all. Windows Setup does not find any mass storage devices, despite me having tried to either slipstream the drivers on the installation, or burning them to a CD. I can't switch to IDE as well. The BIOS is as barebores that you can get.

The drivers: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads/NP-RF711-S02US

My specifications aren't exactly the same: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/samsung-samsung-17-3-laptop-featuring-intel-core-i7-2630qm-processor-rf711-black-rf711/10167692.aspx (but I assume they're the same drivers) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raskolkhan (talk • contribs) 17:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't see a storage driver there that's listed as compatible with XP. You could try the driver from intel.com, which does say it's compatible. -- BenRG (talk) 20:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I feel like such a newb. Thanks, I owe you a beer. Raskolkhan (talk) 04:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Power Supplies for laptops
This is more of an electrical question, but i suppose it would be appropriate to place it here...

I have an old laptop whose power cord is a bit mangled on the DC end.... I'm wondering if its feasible to use a different power cord until i can fix the mangled one....

The original power supply is 19V, approx 3.15A, with the newer power supply at 19V, approx 3.42A. (the amps are approximated because i dont remember the exact numbers off hand, but they should be within 0.1A of what i gave.)

I asked my dad (who is fairly good with electronics) about this and he said it would work as long as the voltage of the new supply was the same and the amps were at least the same as the old (which is the case here), but i just wanted a second opinion. Thanks!

216.173.144.164 (talk) 20:29, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not an electrical / electronic engineer, but I concur with your dad. Same voltage. Capable of supplying the required current. You might also want to check the polarity of the connector matches - almost certainly the inner section will be +ve and the outer section -ve on both. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm an amateur electronics enthusiast and agree with the above. The charging circuitry for the battery is in the laptop, so as long as the voltage is right (within a few percent is fine) and the current is same or higher it should be fine. Vespine (talk) 01:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

how can pypy work?
it's written in python, but python can't be compiled...so, what you actually run (compiled .exe) is that still cpython underneath? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.126.128 (talk) 21:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Your assumption is wrong. Python can be compiled. Some features of Python (e.g. eval) probably require a partial interpreter as part of the executable, but that's not different than for nearly any functional language (e.g. LISP), and several of these languages have had compilers for decades. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Practically every language may be compiled. I've compiled QBasic, Java, and PHP to a native executable in the past (please don't ask why - when you are paid to do a job, you just do it). So, the believe that there are "scripting only" languages is wrong. -- k a i n a w &trade; 13:40, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, theoretically every existing programming language can be compiled as well. See Turing-completeness. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure, but for some of them the "compiled" version will basically be an interpreter bundled with the source code, because you won't be able to prove the correctness of any interesting transformations. Consider the language of Win32 x86 executables, for example. When any byte of program code is potentially modifiable at runtime by almost any store to memory, there's not much a compiler can do. In Python you can get some speedup by replacing each bytecode instruction by the code the interpreter would execute on encountering that instruction, but that still leaves a lot of boilerplate code—for attribute lookups, for example. Every time the program calls math.sqrt you have to get the value of the global math and then do a lookup of the attribute sqrt, just in case the program has perversely changed one of them. In C++ when a program calls std::sqrt you can just generate a machine-code instruction to do the square root. In a whole-program Python compiler you can potentially prove with global analysis that certain variables are constant, but a single call of globals anywhere in the program could potentially invalidate the whole analysis. -- BenRG (talk) 00:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * It might make more sense when you realize that the Python-interpreter-written-in-Python that they're compiling is not written in completely unrestricted Python, but rather only a limited subset of it (called RPython - loosely defined as "the subset of Python which can be reliably compiled"). The features of Python which make it difficult to compile (self-modification, eval, etc.) aren't used/supported in RPython. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)