Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 August 8

= August 8 =

I need an old computing joke

 * I know this is an inappropriate question.
 * I know this is an inappropriate desk to ask it on.

But, I'm desperate, so here goes: there's an old joke, involving a king who calls upon an engineer and a software developer to design what becomes a toaster. The engineer comes up with your standard 1960's toaster (dial for darkness control, for example); the software guy determines it's way more than that, and it needs an object-oriented design, and a graphical user interface, and an operating system, etc, etc. . . and the punch line is something along the lines of "Wisely, the king took the software developer out back and had him shot."

Believe it or not, the joke perfectly illustrates a point I'd really like to make at a city council meeting Monday night.

I need a link to the (or an) original; you can post it on my talk page if you want to avoid polluting this desk. I've tried Google, and rec.humor.funny (yes, I'm that old), and all the other joke sites I can find; nothing so far. It's a computing joke (hence RD/C), it's gotta be out there somewhere. Anybody? --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 00:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Googling "king toaster joke" I find one on this page and another on this page which look basically like what you want. There are lots of other pages with the same joke, if you use those search terms. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Android - ability to sound alarm at regular intervals
Resolved&#58; Thank you Magog the Ogre (talk) 11:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC) I would like my Android phone to sound an alarm exactly once every six hours and fifteen minutes. It can deviate by only about seven minutes in either direction. Unfortunately, Android only gives a maximum of ten alarms that can be set to sound throughout the day, so I can't just create, say, a system where I set 27 different alarms throughout the week at an average interval of 6 hrs 13 1/3 mins (which would perfectly cycle after seven days).

Is there an app where I could do this? Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:54, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably Nil Einne (talk) 09:32, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

You could probably setup your alarms in a calendar and sync/import to your android device, might be the simplest, short of having an app handed to you on a silver platter. &brvbar; Reisio (talk) 19:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You want a stopwatch, not an alarm. There are many stopwatch apps. You want one that has a timer in it (many are called "stopwatch and timer"). Then, you set a timer for 6 hours and tell it to start. It will beep 6 hours later. You can set it on repeat to have it go off every 6 hours. -- k a i n a w &trade; 19:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * There is indeed an app called "Stopwatch & Timer" which has a paid version that will loop a countdown timer. The free version won't loop.  The paid version is $0.99.  (FWIW, I have the free version and don't have any complaints.)  Dismas |(talk) 06:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

SVG image appears incorrectly after uploading into Commons
I have an .svg image created using Inkscape. If I upload this image into Wikimedia Commons, the image appears incorrectly. It may be that some of the layers are missing. Is there any way to correct this without abandoning the .svg format? ike9898 (talk) 01:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Quick question, are you saving it as a "Inkscape SVG" or a "Plain SVG"? I think the inkscape specific ones will glitch in some browsers. APL (talk) 02:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess you're talking about File:Cheltenham PA township seal.svg. Some points to note:
 * You've got text on a curve - the (rather old) renderer Mediawiki uses (which lags Inkscape and the libsvg renderer used by some browsers) doesn't handle this very well. That's why the "salubritas et erudito" part doesn't render.
 * You're using fonts called "GulimChe" and "SimHei" (as well as the generic identifier "sans"). GulimChe and SimHei aren't installed on the render servers, so the renderer substitutes something else, with a different appearance and different font metrics.  It's actually worse if I view it myself in Inkscape or Firefox, because I don't have these fonts either, yielding greatly different font metrics and some horrid overlapping. The list of fonts that are supported can be found at this page on meta.
 * To fix both of the above, you should open the SVG on your Inkscape (with those fonts installed), select the curved texts, and do path->object_to_path. That will make what were curvey-text objects into just complex polyline objects. Then upload that.
 * Browser foibles aren't really very relevant, because almost everyone who will view your picture will do so not as an SVG rendered by their browser, but as a PNG rendered by Mediawiki's SVG rasteriser. Most modern browsers have a better SVG renderer than Mediawiki, but it mostly doesn't come into play.
 * -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 09:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Qubbling with myself - the "ET" does render okay, because it's not text on a curve. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 09:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, shouldn't the last word of the motto be "eruditio" not "erudito" ? -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 09:16, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the very insightful answer! Re: 'erudito', I think that's how the original has it, but I'll double check. ike9898 (talk) 11:41, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Copying text from website with LOTS of links
So i have a website where you can send text messages to other people, and i want to copy all the information from it....

The problem is that the site has links to each message... So the main screen is a list of links with a "view next 20" or etc button...

So is there a way to copy the text on each page that each link points to without doing it manually? Ive googled for such things, but the nearest thing i can find is a Firefox plugin that copies the link text itself, and not text on the page the link goes to. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

74.117.245.62 (talk) 03:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Sounds like you want a web crawler. Httrack would be my recommendation. Make sure you specify specific filters in the "Scan rules" so that it only downloads the parts of the site you actually want, rather than absolutely everything. AvrillirvA (talk) 09:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

hmmmm, seems close to what i need... but if i understand correctly Httrack will basically download all the pages so i can view them offline. This would basically create the same issue i have already, which is that i only want certain text from each page, not a bunch of links where i have to click them to see the text in each. In other words, this texting site im at stores each message of a conversation as a separate link on the main page. What i want is to be able to make a text file with the entire conversation on it. If Httrack downloaded the whole site into http files to a specific folder though, i might be able to write a script to open each file and get the required text based on certain info that is the same in each page?

I hope i have been clear here, i feel that what im looking for isnt exactly routine. 74.117.245.62 (talk) 11:03, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

An additional reason i dont think this will work: You have to log in to view the list of text messages, and the httrack thing says it doesnt do dynamic links, which these are i believe, because the messages are for my account and you cant just get them from going to the texting site. 74.117.245.62 (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Chat site
Yesterday in yahoo chat, i was invited to join a site BuddyChatCams for live webcam chat. I have no prior experience in sites like this and want to know is sites like this safe and keep privacy of its members? Asking here to get serious answer. --Goblin 224 (talk) 03:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Probably not safe, no. At the very least I'd expect them to put advertising pop-ups on your computer. StuRat (talk) 04:29, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * It is also known that there are some nodes that automatically tune in to video chat channels, and record everything they see. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Windows easy transfer
I am replacing a laptop for another person. I want to move all of his photos, music, and programs to the new one. He only has two programs installed beyond Windows 7: Microsoft Office and Nero. Does Windows Easy Transfer transfer the programs as well as the other files? I see that I can do a system backup instead. Will that allow me to restore Office and Nero to the new laptop? -- k a i n a w &trade; 13:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * No. Windows Easy Transfer was supposed to be expanded to do this, but the Companion was never released. Laplink PCmover appears to be able to transfer applications. PickMeApp is a free tool. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I expected that there would be resistance to allowing people the ease of not repurchasing everything they've already purchased. -- k a i n a w &trade; 14:28, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Purchasing a second copy of software you already own would accomplish nothing. The install media would be identical. All you'd get is another license key, but the first key will work fine if you reinstall. The product licenses allow you to use the software on (at least) one machine at a time; it doesn't have to be the same machine forever. -- BenRG (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The issue is that it isn't my laptop and I don't want to purchase a second copy of software for another person. It isn't reasonable for me to get the software from the owner (or ask if he owns a legal copy of it). I am just attempting to replace his laptop that my toddler destroyed and, since the harddrive was salvageable, copy over all his software. -- k a i n a w &trade; 20:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could just physically move the old hard drive to the new machine. -- BenRG (talk) 20:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * That'll only work if the version of Windows DIDN'T come with the laptop (OEM licences can't be transferred to another computer like retail licences and if there is a change in motherboard it'll deactivate and should refuse to reactivate.  ZX81    talk  20:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You should be able to recover the licence keys using something like Magic Jelly Bean Nil Einne (talk) 15:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, a system backup and restore will transfer all installed software. Gadget850's "no" was for Windows Easy Transfer only. -- BenRG (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. System backup fails as 99%. I found that I need to install SP1 to make it work. Tried that, but it locks up on Stage 1 of 2 at 8%. I'm going to try to move the files and registry manually. Hopefully I can get something to work on the new laptop. I may just pop the old drive into the new laptop and hope I can handle all the device driver issues. -- k a i n a w &trade; 20:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows#HardDiskSupport http://mark.koli.ch/2009/05/howto-whole-disk-backups-with-dd-gzip-and-p7zip.html Or take this opportunity to switch to open source alternatives. &brvbar; Reisio (talk) 18:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * That won't work unless the new hard drive is precisely as large as the old one. I suppose you could make a partition of exactly the right size, then fill it with dd, then resize it to fill the whole disk, but it would be easier to use disk imaging software that has that functionality built in (which is to say, pretty much any disk imaging software except dd+gzip). Surely the best choice here is Windows 7's bundled backup software. -- BenRG (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Personally I would try what you wrote, and put the old laptop's hard disk physically in the new one; or if the new one came with a significantly bigger drive, give him that benefit by using Clonezilla or Norton Ghost to make an image copy of the old drive over to the new drive. As noted above, there might be driver issues, but that ought to be solvable.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

mouse pointers
how come the mouse pointer can go off the right and bottom sides of the screen but not the top and left?
 * The mouse's "hotspot", which is where the click is actually directed, is constrained to the screen. For the standard arrow mouse, this is the tip of the arrow, so the rest (whole) of the pointer can appear to go of the screen. For the hour-glass (busy) pointer, it is the waist of the hour-glass, so the hour-glass does not go off the screen. CS Miller (talk) 23:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * For the Windows Vista and Windows 7 circle busy-pointer, it is the center of the circle. Marthelati (talk) 04:32, 11 August 2011 (UTC)