Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 November 15

= November 15 =

Intel tablet that has EFI
I am looking for a tablet PC (just touchscreen kind) that is Intel based and uses EFI. I want to write a bootloader that is larger than 512 bits because I want to make one that has a lot of features like those found on phones (signature check, flashing firmware). Something that doesn't adhere to the standard restrictions on the boot sector where I can install a bootloader that can do numerous things. Also, I would like it to use flash memory and not a hard drive. --Melab±1 &#9742; 02:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * All bootloaders are larger than 512 bytes. On a traditional IBM PC, the 512 byte first sector just loads the rest of the bootloader and jumps to it. With EFI, you just put the bootloader in the EFI System partition and the BIOS loads it for you. -- BenRG (talk) 02:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ehh, that is not exactly what I am talking about. I particularly like the way mobile phones boot up—the bootloadet does the initialization without relying on a BIOS (or in this case, a boot ROM), the first chunk of code that is loaded is larger than 512 bytes, and the first sector can contain only code instead of requiring an arbitrary amount of space be used for a specialized purpose (the partition table in the MBR). --Melab±1 &#9742; 04:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Does anyone else have anything to add? --Melab±1 &#9742; 04:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Permanent cloud storage solutions?
First, the lower the cost the better.

I need to find a way to store the entire sum of my hard drives onto a cloud. Google already does it with documents, called Google Docs, but AFAIK, I can only upload one file at a time.

I need a method that will let me move many at once, and automatically, even if I have to leave it running while I sleep. This is so that I need not pay Geek Squad over $500 (with $100 nonrefundable) to recover everything off of a failed drive, the next time a failure event happens.

Even though it's a fair form of insurance, I'd call cloud storage a holdover; a decent foot-bridge if you will, until SSDs become affordable (At $1/GB or less.) Then with two forms of data insurance, I'll not have to worry about data loss and expensive recovery services ever again.

But what I need for you to recommend me is a cloud storage solution that will not delete all my files if I decide not to renew the solution's membership. (I would call the service fair if, and only if it just "locks" my files and doesn't allow me to make another upload until I renew.) --70.179.174.101 (talk) 05:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Even if they just lock your files, without deleting them, someday, if you are not a client anymore they'll get rid of them. Anyway, web-hosting is so cheap nowadays that you could host some gigas for $3 a month. I suppose that if your data are important that would be a fair solution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.67.30 (talk) 13:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * $3/month/gigabyte? I have about 300 GB to backup. What service were you referring to? Also, I need a cheaper service that still works. Please suggest soon, anybody. Thanks. --70.179.174.101 (talk) 15:52, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of online backup services, you could start with Comparison of online backup services although there are a whole lot of options likely not mentioned there, e.g. Amazon S3 but if you don't have much idea of what you're doing you may want to look for something which provides a resonable level of ease of use including protection against user error (some of the online backup services use Amazon S3). As 88 said, there's not much chance you'll find a service which will keep your files for ever even when you don't pay. Although some may give you a period where they will keep the files if you get behind in payments which I guess may be worth looking in to if your that hard up because of students loans or whatever. As for the cost, particularly if you don't have much money consider whether you really need to backup 300GB or you can be more selective in what you backup. Any unmodified downloads for example don't generally need to be backed-up.
 * Also SSDs don't protect you against all forms of dataloss, for example they provide little protection against user error which it sounds like could be a big problem here. In fact because of the way SSDs work (wear levelling, TRIM etc), I wonder whether they might actually be at bigger risk for user error, since recovery after you've screwed up could easily be more difficult (you may get a few reallocated sectors with normal magnetic HDDs but this isn't the same level). BTW, for nitpickers, yes wear levelling may in theory mean it takes even longer for the data to be overwritten, the difficulty is finding the data in the first place. I don't have much experience with recovery from an SSD but it does sound to me like it's going to be a lot more complicated then from a normal magnetic HD.
 * P.S. Do consider using multiple backups for your most important data. For example as a student, does your university provide any form of storage? You could use this for some of your most important stuff particularly uni related stuff. Obviously don't store anything which would be unwelcome by your uni.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 18:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

What are some low-cost methods to recover data from a wiped hard drive?
Saturday, 8:49 AM, I fell asleep after working all night, business-as-usual, on my laptop. Everything seemed fine and dandy.

I forgot to close the lid all the way.

1:41 PM, I wake up to a completely black, unresponsive screen. I decide to restart like I always would if something cannot respond. I see a pre-start screen saying that "Windows (7) failed to start" so I chose the "startup repair" option. It gets me to another black screen, so I knew something serious is going down.

Eventually I get to choose the Safe Mode options, but I see a blue screen that appears for one second before starting.

Going to "Repair My Computer" and clicking on System Restore doesn't work on safe mode, is what a pop-up told me. (Is that even true?) Then when I went to Safe Mode's startup repair function, it gave me "Searching for Problems" and I knew it was going to take a long time, so I left for the night, and returned the following morning. It was still on that same screen so it seemed hopeless.

I'm eventually directed to do a "parallel install" on my secondary hard drive. When I choose the partitions to do the install from, while I choose the "D" drive, I see that the "C" drive has 215 GB available of 215 GB total. I knew this had to be an error; it sounded like I wiped the drive I care too much for. I never authorized a reformatting or anything of that nature, and the OS install went to my "D" drive.

After the install finished, I went back into Windows again (with the icons all gone but the Recycle Bin. What was the "D" drive was now called the "C" drive on the "My Computer" window, and the original "C" drive did not show up. I right-clicked its Start Menu icon, went to "Manage" and found my former primary drive, now unnamed. I gave it a letter - Drive "B." Then it showed up under "My Computer," but the fluke still stood true: The drive still appeared empty.

I've spent countless hours on so much work; a good chunk of my life history was on that drive, and apparently a hidden software update made "keeping the lid open while sleeping" the command needed to "format" the disk.

(A diagnostic on the Dell Inspiron 1720 gave me the code "2000-0146" for that drive, so I'm receiving two new free ones.)

Best Buy's Geek Squad said that they could take the drive to a laboratory, and they'll use their award-winning equipment to recover as much as possible, but a $100 deposit is nonrefundable. If they're successful, the rest of the charge would bring the total to "$500 and up."

Even though Best Buy's card is going to let the payments be "18 months same as cash," I'm sure that lower-cost solutions are possible. '''Could a data-recovery software be installed to my secondary drive so that it works on the primary drive? What are all the great ways you know?'''

(And as a reminder, just so I don't see a loss of my precious data ever again, someone needs to share a great cloud storage service. Thanks again.) --70.179.174.101 (talk) 05:19, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Reposting, changing the title and using repeated characters will not change the basic operation of the reference desk as noted at the top of the page - - When will I get an answer? -> It may take several days. -- LarryMac | Talk  18:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * First - I hesitated to answer this because I simply haven't had the time to read a novel about your life experiences just to get to the question. It appears that you want to know how to get data off a drive that has been corrupted or formatted or something similar. Second - you state "cheap", but don't define that. For data recovery, anything under $1000 is cheap. It appears you are defining it as around $0. If so, you won't find anything. Third - what I'd do is pop the drive in a Linux box, mount it, and read the data directly off the device block by block. Then, I'd try to rebuild it - which is hard because Windows loves to fragment files. So, you pretty much have to know what you are looking for. You can't just poke around and see what's there. Of course, having over 30 years programming experience makes it a viable option for me. If someone asked me to do it for them, I'd ask for around $1000 to spend a week or so searching around their drive.
 * Now, onto the simple question you asked: I use Amazon's S3 service to store stuff I don't want to lose. It is easy to use and, in my opinion, cheap. I have photos, papers, and the like from as far back as 1992 stored on it. I spend under $5/month. -- k a i n a w &trade; 18:15, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * To answer your other question, Iwould guess you should probably at least use a solid state hard drive (much less prone to failure and corruption) and a backup external hard drive (backup your files regularly to both the backup external hard drive and a flash drive). Heck froze over (talk) 18:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * We've discussed this before in relation to other users, there are plenty of tools you can use to try to recover data. I've used stuff from R-TT before but most of these sort of tools are fairly similar. They will look for traces of the original file system and if they don't find anything they can look for files by signature. While you can work with the original drive, this is a bad idea if there's any possibility the drive itself is damaged which it sounds like is the case here. Even if it's not, it's risky since you could screw up and cause further damage by writing to the drive. As Kainaw it's better to first read the entire device and try to recover from that image. Having said that, from your description you would probably be better off paying someone or at least begging for the help of a technically competent RL friend. Hopefully this isn't too rude but while many of these tools are fairly user friendly and reading a disk isn't hard, if you are talking about your 'C' drive and 'D' drive when asking for help, you probably don't know enough to avoid causing further damage or to effectively recover data. (Are you even sure you actually have to drives and you didn't just have 2 partitions?) If the hard drive is physically damaged, there are of course things a professional recovery lab can do to try and recover data like take the drive apart in a clean room although that tends to cost more then a $1000 from what I've heard. Nil Einne (talk) 19:13, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * GNU ddrescue is free and part of the free tool suite Ubuntu rescue remix. I've not had the occasion to use this yet, but it's highly regarded, and there are various tutorials and documentations online. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I use MozyHome for cloud backup. I haven't had to recover from a hard disk crash but I did once restore a file that got messed up through user error, and it worked fine.  I don't know anymore if I would recommend it &mdash; when I signed up, it was $5 per month for unlimited storage, and I read now at our Mozy article that this plan has been abandoned, and pricing is now based on the amount of data stored.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:10, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

information of mac
i want to know that how mac is inbuild the hardware ? and how they work when mac is slow down? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.211.92.36 (talk) 10:24, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I do not undertand your question at all. What is the meaning of the word "inbuild". And what does the word "they" refer to? 220.239.44.187 (talk) 12:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Does our article Macintosh hardware help? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I need a session restorer like SessionBuddy on Chrome, but that can store my sessions in a cloud.
Since a random kaputting "wiped" my hard-drive, pending a $500+ data restoration from Geek Squad, I need to find a session-saving app like SessionBuddy, but that also stores the sessions in a cloud (that is retrievable by a login.)

Until then, I can only open my webpages by memory, and I had about 59-61 tabs open before the drive failed.

So what Chrome app saves and restores my sessions in this manner, but also to a cloud (hence is immune to hard drive failures?)

Because of recent hardware failures, I need to store everything I can to a cloud-based platform, and hope to get this done as soon as I can because I need to return my failed hard drives to Dell as soon as the new ones come in. Thank you kindly, --70.179.174.101 (talk) 12:19, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * TabCloud for Chrome and Firefox can apparently do this. Or you could save your tabs to local disk and then automatically back that up. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:19, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Compositing Portraits
In certain places, I have seen photo booths that allow couples to take a photo each, and then get it composited, so that they can see what their future child might look like when (s)he's their age. Is there any free software (for Windows or Linux) that can do this sort of thing? I'd be interested in putting photos of my entire family together to see if I can come up with an average. KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  13:52, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There's an online tool - MorphThing. The main Morphing article has links to a couple other programs, not sure if they're free.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Photo taken of backwards E
Referring back to this question, I just saw it at the library, and asked the woman at the reference desk to come look. She reported it to the tech people, and I asked her to take a photo with her cell phone. However, she doesn't want to email me the photo. She intends to show the photo to the tech people. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 14:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Good times. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am very interested in this mystery E that I have been reading about the past few weeks. I can't wait to see it. Who are the tech people, and how will she tell you their response if she won't email you? TheGrimme (talk) 19:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I wonder why they don't want to email it? In the meantime, maybe you could try drawing it in mspaint and upload the drawing to imgur, someone here may be able to identify it from that AvrillirvA (talk) 19:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know. I'm coming back to this particular library in two weeks and I guess I'll ask the woman then. I don't understand why she can't email it, but if the photo still exists somewhere and there's a way to send it to those of you who want to see it, I'll try to do it.


 * Meanwhile,there was a follow-up question. I mentioned seeing an hourglass and that was true this time too. I don't know what determines why I see that and why I see the backwards E, except that when I was seeing the hourglass and moved the cursor down to the taskbar, that's one time that it changed. I called the woman when I had a pop-up ad and something I had to click on to unfreeze everything (something like "When you send information to the Internet ... Do you wish to continue?"), and that time, the E disappeared when I clicked. Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I decided to try asking her again. She is going to email me, but her phone is now in her car. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * She may simply not feel comfortable giving out her email address to a stranger who comes to her library. If she has access to the official library email account, she could send it there and then forward it to you from there after having taken her contact details out of the header.  Dismas |(talk) 02:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Is it the existential quantification character ?--Shantavira|feed me 08:41, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I have the photo now. What should I do with it?


 * Dismas, this woman knows me. I've been coming to this particular library nearly once a week for as long as she's been working there. I don't know how long she has been there, but it's less than 10 years because I still remember the person she replaced teaching me copy and paste when I couldn't get a newspaper article to print out. Turned out I needed printable version, but copy and paste is ultimately cheaper. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 16:24, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm at a different library. The photo is in the computer although it won't display. I've sent an email to User:TheGrimme but there was no way to add attachments. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 16:35, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've sent you my email address via email to your wikipedia email. Most webmails should allow you to add attachments. The wikipedia email function does not but if someone emails you you have their email address and can then hopefully send attachments from your actual email account. Nil Einne (talk) 16:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I can't identify it (I've tried a quick upload to TinEye or Google Image but it's not the sort of thing they're really designed for and perhaps cleaning it up a bit would help) but I've uploaded a cropped version here . It contains what appears to be the whole icon but lacks text which may be useful to give people an idea of the size, however the text would reveal what website you were browsing so I won't upload that without permission.
 * BTW the bit about the 'pop-up ad' sounds like this dialog box which is not a popup ad but a standard part of IE that probably 99.9999% of people disable (outside of a library, simply make sure 'don't show this again' is checked should be enough) and I think is disabled by default nowadays anyway.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 17:24, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I was trying to guess at the size from the cropped image. It is hard to tell. Does it cover a lot of the screen? Is it about 1 character tall, two characters, three...? -- k a i n a w &trade; 17:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I am curious to know if this is related to a specific website. The library, based on earlier questions, has a very old and unpatched (and heavily virus laden) copy of Windows and Internet Explorer. The old IE browsers cannot display PNG transparencies. They display black where it should be transparent. Also, they do not support CSS absolute alignment well. So, if I were to make a page in which I want to "white out" a spot on the page, by having a png with two white rectangles and the rest transparent, the old IE would show an out-of-place image that has two white rectangles and the rest of the image would be black. -- k a i n a w &trade; 17:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * (EC with below) Sorry I should have clarified. The 'cursor'? seems fairly large, the height of the black thing is between 2-3 rows of text (the photo doesn't include the entire monitor but I presume the text wasn't that large). I've looked at the specific URL and can't see anything that would be causing it, the cursor occurs in an odd position between two paragraphs of text and doesn't look at all like a flaw in the page, it actually looks very odd. I did try on IE earlier but couldn't be bothered digging up a copy of IE6 yet and I don't think those IE test sites are likely to show the specific problem anyway if it somehow is related to the cursor. From the earlier comments, it sounds a lot like Vchimpanzee would be fine with me uploading the image (it's just a news article so nothing sensitive) but I'd prefer to receive confirmation first, unfortunately since their internet usage is I believe sporiadic this may take a while if they've already left for the day. (I did belatedly ask by e-mail to hopefully ensure they get my message next time they're online.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The extra pixel width at the ends of the first two parts, the fact that it disappears when you click anything, and that it only happens on this one library computer make me think it might be some kind of hardware graphics glitch unique to that computer. AvrillirvA (talk) 18:41, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I was going to add my two cents that I thought it looked like garbage, too. Kainaw's lack-of-transparency idea was interesting.  VChimpanzee, were you able to go to Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers and verify whether the backwards E is anywhere in the list?  Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:04, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's not really an exact fit, but the E does seem somewhat similar to the E in the Dell logo. Is this happening on a Dell computer? TheGrimme (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The Grimme and Comet Tuttle: I'll check on the type of computer next time I'm there, but that'll take two weeks. It is just the one computer that has that. I couldn't get on the Internet at home yesterday because something went wrong with the keyboard. I took it to the store and they solved the problem quickly, and I'm just now reading this.


 * Nil Einne: I am a he, and it's fine if you want to upload the whole image. It's a Washington Post article by Hank Stuever, and the site was being very temperamental at the time. The list of Hank Stuever's articles is very slow to come up--I mean if the entire Internet were like that at one time, people would celebrate the day dial-up as we now know it was invented. And so an hourglass or that E was always on the screen.


 * Kainaw: I don't recall how many of my earlier questions were about the library where this particular problem occurred. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 23:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * One more response to Nil Einne: I couldn't remember what pop-up ad I was referring to. But clicking on the dialog box before the woman got there made the backwards E go away and I had to wait until the Washington Post problems came back. The "Do you wish to continue" dialog box (which I don't think appeared at that time) does happen to come up every single time and I should tell them to find a way to disable it. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 23:43, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Full photo here . That's the full file I received BTW, 1280x960 242,273 bytes. It has EXIF (no GPS or such info) so I presume is the original file from the librarians camera. Nil Einne (talk) 00:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That definitely looks like a graphics glitch and not anything meaningful AvrillirvA (talk) 00:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It could be the hourglass becomes that E under some circumstances. I thought something was happening to block me from doing what I wanted. At least now it's out there. I'll report back if the people at the library have anything to say about it, and if I get there early enough, I don't have to use THAT computer, but I'll check on its model and software.


 * Thanks everyone. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:06, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to (or a website that will) map possible destinations, given starting point and distance?
I know that the short answer is "There are infinity destinations," but please hear me out. Also, this is all in fun. Please no debates about the merits of Mormonism. Thanks. My church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is planning to build a temple soon in the Hartford, Connecticut area. I keep a spreadsheet list of information about these temples, including location, chronology, physical characteristics, etc. Specific locations for new temples are very seldom (if ever) announced before all legal and administrative requirements have been met, but not long ago, in a church conference, one of the speakers accidentally leaked the temple's future location. I wasn't at the conference, but the brother-in-law of a friend of mine was, and for whatever reason, he's not willing to re-leak the information. However, he did tell my friend that the site is 60.9 miles away (driving) from his home. I have his address but am keeping that to myself. So I know where to start from, how far to travel, and in generally what direction. Is there a website that will show possible destinations, say, within a certain radius of a certain point? I found this and other similar sites, but they're for travel in a straight line, not driving. I have Microsoft MapPoint on my computer and it has a similar feature, but it's for time, not distance. No urgent need to know, but would LOVE a response. Thanks much!  Kingsfold  (Quack quack!)  16:49, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2856992/google-maps-given-a-point-how-to-find-all-points-at-a-given-road-distance ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You could do this manually with a little time. Just use Google Maps or Mapquest, pick your home as the start, and a location you think will be close to that distance, in the desired direction, as the destination.  This gives you the distance.  Pick destinations closer or farther until you get the desired distance.  Repeat this procedure for other directions, if desired. StuRat (talk) 19:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * True. Within the link that Reisio provided above, there's an app that comes pretty close to what I had in mind, but it only has milestone distances at 30, 20, and 10 miles, etc.  I tried to trim off the first 30.9 or 40.9 miles of the route (leaving 30 or 20 miles exactly), but couldn't really get that exact on the map.  After a bit more creative Googling, this links seems to do exactly what I want it to do.  However, the other issue is that I don't really know what land the Church owns in the area, which I suppose is a key piece of information. (Some people are thinking, "Uh... yeah.")  Thanks.  Kingsfold   (Quack quack!)  13:22, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

gami.ng programming languages
am I right in guessing that proffessional game programmers use languages like C when programming games? What (other?) languages would they use? (I don't think all the hits on google have proffessional grade languages).Heck froze over (talk) 18:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * C and C++ for a great deal of development. C# for Microsoft XNA. Java for Android.  Objective C for iOS.  Lua is used pretty commonly as a scripting language inside games. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:45, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * ActionScript for Flash games and (bubbling under) javascript for HTML5 games. For the backend (server) part of server-based games like MMORGS, just about anything could be used, but I'd expect to see a lot of Java there, and some Python and PHP, and C++ for some parts. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Finlay McWalter pretty much nailed it. If you can be more specific about what your target platform is, we can provide a better response. TheGrimme (talk) 19:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Two important ones I forgot: a small number of people, on the fancier Direct3D/OpenGL games, will code the shaders themselves, in GLSL or HLSL; they're not far from C. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I was thinking computer games such as World of Warcraft, Runescape, and flash games. Heck froze over (talk) 02:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * According to this Stack Overflow question, World of Warcraft is written in C++ and Lua, and according to this Yahoo Answers question, Runescape is in Java. Note that there isn't really any limit to the number of different languages that can be used to create a given piece of software, and often people have designed a new language specifically for a particular software project (for example, I think the WEB programming language was developed for TeX, and many businesses have their own in-house languages).  Generally different languages are better suited to different tasks - so, for example, lower-level languages like C might be used for processor-intensive parts of an application (like rendering 3D graphics), while higher-level languages like Lua might be used for implementing complex features that are more difficult to code, but don't require as much processing (perhaps artificial intelligence). 130.88.73.65 (talk) 12:01, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * A big reason companies use languages like Lua for game logic is it's easier for people who aren't professional programmers to write behaviour in it, and there are fewer opportunities for disaster if they mess up. This allows the implementation of higher level game behaviour (e.g. in Wow the logic of a given quest) to be done by a game designer (someone whose job spans a wide range of skills including storytelling, game design, scenario implementation, and maybe creating the environmental meshes and textures for a specific area too).  Lua isn't unique in this (and other games have used things like QuakeC, UnrealScript, or Python) but Lua seems to have gained a foothold in games (and really not anywhere else). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Flash games are written in ActionScript --91.150.127.105 (talk) 14:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Do people buy or download those languages? Heck froze over (talk) 19:06, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Uninstall Android Apps
Is there an application that will allow me to uninstall android apps that come preloaded on the phone, that I can't install from my phone? Root it? C T J F 8 3 19:24, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Without rooting, you cannot uninstall preinstalled apps that don't have the uninstall option in the application manager. -- k a i n a w &trade; 19:39, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Personally I'd use Titanium Backup as it is a popular application and will do this quite easily, but you'll need to be rooted first (to be able to remove system installed apps any application doing this needs root). After uninstalling a system application you might see some force closed errors from the application just removed and these are normal. Just reboot and it'll be gone properly then.  ZX81    talk  19:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Any specific program or whatever to easily root EVO 4G? C T J F 8 3  19:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * http://unrevoked.com/ ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:44, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, C T J F 8 3  12:58, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Dealing with video game lag
Here's the scenario:

I've just made it to the end of the final level and am in a face-off with the boss, when Microsoft helpfully decides it's time to check for updates. My screen locks up for a few seconds, and when it comes back the boss is gloating over my now-mangled corpse. Obviously, disabling automatic updates would help, but there's an almost infinite number of other issues which can cause periodic lag. So, my question is, can video games be made to detect a lag, and suspend the game until they again can get the resources they need, rather than continuing to play with me blinded ? I play mostly Flash games, but I'm curious about this problem in all forms of games. StuRat (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The core of the issue is, "did the game programmer design the game-program to handle that type of system-level interruption?" There are technical reasons why that might be nearly impossible in a Flash game - a flash environment doesn't know when the system pops up with a message.  (Flash is a web-browser plugin, so it doesn't - and shouldn't - have privileged access to system information).
 * On iOS, if the user-space application or game must be interrupted for any reason, the programmer receives an Objective C message (applicationWillResignActive). The application-programmer may choose to pause, stop the game, save the game, or do anything else that seems reasonable.
 * Not all operating systems inform user-applications when they become inactive or interrupted. (It's a concept that doesn't actually make a lot of sense in Windows, because a user may be multitasking, intentionally "interrupting" the program, and still expects the program to behave as if nothing happened).  Most desktop operating systems at least use something to the effect of "we're about to quit your program forcefully - this is your last chance to do something about it."  Nimur (talk) 19:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've also had the problem the other way, where I'm loading a large page, and it keeps popping up a window telling me it's running slowly and asking me if I want to continue. They need to have more intelligence to say "if the user is loading a web page, it doesn't much matter if it's interrupted, just load it when resources become available, but, if they are playing a game, don't keep trying to play when the resources aren't up to the task". StuRat (talk) 20:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * With Flash, it is possible to detect the actual rendered frames-per-minute, which could be interpreted as lag and be set to turn it into a "pause" state. But it would require a programmer to care about that and think it was the right response. I'm not sure it would be able to detect a "whatever was lagging it has stopped" state while in a paused state, which could get pretty irritating... --Mr.98 (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think I saw some Flash games that could detect when the game lost focus and paused automatically, so this could be used as well. But again, this requires the cooperation from the creator of the game. -- 91.150.127.105 (talk) 14:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're looking for a practical solution, and this happens fairly often for you, just boost the priority of the process you're using in Task Manager. Might be a pain if you're dealing with a Flash game in one of a hundred Google Chrome processes, but works fine for most stuff. Nevard (talk) 04:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me just give a link to real-time computing, which discusses the issues that arise here -- they are important in many practical contexts. Looie496 (talk) 19:03, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The worst thing that can happen when you are playing online games is lag. Imagine you are in the middle of a massive battle, about to take out the whole enemy team with a perfectly aimed rocket and then your computer lags. Do not cause your team to lose because your computer is lagging. Here are some tips on how to get rid of lag while playing online PC games. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linda901212 (talk • contribs) 02:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Pie chart on users for an article
Is there a method to get a pie chart (colored and percentages) that shows the portions of what each editor did during the lifetime of a particular article, like Otium?--Doug Coldwell talk 20:08, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This has a lot of information. Is it suitable? Note that the count of users is at the bottom. -- k a i n a w &trade; 20:20, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that will work.


 * Not how you could even define "portion of what each editor did". Number of edits ?  That would be easy, but, of course, some edits are a single character while others add pages of material.  How about deletions ?  Do they count as a contribution ?  Would you include contributions which were later removed ? StuRat (talk) 20:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * StuRat - I see your points.--Doug Coldwell talk 13:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Something like doing "svn blame" first and then counting the lines each user has written that are still used in the article? --91.150.127.105 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC).