Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 November 2

= November 2 =

PPT 2003 defaults
I use Office 2003 and I'd like the default choice for the speed of fade in the custom animation to be "very fast" instead of "medium" -- is that doable, or must I continually change it manually even though I always want it on very fast?  DRosenbach  ( Talk 02:20, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem to be a way to set a default as such. I think the closest you could get to this would involve writing a Visual Basic for Applications script that would change all 'fade' animations to have a 'very fast' animation speed, which you could run once every time you finished a presentation. On the other hand, I can't find anything in the Powerpoint VBA object model that relates to the animation speed, and recording a macro doesn't record any changes to the animation settings. Someone on a VBA/Powerpoint forum might be able to tell you if it's actually doable. Nevard (talk) 08:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I say this, but it's actually pretty trivial, and there's sample code here too. Nevard (talk) 08:15, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

ie6 privacy setting medium (default)
does it allow non-session cookies to last until expiry date? if not how do i enable that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.187.1 (talk) 05:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Administrative distance
Am I right in thinking that changing the administrative distance of a static route is done to give preference to one route over another? Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 09:33, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

How do I avoid spamming?
The thing is like this. My brother gave me a list of more than 3000 e-mails of people who brought him things in the past, and wants me to send e-mails with his new products, on a regular basis. But how do I do it? I tried bulk e-mail software at really low speeds, but got banned for spamming. I sent e-mails manually, but got banned as well.

I'm not asking for help to spam, I want to do things by the book. I want to send these 3000 e-mails without doing anything wrong, but I don't want to delay a month in doing so either (and I don't think the thing I need to do, send 3000 e-mails, to be illegal in itself). Is there, for example, an e-mail where the daily limit is actually visible somehow, so someone can send a number of mails and no more until a certain time, and adjust the delivery to these limits, rather than having no discernible limit and get banned when going beyond it? Or a page that combines e-mail with a bulk software, so someone can prepare the e-mail and the list, and the software adjust the speed by itself to follow the limits?

If possible, a free option may be better. I have no fear to work sending e-mails manually, if there was an easy way to be aware of the limits. Cambalachero (talk) 14:33, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There is an outbound send rate limits for free email providers (AOL, Hotmail, Gmail). 3,000 is definitely out of bounds for a free email provider. You'll have probably to buy a hosting plan and so you'll have your own email. If you have a legit business, that won't be a problem, since it will cost only a couple of dollars each month. 88.9.210.218 (talk) 14:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Or open 30+ free email accounts and send 100 emails from each one. 88.9.210.218 (talk) 15:19, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Amazon SES is a tool for programmatically sending large quantities of email. You'd need to write a bit of code to connect to it, or find a frontend someone else wrote. Paul (Stansifer) 16:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry if this isn't the answer you are looking for, but the simple answer is DON'T. Tell your brother that you will not piss off 3000+ other people by spamming them. Astronaut (talk) 16:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There are definitely good reasons to send 3,000+ emails: many companies have so much clients. 88.9.210.218 (talk) 17:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That may well be. But if those clients don't want the email it may be legal (depending on the jurisdiction), but it's still spam. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:19, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The content of the email can matter. It should be made very clear why you're sending the email, and there should be a mechanism for customers to "opt-out" and never get an email again. If your emails look unsolicited, there will be complaints, and your server will undoubtedly be put on a Real-time Blackhole List. (And if you don't own the sever yourself the owner of the server will stop you out of fear of being put on such a list.) APL (talk) 17:54, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Did you really mean to say they "brought him things in the past" or did you mean they "bought things from him" in the past ? What should have happened, at the time, was to ask them if they wanted to get emails with future offers.  If this wasn't asked, you have to assume they don't want such emails and will consider them SPAM.  This will result in you being blocked as a spammer and your former customers being angry at you.  Not a good plan. StuRat (talk) 20:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

HTML and CSS layout manager
Why do HTML and CSS have no notion of a Layout Manager as in Java and C#? That would definitely ease UI construction. For example &lt;div style="layout:border-layout;"> &lt;div style="layout-position:east;">...&lt;/div> &lt;div style="layout-position:center;">...&lt;/div> &lt;/div> Is it even possibile that the guys at the W3C have never thought about that in these years? --151.75.36.35 (talk) 16:51, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Why? Probably because they were pretty happy about just being able to link between text, which is still all one needs to have a useful website.  No, it's not possible: http://w3.org/tr/css3-layout/.  It's possible they don't have particularly good direction or organization in what all they still plan on adding to CSS, however. :p  Meanwhile using   (or  ) and combinations of ,  ,  , &   can get you pretty far pretty fast. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * HTML and CSS were not designed for applications. Because no viable internet application browser is available, users have bastardized HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create web-based applications. Now, you can float a div to the right or left. You can position a div anywhere you like. You can resize a div (even on the fly). But, you won't get a pure application design environment out of HTML and CSS because they are used for content layout. -- k a i n a w &trade; 18:17, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * CSS is no doubt a powerful language, and that there are many great UIs out there. What I'm saying is that its rules are unnecessarily complex. When I'm designing a web page, I have to open the spec, learn new rules and (oddly-named) CSS properties and values, and try different property combinations in the browser, just to see that the result is not what I thought of. This happens every time I need to make up a non-trivial UI.
 * So, what I'm asking now is: do you know whether there have been any discussions about this topic at the W3C or CSS draft team? Could you please provide the link? (whatever... mailing lists, rejected CSS drafts, etc.) --151.75.107.247 (talk) 18:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You had to do that for Java and C#, too; unfortunately all the information you already know is not always going to be applicable to new things you encounter. (and I've already linked to substantial W3C data on the topic) ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:20, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, Reisio, I was so concentrated in replying that I didn't even open that link. And now I see that there is a lot of material. So thanks a lot. :) --151.75.107.247 (talk) 22:23, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

What does this error message mean?
If I am getting this error message a couple times a week, like 8 or 9 times. What is going on? What is it? And how can I fix it so my computer doesn't die? I already upgraded to AVG 2012 and I was clean. Help anyone? If you can, let me know on my talk page if you've got a good answer. Thanks.Acdcrocks (talk) 17:18, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It could just be what it says, that a pure virtual function has been called by some imperfectly coded software, apparently having to do with your Motorola Wireless USB adapter. Check what version you have and then see if you can find a newer version.  All I could find was http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/products/WU830G/downloads/WU830G_Installation_software_RC33.exe and not even from motorola.com, which is a mess. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Googling WU830G runtime error may yield informative threads on forums. (I just looked at one, but it wasn't informative and I want to go to the shop right now so I'm not looking at any more. It shows you're not alone, at least, and it's almost certainly the driver's fault, and you should try to update the driver to a new version that isn't buggy.) Card Zero  (talk) 17:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * First, some theory explaining "what is going on;" and then, how to (maybe) fix it.
 * This is an error message from the device driver that controls your USB wireless adapter. I interpret the error-message as an indication that a required library has not been loaded - in other words, the installation of your driver is incomplete or has been corrupted.  The program is trying to run some feature, cryptically named "R6025", that the program thinks should exist - but the program can't find a version of the feature that works - so it's complaining that "R6025" is virtual.  Programmers use pure virtual functions to define a feature, but not to implement it.  This error probably means that the program relied on a shared library to implement the feature as a derived class; but the driver can't find that library, so it's falling back on the base-class that defines the feature, without any implementation.  Most programs would simply crash when such an error occurs; in fact, this program failed gracefully; but in any case, to fix it, you need to re-install your driver.
 * Because you aren't a programmer, the above technical information probably won't help you fix this problem (but it gives us insight into what is wrong). Re-install the driver for your wireless USB adapter.  If it's still broken, try installing a different version - older, or newer, from the manufacturer.  If it's still broken, the manufacturer's software isn't very well maintained, so consider replacing the hardware with a different device with better support.  If you really want to get this particular system working, try searching for shared libraries in the driver's installation directory - DLLs - and ensuring that they're on your PATH (see also, the search-path used on Windows to load DLLs).  Nimur (talk) 18:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, R6025 seems to be a standard message from the Visual C++ runtime module. Searching just on R6025 returns multiple "how to fix" results, although I'd first try to re-install the USB WiFi driver (or a newer one).  -- LarryMac  | Talk  20:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's just the error code that corresponds to the 'pure virtual function call' error. Nimur's explanation is on the mark- if a driver update doesn't fix it, this is just what one has to endure if one wishes to use a wireless adaptor less than three or four years old with Windows. Nevard (talk) 01:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * so just to clarify, if i do nothing, my computer isn't going to just crash for good and give me the blue screen of death, right?71.142.73.25 (talk) 20:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If you don't mind clicking away the dialog boxes and your wireless USB adaptor is working the way you want it to, then there's probably nothing to worry about. This could be a sign of impending hardware failure (of the USB wireless adaptor) that could eventually lead to a blue screen, but I doubt it very much. -- BenRG (talk) 01:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The "pure virtual function call" error message occurs when a class constructor or destructor calls (directly or indirectly) a method that's pure virtual in that class. It's not due to a missing library. This is a very low level error, like "access violation", and isn't helpful to anyone but the programmers who wrote this (buggy) piece of software. -- BenRG (talk) 01:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Let me clarify: it might be due to a missing library; this is not a guarantee. It's also possible that the code never worked (the virtual function was never implemented); that would mean the driver was distributed to customers in a broken form.  I find it more plausible that the code worked when it was tested by the original engineer (I'm giving the vendor benefit of the doubt, assuming basic competence in their Q.A. system); but the driver clearly doesn't work now.  How can that happen?  Computer software is, theoretically, deterministic!  The most probable cause I can think of is some environmental difference between the engineer's workstation and the broken machine ... which could be due to a missing file or a bad pathing problem.  But we can't rule anything out, we just don't have enough information to really diagnose this.  Nimur (talk) 18:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * where can i find a good software patch for this or update?71.142.73.25 (talk) 20:14, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Windows time
If Unix stores time internally as a 32- or 64-bit integer, as the number of seconds since 1 January 1970, then how does Windows store time internally? J I P &#124; Talk 17:26, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's one incomplete explanation from MSDN --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This explanation is good too: Broba (talk) 22:22, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * As stated (confusingly) in that article, the Windows equivalent of the POSIX time is "100-nanosecond intervals since January 1, 1601" (in a 64-bit integer). There's also a SYSTEMTIME structure which is like struct tm. For some reason the article also mentions a time format used internally by the FAT filesystem (and ZIP archives) that you're unlikely to encounter as a programmer, and the "tick count" returned by GetTickCount, which is not a date/time format at all. -- BenRG (talk) 19:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Note that it's incorrect to say that "Unix stores time internally" as seconds since 1-1-1970. That time format is part of the POSIX system-call interface, not the OS implementation. Any real OS will keep track of the time internally to much higher precision. -- BenRG (talk) 19:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Web Fonts in Firefox
I have Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7. I've heard that when you go to a page that uses @font-face, Web fonts are held in the cache of your browser for use only by the browser. I just want to look in my browser's cache folder and see the web font file. I went to a page that has such fonts that are not installed on my computer at 2:52 PM, then went to %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\ and sorted by time, but all I saw at or later than that time were sessionrestore.js and some cookies- and places.sqlite files, none of which seemed to indicate they had anything to do with web fonts. I'm not trying to install fonts, as I'm sure that wouldn't work if they're not open source, I just want to satisfy my curiosity of where the files are that make it so I can see text in a font that's not installed on my computer. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * On my system they're stored at, where A is a (presumably random) alphanumeric directory, and B is a (presumably random) alphanumeric font file.  I don't know exactly how the JavaScript-based web font APIs work, but for an ordinary @font-face including an ordinary font file, the file will be identical to the original, and you can install them locally if you want to.  There is no simple guarantee, however, as to the font's origin, quality, redistribution licensing, etc.. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:55, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, I don't even have a Cache folder in my xxxxxxxx.default folder. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 17:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * On Windows they appear to be stored at . ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)