Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 October 13

= October 13 =

Good web script for displaying a gallery like a book
I'm wondering if anybody could recommend a good script to use on my website to create a book-like appearance. I take pictures of pages of books, and so often there are over 100 pages to a "gallery", and so the traditional javascript/css gallery tends to lock up when I load it for 5 minutes while every image loads (although perhaps this is an error in my coding)... anyways the page is at http://www.ontariohighways.ca/1989dt.html

Barring the script having some little error that's causing the long delay, I need something that will allow me to have a sequence of numbered images to create something like a book. I'd prefer horizontal scrolling as opposed to vertical, more like a notebook. However, not loading all 100+ images at once is the main thing.

Any suggestions? -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  τ ¢  07:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Something that uses XHR. http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=Floydian&channels=##javascript would have recommendations. ¦ Reisio (talk) 10:02, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking for machine learning forums
Dear Wikipedians:

Are there any time-honoured forum/BBS, with lots of user participation, out there dedicated to the discussion of a sub-discipline of artificial intelligence known as machine learning?

Thanks a lot.

L33th4x0r (talk) 14:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It may be possible to sign up for the free version of this quarter's Stanford AI class. Normally, this course costs a lot of money and requires admission to the Stanford Center for Professional Development; but for a limited time only (it's sort of a pilot program), you can sign up for free - with limited (read: zero) support from TAs and professors.  However, there are thousands of people signed up who will undoubtedly be participating in web-based discussions and homework collaborations.  Read the terms of service - I'm pretty sure your presence is desired only because you provide a nice set of training-data for an artificial-intelligence-program to assist university teaching-assistants.  Nimur (talk) 15:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip. L33th4x0r (talk) 18:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Archiving a Facebook page to a disk or drive?
I work for the Region of Peel Archives, and I was hoping there might be a way for our public institution to archive Facebook Groups. There's a few groups with mature conversation about "remember this", "remember that". It's effectively an oral history of an elsewise poorly documented section of Brampton, Peel Village. And I'm sure there's many other groups for other areas of the region, that would be equally as valuable.

I know that Facebook offers "Download your account" as an option to backup personal data (news article), and recently I found a site that let me download all the images in any group or page that I joined/liked, but I can't find any backup solution for the text of groups. Whenever I search "archive Facebook group", all I get is articles about Facebook archiving its groups in the sense of making them uneditable.

Note that the aspect of archival data standards isn't too much of a concern, if all that exists is proprietary programs, that's better than nothing. Does anyone have any ideas? We're not into digital archiving enough to join Internet Archive's Archive-It feature, or similar. -- Zanimum (talk) 23:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It will help us to give you useful suggestions if you can give us a rough idea of the amount of data you want to archive. If it's only a few dozen pages, it's probably worth getting a volunteer to "copy/paste" the contents.  If we are talking about thousands of entries, we probably need a little more robust technical solution.  How much content are you planning to archive?  Do you want to set up automatic archiving to capture new updated content?  Nimur (talk) 00:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, it's strings of comments, probably in the hundreds. Thing is, Facebook condenses comments, resorts threads of comments based on the most recent, it would be somewhat challenging to copy-paste. Well, not challenging, just time consuming. We have 1.2 people right now (I'm the .2!) and our volunteers are all technically challenged, to the point where manually archiving might not be easy enough. (I tried literally saving the page as a file through Chrome, but you can't expand the comments if they weren't already expanded.) I'm hoping there's something out there that I can just click and save. I don't need it to automatically check the group and archive, even if I started from scratch every month, that would be fine. I just fear someday Facebook will delete the comments entirely. --  Zanimum (talk) 00:46, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Retrieving Password in Thunderbird 6
Is there a way to see what my password is in Thunderbird 6? I have recently purchased an android tablet, and I can't register it without my Google account and password. Having my own domain complicates things, as I am the administrator and I am told to contact the administrator - like they are following Vista's horrible steps. KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  23:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's a really horrid suggestion (assuming your Thunderbird 6 installation still works): disable SSL/TLS on the POP3 or IMAP connection, run Wireshark to trace your own traffic, and check your mail. Then search the recording for the HELO greeting, after which the password will be exchanged in plaintext. A cautious person would then reenable SSL/TLS, login to Google with the password, and change it. Password stores like KeePass are also a sensible idea, to avoid being in such unfortunate circumstances in future. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That's risky, though - somebody could intercept your password during the brief period of time between your self-eavesdropping and before you change it. If you really want to do this, you could set up a "cleanroom" network environment (hosting your own server, who spoofs as the Google email-server entirely using computers you control), so that plaintext password is never transmitted across an untrusted network... but, the practical details of pulling this off are pretty unwieldy.  Nimur (talk) 00:18, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Not much risk if he turns SSL/TLS back on and changes his password within a few minutes. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That's true. Another approach would be running a trivial POP3 server like this one (comment out lines 53 and 54 for simplicity) and add a line to the hosts file to send mail.kagetorasdomain.com (or whatever) to 127.0.0.1. You still need to disable security, but no wiresharking is needed. It's best not to change the Thunderbird server setting, because Thunderbird may decide it's a new server and prompt for the password (which you don't know). I'd very strongly recommend backing up the Thunderbird profile before doing anything, as it sounds like it's the only place your password exists (which is a very precarious position to be in). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:51, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

So there is no easy way to do it? Thunderbird's password manager can't be broken into? KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  00:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The password is obviously in there (in one of the sqlite files in the profile) but they obfuscate it, to make the task you're doing at least somewhat difficult. I don't think I'd trust whatever recovery tools fell out of Google for that task. A desperate man could compile Thunderbird himself and have it printf the password. Fun, huh? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:58, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant. This means I need to get all my apps downloaded to the PC, and then transferred to the tablet through USB..... This is annoying. Cheers, guys. I'll see what I can do. KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  01:02, 14 October 2011 (UTC) EDIT - Actually, the problem is, I am getting the message 'there are no Android phones associated with this account', even though it is not a phone app I am trying to download, and I am using a tablet, and I have registered my tablet with a different account from the one I have just had problems remembering the password for. Apparently this problem is widespread. Are there any solutions? KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  01:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above answers seem unnecessarily complicated depending on your requirements. First it sounds like you are using Windows which helps. Next, since Thunderbird is a reasonably popular app, there is almost definitely a large number of password recovery apps for it. These may be closed source, so no one can review the source code. And theoretically they could steal your password and send it to a master server run by whoever made the app. Or worse, they could install a keylogger and wait until your enter your credit card or log on to your bank to steal money. But of course, the same is true for any other app published by anyone where you either can't be bothered to/can't (whether because it isn't available or you lack the technically knowledge to understand it) review the source code of and can't be sure other people you trust have sufficiently reviewed it, so it's not a unique risk in any way and ultimately comes down to whether you trust the people who published the software. Many malware apps may warn the user of password recovery applications, but if they are a decent app they should also make it clear why they are warning, i.e. because it is a password recovery app which could be used for malicious purposes. (Microsoft Security Essentials does.)
 * I myself have used utilities from NirSoft before, even though they may be a redlink they have existed for a long time and are not exactly unknown       . But whether you want to trust programs from them or the mail password recovery program in particular is of course still up to you, I'm not making guarantees it won't do something harmful. (It doesn't need admin access, as it shouldn't if you don't need it for the password to be used. And potentially you could set up a VM, install Thunderbird and the copy your profile over, check that it's working to reduce confusion, copy over the password recovery utility disable all network access and any other risky access of the VM, and run the password recovery utility, write down the password and delete the VM if your paranoid although depending on your technical ability this may not be much easier then other suggestions above.)
 * Unfortunately their mail password recovery utility mentions Thunderbird 5.x support but no higher. Having tested it with Thunderbird 7 I can say it doesn't work with that so it's possible it doesn't work with Thunderbird 6. You can try downgrading Thunderbird, but there's no guarantee this will work and you may want to consider backing up your profile just in case.
 * I am confused about your password-reset dilemma. If you are using Google Apps, then the process to recover your password is listed here . You need to start from the admin control panel which is https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/YOUR.DOMAIN.NAME rather then a normal login page but if you control the domain there should be no question about your ability to reset the password. The easiest scenario is if you still have access to the secondary (non Google) mail but even if you don't, you do have the option of verifying you own the domain to recover the password. I have never done it myself (or if I did it was several years ago) but a quick test on my domain (without going all the way to resetting the password) shows it seems to work. Remember that Google Apps is primarily intended for organisations, you can have multiple accounts, and by default only the first account will be admin, any other new accounts are not admins. So the advice to contact your administrator at a normal login screen makes sense since there's no way they can know if you are an admin (well after you've tried to log in with an admin account they will know although they probably don't want to reveal that info so easily). And I suspect they believe none of this should be a big deal to administrators.
 * P.S. I would consider 'phone' means 'any device using Android' in the above context, so the fact you have a tablet is likely irrelevant. You can of course suggest they update the text to reduce confusion. If you have associated your tablet with whatever account you remember the password for and are trying to access apps from your PC browser, make sure you are logged in to that account when trying to download apps. If you are unsure about which account you are logged in to, go to some Google page where you can check like gMail and check or simply log out and log in to the correct account.
 * I would however suggest you try using the Google's Android Market app on your tablet (not via the browser on your tablet or PC). If your tablet lacks the Google's Android Market app, perhaps this is the problem, I believe Google does require manufacturers to have an agreement with them if they want access to the marketplace so as far as Google is concerned, you don't have any device associated with that account which allows you to download apps and I expect this isn't likely to change anytime soon. I admit, I'm surprise you had the option to associate a Google account with your tablet in that case, or did you just mean you used it to log in to some of the services like gMail?
 * You could try an alternative marketplace, a quick search finds and.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 03:05, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * BTW, the TL version of above would be 1) There probably are programs which could recover your password. There's one  which I personally would trust which may do the job but your TB may be too new. 2) In any case, you should have no problem recovering your password if you control the domain, start here  if using Google Apps. 3) It may be your lack of access to the Android Market is intentional, in that case you're going to need to use an alternative. Nil Einne (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2011 (UTC)