Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 April 1

= April 1 =

Issue with Java (PJIRC) and fullscreen games
I use PJIRC to communicate to friends on my IRC server. The problem is if i play a full-screen game, i come back to see my IRC applet is all black and unusable. This is very annoying as i have to refresh the page, and i might have gotten unlogable private messages while i was playing. Is there any way to stop this black/unusable applet issue?

137.81.118.126 (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I know this doesn't answer your question, but a good IRC client should be able to log private messages so if your IRC client does not allow that, you may want to consider another one. That IRC client may also not suffer from such a flaw when you use a program in full screen. Also unless you are using Direct Client-to-Client, all messages go thru the server, even ones between users. So if it's your IRC server, you could just get the server to log messages, although I strongly suggest you inform your users. Nil Einne (talk) 12:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I prefer to fix the problem before switching clients, if possible. Also, it is not my server. 137.81.118.126 (talk) 14:34, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Windows XP laptop battery

 * the machine is a Advent 4211 (ie MSI Wind U100 clone which has some reported issues with "flashing orange light" - some obviously idiot user, some not..

I have an orange flashing led on a computer, which the manual informs me indicates "failed battery" - however when I check controlpanel>power options it tells me I have a 95% full battery, which is "on line". I have no way of telling if the battery is dead or not. I would like to find out if the battery is the problem, or the laptop.. and why XP doesn't seem to know that the battery is dead when the computer itself thinks it does.. Can anyone explain the difference?213.249.187.63 (talk) 12:43, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * "I have no way of telling if the battery is dead or not."
 * Sure you have, just unplug the power cable and see how the battery performs. If it performs as expected, your only problem is an annoying LED. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:52, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work - I still don't know if it is dead, or alive with a dodgy battery control chip.. Also wisecrack doesn't answer my question either - which was why does XP give a different reading?213.249.187.63 (talk) 16:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't believe that was a wisecrack - it was a legitimate response to the first part of your question, and the result suggests the battery is indeed dead. It could be a hardware fault in the laptop itself, but you'd probably have to try using the battery in another machine to rule this out. However, I think the former possibility is more likely.
 * As for the second part of your question, I can't help much there, except to note anecdotally that battery indicators seem to me typically unreliable, especially when the battery is faulty. I had a damaged battery in an old XP laptop that could only barely hold a charge - when the machine was plugged in it would report 95-100% charge, and give me estimated usage time of 2-3 hours. If I unplugged, the indicator would drop to <5% instantly and I would lose all power within a minute. However, I've also observed misleading figures on iOS and Android smartphones, and PCs running both Windows and Ubuntu, even when the battery appeared to be in good working order.  AJ Cham  18:09, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I should note in addition, that the anomolous battery readings usually occur when the device is charging. My Android, for example, will indicate 60%+ charge immediately after plugging in, even if the battery was almost entirely depleted. I suspect the specific answer to your question lies in this fact.  AJ Cham  18:15, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can understand that the battery level indicator level is plain wrong - but windows is still reporting that the battery is "good to go" despite the fact that the rest of the laptop has admitted that it has given up the ghost... Does anyone know enough about the "battery drivers" or whatever they are called to reason this one out.? (If I unplug it dies immediately - there's not even a minute of charge - I suspect the laptop is refusing to even try to use what may or may not be left in the battery..)213.249.187.63 (talk) 19:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Have to ask: did this laptop even come with Windows XP on it? It's quite an old version of Windows, and a lot of new hardware is designed utterly without XP in mind. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:10, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * (No I decided to upgrade to XP - joke) - Yes it came with XP on it.213.249.187.63 (talk) 19:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

How many single-sided Blu-rays would the YouTube Collection require? Double-sided?
Have you seen http://www.youtube.com/theyoutubecollection ?

So allegedly, you can watch all videos ever placed on YouTube, on DVDs. I wish they had the option for Blu-rays because they store more hours of video and have overall, other better features.

Here are the questions:

1. How many single-sided DVD discs would the entire YT collection take up? (That is just the collection as of 4-1-2012, 12 PM GMT, because the constantly-increasing uploads would render any other answer obsolete.)

2. How many double-sided DVD discs?

3. How many single-sided Blu-ray discs?

4. How many double-sided Blu-ray discs?

5. How many 1 TB external hard drives?

6. How many of the largest external hard drive available (in terms of storage space, not physical size) to home-users today, would be needed to store the entire YT collection (the collection as of 4-1-2012, 12 PM GMT)?
 * I selected "send entire collection", and it said it would be 579,840 DVD discs, but it did not specifiy if they use single or double-sided DVD discs in that calculation. A DVD can hold about 4.5 GB per side, and a Blu-ray can hold about 5x that amount, so the rest of your calculations can follow from that.  Largest consumer HDD is probably 3TB, but availabiity may be limited due to the manufacturing capacity lost in Thailand.  RudolfRed (talk) 20:34, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I rammed Wolfram Alpha on this issue and let us round it to 580,000 DVDs, and assume they're each one-sided. (To double-side anything, just divide by 2 and that's the # of discs you get.) Wolfram Alpha has the versatility to love and endear ourselves to; it gives 110,000 single-sided Blu-rays in the conversion from 580,000 one-sided DVDs.
 * If there was an option to ship the 3-TB external hard drives, 900 would be. Wow, 2.7 Petabytes is what the sum of YouTube's videos are! We've come a long way! OH, moreover, I just found that LaCie has 4 TB external hard drives. With that option, 675 would ship. --Tergigress (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics claims that one hour of video is uploaded to Youtube every second. One year's worth of uploads at that rate is 3600 years of video; supposing an average rate of 200 KBps that's about 20 petabytes. The upload rate was presumably lower in the past; on the other hand, Youtube has been around for much more than a year. So it seems likely that 3 PB is a substantial underestimate. -- BenRG (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Side questions
It said my order would arrive on June 16, 2045. Where would I find a change-of-address form? =)

(How much would it cost to resend to my new address in Sariwon, Reunified Korea, where I may work as a consulate employee or humanitarian agent?)

(Or if we increase our space-faring momentum, big-time, how much would it cost to resend the collection to my new address in the Jim Wales Colony on Beta Aquilae IV? And how much longer would it take to get there?)

(Or if I decide to stay a little close to home, how about the cost to resend to my dome-villa on the Obama Colony on Mars? And how much more time would it take to get there?)

Thanks, you guys, gals and extraterrestrials. --Tergigress (talk) 19:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd presume by then, Trekkie influences aside, that we'd have matter/antimatter replicators and apart from the most unstable of matter, you would receive a digital blueprint at hopefully faster-than-light ("subspace") speed to replicate in the safety of your own dome :) Heck, we're on our way there with talk of 3D Printers now, with working prototypes. Sandman30s (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Why not just download all the Youtube videos and burn them to DVD-R? A gigabit net connection is about four petabytes per year, so you should be able to finish well before 2045, as long as you don't try to keep up with new uploads. -- BenRG (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Installing Android SDK on Ubuntu
I need some help installing the android SDK on Ubuntu. I believe I need to first install JDK and Eclipse before installing the SDK. I've downloaded the JDK (the .rpm not the .tar.gz. I would like to know what the difference is). Now what do I do? --TuringMachine17 (talk) 21:30, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There are some instructions here: . Instead of downloading the JDK, you can use the package manager to install it with apt-get.  RudolfRed (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)