Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 February 12

= February 12 =

Firefox and cookies (yet again)
Admittedly, I'm probably more paranoid about online security than I need to be; here's the situation I've put myself in. I'm on FF9, but this behaviour hasn't changed in many releases.

My cookie settings are: "Accept cookies from sites" is ON, "Accept third party cookies" is OFF, and "Keep Until" is "Ask every time" -- which means I get prompted for a LOT of cookies. Mostly, I'll Allow For Session, but the Google Analytics __utm-series, I deny -- hold down Alt-D until it stops trying (sometimes 20 or 30 attempts!)

And, about half the random sites I visit HANG at that point, with the message "Reading google-analytics.com" in the lower left corner. Note, this is NOT the "Transferring from.." message. Progress indicator keeps circling. My usual response is to stop the page load, then shift-reload. Sometimes several times until the whole pages loads, and sometimes it just never does.

(Finally, we're getting to the questions:) BUT, if I simply click Deny for Site at the beginning of the session, the page loads fine. AND, if I use the private browsing features, it loads just fine. WHAT'S the difference between denying individual cookies, and denying them site-wide, that causes a site or google-analytics itself to hang on one and not the other?

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:55, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You're already being tracked by google analytics as soon as the http hit gets there, regardless of what you do with the cookies. Adblock Plus (blocking the site completely) is much better than a cookie filter for avoiding tracking. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 01:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Parametric types and Generics
Is there any difference between type polymorphism and generics? They both seem to me (with a limited understanding) to be identical, but in different contexts no one ever switches between them (no one ever talks about generics in Haskell for example) so I was just wondering if they were actually synonymous? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SlakaJ (talk • contribs) 02:36, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The term polymorphism covers a lot of ground. Generics are very much like Haskell's parametric polymorphism, method overloading is vaguely related to Haskell's type classes, and subclass polymorphism has no straightforward equivalent in Haskell. -- BenRG (talk) 02:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "Generic" most of the time (i.e. in the C++/Java/Ada world) means what Haskellers call polymorphic. The Haskell community seems to the term "generic" in a more specialized way, that I think I've also heard the term "polytypic" for.  Haskell generics, which means automatically creating specialized functions based on the structure of the datatype.  The built-in "deriving" mechanism for creating instances of Show, Eq, etc. is an example, but more generally it's done either with fancy type-level machinery like in Generic Haskell or with reflection-like hacks such as Scrap Your Boilerplate.  WP's generic programming article's Haskell section has more info about this, and it's talk page has some further discussion and references.  67.117.145.9 (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

A question about audio tone-changing...
Well, I was watching an episode of Naruto Shippuden and I heard the choral piano music at one point (http://www.narutoget.com/watch/666-naruto-shippuden-episode-138-english-subbed/ - music starts at 13:50). Then I watched the episode in Spanish subs on Tu.tv, but I noticed the choral piano music had a different tone (http://tu.tv/videos/naruto-shippuden-138-sub-espanol-3-3_1/ - music starts at 00:35). As I heard it, I thought it might be possible to make music sound in a different tone. I wanted to try out taking a music clip or sound and change the tone to a different tone. Are there software programs or tricks to do that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 13:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That is possible; it's called pitch shifting. The reason why you hear TV music in a different pitch however, is due to a process called PAL speedup during conversion from a NTSC video source to PAL. Sometimes, pitch shifting is used to counteract this effect, resulting in the music having only a higher tempo, while the pitch is maintained. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This explains a lot everything... --190.158.184.192 (talk) 17:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Client-side wiki software
Hi,

I'm looking for a client-side-only wiki software which would run on Windows XP. I found TiddlyWiki, but it is a single-user wiki, while I'm looking for a multi-user wiki (I assume there will be only good faith users, so I don't need a real user authentication system, although this could be done through encryption and digital signatures). Also, I prefer avoiding the use of Javascript in a web browser, because I'm not sure which web browser will be available, so there could be compatibility issues with a software like TiddlyWiki.

Thanks.

Apokrif (talk) 18:13, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * XAMPP ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the hint, but I'm looking for something more lightweight (if I don't find what I need and I end up writing it myself, I would first try in VBS or VBA). Apokrif (talk) 00:49, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Fossil (software) and MoinMoin are both very easy to set up compared with something like MediaWiki, and Fossil is especially easy on machine resources (runs in 1 MB or so). Overall though, MediaWiki is so much more powerful that if it's for long term use, I'd just bite the bullet and use it.  67.117.145.9 (talk) 22:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

"AirPort"
I use an AppleMac and it's Airport for syncing with my iPad and iPhone via my router. This is a puzzle to my wife, and being non literate in these matters I have difficulty in explaining how "AirPort" works. Any ideas please, I guess 'radio waves', but this does not seem right somehow.--85.211.170.102 (talk) 18:56, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Airport is just Mac's trademarked term for a WiFi router. So if you have an Airport card, that just means you have an Apple-branded WiFi card. Radio waves is close enough. WiFi is a form of electromagnetic radiation, like radio or microwaves or infrared or visible light. Specifically it uses either 2.4GHz or 5GHz spectrum bands, well within the definition of radio waves. Basically the Airport/Wifi cards in your iPad and iPhone use very complicated means to send information packets to the antennae on your Airport/Wifi router, which then relays them back to the other device for syncing, or something along those lines. The details of how it sends the information are quite technical. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:24, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks--85.211.170.102 (talk) 06:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Types of 3d in games
Are there words for different types of 3d in games? I don't mean those new games with 3d effects, but, for example, a differenciation between a cube on a screen, which is shown only from one angle and a cube that can be twisted. The second would be more 'real'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.36.33.29 (talk) 20:05, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There are many terms, but I don't think they are unique to games, but apply to all 3D visualizations. Some games allow a limited number of "camera angles", too. StuRat (talk) 20:09, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You're probably thinking about the difference between isometric projection (sometimes called 2.5D or axonometric projection/oblique projection/parallel projection - there's slight differences between them, depending on how technical you want to get) with a non-rotatable camera and perspective projection ("true" 3D rendering) with a fully mobile camera. See also Video game graphics and Isometric graphics in video games and pixel art for more details. -- 140.142.20.101 (talk) 21:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * See sprite for the use of 2D images in graphics; it has a lot of discussion about pre-projected 2D images of objects can be used in a 3D context. SimCity 2000 is an example of a game whose graphics were totally isometric and sprite-based. Doom used sprites (with a small number of different view angles) to render various objects, such as the enemy creatures. Paul (Stansifer) 21:28, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I could be wrong, but I don't think you are talking about the difference between isometric and perspective projection. Your question seems more about "real-time" 3D, as you typically see in Virtual reality and most 1st/3rd person shooters, and high-definition rendering as used in cut-scenes and the CGI movie business.  The first is generated on-the-fly, 20-30 frames per second, and uses various tricks to cut down on the amount of detail that needs to be drawn. The user can define the viewer's position and orientation.  The second produces a much higher degree of "realism", with complex lighting and reflection calculations, but each frame takes several minutes or even hours to generate, so movement through the scene must be pre-defined.  The relevant articles, as linked from Computer-generated imagery would appear to be Interactive visualisation and Computer animation  Rojomoke (talk) 14:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Search Engine Behaving Badly in Firefox 10.0.1
My search engine was recently changed to Yahoo by some software (YouTube Downloader) I got from Download.com (the option to refuse was greyed out). Anyway, I changed it back to Google using the about:config thingummijig, but now it's behaving oddly. For example, I type in a word, say, "barley", and it sends me straight to the Wikipedia page. I type in an actor's name, and I get sent immediately to the IMdB. I want Google Search results. I guess something or other is set to 'automatically choose the top search result'. I do not have the independent search bar in the top right, but rather I search directly from the address bar, and have been doing so for several years. This problem has only appeared this evening and it's annoying because I use Google extensively in my work. Can anyone help? KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  22:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * What happens when you type in "google.com" and then enter your search term in the Google search box ? StuRat (talk) 02:51, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That does indeed give me Google, but the ranking of the search terms is different, with mostly Google Books pages at the top.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  03:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, it won't be perfect, but that does suggest that bookmarking the Google search page will give you a way to get to the Google search result list, fairly quickly. StuRat (talk) 03:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * What setting did you change in about:config, and what did you change it to? Does it have some mention of "I'm feeling lucky"? Paul (Stansifer) 04:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I changed the 'keyword.url' to: 'http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=' (no quotes), which is the normal default as per MozillaZine Knowledge Base.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  04:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm, looks like 'gfns=1' makes it redirect to the first result. Try changing it to . I guess that page is out-of-date; that used to be the default behavior, but it isn't anymore. Paul (Stansifer) 22:33, 14 February 2012 (UTC)