Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 February 19

= February 19 =

Home mail server with multiple (external) POP3 accounts
I'm trying to set up some sort of home server for my dad. It needs to provide network storage for files from two laptops, but he also wants to be able to read and send emails from either computer. He does consultancy work for a number of companies, each of which has provided him with a mail account, and most of the accounts support only POP3 access (apparently it's still 1995 in their IT departments). At the moment he uses Outlook to download the mails, then files them offline in a pst file. I know that Outlook dislikes working on a network other than an Exchange server, so I'm trying to find a solution that would allow him to see all his emails, move emails between folders and archive them from either laptop. So far, the solutions I have come up with are either using Windows Home Server (expensive, and I'm not sure if it has this ability), or getting him to use Eudora instead of Outlook (ok for him, but my mum has a dislike of unusual software), or some horrendously complicated implementation of fetchmail, postfix and/or dovecot. Is there another way of doing this I haven't thought of? Most of my Google searches on mail server setups are targeted at those with their own domain. Any help appreciated. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:05, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I use getmail rather than fetchmail, as I found it much easier to use. For a while I didn't use a standalone MDA at all - I just had getmail drop stuff into a Maildir folder structure. Dovecot contains its own MDA, which will read that Maildir and serve it. Latterly I wrote my own MDA in Python (because I couldn't be bothered learning procmail's filter language) which drops the mails into subdirectories in the Maildir.  The Maildir is then watched by Dovecot which serves them to clients over IMAP. Dovecot-IMAP literally requires no configuration (it just looks in a user's ~/Maildir by default), getmail needs a trivial config file (it's less than 10 lines long), and a simple procmail setup (to sort mail by recipient account) should be almost trivial. I do all this on Linux; it should all work on Windows, but I've not tried it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, bit of a different approach, but have you considered just putting him on Gmail? He can auto forward his current mailboxes to to his gmail account and once he confirms those email addresses, it even allows you to reply using the email address the message was sent to (instead of the gmail address). All the emails stay online, over 3GB storage, accessible from anywhere in the world. Vespine (talk) 04:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple search queries on a web-page
If I have a file with a list of search terms and I want to got to page x (imagine it's like google, even if it's not the case) and perform a search, which is the easiest way to do that in Linux? The perfect result would be Firefox with several tabs showing the results. The list is rather small, not more than 100 or a little bit longer. 188.76.228.174 (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding precisely what it is you are trying to do. What are you searching?  What do you mean by going to 'page x' (do you mean opening the first x pages of search results for each term?)?  Probably the easiest way to do this kind of thing is with some kind of scripting language.  Python has good support for reading data from files and controlling web browsers - for example, you can do

import webbrowser webbrowser.open_new_tab( 'http://wikipedia.org' )
 * to open the Wikipedia home page in a new tab of your default browser. Depending on what resource you are accessing, you might be able to encode the search term in the URL. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 16:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * using the code above, expand it to open your text file and read each line. That's a nice little exercise, if you are a beginner at programming. Python is one good option, and it's mostly installed by default in Linux. Ib30 (talk) 22:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Computers predicting the economy
I know there are some projects attempting to do this, but...

Will silicon based computers ever be able to accurately predict macro-, micro-, and regional economies? If they have real-time economic data, artificial intelligence, social media mining, data mining, and so many other models integrated with their computing, will they still ever be able to produce accurate models? Is it already being done (albeit not that great) (or for just one stock)?

Or will we have to wait for quantum computers?--Prowress (talk) 16:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Trading houses use computer modelling to try to predict the values of stock markets, but mostly to try to do short-term arbitrage. Economies are very complex and subject to measurement uncertainties, so even if a perfect model existed, it'd surely be a nonlinear dynamical system, which would make any kind of long-term predictions very unreliable. Quantum computers are not a magical solution. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:51, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Whether a system is linear isn't really relevant to whether long-term predictions are feasible (perhaps you meant chaotic system, but depending on what aspect of the behaviour you want to predict, for how long, and how chaotic the system is, that isn't necessarily a barrier, either). To Prowress: you mentioned data and computing power, but to predict a system, you also need a good understanding of how it works (for example, even if social media mining and other tools could tell you very precisely about, say, economic confidence, that information is useless unless you understand how it is likely to influence people's behaviour).  Basically, nobody knows the answer to your question (but presumably most economists hope the answer is yes), but I suspect that we will have useful quantum computers (we already have simple quantum computers, by the way) long before we have useful models of macrosopic economies. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 17:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Disabled wireless
I have an HP G56 notebook running Windows 7, which cannot access the Internet. I also have a desktop computer that can access the Internet. It should be as simple as removing the Ethernet cable from one computer to the other, but that doesn't work. It won't let me connect, and the diagnostics won't solve the problem. Furthermore, in an attempt to reset my wireless connection settings I disabled wireless and now I can't turn it back on no matter how hard I try. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 17:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Some laptops have little external (physical) slider buttons than enable and disable WiFi and/or Bluetooth. If you've turned the WiFi off this way, it may not be possible to re-enable it in software, but instead you'd need to slide the switch again. On my Acer the switches have a wifi icon and a little LED beside them. 87.114.249.141 (talk) 18:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Do the computers connect to a cable modem directly, or to a router? If the computer is connected directly to a cable modem, the modem may have locked onto the mac address of the desktop computers network card and is ignoring any requests coming from a different mac address (the notebook). So, assuming this is the problem, the solution is to power down / unplug the cable modem and wait a while, then when you turn it back on make sure it is connected to the computer you want the internet to work on. It will lock onto the new mac address and accept connections from it. You will need to do this every time you switch the cable from one computer to another AvrillirvA (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I tried what you said, twice. How long am I supposed to wait? The connection doesn't work and the laptop tells me to unplug the modem, wait 10 seconds, and plug it back in. After I do that it troubleshoots some more and says the problem is "Local Area Connection doesn't have a valid IP configuration". And also it wasn't an external switch. As I recall I went to some sort of "properties" menu and clicked "disable". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 20:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 30 seconds is normally ample. When you plug the ethernet cable into your laptop, do you see this icon in the systray (by the clock)? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:03, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but there's either a red x or a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark on top of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Can I get some attention here please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.96.121 (talk) 15:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Another possibility is that a fixed IP address has been set for one or more of your Internet adapters. To check this, click Start Button->Settings->Network Connections. (1) Right click on an adapter icon. Select Properties. In the Items list, select Internet Protocol. Click Properties. Click Obtain an IP address automatically. Click OK as needed. Repeat at (1) as needed. David Spector (user/talk) 02:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you saying I should do that on the desktop or the laptop computer? It's already set to "obtain an IP address automatically" on the desktop. 96.55.96.121 (talk) 15:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, both computers have "obtain an IP address automatically" set. So what else could be the problem? 96.55.96.121 (talk) 00:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Desktop Shortcuts Disappear
I am using Windows 7 64 bit and I have desktop shortcuts to a few of the Windows games - minesweeper, etc. Every now and then the shortcuts disappear. It is easy enough to make new ones, but why are they disappearing and is there anything I can do about it?

Any hints please? Gurumaister (talk) 18:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Every week there is a maintance done by Win 7, where it looks for invalid shortcuts. If there are more than 4 it deletes it.
 * This should help you: Desktop shortcuts disappear in Windows 7 --33rogers (talk) 21:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks 33rogers. Gurumaister (talk) 09:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Downloading a flash function
Hello, I would like to download the Execution 101: How an Equity Order Becomes a Trade on http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/education.asp. When you click on the link to view it, this Flash feature pops up in the middle of your screen without any change to the URL. Is there any way to download their Execution 101 presentation? Thanks.--Prowress (talk) 18:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Go to http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/trade_execution-2.swf old chap - then use the "Save As" dialog in your browser to save the file locally. You can then open or drag and drop the file with/into a browser to view it. However, please be aware of their T&Cs at, specifically "Except as otherwise explicitly agreed by Knight in writing, the Content may only be downloaded, displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal, non-commercial use." Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 20:03, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! For future downloads of flash content, how would I find the URL to go directly to that flash content (like the one you listed) so I could do the same?--Prowress (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I opened the link to the file (http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/execution101.asp) in a new window then looked at the source code of the page (Use "View-->Source" in Internet Explorer or the shortcut "CTRL-U" in Firefox). This gave me the following :-

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

 AC_FL_RunContent = 0;  DetectFlashVer = 0;  



// Provide alternate content for browsers that do not support scripting // or for those that have scripting disabled. Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash
 * The critical thing here is knowing that all Flash objects use the suffix ".swf" - I then extrapolated the filename using the "id" and "movie" variables as "trade_execution-2", noted the lack of any path elsewhere, indicating that the file was in the same directory as the page I was looking at and I simply changed the URL from http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/execution101.asp to http://www.knight.com/investorRelations/trade_execution-2.swf to directly access it. This was slightly harder than normal - most sites have a direct link to the file in the page source in the form of, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/flash/blah.swf or similar, enabling you to go directly to the flash object. Hope this helps old bean! Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 22:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I dont quite understand how browsers can get the swf, when I use developer console on chrome or DOM inspector in firefox, I get the code of the swf..

or if I check the elements of the page. the browsers know the address of the swf, without being in the html... What kind of sorcery is this? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Creating machine code computer games in the 1980s
When I think of all the computer games developed for the Commodore 64 from the middle 1980s to the early 1990s, I have to just wonder. Did people really program all these by hand, in 6510 assembly language code? I mean, I program computers for a living, and I know 6510 assembly language code, but for me, these two aren't compatible. I write code in C, Java, and C#, which are far more human-readable than assembly language, and let the compiler do all the assembly language work for me. What little I have done directly in assembly language code is short example programs. My most ambitious project was a BASIC expansion adding a couple of commands, but I couldn't get passing parameters to work right. In the days of the Commodore 64, people didn't have graphics and sound cards with in-built drivers, they had to control the chips directly. Did people just painstakingly add instruction after instruction to their assembly language code, hoping symbolic addresses (to be later resolved by the assembler) and hand-written comments would be enough to keep them sane when debugging their code? J I P &#124; Talk 20:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I never programmed for the 6502, but I wrote a couple of programs for the Z80 (Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC464), including Magic Brush, a fairly full-featured graphics editor. Yes, we really wrote these programs directly in assembly language, and directly on the target machine. It taught me the value of structured programming. Symbolic labels for subroutines and variables made things reasonably readable, and, after a while, one acquired a set of patterns for standard situations. The debug cycle was somewhat horrible, since any bug would most likely crash the computer. It was a big step forward to move from cassette tape to disk drive. More professional studios had a (UNIXy) minicomputer and a cross-development environment, but still would write directly in assembly language. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow that's a pro. 190.158.184.192 (talk) 21:02, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. Actually, I've even written code for the Z80 without the use of an assembler to speed up MSX BASIC. If you compare languages now and 5 years ago, I think in 10 years people will ask "so you actually had to specify how C# should do a for-loop?". Or may be not, C will probably always be supposed to be "the professional language", while it shows it's shorthand for ASM and still a 1973 language. Joepnl (talk) 23:08, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I wrote quite a few C64 programs in assembly with just a monitor (which means I had to hand-compute jump offsets and had data locations written down on a piece of paper, with no labels). It was a bit laborious (and a pain to change stuff) but not any harder, intellectually, than programming in say C or Java. For a different weird little architecture I've had to write a small amount in genuine machine code (meaning I had to turn mnemonics into the appropriate opcodes by hand) before I got annoyed and wrote an assembler for it. It's not hard at all, it's just a chore. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:16, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yup. Been there, done that. As a long-time amateur programmer, I wrote a little code on the Sinclair Spectrum with no assembler at all - just a copy of Programming the Z80 (still got it somewhere), and a lot of patience working out the numerical value of op-codes, to 'poke' into memory. When I finally got an assembler (possibly for the Amstrad CPC 464) I was in heaven. And then there was programming an Acorn Archimedes in ARM assembler - too easy. Of course, my code rarely worked properly. These days, I program in Java, and construct much more complex applications that don't work either... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:57, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh yes! I remember those days!  There was a time when I knew most of the Z80 hex codes off by heart, and could read the hex code of a program and work out what the processor was doing.  I only wrote very short program segments in hexadecimal, of course.  It was useful for writing short patches, but it would have been a nightmare to keep track of a complex game program.    D b f i r s   13:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Most of the above replies say "I've written a little code directly in assembly language". I have also done that myself, but only for short example programs. Did professional game programmers also create commercial-quality games directly in assembler by writing each instruction by hand? J I P  &#124; Talk 06:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Chris Sawyer (creator of Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon) is famous for coding as much of his games as possible in assembly, only using C to connect the assembly code with the operating system. And that wasn't just in the 80s either (although according our article he did write commercially released games in Z80 machine code) - RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 from 2002 was still written mostly in assembly. Smurrayinchester 09:47, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * What I'm mostly interested in is, for example, when Andrew Braybrook wrote Uridium, did he just sit down in front of a Commodore 64 and enter assembly language instructions that he had written down on paper in advance, one by one? I mean, that's the way I did it, when I wrote my BASIC expansion that worked reasonably well with constant values but crashed if passed a variable. But something like Uridium or, heck, any commercial-quality game in the 1980s is way more complex than that. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know what Andrew Braybrook did, but paper was only marginally involved when I coded large (as in 20kb binary/200kb source) assembler programs. I had a rough architecture in mind, and just typed the program directly into a text editor, one subroutine at a time. The instructions are fairly transparent: call/ret, jp, jr, push/pop, ld, add/sub, and so on. The processor had 6 general-purpose 8-bit registers (or 3 16-bit registers), and one acquired a number of stock tricks (xor A, ldir, exx). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Zzap64 published a diary Braybrook wrote about his development of Paradroid - it's here. He talks about using a proper symbolic assembler, and debugging with a monitor cartridge.  That sounds like a workflow akin to normal modern programming. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

How do you do the sprites in assembly? you have to do them pixel by pixel? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 14:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Sprites in a C64 are mostly done by hardware. There's a few registers in the VIC chip that specify on-screen location and colours for them, and crucially the location in memory where the sprite bitmap data is kept. Things broadly similar on the Atari400 and 800. On machines that don't have hardware sprites, like the Spectrum or a PC's VGA adapter (strictly some PC graphics adapters did have CGA or VGA sprites, but these were mostly intended for the mouse pointer) you have to take the raw sprite data, shift it by up to 7 bits (because sprites aren't usually aligned to 8-bit byte boundaries) and then you compose the sprites with on-screen data with a bitwise OR operation. Undrawing a sprite entails redrawing the other stuff that should be there.  Naively this might turn out to be a bit flickery, so better implementations used dirty rectangles and a (mini)back buffer to prevent flickering (the screen took up so much of the memory of an early home computer that there was rarely space for a full back buffer). Luckily doing that shift->or procedure on a spectrum or a PC is easier than it would be on a C64, because those machines' CPUs have a few more registers, and some 16 bit wide registers, which make it easier. -- -Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Amateur code on the C64 was rarely done fully in assembly, and I suspect some commercial software was the same. I remember typing in code from magazines with combinations of GW Basic, assembly and tons of peeks and pokes and sys calls. Things like Simon Basic and text adventure generation toolkits made things easier for amateurs to produce some decent quality games and applications. Coders from the demo scene coded their demos in assembly primarily to show off their knowledge. However, the VIC-20 was a different proposition! With a glorious 3.5K of RAM, anything worth its salt had to be done entirely in assembly, using every trick in the book to optimize code and swap between available memory buffers and CPU registers. I remember once spending an entire evening typing in assembly code from a magazine and just before saving my younger sister kicked the power cable... that was my first experience of realizing the importance of backups (although in those days backups were painfully slow onto tape/cassettes). Nowadays I wonder how many of the current generation coders realize the importance of code optimization? How many understand how a CPU works? Sorry for random thoughts... typing fast and in a hurry to leave. Sandman30s (talk) 11:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

floppy disk removal
having extracted the head of a floppy disk (the plastic part protecting it) from a floppy drive, could i have accidentally damaged the reading head and corrupt media i'd like to recover using this drive? How do I test this? Thankis. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 20:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't quite understand what you're saying. Did you somehow try to pull the floppy out of the drive and have it fall apart on you ?  If so, try to get all the pieces out with tweezers.  Then try reading and writing to a new floppy disk.  At worst, you would damage the new disk, if some pieces of the old one are still inside.  The good news is, both floppy disks and floppy drives are quite cheap to replace (although they are both obsolete, so you might not want to bother).  If your goal is to recover data from the floppy disk that fell apart, that would be difficult.  There are places that could attempt it, but it would have to be quite valuable data to make this worthwhile. StuRat (talk) 22:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Right, it fell apart and I *already* pulled out the piece stuck inside with tweezers. If I write a new floppy successfully, does that mean I can assume I didn't mess the head up (with my tweezers) and would not damage any old floppies I try to read? --80.99.254.208 (talk) 07:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd say if you can do a read-write cycle on the new floppy, you're likely OK with the old floppy. If you're still worried, you can first copy the contents using another computer. StuRat (talk) 04:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You may also want to specify what kind of floppy. -- &oelig; &trade; 23:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Wiring a Small Office with CAT6 Ethernet?
Thanks. --33rogers (talk) 21:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The small office has 8 computers. Each computer is located in a separate room.
 * All the computers need to be able to connect to a File Server where they store their data. There is a room at the back for the File Server.
 * All the computer need to be able to connect to the Internet, offered via a single Cable Modem.
 * So I am thinking you connect the Cable Internet to the File Server, and since all the other 8 computers are connected to the file server, which will give them all access to the internet as well as locally stored files.
 * Where to where is the CAT6 cable ethernet wiring supposed to connect to?
 * Will each computer need a dedicated CAT6 wire to the File Server, or can they be merged into 1 CAT6 wire that goes all the way to the File Server?
 * To share access to the internet, you will need a router somewhere in the network. If you (or the computer network technician you hire) are pretty savvy, you can install a software router on the file server, but this probably falls in to the "fairly advanced" networking tricks category, and may not be worth the effort.  For around $50-100, you can buy a small router and network switch, allowing you to share the single internet connection with a lot of machines.  Usually, this means "four" or "eight" ethernet ports.  For about $20 more, you can buy an extra network switch, which allows you to expand the capabilities of the router, by giving you extra ethernet ports for more computer connections.  Note that a switch can not replace the function of the router - only expand the available number of ports.  A very common error is to use a switch instead of a router, on the assumption that it is cheaper, and looks similar in outward appearance - but you still need a router - by itself, the switch will not work for the job you described.  What you can do is place the switch near to the computers, and then run a single long ethernet cable to the router and file-server, reducing the length of cable you need to buy.  Nimur (talk) 21:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That fourth point isn't what you want to do. On your network, the file server can be anywhere.  It doesn't have to act as a "choke point" for all traffic to funnel through in order to access the Internet.  It should be connected to the network just like any other computer.  What you will need to buy is at least one router, which does act as the "choke point"; and then you will run a cable from every computer and file server to the router.  The router sits next to the cable modem and there's a cable going from the cable modem to the router's "external" port.  Then when your computers try to access the Internet, it's the router's job to mediate all the requests and get the packets where they are supposed to go.  All eight computers can access the file server, too, in this configuration; they do not each need a cable to go directly to the file server.  In case you were wondering, your router is the piece of equipment that assigns each computer and file server on your network an IP address.  You will likely want the router to be a firewall (that's what I did at my last office I wired).  Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Can the CAT6 wiring be merged (joined with the rest of the network to save on wiring costs?) as I have shown in the below picture? That is, can it be like there is only 1 CAT6 wire going to the File Server which is located at the other end of the office? And the other computers just 'hook in'?



--33rogers (talk) 22:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * No, that is not possible. CAT6 ethernet is always wired in what is called a star topology. There needs to be one central point, typically a network switch. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This used to be sort of possible, though not exactly using your map, when we all used thin Ethernet; this is now antiquated and you truly don't want to even spend 1 minute researching it. See network topology if you're interested.  What are you spending on cabling that you are trying to avoid a star network?  Cat 5e cabling supports gigabit Ethernet, by the way; are you sure CAT6 is required?  Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You could cable the file server to a wireless router in a central location and stick wifi cards in your clients. Wifi is not as reliable and robust as cable, but if retrofitting cable in the site is problematic it's at least worth considering.. Vespine (talk) 03:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks all. I have decided to go with CAT6. I was confused earlier, because I thought they all go into 1 single wire, but now it makes more sense. --33rogers (talk) 10:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Depending how much data each will be transferring to/from the server, it's pretty much possible to "merge" all the 8 PCs onto a single network cable that goes to the server - you'd buy an Ethernet switch (which can be pretty cheap) connect all your PCs to that, and then run the output of that as a single network cable to the server room. This could save quite a bit of wiring, depending on your building layout. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Mystery Font
Hello,

I came upon this font today in a magazine and found it very beautiful. How can I identify which font it is?

Sample Image

Best, --Cacofonie (talk) 21:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I used "what the font" (google it) and think it's a bold version of Jiffy? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:40, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Storing data in the 1980s or earlier?
"For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores." <-- How has this been stored for "decades"? Does that mean 1980? Earlier? How was it stored back then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xcvxvbxcdxcvbd (talk • contribs) 22:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Magnetic tape data storage. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 23:04, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Anything from 1992 or earlier would be for "decades". RudolfRed (talk) 23:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * See also punched card. Warofdreams talk 14:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I remember disk storage from the 1970s. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, eight-inch and five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies took over from magnetic tape and multi-platter hard disc packs in the late 70s for some applications.   D b f i r s   22:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Halo Remake and 3D TV hack for 2 players on the same full screen?
Does anyone here know if Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary supports that weird ugly 3D hack which allows both players to see their own full 2D screen while playing on the same console? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xcvxvbxcdxcvbd (talk • contribs) 22:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Charge Phone on Windows
I have Windows on my laptop. I plug in my phone to charge it and it doesn't charge. I have been told that you have to allow the phone to charge in Windows. I cannot figure out how to do that. Is there a "let my phone charge" setting? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.182.66 (talk) 23:13, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * To conserve power, not all laptop USB ports are typically wired for that sort of discharge, try another one / consult the manual. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You need to make sure that the device drivers are installed for the phone or else windows will not know what device it is, or to send power to charge it. If you're stuck, could you tell us what phone it is? Have you tried to do it on other computers? Mr  little  irish  11:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)