Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 February 21

= February 21 =

Cloud storage service with password-based sharing
Can anyone tell me of a free cloud storage service where a folder or a file can be made public but a password must be required to actually view the file? I don't mean encryption. Also, it should have unlimited versioning, if possible. --Melab±1 &#9742; 00:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

You can encrypt the file with tools such as 7zip and Truecrypt, and store the file on any unencrypted storage service. This has the benefit of allowing different passwords for different files. 75.144.36.137 (talk) 15:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Like I said, I don't mean encryption. But, thank you anyways. --Melab±1 &#9742; 02:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Annoying menu on a website
At http://www.kbsz.hu/polebisz/index.html I am trying to access menus. The javascript menus appear when I hover my mouse over an item, but when I move my cursor to click the items, the items disappear.

How do I access the content? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Try it with Internet Explorer. Moondyne (talk) 00:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems to work with Safari on Mac. Not all computers have IE. RudolfRed (talk) 01:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, guys! It works fine on IE! It seems like it's messing up on Firefox. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I usually use Firefox, but some websites don't work correctly with it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Picking a PIC
Hi,

I've been given a bundle of C code and a circuit diagram to build a particular PIC-based device. However, rather than build it exactly as the original designer did, I want to add a couple of extra capabilities. I'm a Java programmer with very little embedded experience, but looking at the existing code I think I can probably muddle through OK on the software side. The problem is hardware - the original developer said that he was running right up to the limit on program memory size, and indeed there are pieces of code in the source that have been deemed non-essential and commented out to fit the object code into the device. There's no way I'm going to be able to optimise what he couldn't, so I need more memory.

The specified device is an 18F26K22. I've been trying to find a PIC which is as similar as possible in every way (since I'll probably struggle to adapt the code for anything very different) but has enough extra program memory to take my additions. However, as a non hardware type, I'll admit to being somewhat flummoxed by the Microchip catalogue.

Can anyone suggest a suitable chip that's like an 18F26K22 but bigger?

Thanks.

-- Pete — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.230 (talk) 01:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * How about the PIC18F67J11, which has double the program memory? It's from the same series (PIC18), has just a bit more RAM, and a few extra features.  Looks like it only comes in QFP, which is probably harder for the amateur electronics hobbyist; but you can also look at 18F27J13 and 18F27J53.  These come in DIP packages; they have more program memory; but a tiny bit less RAM than your original chip.  Nimur (talk) 02:09, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for those suggestions. The J11 looks interesting - although it's only available in QFP, I found a company which will sell me one soldered to a DIP daughterboard - so it's still an option. I do notice that all three chips are slightly slower than the original; I'll have to check with the developer whether he's maxing out CPU speed as well as everything else. Hopefully not.


 * Cheers,
 * -- Pete — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.230 (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking up very old websites
I'm trying to find out the URL of the government of the Netherlands in 1998 to 1999. I am trying to determine what information it had about the Netherlands Aviation Safety Board (Raad voor de Luchtvaart), a government agency that was abolished in 1999 Any help would be greatly appreciated WhisperToMe (talk) 06:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if I'm on the right track, but try this. Cheers! G.R.O.S.S (talk) 12:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip! I have been familiar with the web.archive.org tool, but I'll see if the State Department archives have any links WhisperToMe (talk) 22:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

learning html
Hi. I'm teaching myself to use seamonkey and would like to download a sample html file that I can edit in small steps. Can anyone suggest a good, example of best practice to start with? Something more complicated than Hello World, but not too difficult would be good. Robinh (talk) 08:33, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry I don't know of any collection of (properly coded) totally made layouts for you to look at, but I can just give you my usual list of links, which combined will get you the vast majority of what you might want:

The most important:
 * http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/
 * http://validator.w3.org/
 * http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Refs:
 * http://w3.org/TR/html401/
 * http://w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html
 * http://w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html
 * http://w3.org/TR/html5/
 * http://w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html
 * http://w3.org/QA/TheMatrix

Guts:
 * http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssLayouts
 * http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
 * http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/

Support:
 * http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-html
 * http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-css
 * http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-dom
 * http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-ecmascript

Icing:
 * http://www.mezzoblue.com/tests/revised-image-replacement/
 * http://wellstyled.com/css-nopreload-rollovers.html

Live support:
 * http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=Robinh&channels=#websites

¦ Reisio (talk) 16:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * (OP) Thanks for this, Reisio. I've been looking at the links.  All of them seem to be quite 'advanced' in terms of being very complicated (at least, the html code looks difficult).  Is there a simpler one out there?  Sorry to be unclear in my original request.  Robinh (talk) 21:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/ & http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur/#toc & http://w3fools.com/#what-should-be-done aren't too bad. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

This site has a nice guide with lots of examples AvrillirvA (talk) 22:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That site is fairly awful. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Why do you say that, Reisio? Robinh (talk) 00:15, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The first page with code skips over the doctype declaration, which is vital, the second details deprecated elements and suggests you use invalid syntax, and at that point I looked no further (though truthfully I consider any of those damning individually). ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I like w3schools.com. Once you exhaust the info on that site, then you can reference the specification at w3.org/TR/html401/.&mdash;Best Dog Ever (talk) 00:21, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I personally find w3schools to have a lot of junk, poor explanations, often quite horrible examples, and most are definitely not best practices. See this site for further elaboration. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * (OP) I'm still not 100% certain that my question was clear enough.   All I need is a basic 'get you started' web page from where I can download the html content and play with it in seamonkey.    I don't want anything clever,  no active content or videos or widgets, just the basics (I need to design a website as part of some course I'm studying).  I don't want to start from a blank piece of paper in seamonkey because I fear that I'll produce a very boring web page.  Thanks, Robinh (talk) 03:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Which is why I recommended W3Schools. It's very beginner friendly. What you need, Robinh, is just to get started writing web pages. If you get bogged down in theory, best practices, and terminology, you will become bored and forget most of it. The sooner you can start creating web pages -- no matter how simple -- the better.


 * I am a web designer and developer. I do web design, every day, in an office, 50 hours a week. And I do not find the critiques on the site Mr. 98 cited to be justified at all. They're more snobbery than fair criticism. It recommends against the use of WYSIWYG editors: "Professional web developers do not recommend the use of WYSIWYG editors." But when you edit pages as large and as complex as I do, you have to use WYSIWYG editors. I just use them to navigate the code. I don't actually format the page in them, but you need them to find your way around the page. The fact that I do web design as a living makes me a professional and I have no qualms recommending a WYSIWYG editor so long as you keep an eye on the code.


 * Other critiques could only be considered inaccurate from a Deconstructionist point of view. It is technically true that &lt;h1&gt; doesn't add a blank line above and beneath it, but rather a margin. It is a simplification, but it doesn't matter. What really matters is that you note the space it adds above and beneath it. You can deduce it's not an empty line by highlighting the line. It's harmless simplification that aids understanding for beginners more than anything else.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

(OP) thanks guys. The w3schools site is just great for my purposes. Maybe one day I'll understand the issues raised above. Kia Ora, Robinh (talk) 07:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

blocking unsolicited junk mail
I'm tired of receiving unsolicited junk emails from online dating services. Is there any way to block them?24.90.204.234 (talk) 08:35, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That depends. What a) mail service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, AOL - basically the bit after the @ in your address) and b) email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail for Mac or simple webmail - how you view your emails) do you use? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:02, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Get yourself a new email address and don't tell anyone what it is except the people you can trust (ie. your very closest friends and family). Use a disposable/temporary account for everything else.  Astronaut (talk) 13:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I use Hotmail.24.90.204.234 (talk) 14:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok. This page gives you the lowdown, and options for dealing with junk/spam emails. These are reactive methods - they only work to stop emails from people/companies who already have your address by blocking their emails or moving them to a junk folder. This page from the UK government has some good proactive suggestions for making sure these people don't get your details in the future. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:32, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hotmail uses Bayesian spam filtering, so marking messages as "Junk" helps it determine whether future emails are junk, even if they come from a different source, simply based on message similarity. So it's sort of proactive. Paul (Stansifer) 22:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If the messages have many of the same words in them, you can create a filter: . It will take messages that match the filter and put them in a folder of your choice (or simply delete them -- your choice).--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Bouncing the mail back usually stops them coming again.

Missing email
Simply.... I can not find 2 e-mails I wrote and sent to my boss. After writing and sending 4 different e-mails to him, he said he only received 2. And he asked me to re-send one of the ones that has disappeared. NOW THIS IS WIERD....I had a heads up from a co-worker that he talked as though he hadn't heard from me on two of the important ones so earlier that day I went to check to make sure I had sent them. I went to google and typed mail.yahoo.com. Clicked on the topsite, which opened my email. I am not real savvy with e-mails. I went to my 'sent' emails and opened one up, read it, noted date sent and to close the email I go back to the heading sent, pulled up anpther, then another then another. Somehow, somewhere, the 2nd email sent on the 5th disappeared from my computer and so has the most important one from saturdays!!! My boss wants to see saturday's and it may be my job if i can't show him it or at least I sent one that day to him. I did. I saw it just before it was gone. Jeff said I used an incorrect email address. I I've seen both used I thought!?? anyway, I sent 2 feb 5, 2012, 1 sat. xx:xx, and 1 sent friday, 5:37 am. He got the first two but not the next 2. The last email I wrote had 2 cc. I know for fact 1 cc received it but who I sent it to, Jeff, didn't get it. Here's another weird...the 1st email sent, feb 5, 2012 remains in SENT. The 2nd email sent, feb 5, 2012, has vanished. The 3rd and most important email, saturday, has also disappeared and the 4th email I sent found it's way into my INBOX. Go figure?!! Please, pretty pretty please find that short no titled email. You could save my life, literally 'cause I would keep my job. Cost is not important. That is how important this is to me. I thank you so much for your time and I hope my explanation is what you needed. Sincerely, forever in your debt, one very tired and stressed, Stephanie Anne76.254.42.86 (talk) 09:48, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * (I've added a header to separate your question from the previous one). Have you checked in your "Drafts" folder? Sometimes if there's a problem while you're writing or sending an email - say, if your connection goes down briefly or you exit without clicking "send" - most email programs put the unsent email in a folder called "drafts" ready to be sent properly. It'll be in the list of folders, next to Inbox, Sent and Junk. Smurrayinchester 10:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, of course, worth looking in the Trash folder, if it hasn't been emptied. - David Biddulph (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Did you cc. ayone into either of the missing emails? If so, they may have copies. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * For clarification, do you mean you saw emails 2-5 in your sent but later they disappeared or you never saw them in the sent? Nil Einne (talk) 16:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If your Yahoo e-mail is having problems, I suggest you get another account, such as with Google's free Gmail. Also, until you get this resolved, you'd better print out copies of everything, just in case.  Note that if somebody got you CC, you could have them forward that on, to prove that you're not lying about having sent them. (Presumably you won't get fired unless your boss thinks you are lying.)  Another hint is to always CC yourself, and then check your inbox, as a way of verifying that it was really sent.  StuRat (talk) 06:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I always cc myself, then I KNOW it's gone.

Inkjet ink cartridges
How does the ink level detector work? --92.25.104.255 (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * At least in some cartridges, it doesn't. That is, the printer keeps track of (very roughly) how much ink it thinks it's used (and stores that in the little EEPROM in the cartridge) and the driver then just estimates how much ink the cartridge should have, given that amount of printing. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:47, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed, though some makes are less bad at it than others. Plenty of research online. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Reisio, can you recommend any brand which is not a rip-off, which do not tie me to its cartridges, which do not force me to buy all three colors when I only need black? XPPaul (talk) 22:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * For not buying colors when you only need black, you want a 2 cartridge system, with black in one cartridge and three colors in the other. This allows you to change the black cartridge independently.  Even better is a 4 cartridge system where you can also change each color independently.  The prices are still a rip-off, though.  I've tried injecting ink into cartridges as they run dry, with some success (some manufacturers have found a way to prevent this, by having the chip on the cartridge die when it runs dry, for instance).


 * If you have a large enough print volume, laser printers are the way to go, as their toner cartridges last much longer, and this will make up for the higher initial purchase price. Unlike inkjet printers, you have to choose between less expensive black-and-white laser printers and expensive color ones.  A good compromise might be black-and-white laser printer and a color inkjet, assuming most of your prints will be in black-and-white. StuRat (talk) 05:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * On my Brother multifunction inkjet, the cartridge has a narrow ridge on one side that fits into a slot in the printer. There seems to be a light and sensor on opposite sides of this slot, shining through the ink inside the ridge on the cartridge. When the cartridge is full the light is blocked by the ink, when it nears empty the light shines through into the sensor. I can simulate a full cartridge by putting a small piece of tape on the ridge to block the light. The yellow ink has a small float, presumably because the ink is not opaque enough to block the light. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.230 (talk) 19:18, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

'Cutting' Patterns
Hi, simple question, Is there a 'free' file format for storing industrial cutting patterns ?

There were two specific applications I was wanting to know about this in relation to:


 * Sewing patterns


 * Cutting layouts for jigsaw puzzles...

Any thoughts on what formats these use, other than DXF/DWG ?

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about these specific applications, but it is likely that they will use some kind of vector path. It is feasible that a pattern stored as SVG for example, could be imported into the application that controls the device in question. This, of course, would depend on the capabilities of the software used. I personally have been able to import vector images in several different file formats for use on a vinyl cutter. -=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 22:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Another vector format that might work is HPGL. StuRat (talk) 05:44, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Alternative to Archive.org (The WayBackMachine)?
I hope there isn't one, but I have to ask anyway. Is there any other project that "collects historical websites" and make them available like they do? It's a major privacy issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xcvxvbxcdxcvbd (talk • contribs) 23:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Internet Archive; in fairness, the truly major privacy issue is letting people who don't realize what is and isn't personal information online at all (because personal information being online long enough for almost anyone to view it is enough to cause real problems). ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I looked through them but couldn't find anything that seemed at all like Archive.org (thank god). It was just nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xcvxvbxcdxcvbd (talk • contribs) 00:18, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * have you bothered to look at archive.org and how easy it is to remove stuff? if anything there should be a way of stopping new owners of old website removing stuff that was meant to be public. The deleting of old stuff is like being able to walk in to a newspaper and burn backcopies at random. Agree the main privacy worry on the internet is the countless clueless people who stick stupid photos and videos up onto things like facebook and utube. Dmcq (talk) 21:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)