Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 February 7

= February 7 =

Kindle questions
Two questions related to the Amazon Kindle:
 * 1) Is there a way to view customer reviews of the kindle version? That is to have it show all the reviews of a certain book but only those that reviewed the kindle version. Normally no matter which version you go to it shows reviews from all versions. And searching the reviews for "kindle" only returns reviews where the customer used the term kindle in the review
 * 2) Is there somewhere where readers can report any errors/typos in the kindle version which are obviously due to problems with OCR when scanning and converting them? --TuringMachine17 (talk) 06:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * (1) I doubt it, unless the reviewer specifically mentions they are reading it on a kindle: go to the reviews page and search (CTRL-F) for "kindle". (2) For new books, this is the responsibility of the publisher: find the contact section of their website and drop them an email. For older books (e.g. out of copyright) that have been scanned by Amazon, try clicking on "update product info" in the product details section.--Shantavira|feed me 10:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

AWB?
I'm trying to find a program that I could use for editing Wikipedia where a CTRL+F feature would be involved:

It involves finding 5 prefixes at once:


 * fam
 * know
 * best
 * great
 * fam

but excluding "family". (If you look at my userpage, you will see that these prefixes normally lead to pov.) So what I am thinking of is something that I could either open up a page and the program/browser will tell me if any of these prefixes are located on the page. Because currently, I use Chrome and I have to use CTRL+F to do this, but I must type the prefix and then search for it, and repeat this process 4 times, for the 5 prefixes. User:John of Reading developed a regular expression:

for use for WP:AWB. Now is there a program developed by the Wikipedia community that would be better than AWB to do this? But also, would using Firefox and adding a macro bet better? I would like to use the least intrusive way of doing this, so downloading the fewest programs and skipping approval (as in AutoWikiBrowser) would be most conveienet convenient.

User:John of Reading suggest suggested I ask: "Is there a way to highlight all words on a web page that match a regular expression?". Thanks for your help.Curb Chain (talk) 08:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You can use Greasemonkey and scripts based on this example to do what you want. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

in general is something like vmware secure?
if I don't give vmware guest access to the internet can i install an untrusted OS in it and then install even less trusted software under that OS? Or can software be expected to break out of vm and mess with my actual computer? I'm asking about in practice, not in theory. thanks.. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 11:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think software can be "expected" to do this unless it is really especially targeted to break out of virtualized environments. Such a thing is possible through exploiting vulnerabilities, but I would expect any software that had this capability to be really quite finely targeted for this purpose. I don't think your run-of-the-mill malware is going to bother trying to figure out if it should be trying to break out of a virtual environment. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:00, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I would however suggest you deny the guest all network access rather then simply internet access. (Actually if you intend to install dodgy programs in the guest, I'm not sure what the point of denying internet access is other then as good netequitte or to stop your ISP kicking you become part of a botnet or whatever. Well unless you also intend to store private information on the guest.) Or at the very least make extra sure your host is properly firewalled and protected against things it may normally regard as the LAN. Spreading across the LAN, particularly if the host OS is the same, is something malware is often designed to do. (Of course for the same reason many modern OSes no longer trust things on the LAN like they may have done so in the past, particularly over wireless LANs. And this is something you'd want to set up anyway if you have other computers in the LAN you don't entirely trust. But even if you do, there's no reason to give the VM access to anything you don't need it to have access to. And if there are other computer in the LAN which aren't under your control, simple courtesy would suggest either no network access or host only network access would be preferred.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you (OP here)! This is quite the useful advice...  I've disabled the virtualized network card and chose to go with the less popular of VMWare or Virtual Box, just in case the author knows how to break out of the more popular one :)...and running the latest version of course.  thanks for the heads-up and well-thought-out tip. 94.27.158.198 (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Why programs damage images?
for example this How can I get programs to exapand images like that? I want them to show each pixel, not to blurry them... --190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Your image scaling program is doing image interpolation, to try to produce a better upscaled result. That's usually a good idea with natural stuff like photos, but it's often a bad idea when manipulating drawn stuff like diagrams, for the reasons your example illustrates. So look in the settings for the image-scaling part of your graphics program, and turn interpolation off (for example, the documentation for Gimp's image scaler is here). 87.114.90.11 (talk) 14:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * How that scaling effect is called? Without interpolation Scaling? lol --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * In Photoshop it is called nearest neighbor. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I've always heard it called anti-aliasing. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 20:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Anti-aliasing is the opposite of what we're talking about, here. The OP was asking about how you preserve the hard edges, not blur them. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, I understand that... I meant that the OP wanted to avoid anti-aliasing. Sorry if unclear. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 01:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Right. And the scaling mode that avoids anti-aliasing is called... nearest neighbor. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:21, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd want the prog to take out the jaggies but keep the image black and white, like my version here: [[image:Dejagging.GIF|thumb]]


 * Are there any programs that can do that ? StuRat (talk) 19:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There are a number of algorithms that try to do similar things. See Image_scaling. They are not standard to most photo editing packages, but there are implementations for them that one can get the code for. They're most often used in video game emulators, in my experience. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If you want that, you should use a vector graphics format, such as SVG. It's silly to try to get vector behavior from raster images. Looie496 (talk) 00:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That's not always an option. For example, if I do a screen grab I get a raster image too small to print on a standard sized page.  It would be nice to be able to scale it up to print out at a reasonable size, without jaggies. StuRat (talk) 00:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The house could be Live traced though I wanted a big 8-bit appeareance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:37, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I get the result you want in Gimp by:
 * 1) Image->Mode->Indexed
 * 2) Select radio button "Use black and white (1 bit) pallete
 * 3) Click convert
 * 4) Scale image
 * -- Q Chris (talk) 16:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Does that smooth out the jaggies ? StuRat (talk) 20:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it's exactly like the bottom right image in the picture. I think that smoothing edges is more than just an image processing problem, you would need to start with the assumption that its a straight-line drawing and reconstruct the figure that is most likely to gve the blocks in the original.-- Q Chris (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * According to this, somewhere there is an Interpolation option, and you can set it to "none." --Mr.98 (talk) 14:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Cookies in Windows 7
Hi, how do you get to view cookie lists in Windows 7 / IE 9?

One suggested method, Internet Options > General > Settings > View Files, seems to show only a very small subset of cookies for me, mostly Microsoft and Google. (Why is that?)

Another suggestion is to look in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies. This shows some files, but only useless encrypted filenames where you cannot see where the cookies came from. Also, there do not seem to be as many files as I would expect. There is a subdirectory called "Low", which some people suggest contains the cookies, or more cookies, but I cannot access it. I get "These files can't be opened: Your internet security settings prevented one or more files from being opened." What setting would that be? I have already selected "Show hidden files" and unchecked "Hide protected files" in Windows Explorer.

I seem to remember in XP there was a way to display a user-readable list of cookies. How can this be done in Windows 7?

Regards, 86.179.114.39 (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Well you can't just click the folder 'cause it's hiden, it's a hidden file even if you disable hiding hiden files. For exmaple some of my cookies are stored here: "%Homdrive%\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" and some of them are in %temp%... you should check it. IMHO I think they are messed up on your temp files. --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:02, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think ie cookies are just not readable, you have to use IE GUI to see them... Microsoft is evil --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I don't mind using "IE GUI" to see them ... but how do I do that? 86.179.114.39 (talk) 18:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * here --190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I already did several Google searches before I came here to ask. I cannot find a procedure that works. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 14:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Have you tried using this (http://www.raboof.com/projects/iecache/) utility? It seems like it may be exactly what you want. Lhcii (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the suggestion, but I never download software from random websites that I've never heard of. I was hoping (expecting) there would be something within Windows that would do it. 86.183.2.20 (talk) 00:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That is a very good policy and I understand your skepticism. However, I really don't think there is any reason to worry about Atif Aziz's website or any of the software on it.
 * I searched around a bit and it seems like:
 * the software is safe, (http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/raboof.com/downloads/startat10/).
 * and Atif Aziz is legit (http://geekswithblogs.net/AndrewSiemer/archive/2009/11/14/dotnetradio.com---podcast-2-ndash-interview-with-atif-aziz-creator.aspx)
 * I also ran the software myself (http://i.imgur.com/eewi9.png) and ended up with a short list because I use Chrome. Lhcii (talk) 02:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Different Divs
I have an HTML document with four different div tags for a header, a content section, a side menu, and a footer. How can I give all four of them different background colours, font styles/colours, etcetera in a CSS document? I can change the whole page if I change the "body" attribute, but either I don't know the proper names for the four or it can't be done. Inter change  able | talk to me  18:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You have to give your divs different classes or different ids. In your case it shouldn't matter much which you choose. Multiple elements can have the same class, but ids have to be unique. Add an attribute id="someid" or class="someclass" to the div in your HTML. Then in your CSS you can use div#someid {...} or div.someclass {...}. KarlLohmann (talk) 19:36, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Typewriter effect in Windows Live Movie Maker
I'm trying to create a credit scene where the words appear on a black background, animated with the typewriter effect. I'm using the windows live movie maker that comes preinstalled with Windows 7. I can't find the option for typewriter anywhere. Can anyone help? 117.226.141.77 (talk) 19:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * What makes you believe that such an effect is available? All the search results I'm seeing right now indicate that is specifically is NOT something included in Movie Maker.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  19:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Of course, you could create such an effect manually by adding one letter, holding for several frames, then adding the next, etc. To really make it look like a typewriter, make the letters darker in spots and lighter in others, slightly misaligned with each other, and go back and X out a mistake.  Typewriter sounds would also add to the illusion (and don't forget the bell and return sound at the end of the line).  However, note that people under the age of 40 may not have ever seen a typewriter.StuRat (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Movies still use green VDU characters that appear as if on a 20 baud connection; I doubt one viewer in a thousand has ever used a computer display remotely as slow as that.  Wargames set a trope for how movie computers work, one immune to upgrades.  Like the heart monitor flatlining when someone dies, it's a movie trope well understood by people who've no experience of heart rate monitors. The Dougie Howser/Jessica Fletcher typewriter thing will work just as well now. 87.114.127.133 (talk) 01:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That's Doogie Howser. StuRat (talk) 00:15, 11 February 2012 (UTC)