Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 8

= January 8 =

Average amount of time for two-qubit entanglement.
I was wondering if anyone knows what the average amount of time is for an entanglement of two-qubits. I would have to assume that the amount of time is longer than say for seven qubits. This question is obviously about quantum information science. Thanks.  Lighthead  þ 01:52, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay... I guess I'll never know. Thanks for the fast response. Ha ha ha!  Lighthead  þ 22:32, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

laser toner compostable?
Is waste laser toner suitable for a garden compost heap? If not, are there other ways of disposing of it appropriately? RogerSawkins (talk) 02:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Laser toner is plastic. It is essentially bioinert, which means while it won't poison the compost heap, it won't actually compost, so that's a pointless thing to do with it. It's non-hazardous waste. 87.115.57.93 (talk) 02:54, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The laser toner cartridges I handle come with some pretty clear warnings on handling and disposal, including not getting it on your skin, washing it off immediately, not inhaling the dust, etc. Now they're probably just covering their butts so to speak in case in fifty years' time some disease gets linked to it, but personally it's not something I'd be putting in my compost. If you type "laser toner recycling" into Google it should come up with a number of suggestions of suitable locations near you to send your cartridges and toner for recycling, assuming you don't just want to put it in a plastic bag and chuck it in the bin. --jjron (talk) 10:46, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The toner may be inert, but that does not mean that it's harmless. Think asbestos. The physical shape of the particles can cause irritation and illness without chemical interaction. Or, macroscopically, think Claymore. If well-maintained, it's bio-inert, but certainly not harmless ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And that's not just theory. Laser printer toner certainly can irritate your skin in a purely mechanical way..
 * APL (talk) 11:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Our very own Toner has many mentions of the hazards and environmental issues. A simple Googling "Laser printer toner disposal" provides numerous links to companies that deal with the proper recycling and disposal of printer cartridges and peripherals.  fredgandt  11:52, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

8GB of RAM, but OS only seeing 7?
I bought a laptop with following specs:

Windows 7, 64-bit Sandy Bridge, i7 quad-core 8GB, 1333 Mhz RAM

But in Windows Task Manager, under the Performance tab, it says that total physical memory is only 7084 MB, instead of around 8000 MB. Where did that 1GB go? Acceptable (talk) 03:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Part of it is probably used for video memory. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Read this. Von Restorff (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! That was exactly what I was looking for :). Acceptable (talk) 17:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You are very welcome of course! Von Restorff (talk) 22:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

MatLab help
Hi there. Not really a _question_, but could someone with access to MatLab do

and post the results? Thanks. 195.89.37.162 (talk) 13:05, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with that command, but when I run it I get a 17 column vector, with all zero entries, except for a 1 in position 9. Also, you can compute most matlab commands in GNU Octave for free :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. I thought it might be some appalling nth-complexity infinite binary Chebyshev/K!sdra thing, and I didn't want to try and replicate fir2.m just to calculate 17 numbers. Tevildo (talk) 17:09, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In case you need to use this algorithm again, googling turned up an implementation for Octave here, and one in Scipy here (Scipy is a set of packages for Python (programming language), and is also free and open-source). 130.88.73.65 (talk) 12:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

tag margins and displaytitle
Resolved I'm currently renovating my userpage and using a lot of  tags. However, I can't seem to get the right margin to behave. The nested div tags also don't respect the right margin of the parent div box either. The edges overflow past the width of the page, making the horizontal scroll bar appear. What am I doing wrong? I'd just like the right margin to display the same space as the left margin (adjustable to screen size of course). Fixed first problem on my own, heh

Also, is there a way to completely suppress the title of a page? i.e. I would like the "User:Obsidian Soul" to disappear as it is quite redundant. doesn't seem to be doing anything though.--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   16:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The documentation for the DISPLAYTITLE magic word points us to m:Manual:$wgAllowDisplayTitle, which says the magic word allows you to "override the title of a page, provided the selected title normalises to the same canonical title". Presumably you're trying to set DISPLAYTITLE to nothing (or nbsp or something), which obviously doesn't canonicalise to "User:Obsidian Soul". Without the other setting mentioned on that page (which, unsurprisingly, it looks like en.wikipedia doesn't enable) you can't use DISPLAYTITLE to blank a page title. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh well... I was under the impression that you could do more with it in enwiki. Anywho, TYVM :) --  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   18:49, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is not true; you can use DISPLAYTITLE to blank a page title. Von Restorff (talk) 19:54, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed the title on Obsidian Soul's userpage and and changed the title of his talkpage. I also changed the title of Finlay McWalter's userpage to Slay McWalter. Von Restorff (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Google Account
Hi! Today my friend send me a link to Youtube. I clicked it but had to download Adobe Flash Player because I could not watch videos on Internet Explorer before. I automatically got the Google Account, but I don't want it. How can I delete it but keep my Gmail? Will it disappear if I delete Google Account? Thank you in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atacamadesert12 (talk • contribs) 18:23, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you delete your Google account you also delete your Gmail, sorry. Von Restorff (talk) 19:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC) p.s. Why do you use Internet Exploder? Firefox is free!

If you already had a gmail account, you already had a google account; they are one in the same and have been for some time. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2012 (UTC)