Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 September 3

= September 3 =

Stupid Twitter question
I've tried to use Twitter a few times, and found that when I try posting to it, the tweets are listed in my history, but don't ever seem to turn up on a search by the hashtag I put in them. Is that some kind of deliberate feature, or does it indicate the thing is "hexed" somehow and never really gets posted? Wnt (talk) 03:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No idea but in these sort of things it always makes sense to log out and see what a person not logged in will see. N.B. This doesn't of course when you want to see things from another logged in users POV, which is usually needed with Facebook but usually not Twitter AFAIK. You can of course create another account if this is needed although it might violate the site's TOS and may theoretically put your main account at risk. Nil Einne (talk) 05:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is expected behaviour. The nature of hashtags is that they allow you to discover what other people are saying about a subject. I've found a few anecdotal references around the web to suggest this is the case, but nothing official from Twitter.
 * Further to what Nil Einne said above, if you're worried about your tweets disappearing, I'd recommend enlisting a friend to help you test (of course, you could use a second account instead). Send a tweet like this: @yourfriend Hi, I'm just going to do a test. Can you search #test67352hgdui5487 and see if you see this tweet? (obviously replace @yourfriend with your friend's twitter handle). Given what I said above, I'd expect them to be able to see the tweet in a search, whilst it will be invisible to you. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:59, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Apparently the solution is not to use Twitter search (which requires login apparently) but use Topsy.com - and apparently no, the Tweets don't show up anywhere but in the account profile. No idea what is up with that site, or how it's supposed to be an improvement on IRC or Usenet. Wnt (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * ...or RSS hosted on your own server. Twitter is a member of a generation of "Web 2.0" brand services.  The objective of such services is to start with existing free software and either reimplement the feature-set, or simply run it on a server.  The objective of such companies is "to go viral," meaning "to pay for the server, bandwidth, and infrastructure costs for millions of people." In exchange for fronting the costs, these companies may show advertisements, or may just try to self-aggrandize their own brand.  All the while, they violate the spirit, if not the terms, of the free software that they use to drive their web services.  It is for this reason that the GNU Affero license was conceived: to ensure that free software is still free, even if it is executed on a server.  Nimur (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not the chat functionality or the ability to spew your thoughts out that makes Twitter interesting/fun/whatever. It's the fact that you can hook your account up fairly directly to famous people, people with similar interests, and so forth. The interactivity level is very high compared to Facebook or IRC or so forth — you are one degree of separation away from the entire planet, you subscribe to them, they can subscribe to you, nobody pretends to be "friends," the amount of interaction is pretty specifically limited to chatting (not tagging photos or whatever) and so forth. You don't have to like it, but at least take the time to understand what draws people to it, rather than just dismissing it as being made up of component technologies that already existed. It's very different from IRC, very different from just hosting your own RSS feeds, obviously different than Usenet. It's a clever service and fills and interesting niche. I was skeptical before I started using it more heavily professionally; it's become a huge way of how I disseminate my own research at this point and is the main way I make interesting professional connections out of my own narrow field these days. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * This has a five blind men and an elephant feel to it... Do you have Tweet Privacy turned on? Are you searching just for hashed terms or other terms? Do you list "all" or just "top" Tweets? Are you using extremely popular hashtags (and thus perhaps just getting drowned out by the volume) or unusual ones? You should be able to search for your own tweets if they are showing up. I don't use hashtags much, but I'm pretty sure you should be able to see your own hashtags. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * [Your comment alludes to blind men and an elephant, which might be unfamiliar to some readers.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)]

Facebook
Trying my luck once again: What is the max size of a file you can attach to a personal message on facebook? 81.218.12.100 (talk) 08:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know the answer, but since it seems you are having no luck, I can offer this suggestion: try a big file and see what happens, and keep trying various sizes until it doesn't work. Mingmingla (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Outlook 2010 display
I've just had Outlook 2010 installed on my work PC. I have emails from asian colleagues whose name is now displayed in an asian font. In my Contacts list I have them listed with name = asian font name; display name = anglicised name; email address = abc@xyz.com. In the email list they are still "From" the asian name. How do I make it either the display name or the email address please? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe this will help, but it is hard to tell since I probably don't have the same account/exchange setup as you. On my Outlook 2010, under Tools -> Options -> Mail format tab, I have an "International options" button which opens a dialog with settings for fonts etc.  Also under the "Other" tab, the "Advanced options" has a setting about unicode.  Astronaut (talk) 19:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't even have a Tools menu! I have "File", "Home", "Send/Receive", "Folder" and "View". None have an (obvious) "Options" option. Ah well. -- SGBailey (talk) 08:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I think Astronaut is actually talking about Outlook 2007 or 2003. In 2010, you go to File &rarr; Options &rarr; Advanced &rarr; International Options to get there. To customize how the contact list is displayed, you can go to Contacts &rarr; View Settings and then choose what contact fields are displayed in that view. If you want to customize the "display as" name, you can simply edit the contact by double-clicking on it and then change that field.&mdash;Best Dog Ever (talk) 09:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Best Dog Ever is correct. I could have sworn we used Office 2010 at work, yet there it is in the about box "Outlook 2007".  Astronaut (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Best Dog Ever's paths work, however the contacts option looks as though it will chnage the contacts page display, which is fine (I have all of Asian name, anglicised name and email address showing). The File Options path takes me to a page where I can select the font that is displayed, but not what is displayed in the email list. What I want is to NOT display what in contacts is "Full name" but what in contacts is "File as". I have tried editing the contact to swap them round and that didn't help. -- SGBailey (talk) 09:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

2d car movment
I'm making a little game where you drive a car. It's a 2d top down game. I'm having trouble getting the car to drive correctly. For example I would like the car to accelerate towards a top speed, instead of simply hitting a predefined top speed and stopping its acceleration. Also at slow speeds the car should turn in a tighter circle then at faster speeds. I just can’t figure out the math. Here's what I have so far:

if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_LEFT)){ Polygon.Rotate(-1 * Speed * elaspedTime.Milliseconds * 0.01F); } if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_RIGHT)){ Polygon.Rotate(1 * Speed * elaspedTime.Milliseconds * 0.01F); } if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_UP)) {    Speed += 0.05F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds; if (Speed > MaxSpeed){ Speed = MaxSpeed; }    if (Speed < 0){ Speed = 0; } } else if (NativeMethods.IsKeyDown(NativeMethods.VK_DOWN)) { Speed -= 0.05F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds; if (Speed < -MaxSpeed){ Speed = -MaxSpeed; }    if (Speed > 0){ Speed = 0; } }else{ if(Speed > 0 ) Speed -= 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds; else Speed += 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds; } Polygon.Move(Velocity);

86.45.177.178 (talk) 15:29, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Can you clarify something: do you want acceleration to be a function of current velocity? If so, you just add that in: Speed += 0.05F/Speed, or some similar correction factor. You either have to play around with it, or find a formula on the internet that models the dependence of acceleration on current velocity. If it's not working at all, you have changed your variable from Speed to Velocity in the code above, so I can't quite follow it. IBE (talk) 15:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * PS: you'll probably want to divide by something like (1 + abs(Speed)), because otherwise you divide by zero. IBE (talk) 20:00, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * A car's top speed happens when the force being applied to the pavement balances the drag from wind resistance. If you want to model something similar to that, just reduce the speed by a value proportional to the square of the current speed each time the position is updated. The acceleration will have to fight against that, and it will grow stronger as the acceleration stays constant. Eventually they will balance and your speed will level out. It will also add a slowing down effect when not accelerating or braking. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe
 * Speed += ms/5000 * (MaxSpeed - Speed);
 * for forward acceleration (which is basically the same as user 209.131.76.183's suggestion, without the squared part). You can adjust the constants, but whatever you use, make sure that
 * 0 < ms <= 5000 (or <=your constant). (ms is meant to be the time interval in milliseconds, elaspedTime.Milliseconds in your code.)
 * And I can see a minor 'bug' in your code. Pressing UP while going in reverse will kill the speed instantly, as will pressing DOWN while moving forward.
 * Your code for drifting is almost fine, but keep in mind that
 * if(Speed > 0 ) Speed -= 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
 * can cause a VERY slow car to reverse slightly, and
 * else Speed += 0.01F * elaspedTime.Milliseconds;
 * will cause a stationary car to move forward slightly.
 * Two more ifs will catch those cases though. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 09:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Mac OS X Lion: Inbuilt PHP
I enabled Apache (via System Preferences, Sharing and enabling Web Sharing) and entering 127.0.0.1 showed the "It works!" HTML file.

I went to Terminal, entered:

cd /etc/apache2/ sudo nano httpd.conf

After entering my password, I managed to uncomment the following line

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Successfully saved the Apache configuration file and closed Terminal.

Entered the following into TextEdit and saved as phpinfo.php in \Users\user\Sites and \Library\WebServer\Documents:

<? phpinfo; ?>

Opened both phpinfo.php files in Safari and in both cases, only saw the code.

Restarted Apache by disabling and then enabling Web Sharing, checked both files again, still no luck.

Tried enabling the PHP configuration file by going back to Terminal and entering:

cd /etc sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini

Still no luck.

Tried changing the code to:



Still no luck.

This was tried on a brand new Mac OS X Lion machine.

What is going wrong? — Preceding unsigned comment added by YoungAspie (talk • contribs) 17:06, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Two things: 1. Are you making sure you are accessing the page via the localhost and not just as a file? That is, what's the URL you are accessing? It should be something like http://127.0.0.1/~username/phpinfo.php (which is where Username/Sites is mapped by default, I think), not file://etc.etc./whatever/phpinfo.php. 2. Have you tried rebooting since changing the files? Always worth a shot. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:29, 3 September 2012 (UTC)