Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 June 26

= June 26 =

setting up an email service under Windows 8.1
I've just bought a Lenovo U310 IdeaPad laptop running Windows 8.1. When I try to launch my Medicom webmail service (for the first time) under IE 101.0.3 it hangs at the "loading" screen. What can I do? --Halcatalyst (talk) 13:32, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There's loads of reasons this could be happening, I've supported internet explorer in an enterprise for years and the most common cause of issues is usually flash or java and it can be annoying to troubleshoot. First thing I would try is install chrome or firefox and see if you can get it working with that. Vespine (talk) 22:50, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Command-Line Text Encryption Program for SuSE Linux
Hi People.

I need a command-line text encryption program that takes as arguments an input text file (containing plain-text) and a specified output directory; and outputs a text file (containing cipher-text). The program also has to be able to perform the operation in reverse — i.e. take as arguments an input cipher-text file and a specified output directory, and output a plain-text file.

I want to be able to copy the cipher-text from the output text file, paste it into the body of an email, and have the recipient of the email be able to copy the cipher-text from the email and paste it into a text file which would then be subjected to the reverse operation to recover the plain-text file.

Thanks in advance, 203.117.37.212 (talk) 14:04, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I forgot to say, the program also has to take a password as an argument both ways. 203.117.37.212 (talk) 14:10, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Linux systems usually have GNU Privacy Guard installed. It can do this, although you'll have to read the documentation to find out just how to invoke it for this operation. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:38, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * As well as GPG, you can use openssl as described here -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 14:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Digital frequency multiplication
I have a low frequency signal (10..200 Hz) coming into a black box that wants to output a frequency about 3 times as fast (actually 2.8 times as fast). I have a system clock at 32768 Hz.

I want to implement the following algorithm in some hardware/PLD/DSP, representing 2.8 as the ratio n/d = 14/5:

On each system clock do: InputAccumulator = if input pulse then d                                  else InputAccumulator + d InputTotal = if input pulse then InputAccumulator else InputTotal OutputAccumulator = if OutputAccumulator < 0 then Output Accumulator - n + InputTotal else Output Accumulator - n OutputPulse = if OutputAccumulator < 0 then 1 else 0

(I can sort pulse widths and edge detection etc out separately)

Is this the sort of thing that a Texas MSP430 DSP could readily handle with signed 16-bit arithmetic? Would it be a sensible use of such an IC?

-- SGBailey (talk) 15:05, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I haven't read through your algorithm enough to get a good idea of how it works, but the normal solution to clock/frequency multiplication is to use a Phase-locked loop. That DSP could certainly handle your algorithm or a PLL - it's probably overkill for the job, but it's a cheap part. K ati e R  (talk) 19:11, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Tool to list Wikipedia editors who have contributed to particular Wikipedia pages
I had posted this over at the help desk but it doesn't appear to be going anywhere.

I know about multiple tools which allow you to input names of Wikipedia editors to see what pages they have contributed to. I'm also familiar with multiple tools that let you enter the name of a single article to return a list of contributors to that article. What I haven't been able to find is a way to take two or more article names and generate a list of users that have contributed to all of them. This seems useful both for SPI and for finding people with similar interests to your own. Anybody know of a way to do this? --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  15:08, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Directly, no. But you could obviously get a list of all the editors for each of two articles and paste them into excel and use MATCH or similar to find name matches between the two lists. -- SGBailey (talk) 15:18, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * In Python, with mwclient:


 * Which shows the three of us have, at some point, apparently edited Chuck Norris. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Unfortunately I've never used Python. I downloaded it and downloaded mwclient, but nothing's actually doing anything other than popping up windows briefly and closing and I'm not seeing any tutorial that effectively starts "at the beginning." This might be a bigger project/learning curve than I can make time for at the moment. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  16:04, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * If you're on Linux, you open a terminal and:

sudo pip install mwclient chmod +x finlays_script.py    ./finlays_script.py
 * I think it'd be the same on Mac. But it sounds like you might be on Windows, for which I can't really help. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 20:11, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Have you checked the few links at Tools ..? I've only used the tool which analyzes the other way: given two contributors, which articles have they both contributed to. El duderino (abides) 08:01, 28 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Windows closes "command line" (terminal) programs as soon as they finish, before you've had a chance to read any final output. In this case, all the output is final.  Run it from a command prompt instead; you may have to give a full path to your Python installation, but you can try just changing to the script's directory and typing its name as a command.  --Tardis (talk) 15:43, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Google search results Mozilla Firefox
Hi, everytime I use google on Firefox and click on one of the search results, it opens the webpage in a new tab and this is really annoying me. Is there anyway I can disable this feature. Thanks in advance --Andrew 16:41, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There's an option in preferences to "Open each selected result in a new browser window", which you may have inadvertently turned on. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:51, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Just checked and I haven't, not sure why it's doing it --Andrew 17:55, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Turns out there was some sort of Malware affecting all of my web browsers - I've performed a system restore now and everything is back to normal thankfully --Andrew 00:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)