Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 October 3

= October 3 =

OGG recorder
Which free (gratuit preferably libre) software enables you to make OGG recordings on Windows 7?—Eat me, I'm an azuki (talk · contribs · email) 12:21, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Audacity would likely be a good choice for you.--Phil Holmes (talk) 12:53, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia tense
Please consider this example snippet from our article on Russ Jackson which I refer to in support of my broader question:

"Jackson is an Officer of the Order of Canada[8] and was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in law by McMaster University in 1989. He will be added to Canada's Walk of Fame in 2012.[9]"

Nobody has changed "will be" to "was" in these three years (and I don't know if the investiture happened - that would take human research). Should Wikipedia implement an automatic way of flagging instances like this, triggered by a parse of the grammar, prompting an update such as "[please update]" like the useful ones we have for "[citation needed]" and "[by whom?]"? Hayttom (talk) 16:21, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've updated that particular instance. In fact, it was original research, predicting the future, so should never have been added with that exact phrasing.  It would be interesting to know if anyone can write a script to find such predictions, and the more general sentences that need updating.  We have some bot experts ...    D b f i r s   16:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Please read the original edit adding this fact before throwing around phrases like "original research, predicting the future". A "prediction" in the form of an announcement from the Walk of Fame organizers seems like a reasonably reliable source to me.  It might have been more exact to say "is to be" instead of "will be", but that's a minor point. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's the point I was making. The original edit should have been "It was announced that ...".    D b f i r s   20:42, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh how thoroughly I hate the "on such-and-such-date it was announced that" sentence structure. I have seen articles with entire paragraphs made up of announce porn. Nobody cares when Mr. Passive announced something. Announcements are a clumsy sentence structure carrying non-notable and irrelevant information. 91.155.193.199 (talk) 02:08, 4 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree that it's probably better not to put it in Wikipedia at all until it happens, then there is no problem with tenses and updates, but people like to be first to add details of future events to articles, so we are unlikely to prevent the recording of announcements.   D b f i r s   09:25, 4 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That bot thing sounds like the kind of thing I was imagining. I presume that's how peoples' ages get updated.Hayttom (talk) 04:29, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * For ages there's a smart template that subtracts birthdate from today. —Tamfang (talk) 06:31, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

that bot requires strong AI. ( Unsigned reply added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov on October 4th. )
 * Yes, to check the actual facts requires a human intelligence, as Hayttom said, but finding phrases such as "will be" and "is to be" should be very simple, and checking for an adjacent date in the past should be possible.   D b f i r s   07:36, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Bookmarklet to insert preset text into browser text box
How could I create a Bookmarklet (in Chrome, but I imagine it would work elsewhere) that, upon clicking, would copy a particular block of text into whatever text box were selected? As an example I'm thinking about the Cluebot autoarchiving text one adds to a talk page to start auto-archiving. It's not exactly something to memorize and a bit of a hassle to look up every time -- but it's not really any more convenient to load up a text file or something, either. I'd like to be able to click in a particular spot and paste away from my browser (or, perhaps, click the bookmarklet and then specify where, if that's required). If cursor position is impossible because of the need to click the bookmarklet, maybe just insert it at the top of the text box? This may be better for Village pump (technical), but the answer most likely does not require specificity to Wikipedia. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 16:54, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Have you tried saving a text file with the text you want, then cutting and pasting from there to wherever you need it ? I've done this before. StuRat (talk) 19:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Indeed. That's one of the approaches I mentioned above that I'm trying to improve upon. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 22:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Take a look at. It looks like it can create exactly what you want. --jpgordon:==( o ) 21:30, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I did find that. It generated a long line of JS that, given my relatively poor knowledge of the language, isn't easily readable. When I searched for any mention of that site elsewhere, I found nothing, which did not fill me with confidence. I suppose I could use it as a starting point and figure out what it's actually doing along the way... &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 22:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's a tool to make it easier to figure out. Create the bookmarklet using that .ru page, then drag the link it generates to http://jsbeautifier.org. Hit control-enter and *poof* a nicely beautified readable version of the bookmarklet. The name and ID versions are very simple:


 * The clicking one has considerably more parts, of course. --jpgordon:==( o ) 05:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Very nice. Thanks! &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:26, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Dell Latitude E5450
I recently started a new job and they supplied me with a Dell Latitude E5450. It has 8GB of memory. I'd like to find out if it can take 16GB. I found this spec sheet which says that models manufactured after Jan. 2015 can use 16GB. How do I find out if my laptop was manufactured after January? And most importantly if it can accommodate 16GB? Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 19:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * You might try running the download from crucial.com, which is designed to give you info like that. StuRat (talk) 19:54, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I had completely forgotten about Crucial! Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 03:07, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Google line chart variable Y max value
I have a lot of line charts on a website using Google's charts. Foe a few charts, I have between 3 and 6 columns of data. I don't want to see the first column. I want that to be the maximum Y value for that row of data. To make sense of this request... I have sales. I have a total sale quantity in the first column. I have categorized SOME of the sales in the other columns. So, the sum of the other columns is always less than the first column. I want to see a line chart where I see all by the total sales column as a percent of the total sales column. Right now, I think that I have to create a new data set with the percent of total for each category and graph that. I would prefer if there was some way to simply provide the API with one column of values as the total value and the others will automatically be shows as a percent of total. 75.139.70.50 (talk) 21:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)