Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 April 17

= April 17 =

SearchFaster - another piece of malware
Hello. While working with GnuPlot I did some search and inadvertently downloaded so called SearhFaster. Only an hour later I realized what the sucker it is. It misplaced the Google search completely and in the address window I can see this link:

h ttp://search2.searchinfast.com/?uid=9bfa1dd9-636c-49e7-b5e2-8195721628a1&uc=20160416&ap=appfocus5&source=search-bb8&page=homepage&implementation_id=dm_0.2.1

The search itself gives me totally different results. Instead of some academic stuff I get commercials: buy this, buy that. The download was misleading and I don't know how to get rid of it. My OS is Ubuntu 14.04. The search through directories gives me nothing. How to get rid of this nuisance?

Thanks, --AboutFace 22 (talk) 00:25, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I've added a space to the link to disable it. Rojomoke (talk) 06:09, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Probably this is a browser add on, so look there. For example, if you are running Chrome try typing chrome://extensions and chrome://plugins in the address bar. --TrogWoolley (talk) 08:13, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, my OS is Ubuntu 14.04. I managed to remove it from a list of search engines, also removed all other search engines but Google. There is a check against Google name. The default search engine is Google now, the malware still shows up in address window when I need to do the search. How can I get to add-ons for the Browser? It is Mozilla FireFox. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 17:08, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

A question somewhere between Computing to Cognitive sciences to Philosophy
Is there a difference between a "Semantic field" to a "Namespace" or the two terms generally have a similar if not identical meaning? Ben-Yeudith (talk) 05:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * A namespace is organized around a common name. For example, the surname of a family identifies the members of it. Or, the .gov ending identifies governmental pages. Files in a directory are all named /file


 * A semantic field is organized around a common meaning, even if the names are completely unrelated. For example, "chair" and "sofa" might belong to the same field "object you can seat on." --Scicurious (talk) 18:28, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Namespace and semantic field are both blue links. I'd say that "namespace" tends to be used more in the context of artifical languages, and cam be described through formal statements and sets, etc. Semantic fields are more nebulous, and cannot be so succinctly defined. See also Controlled vocabulary and Controlled_natural_language, which are additional related concept that fit in to this milieu. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:35, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Folder Icons & Folder Pictures
Apostle (talk) 09:29, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) What's the difference between the two? ✅
 * 2) How do I change them as a whole, also restore it back to the Original?
 * 3) Where can I find luxurious/futuristic icons...?


 * 1) These days, an icon is just a smaller pic. (At one time, icons also used fewer colors, to avoid using up the limited color palettes available on earlier PCs, but that issue has gone away now.)  However, note that just scaling down a large pic to create an icon doesn't give very good results.  Instead, you want a simplified "cartoonish" version of the item, to be visually clean. StuRat (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I have a feeling that this question is about a file browsing program that has optional pictures to replace the standard folder icon. This is common when browsing media folders. For example, in a music folder, the cover art for an album will commonly replace the standard folder icon. If that is actually what is being asked, we need to know what program you are using - at least the operating system. Otherwise, you will get a dozen answers, each specific to a program that you are not using and, therefore, will be of no use to you. 209.149.115.199 (talk) 11:50, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate. I'm planning to change Folder icons all in one go, and of course, restore it to default when I'm bored... I'm not using a special software, unless you guide me with an 'open source' software. I'm aware of the picture and media glancing/viewing icon and was concerned about this mainly, cause I wondered if changing the first icon would clash with the second (media, picture icon). I couldn't find the destination of both the icons, what I found, I couldn't grasp which one was the second icon... -- Apostle (talk) 18:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Scanning and archiving: standard settings
What is the most recommended settings for scanning a pile of documents and archiving them for the future?

They are basically letters, notes, and forms. No color or color not important (that is, written with a blue pen), and no pictures.

I'll use 300 dpi, but I wonder, what file format should I choose? Is there a file format that will stand the passage of time? That is, 5-10 years from now, could it be that no common tool will be able to open a file scanned today? --Scicurious (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but predicting the future is beyond the scope of the Reference Desk. We do not know what tools will be common in 5-10 years&mdash;let alone, more importantly, 50-100 years. --69.159.61.172 (talk) 18:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I am pretty sure someone knowledgeable in archiving will have a better answer than yours. And there is no reason to suppose that 50-100 years in the future is more important than 5-10 years.--Scicurious (talk) 19:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

GIF was created 29 years ago and is still in use today. There's no reason to assume that it will disappear in 5 years time. You can pick any widespread format in use today (jpg, png, gif, pdf, tiff) and be reasonably confident that it will still be readable in 5, 10, or even 50 years from now. Of course, if you're trying to protect the data from a doomsday scenario where the internet has been destroyed and you'll only be able to use whatever computer parts and software you manage to salvage in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, then all bets are off. For documents where color is not important, reduce the image to black and white to save space. A 300 dpi scan of a page of text might be 1MB as a jpg, but only 100Kb as a black and white gif. The threshold operator in imagemagick works nicely for this. 61.33.191.135 (talk) 19:52, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Word was also created 20+ years ago, but ... . Anyway, are GIF tools of today back-compatible with the GIF 29 years old?


 * And, some version of .pdf is not an option? Scicurious (talk) 21:03, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * (EC) PDF/A is a format designed for the purpose of long term archival. While the actual advantages in the case of scanned documents with no OCR is minimal, it may still be the best choice. In terms of compression, it will depend what precisely you want to keep. If you're just storing in black and white i.e. 1 bit as mentioned above there are better compression formats designed for this supported by PDF/A (notably JBIG2 although you'd want to avoid the lossy variant). I do wonder if 300 DPI may be a bit low if you're doing 1 bit particularly if you have very small text or some important imagery on the documents. As has been said above, while it's impossible to predict the future, 5-10 years from now don't seem like a good test for any common image format, or heck less common ones, you'd want to worry more about 50-100 years. The other commonly used alternative is TIFF although I'm not sure what forms of compression are normally used. From what I understand, PDF/A is largely replacing TIFF for scanned documents although obviously some may still prefer TIFF or other formats. Note that TIFF and PDF also support multipage files, although it's more of a standard part of PDF. TIFF is still often used for archival of digital images from cameras (whether scanned or digital cameras), x-ray machines etc. Possibly uncompressed or with lossless compression. JPEG would be the most likely alternative whether in TIFF or by itself. Although despite it's unpopularity elsewhere, a number choose JPEG2000 for long term archival instead. (And whatever the wisdom of this choice, considering some of the big names involved, it's hard to imagine they aren't going to ensure they have a way to access their content in the future. Although it may be this software would not be something easily usable by random people bearing in mind we have no good idea what hardware and software is going to be like 50-100 years from now. Realisticly this probably applies to other common formats including GIF although the less commonly the format was used for professional archival, the greater risk that even if someone has a way, it may not be easily usable by you.) See e.g.        for more discussion. Note as highlighted by some of these discussions, if this is something you really care about you should look in to how you're scanning and processing your documents. Also be aware that some software may claim to produce PDF/A, but don't actually. (It's possible this is less of a problem for scanned documents, but I'm not so sure.) Nil Einne (talk) 21:44, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Apple iPhone autocorrect
For the first time in my life, I have a non-Nokia mobile phone, namely an iPhone 5S. It seems to have autocorrect in its text input. It displays popup suggestions sometimes when I am typing a word.

I am having trouble with these popup suggestions. I thought tapping on the popup would accept the suggestion. No, no such luck. Tapping on a suggestion makes it go away and I have to type the full word.

Furthermore, the suggestions are sometimes wrong, and when I finish typing the word, the iPhone decides it knows better than me, and accepts its own suggestion without my authorisation, causing me to delete the whole word and retype it.

So in conclusion, this autocorrect thingy looks like a good idea, but in practice seems to be more trouble than what it's worth. So, how do I actually use autocorrect? How do I accept its suggestions when they're right and ignore them when they're wrong? So far, it's been more of a hindrance than a help. J I P &#124; Talk 20:56, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's Apple for you, they know better than you how something is supposed to work. Tapping the auto-correct, as you have noted, dismisses it, you can eventually learn to live with it, or you can just turn it off. I find it the perfect balance of useful enough that I don't want to turn it off (have tried a few times) and annoying enough that it frustrates me on a regular basis.. Vespine (talk) 22:38, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, something that makes it just slightly more bearable, to "accept" the suggestion, you don't tap it, you can just press "space". As SOON as the correct word appears in the suggestion, you can stop typing the word and press space, this can save you some typing when you get used to it. Vespine (talk) 22:40, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * See my sprawling text below, this is mostly true, but not entirely. It only completes on space under some circumstances, not all. (I just tested it to be sure). SemanticMantis (talk) 14:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Look around for things like "iphone autocorrect hints", e.g. . I did that too when I got an iphone, but it was hard to find a good description, plus the details change a bit over time. So I'll type out some hints that I wish someone would have told me.
 * It is a bit frustrating to get used to. Assuming you have the latest iOS: When you start to type, you'll see a range of possible completions at the bottom, including the actual text you have typed (inside quotes for some reason). If you want to pick one, just tap it, and the word will get filled in, along with a space so that you can start the next word. If you don't want the suggestion, just hit space or keep typing. So far so good. However, when it's sort of more sure that you don't really mean what you've typed, then one suggestion will turn blue, and that means that when you hit space, your text will automatically get changed, even if you didn't want it to. To keep weird strings that it wants to change, like 'tleprt', you have to (at first) click on the little bit that says 'tleprt' and to override the blue automatically inserted 'teleport' option. Here's a few fun tests that show how awesome/insane/frustrating/magical the system is. Type 'tle'. You probably will see a blue "the" pop up. If you hit space, you get the "the". But if you continue 'tlepr..', eventually you might see "teleport" fill in. Now, if you delete back to tle, you will likely not see "the" as an automatic autocomplete option, because it has guessed that you do really mean something about e.g. tle, and it's trying to be adapt. So from this we learn an important aspect: this magic is context dependent. It depends not only on the current state, but also the history, so it is also path dependent! As you use the phone a bit, it will start to learn what weird words you use, and eventually stop trying to correct them. True story: my phone now sometimes suggests Necrodancer after I texted a bunch of my friends telling them how great that game was. The first few times were frustrating, but it learned quick. Another fun trick, that works best after you've had the phone for a bit. Open up a new email, then just hit the first completion suggestion, then repeat. It doesn't need any seed to start, and you'll get some interesting strings of words based on your past usage. Hope that helps :) SemanticMantis (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2016 (UTC)