Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 November 16

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[edit] November 16

[edit] Newsgroups & Music

I'm not sure if this should be in the entertainment section, computing or where but here goes... With the large record companies having the clout to shut down music sharing internet sites, busting pirate companies all over the world and even taking individual people to court, is there any reason why the usenet groups have remained relatively untouched and generally out of the debate? For a resource that lets people easily download just about everything it seems low on the 'get rid of it' priority list. Kirk UK 88.144.64.61 07:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)


It is mostly because the usenet providers don't actually post content, they automatically mirror it. Neither do they flaunt it as a place for illegal files. One usenet provider did recently and have had legal action taken against them by the RIAA (see here) . I also think maybe usenet isn't high profile enough, I'm pretty sure the average internet user knows what limewire is and probably even torrents by now, but most won't know what usenet is, and even if they do wouldn't be willing to pay for it, or go through the hastle of setting it up. Added to the fact that it has a large amount of legitimate uses (moreso than torrents I would say) Finally you can't really get rid of usenet, you may as well try and get rid of http, it is just a method of storing data and accessing it. TheGreatZorko 09:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, DMCA notices tend to be sent to people who POST the content. I know when I frequented a posting IRC channel, they would discuss this issue and several people either had notices sent or knew people who had noticed sent to them.--152.2.62.27 14:00, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
It would be far easier to get rid of usenet and http than to get rid of bittorrent.. aren't there centralized servers for usenet that resolve the usenet alt.whatever.whatever style names to locations of machines? Same with the internet.. the primary DNS root is critical for basically the entire consumer internet, and it's probably inextricably integrated into billions of dollars of software that depends on it. Just take out the like 8 data centers that serve root DNS requests. Their location is supposedly secret, but the locations of the US ones are known and I doubt it would be too hard for the MAFIAA to track them down. Meanwhile, bittorrent is decentralized and usually encrypted, and a true peer-to-peer network would be completely impossible to stop without drastic changes to networking standards. --ffroth 14:49, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Usenet is a "global, decentralized, distributed" network. --LarryMac | Talk 15:02, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
There are no centralized servers for Usenet. All the recent articles on every group are physically stored in every NNTP server that carries the group. There's no central directory of NNTP servers, either; each server gets its articles from one or more peers, and each of these peering relationships is set up individually (the administrators get together and draw up a contract). It's less centralized than BitTorrent in that there are generally far more servers carrying a particular newsgroup than trackers tracking a particular torrent. I assume you're joking about taking down the root nameservers. This is not something you can do by court order; it would take a major global catastrophe. I'm sure Usenet and the Internet will eventually die, but only of natural causes. Of course, some people would say that Usenet is already dead; in fact, they've been saying that since 1983. -- BenRG (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm entirely serious about the root nameservers. Granted it might take a global catastrophe to provoke the action, but really. If someone in power really wanted to take them out all it would take is a special forces team.. they could even take them out one by one at their leisure- who's going to stop them? Rent-a-cops? I don't know if other root nameservers can propogate new root nameserver IPs down to ISPs before their turn is up, but it seems like it would basically break the WWW, at least in the short term --ffroth 05:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Let's go over this again. Disabling all thirteen seventy-odd root nameservers, even assuming it was physically something that could be done, would not kill Usenet. This is because Usenet does not require the DNS; rather, each newsserver only needs to be able to contact its peers, which can be done by IP address. (Heck, Usenet doesn't even require the Internet, never mind the DNS). However, it would effectively shut down the entire WWW for the entire world (and email, bittorrent...), which might have one or two other political ramifications for anyone foolish enough to try it, even a group as powerful as the RIAA. Marnanel (talk) 14:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Let me echo what TheGreatZorko said. It is a problem of visibility, most internet users have no idea that usenet exists. Usenet as a discussion forum has (sadly) been eclipsed by web-based forums like this one. Usenet as a binaries distribution hub has been eclipsed by highly visible P2P networks. The usenet paradigm is foreign to most people, joining and decoding binaries posted to usenet is well beyond the technical expertise of most users. -- Diletante 15:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
You can add to that the fact that many (dare I say most) usenet users never returned to usenet after the September that never ended. -- kainaw™ 15:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
A bigger nail in the coffin for usenet is that mailing lists are more convenient - and their sole disadvantage (that they are a horrible waste of bandwidth) is largely irrelevent in a world where bandwidth has become cheap. Setting up a new usenet list was a major political exercise - setting up a mailing list is a job you can do without anyone's say-so and get it ready to roll in about 2 minutes flat. Sure you could put your new usenet list up in 'alt' - but the odds of the usenet servers of all your potential subscribers actually carrying it was almost zero. Between mailing lists and forums - we've got a better solution. Usenet's only remaining benefit (anonymity) means that these days it's mainly a repository for porn. Sad - but it served it's purpose. SteveBaker (talk) 04:29, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sizes of USB flash drives

Hello, My question is how the size of USB sticks are advertised? Are they in binary gigabytes (as RAM) or in decimal gigabytes (as hard- drives) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.206.56.248 (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

According to Binary prefix#Flash drives, these particular drives are measured in "'powers of two' multiples of decimal megabytes; for example, a '256 MB' card would hold 256 million bytes." Ian 14:20, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
A card/stick labeled 256MB almost certainly has a memory chip with an exact power-of-2 of storage locations, but some of it may not be user-accessible. And, how much is really useable will depend upon OS and formatting options. This seems (I work with these every day, so this is "OR") to vary by manufacturer, brand, and even model. The best answer is "You may be able to use up to 256MB of space for storing your stuff, but certainly no more, and probably significantly less". -SandyJax 14:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
If you want any kind of filesystem there's going to be enough overhead to make the difference negligible --ffroth 14:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
My experience with CF cards suggests that the size changes rather dramatically depending on the individual card -- even those from the same manufacturer. My understanding is that different chips have different defects, and so the internal defect managment may mark large areas as unusable. This makes the card report a smaller size than the actual chip should allow. ---- Mdwyer (talk) 17:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
almost every memory chip uses binary, so you would have the size as per RAM. keep in mind that because of the file system you loose some memory. A 256MB card could fit 256MB of ram's data, but not a 256MB file, because the file allocation table etc take up room.--Dacium (talk) 01:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mac Advantage?

Is there any particular reason why Macs have traditionally been favoured by the design industry? I've looked on the entry for Macs and nothing seems to stand out as a massive plus in terms of DTP or Graphics work. Is it that they just look more contemporary? Thanks in advance. 88.144.64.61 14:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

IMO: yes. *brace for impact! --ffroth 14:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Why would anyone argue with you? You admit that you "hate" the Macintosh operating system[1] so if you're happy in your hatred, carry on; no argument is likely to affect you.
Atlant 16:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah but I still have to answer arguments; that was what I was bracing for --ffroth 20:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
The software used by the print industry was originally only available on the Mac. Equivalents are now available on Windows (and Linux). However, the Mac-only mindset is well entrenched in the industry. -- kainaw™ 14:59, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I think Kainaw probably has cited the most important reason: Mac's clear early superiority in the "design" environment, but I think it's also worth noting that the user experience on a Mac remains substantially "smoother" than the user experience on a PC. So if your goal is to use a computer as a tool to get some not-directly-computer-oriented work (such as graphic design) done, you may be happier using a Mac. And I say this as someone who, every day, uses Windows/XP, Windows/2K, Sun Solaris, and Mac OS X. If I could, I'd do all my work on the Mac (although a lot of it would be done down in the Unix shell).
Atlant 16:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Network effects can cause this kind of entrenchment after the original reasons have gone away. Mac software also has a certain design aesthetic that seems to appeal to people who care a lot about that sort of thing. --Sean 15:49, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I think also Mac has better font systems or font based things, so is often favoured for this too. They certainly feel like they are designed by designers for designers. Whether that is pretentious or true is in the eye of the beholder, but presumably due to this the 'better' versions of photo-editing/design software become available on Macs. It will become a self-fufilling prophecy over time as the more macs are associated with design the more design see mac as their platform. -- ny156uk (talk) 17:04, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe it had better color support, too. That is, it supported the ability to handle Pantone colors accurately. ---- Mdwyer (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Two words: Aldus PageMaker and LaserWriter. See Desktop publishing for more. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Yup, Apple's early support for postscript printing made it the de facto standard for desktop publishing. Speaking as someone who's done design and commercial printing work on both a Mac and a PC, there isn't a huge diffrence anymore except support of legacy tools (especially font software), and personal preference. -- dcole (talk) 19:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ranked list of Wiki visitor user-agent strings available?

Has anyone compiled a ranked list of User-Agent strings reported by Wikipedia visitors' broswers? ---- 64.236.170.228 (talk) 20:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Saving a page in Internet Explorer

Is there a way to change the default format in which Internet Explorer saves pages? Currently, as I go to File→Save As..., the "Save as type" drop-down box shows "Web page (complete)". Is there an easy way (a registry tweak, perhaps) to permanently change the default to "Web page (HTML only)" or to "Web Archive, single file"? I need this for IE6. Please do not suggest switching to different browser or installing third-party apps, as it is not a realistic option for me. Any other help (if only to confirm that it is impossible, so I wouldn't waste any more time on this issue) would be extremely appreciated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:38, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not have IE (no Windows here), but I am certain that an alternative is to view the source (I assume you know how to do that) and then save the source. Hopefully there is a more straightforward method. This is just in case nobody has one. -- kainaw™ 23:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
There seem to be plenty of people asking about this, but I haven't been able to find an answer that doesn't involve 3rd-party applications. I thought IE6 might remember which type you chose between sessions, but it doesn't appear to remember it between webpages! I think that Kainaw's solution might be the best, although someone else might know differently. -- Kateshortforbob 11:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Kainaw! Embarassingly enough, this obvious solution did not occur to me. It is perfect for my needs. Thanks again!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:34, 19 November 2007 (UTC)