Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 April 13

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Computing desk
< April 12 << Mar | April | May >> April 14 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


Contents


[edit] April 13

[edit] famous sayings

01:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)75.108.93.113 (talk)Who said"In the world theres a market for maybe five computers."

Thomas J. Watson allegedly made the statement in 1943. However, there is no actual proof that he was the one who said it. Stephenchou0722 (talk) 01:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
And he may very well have been correct, in that there was only a market for 5 computers at the size, expense, and limited functionality they had at the time. StuRat (talk) 03:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Most of these purported sayings are likely apocryphal. At best they usually misunderstand the context of them being said, as StuRat implies. By the time Thomas Watson died there were, in fact, only a handful of computers around the world, and their uses were still fairly constrained. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 04:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Who knows. In 30 years, there may be no more than 5 mainframe computers left, with everyone else just a satellite. 222.159.65.56 (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

In 1950 or 1951, B.V. Bowden approached Douglas Hartree on behalf of Ferranti to discuss the market for a commercial computer, which they were working on. Hartree felt that there would be no market at all, as the three computer projects already underway in Britain would be able to handle the nation's computing needs for all time. Ferranti decided to go ahead anyway, of course. I have often wondered whether the Watson story is simply an Americanization of this, or whether the same type of mistake was made by both men.

(Source for the Bowden/Hartree story: Mathematics: People, Problems, Results, edited by Douglas M. Campbell and John C. Higgins, ISBN 0-534-03201-X, volume 3, item by Bowden. He adds that Hartree "used to tell the story against himself as long as he lived".)

--Anonymous, 23:35 UTC, April 16, 2008.

[edit] Excel 2007 chart labels

For a long time now I've been making charts in Excel 2003 in order to upload them here, but after upgrading to Excel 2007 I'm having a problem in putting labels on the horizontal axis. Here is an example of the charts I'm talking about, and you can see that the horizontal axis is labelled with the years 1994 to 2008. How I've set this up is to have these years in a column with precisely the right number of blank cells in between to put the labels in the right place. When I view this chart in Excel 2007 however, many of those labels are missing. Through a bit of investigation I've found that Excel is only displaying every second cell from my labelling column, so it's skipping many of the cells that contain the numbers. Try as I might I can't find a way to tell Excel to stop skipping labels like this. I've tried going Format Axis and setting 'specify interval unit' to 1, which should do what I want, but nothing changes. I've tried shrinking the font size and extending the horziontal size of the chart to truely rediculous proportions, but neither of these have worked. I've also tried installing this Microsoft hotfix which sounded like it might fix my problem, but it doesn't seem to have done anything. Excel seems to to be saying that if I have more than 'x' number of labels selected then it's only going to display every second one, dispite the fact that most of them are infact blank cells. Does anyone know a way to stop Excel from skipping labels like this? Raven4x4x (talk) 08:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing you selected a bar graph with the first column as a label - in this case it may be better to use an xy (scatter) graph to treat the first column as a number not a text label. --h2g2bob (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'with the first column as a label'. I've got the axis labels in another column to the data, because as you can see from my example the axis is labeled with the years. I tried making a scatter graph and the same thing seems to happen. I really don't want to make major changes to the look of the charts anyway. Raven4x4x (talk) 12:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the problem is very clear from your question. I assume the graph uploaded here is an Excel 2003 shot. Could you please upload the Excel 2007 shot somewhere so that we can see what it looks like? And if possible the .xls or .xlsx file too? --soum talk 13:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if I haven't been clear. I did try to be as detailed as I could. Yes, my example was from Excel 2003. Here is the same chart viewed in Excel 2007. Notice the missing labels on the horizontal axis. I have a simple example chart to demonstrate the problem, but I cannot upload an Excel spreadsheet to Wikipedia. I'll work on uploading it somewhere else. Raven4x4x (talk) 10:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Maybe it's a bug in your install of Excel 2007? I tried it with my Excel 2007 and had no problem setting 'specify interval unit' to 1 and getting all the years displayed. Astronaut (talk) 14:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
(de-indent). I'm afraid not; the same happens on both the computers in our house, which have different installs of Office on them (installed from different CDs). Have you tried making a chart with upwards of 200 data points on it? This only seems to happen to charts with lots of values. Raven4x4x (talk) 09:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah... Maybe you're on to something here. I extended my example random data to 366 rows and most of the randomly placed years disappeared. Maybe it's time to report a bug to Microsoft? Astronaut (talk) 12:36, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] USB Webcam

I have a USB 2.0 Webcam installed on my laptop (Japanese made); it's one of the ones that's inside the casing at the top of the screen, and I can enable and disable it from the keyboard. In vista, it is listed simply as USB 2.0 Webcam, and the provider and manufacturer are listed as Microsoft. I wanted to see if I could find some drivers that allowed me to tweak it a little bit, improve the framerate perhaps, change the color settings, shutter speed, etc. Anything would be better than the default Microsoft drivers that come with it. Might it actually just be what it says, a Microsoft USB 2.0 Webcam, and nothing else? Is there anything I can do to improve its performance? Thanks. 222.159.65.56 (talk) 15:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC) - Forgot to mention that with the drivers I have now I can't control 'anything'. The camera only shows up in device manager and there is nothing other than a screen that tells me it's working properly, so if I want to change settings I'm doing it through a host program, after the picture has already been captured. 222.159.65.56 (talk) 15:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

After a little searching it seems likely that the generic 1.3 mpixel integrated camera on my laptop is by a company called Chicony, and the only name of any sort I can find is its USB address at 04f2:b022. After about an hour I could only find one site offering drivers for that model (or ANY model by Chicony for the last 3 years), here, but it's one of those pay-for-your-drivers sites and they might be lying about the existence of the driver in the first place. I dunno if it will improve the quality of my camera, but I'd like to get my hands on a specific driver, if possible. Anyone have any ideas? 222.158.163.48 (talk) 23:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Did your webcam come with a driver disk? Or possibly on the laptop driver CD? There is an even chance the Windows XP drivers will work under Vista, if you're using 32bit vista and not 64bit. Otherwise try contacting the manufacturer? TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:14, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] paypal stuff

ok, paypal isnt being much help on this. I am trying to get something to change the price depending on the options selected. It was suggested that i use javascript, but i have little to no experience.

<script language="javascript">
function CalculateOrder(form)
{
<!--None-->
if (form.os2.value == "None" && form.os3.value == "No"
 {
 form.amount.value = 395.00;
   }
if (form.os2.value == "None" && form.os3.value == "Yes"
 {
 form.amount.value = 480.00;
   }
<!--Mag-Lock-->
if (form.os2.value == "Mag-Lock" && form.os3.value == "No"
 {
 form.amount.value = 475.00;
   }
if (form.os2.value == "Mag-Lock" && form.os3.value == "Yes"
 {
 form.amount.value = 560.00;
   }
<!--Pin-Lock-->
if (form.os2.value == "Pin-Lock" && form.os3.value == "No"
 {
 form.amount.value = 480.00;
   }
if (form.os2.value == "Pin-Lock" && form.os3.value == "Yes"
 {
 form.amount.value = 565.00;
 }
}
  </script>

This is what I have, but i dont see how it inputs into the form. The entires site can be found here. Thanks in advance, --Omnipotence407 (talk) 15:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You've got a lot of problems here:
  1. Each of your IF statements in the code above is missing a closed parathesis, so it won't work for that reason straight away. E.g. if (form.os2.value == "None" && form.os3.value == "No" should be if (form.os2.value == "None" && form.os3.value == "No"). Note the closing parentheses at the end.
  2. The FORM tag on the page does not have a name attribute. Add name="myform" or something like that to the <FORM> tag.
  3. You don't have anything that calls the function above. When do you want this function to run? When you click "Add to cart"? You need to set up a time for the event to trigger. For example, if you had a "add to cart" button and wanted it to run when you click on it, you'll need to add onclick="CalculateOrder(document.myform);" to the A HREF tag. Note that "myform" there is the name attribute of the FORM tag you need to put in in the previous step.
  4. You're asking it to check if the SELECT tags have values exactly equal (==) to "Pin-Lock" or "Mag-Lock", but none of the OPTION tag values equal exactly that. They are "Locking Device Pin-Lock" and "Locking Device Mag-Lock". You need to modify the Javascript to what they actually equal, or change the values to match the Javascript, or else they will never return "true" when you compare them (and it won't work). Ditto with the Hose stuff; instead of the option being between "Yes" and "No" the VALUE attributes are set to things like "Extra 50 feet of Hose No". That's not the same thing as "No" and the Javascript will be very strict about that.
  5. Since the Javascript isn't triggered, it's also not clear how the form will submit itself. You could add the line document.myform.submit(); to the end of the Javascript function to make it do that after running the function itself, if that's what you want it to do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Ref Desk (talk • contribs) 16:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  6. Bigger problem: what's to keep me from inserting some of my own javascript and changing the prices? Are you going to be maintaining a vigilance on this, so that if you get orders for irregular numbers it will tell you? Usually things like prices are handled server-side, not client-side, so I can't just insert any value I want and have it get processed correctly.
  7. More abstract problem: it doesn't help that this page has been designed in MS Word, which generates horrible HTML. For such a simple page it is likely to be more of a detriment than it will be a benefit, since modifying things like the FORM's name attribute will already require you to be editing the source code directly, I believe. If that's the case, you might invest a little time into basic HTML. You could re-write the entire page into about 12 lines of code, which would be a lot easier.
  8. Final question: How much is your time worth to you? This might be something you should consider paying someone else to work on for you. Time is money, after all. Someone experienced in HTML and Javascript could have this working perfectly in much less than an hour. Got any computer-whiz nephews or nieces? Is it worth $20 to you?
Hope that helps a little bit... --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 16:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Captain Ref Desk gave a very good answer. To put it bluntly, you should probably hire someone to do this for you ... or better yet, hire a webhost with turnkey E-commerce solutions so you don't have to code this yourself. This is not the kind of project on which to learn Javascript for the first time. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 21:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I made the changes you suggested, and, heres the bad part, I'm actually the "computer-whiz" son, i just need to convince my dad to spend the money. I've got most of the html down, i just use the word as a jumpoff. Ive just never used javascript before. Thanks again --Omnipotence407 (talk) 01:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha, well, if you're the computer-whiz, then you might consider working through one of the many "how to" tutorials on Javascript available on the internet. Any one of them is fine—just work through the examples, and you'll get the hang of the grammar of the language, it is pretty straightforward for the types of things you are doing. You'll probably pick it up very quickly. That's how I learned it originally, anyway, it is pretty simple as far as scripting languages go, but if you don't know it, of course it'll be a struggle. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 13:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dual internet

Hi. Suppose my home is connected to two separate internet infrastructures (say, one ADSL and one cable), each with its own ISP. Is it possible to use both to double the connection speed for a single computer? Say, by connecting both to some router, or by connecting each via its own modem\router to a motherboard with dual ethernet ports? Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

There are office routers that can take two internet connections and balance them out (like this one), but they aren't cheap. If there isn't existing software out there to try and do it, I doubt it would be easy to do or worth it. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 16:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
pfSense can do multi-WAN. --antilivedT | C | G 10:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
If you've got connections to two different systems, you can do load balancing to increase the total amount of data you can transfer, but you can't do line bonding to increase the speed of individual transfers. Downloading using BitTorrent will be faster because each connection to a different computer is a separate transfer, but downloading a large file off a website won't be any faster, because it's only one transfer. --Carnildo (talk) 20:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
If you manage to get it to work you can also try to log in to the same isp twice using 2 dsl routers, there are still some isps where this is possible.
  1. Any reasonably priced Windows software that can do load balancing?
  2. Will loading several webpages with the same Firefox instance count as separate transfers?
  3. How smart are these things? Say, if I start downloads for two large files, will they use different connections or is there a chance that they will both be assigned the same connection?
Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 07:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
[#2] should work

I do not know any windows software for this. But I found this [1] It has 2 WAN ports. I never used something like this so I dont know if it works well. Here is another product: [2]

I have taken the liberty of formatting your reply a little. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Here is another free software that allows this: Fli4l

[edit] "Folder" label appearing...

[3] Suddenly, all my computer folders when displayed in the tile mode have started having the word "folder" underneath them. Any way to remove it? Thanks, —TreasuryTag—t—c 16:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] non-wiki contributions

what website solutions, other than wikis, exist that enable users of a site to add content such as answer and post questions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.165.47 (talk) 18:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

How about Yahoo Answers for posting and answering questions. Also, there are many message boards of various types. -- kainaw™ 19:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
How about a forum? I know of two VBulletin and ASPPlayground.NET Astronaut (talk) 23:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
There's http://www.allexperts.com/ --Wonderley (talk) 23:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Online Courses

How do online courses provide laboratory work? Do the students have to go to an actual college or is the "laboratory work" really a series of simulations? 75.60.207.161 (talk) 23:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

From my experience, they try to offer courses that don't need real lab work. Otherwise, you have to visit the campus. Not a problem for online courses at local schools. 222.158.163.99 (talk) 11:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
That would depend on the type of lab work. If it's to write a computer program, you can certainly do that at home. Even some basic chemistry could be done at home, like determining the pH of a number of common household liquids. StuRat (talk) 17:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)