Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 May 21

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[edit] May 21

[edit] how to sniff and play streaming mp3

When a user is listening streaming radio in mp3 format using application like Winamp, how can a network administrator monitor what is being listened by the user, by using packet sniffer? Is there any tool that will play mp3 which is being listened by other users on network at runtime? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.129.237.147 (talk) 06:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Driftnet claims to have that ability: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/
The hard part for our nosy network administrator is to convince his router(s) and/or switch(es) to pass all their traffic through his unix box. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mysterious page inclusions/deletions

If you look at the revision history of the 2006 Lebanon War article, User:Ian Pitchford made [an edit] which didn't seem to effect the Media controversy section but generated a partially duplicated section above it. Not vandalism, as far as I can tell, but a computer error. Similarly, [this edit] did not actually seem to touch any parts of the "Mosquito repellents and personal mosquito control" section, but after the edit the content was deleted. Are these some strange computer errors or am I missing something? It seems like content errors are arising when not consciously committed by the editors. Please explain.72.184.183.175 (talk) 08:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

In 2006 Lebanon War, the "Media controversy" section actually exists twice in the wiki source. Before the edit you highlighted, one of those instances was being hidden by an unmatched <ref> tag. (The text actually got squeezed into the a footnote.) User:Ian Pitchford correctly changed it to a </ref> and the extra section popped out of the footnote list and back into place above its twin.
In Mosquito, some top-level section headers were added in between existing second-level headers, which caused some of the old second-level sections to appear in a different place in the tree (5.4 and 5.5 became 9.1 and 9.2) but I don't think anything actually disappeared. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] YouTube

I have a problem with YouTube. The "similar videos" box on the right has the problem - all the videos that are not in the box when it first appears go all the way down to the bottom of the screen, and the scrolling of the video names is not in sync with the video screenshots. What is causing this problem and how can I fix it? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 11:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What web browser and operating system are you using? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 13:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What Trusted timestamping service do you trust?

If you trust any, of course... Mr.K. (talk) 13:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It would probably depend on what I was trusting it to do! If it was about patent priority, such a system would be secondary to getting trusted witnesses and building a strong paper record of how I got to said bright idea. And though I'm no lawyer, personally I would worry less about timestamping on MY end of things than making a hash of the work and sending it to, say, a dozen other people, all of whom could testify as to when they received it (or putting it on websites with timestamping beyond my control—even Wikipedia, for example). Do that enough times and the likelihood of buying everyone off and faking all of the technical data across a variety of machines seems rather unlikely. But in the end the courts are going to privilege witness testimony and ample paper records more than a few neat technical tricks, I suspect. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can an Adobe Flash plugin read a person's MAC Address or other hardware/personal information?

Can an Adobe Flash plugin read a person's MAC Address or other hardware/personal information? I mean with the latest version that fixes some security flaws in the past? William Ortiz (talk) 15:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

If you do a google search for "actionscript mac address", it looks like the answer is no, unless you've saved the flash file to your computer, run it from there, and you've also installed some .exe file to help it get your mac address. Typically flash can only get the same sort of information that javascript can get, which is not much outside of what the browser knows. If you're asking if there's a security hole allowing unauthorized access, I have no idea. Indeterminate (talk) 23:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Java parser implementation?

As a hobby, I recently wrote a simple Java class library implementing a very basic form of lambda calculus. I now have a class library capable of representing lambda calculus expressions dealing with operations on rational numbers. But to be able to test the class library, I would have to be able to actually construct lambda calculus expressions. I could do it by constructing the objects by hand, but using a parser would be much more powerful. Problem is, I don't know how to write a parser. Is there an existing parser implementation in Java, that I could just feed a Backus-Naur grammar and instructions on what objects to construct? JIP | Talk 17:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Check out JavaCC (and JJTree). Those might be a decent place to start. --Prestidigitator (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] link sharing.

my site is bigtreespa.com. I want to know if I can link to your definition of swedish massage, shiatsu massage and sports massage? my email is (email address removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G2506 (talk • contribs) 19:20, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

You're free to link to any content in Wikipedia without asking permission. If you want to copy the content text to your own site you need to abide by the terms of the GNU Free Document License. (I've removed your email address per the reference desk guidelines because pages from Wikipedia are widely copied, which would make your email address very public.) — Matt Eason (Talk • Contribs) 19:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Anything better than Anisotropic filtering?

Anisotropic filtering for 3D textures has been around for more than a decade (I remember Virtua Fighter 3 arcade had it). Has there been any better/cleaner/faster filtering methods since then? Is there a next generation filtering algorithm? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:16, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Not that I know of... I'm not aware of any major problems with anisotropic filtering that another method would improve on. Indeterminate (talk) 23:00, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dotaing

What does this word mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.119.83.204 (talk) 22:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

afaik, it just means playing Defense of the Ancients. Indeterminate (talk) 22:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)