Computing desk
< December 16	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 18 >

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.

December 17

Updating a Firefox extension to work with newer versions of the browser

POW (Plain Old Webserver) is a useful Firefox extension. Due to a lack of maintenance, it won't install on Firefox 3.6.x. It will, however, continue to work if installed on Firefox 3.5.x and the browser is later upgraded to version 3.6.x. It seems that the extension relies on some mechanism for installation that has been retired. Can someone tell me what changes to the extension are needed to make it install on Firefox 3.6.x? Thanks. --108.16.202.155 (talk) 01:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't done this personally, but the following procedure might work:

Extensions are distributed as JAR files. You want to open and edit one of the files contained therein, so you need to be able to extract and change files stored in a JAR. Some archive programs can do this natively; if not, rename the .jar to a .zip and it'll open with most archive managers (e.g. Winzip).
This article suggests the important file is install.rdf, which contains minVersion and maxVersion lines. You might succeed by just changing these
Then save that file back into the JAR and try to have Firefox load it.

This should work if the only impediment is the versioning (which you might well expect for an addon that's no longer being maintained). If, however, the addon relies on APIs that aren't in the newer version, or work materially differently, then it might not work, and indeed might make the whole Firefox profile unstable (you can always manually remove the extension). I'd be interested to know how you get on with this. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 02:08, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is the OP. I've tried the method you described before asking the question, but it didn't work. I suspect that the reason the extension doesn't install on newer versions of Firefox has to do with its use of an obsolete "contents.rdf" method for registering chrome. (AIUI, the new method uses a "chrome.manifest" file.) I know very little about Firefox extension development so I don't know if my suspicion is correct, and if so, how to create the required chrome.manifest file to make the extension installable again. Any ideas? Thanks. --108.16.202.233 (talk) 22:27, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

⛬

Can anyone point me to an image of this character? It only appears on my screen as a little cube, and I don't feel like downloading a new character set just so I can see what this one looks like. Nyttend (talk) 01:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

here. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 01:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I didn't really know how to search for it via Google etc., since I wouldn't know if I'd gotten the correct results. Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you know the codepoint, you can search for that. If you don't know the codepoint, go to your browser's address bar and type javascript:'⛬'.charCodeAt(0).toString(16) (copying and pasting the symbol in between the apostrophes). It says "26ec", so you search for U+26EC and there you go. (This only works for characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane, at least in Firefox. javascript:'𐑑'.charCodeAt(0).toString(16) returns some nonsense about surrogate pairs. I suspect this is a bug.) Marnanel (talk) 03:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For me, Firefox shows ⛬ as a little box glyph with 26EC written in it, so I didn't need to do this javascript business (this is true for 3.6.13 on Linux, and whatever I have on Windows, which is probably the same). One can also do much the same thing as Marnanel's javascript thing if one has a Python interpreter handy - one can paste the unknown glyph into it, so u'⛬' prints as u'\u26ec' -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:02, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My favourite is iconv -f utf-8 -t ucs-2 | hexdump (or ucs-4le if outside BMP).—Emil J. 17:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OpenGl compatible with windows Xp

I want to download OpenGl but i don't if it is compatible with Windows XP, Is it going to work? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.82 (talk) 02:36, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See the Windows section on The official OpenGL getting started page. Specifically, the sentence "If you are running Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, the OpenGL library has already been installed on your system." -- kainaw ™ 02:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but i can't open it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.82 (talk) 03:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. There's nothing to open. It's just an set of drivers and an API. What are you trying to accomplish? APL (talk) 03:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same user who originally wanted to use Frontpage to make games. I mentioned NeHe (an OpenGL tutorial site). So, I assume the user is planning to use OpenGL. -- kainaw ™ 04:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am (eternally) writing a game on XP using OpenGL and Pelles C, if that's any help. The Integrated Development Environment would seem to be the element you're missing, not OpenGL. 81.131.23.182 (talk) 11:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you make games using OpenGl!? I didn't know that! how can i fix it without paying money? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.82 (talk) 18:26, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your OpenGL is almost certainly not broken. You can test this easily: see those four screensavers that came with XP, the ones which start with "3D", such as "3D Flower Box"? Those use OpenGL. 81.131.62.210 (talk) 18:52, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OpenGL is not a program that you can open and then type into and then somehow make games with. It is not a program at all. It is a set of drivers and interfaces. If you were to write a computer program, that computer program could use openGL to draw graphics on the screen. APL (talk) 20:10, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to build serial strings without MS-Excel-like softwares

For an easy example, the result that I want to generate is like below:

copy /b 1.txt+1.nfo C:\1.zip
copy /b 2.txt+2.nfo C:\2.zip
.
.
.

Although I know MS-Excel can do this job well, I am still looking for more efficient methods or softwares. So if you know something about this, please be generous to share your experience or ideas. Thank you. --Merry Rabbit 05:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using Microsoft Windows, go to the command shell ("run"--> type "cmd") and write HELP FOR. That works fine for tasks like the one above. For more complex things, I guess you'll want to learn a scripting language like Perl or Python. Jørgen (talk) 09:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a site that lets you run code online without installing anything. I've written a program to do what you want from 1 to 100: http://codepad.org/k1OShDA8 --Sean 18:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see. It's cool. Thank you very much. --Merry Rabbit 15:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Red google results

How come if I search for 新撰東錦絵 ("New Selection of Eastern Brocade Pictures") the query term is highlighted in the results in bold, but if I search for just 新撰東 ("New Selection of East") the query term is highlighted in red? What's the red mean? 81.131.20.102 (talk) 05:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I assume it has to do with silently switching to their http://www.google.com.hk/ backend (or not), depending on obviously inconsistent/imperfect detection systems. Compare: http://www.google.com/search?q=新撰東錦絵 with http://www.google.com.hk/search?q=新撰東錦絵, or http://www.google.com/search?q=新撰東錦絵&hl=zh-CN and http://www.google.com/search?q=新撰東錦絵. Likely another "Instant" search UI inconsistency. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How odd that it can't detect the language every time. Those three Japanese characters aren't any less Japanese than the whole phrase (are they?). 81.131.23.182 (talk) 10:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The question is more likely how _Chinese_ they are (as interpreted by FOO crazy system in Google dungeon BAR at BAZ given time from FRED browser after executing BARNEY keystrokes, etc.). ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:52, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From my Google search for Red google results, the first result was Google China Highlighting Query Terms in Search Results in Red.

—Wavelength (talk) 07:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did that search too before troubling the reference desk, and read that page, but I thought they were just guessing, particularly since the results aren't always red. 81.131.23.182 (talk) 10:41, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just guessing also, but I'm almost 100% sure that the answers above are correct: it's a misperforming heuristic combined with different stylistic decisions in different localized interfaces, influenced (in the Chinese case) by the fact that Chinese fonts don't react well to bolding. For a well-known example of a misperforming heuristic see Bush hid the facts. Here's the search with three explicitly specified interface languages, and no other differences: English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese. The only thing I don't understand is why the Japanese interface uses bold. -- BenRG (talk) 20:19, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My google highlights all terms in red. The possible reason is following. Chinese characters are rendered in the font called '宋体'(SimSun) (For SimpChn) or '细明体'(PMingLiu) (Trad). No corresponding bold font is specially designed. In order to render texts in bold, the system would like to extend edges of characters, which may lead to an aliasing result. the Google chooses to red them instead. GanKeyu (talk) 10:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, the font '微软雅黑' (Microsoft Yahei) (named after '微软正黑体' in Trad system) introduced in Vista and the newer systems do provide a better rendering performance. GanKeyu (talk) 10:14, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How much RAM is that?

If the memory specs of a computer is:

DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM, 2 x SODIMM socket for expansion up to 4GB SDRAM

Does it mean you can put 2x 4GB in it (thus each socket up to 4GB? Or just 2x 2GB up to 4GB. 80.58.205.34 (talk) 16:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would take it to mean 2x 2GB for a total of 4GB. Dismas|^(talk) 16:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the text above, I'll also say you can only have 4GB in total. However, DDR3 is normally able to handle more memory (and this is the reason why it was introduced). So, it sounds surprising to have two slots and only 4GB. If you want to know the precise specs check crucial.com or the manufacturer. Quest09 (talk) 16:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've searched for the computer and found 'Asus Lamborghini VX 5 Laptop'. Is that the computer you're considering about? The ticket received from ASUS cheif engineer described the computer can support only up to 4 GB in total. GanKeyu (talk) 10:07, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the OP. Thanks for the answers so far. It is an ASUS, but not this model, although maybe it is the same mainboard. I wanted to purchase the ASUS UL80-JT as seen here: [1]. It is advertised with: "Memory: 4GB DDR3 system memory (up to 8GB)". Crucial.com confirms that the computer can handle 8GB. The information at my first post is directly from ASUS and slightly ambiguous. You can parse it as 2x (SODIMM socket up to 4GB) or (2x SODIMM socket) up to 4GB Wikiweek (talk) 18:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can just about certainly put two 4gb modules into it, giving 8gb. The spec probably says 2x2gb because at the time that laptop was first made, 4gb modules weren't easily available, so they hadn't tested them. That is a pretty common situation. There are actually 8gb laptop modules now, letting you put 16gb in the box, but they are hard to find and cost a fortune. 67.117.130.143 (talk) 09:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ram

What is the most ram that is available for customer buyable computers? 16gb maybe? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.61.56.34 (talk) 17:26, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A quick check of Newegg, which is not definitive or anything, looking at the highest-priced PC motherboards, yields this motherboard which supports 16GB; but when I looked at the highest priced motherboard listed under "servers", I saw this motherboard, which says it supports up to 192GB of RAM. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dell and HP will sell "home" computers configurable with up to 24 GB of RAM. Very high end servers (e.g. $100k+) can be purchased with 1 TB or RAM or more, but in general not all of that RAM is available to every CPU. Dragons flight (talk) 17:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Usually what the operating system can access plays a role in how much memory is sold with a computer. For example, Windows 7 has a physical memory limit of 8/16 GB for Home Basic/Home Premium, so it would be rare to see a computer sold with Windows 7 Home and more than 16 GB of memory, because the rest would be unusable. For Windows 7 Professional and higher the limit goes up to 192 GB, so business-type or high-end home machines might come with more. Windows Server 2008 can reach up to 2 TB, also depending on version. [2]. (For Linux, I found a figure of 16 TB [3]). -- 174.24.216.113 (talk) 05:20, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are the Windows 7 limits imposed by Microsoft to make money or is there a reason why Windows 7 home can't used more than 16GB? Like 32-bit couldn't use more than 4gb 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The 16GB limit is almost definitely just for licensing reasons. (The 192 GB limit is probably more complicated then that.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's called market segmentation. An amusing blog post on the subject. The idea is that richer customers pay more for more or less the same product; the poorer customers get it for less, but the product is hacked down a bit in order to keep the richer ones from buying it. It makes good business sense even if it is irritating from the user point of view. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:40, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a user of ASUS Republic of Gamers Rampage II Extreme motherboard, I can say I installed 24GB (4G*6) DDR3 memory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GanKeyu (talk • contribs) 10:08, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The typical home pc will have 1 cpu slot and 6 ddr3 ram slots at most. 4gb ram modules are now fairly cheap (giving 24gb) and 8gb modules (48gb total) are available but cost a lot more per gb. I think 16gb modules might be available at stratospheric prices. "Workstation" and server pc's are available with 16 or 32 ram sockets and multiple cpu sockets but you're into a higher class of machine then, starting around $3000 and going to $10,000+. pogolinux.com (not intended as an ad) has a nice selection. 67.117.130.143 (talk) 09:32, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What is a crumb?

From time to time on Lycos email I delete an email and get the error message "action not allowed without a valid crumb".

The crumb page has nothing helpful.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

HTTP cookie says 'The term "cookie crumb" is sometimes used to refer to the name-value pair'; it may just be their own rather twee way of saying "a web cookie". -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I fixed the disambiguation page accordingly.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]