Computing desk
< June 13	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 15 >

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.

June 14

anyone know how to download movies on a samsung advance a885?

/03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)~~\ l lOOOl lOOOl l / l lOOOl lOOOl l / l l / l l l l \03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Peekingducky12 (talk) 03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC) PLZ tell l \_____/ l \ l l \ l /03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)03:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)~\ l l /__________________\ l \_________________________________________________________l[reply]

I removed your double post. It will probably also help if you don't have such an 'eye catching' and large signature. At the very least, there's no need for the time stamp to appear 10 times Nil Einne (talk) 04:44, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing that the tildes ~ were supposed to be part of the ASCII art, yet the wiki software gets confused and turns them into time stamps/signatures. -- 109.193.27.65 (talk) 10:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't have worked anyway, since he didn't preface the whole thing with a space. Here's what he wanted:

/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\
l    lOOOl                                     lOOOl      l    /                                               
l    lOOOl                                     lOOOl      l   /
l                                                         l  /
l                   l    l                                l  \~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (~~~~ PLZ tell
l                   \_____/                               l   \
l                                                         l    \
l               /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\                        l
l              /__________________\                       l
\_________________________________________________________l

Vimescarrot (talk) 11:14, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But what is that? A diagram of the device? Nimur (talk) 14:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC) [reply]

Probably, here's proper instructions then:

/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\
l                                                         l    /                                               
l                SAMSUNG Advance                          l   /
l                                                         l  /
l                   l    l                                l  \~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (~~~~ MOVIE
l                   \_____/                               l   \
l                                                         l    \
l               /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\                        l
l              /__________________\               A885    l
\_________________________________________________________l
216.185.72.2 (talk) 18:43, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since we've established the garbled code is supposed to represent the device OP was asking about (apparently a samsung advance a885), maybe someone would like to have a go answering the question. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 20:26, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving data

Imagine that I wanted to archive a copy of wikipedia, which is about 100GB these days (current revisions plus images?). If I want to archive it so that the data is good for a VERY long time (say 10,000 years) without power available how could one do it? I imagine amongst other things doing whatever it is say 3 times for redundancy would be a good idea. Store whatever in a vaccuum or inert gas or ...? The only thing I can thing of that could be expected to last that long is ceramics where I reckon you could easily manage 1Mbit per 100mm * 100mm * 3mm sheet. But that's 3 lots of 800,000 ceramic sheets. Might Mylar last 10,000 years? Punched copper tape? Any ideas folk? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:58, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project hopes to address this, using data etched (as analog pictures) onto nickel alloy disks. They're only planning on storing 13,000 pages with a 2,000 year life expectancy. I think they're going analog because they're not confident that any digital format can be relied upon to be meaningful over such a timescale. The problem of intelligibility is one shared with the designers of deep nuclear storage facilities like Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - see this. For physical media, the trouble starts when you have to survive some or much of that time in a condition of apathy or neglect. Ceramics crumble, metal oxidises, plastics offgas and become brittle (and are slowly eaten by fungii and degraded by sunlight), gas-tight containers aren't that gas tight (and the material of the box, and the seal, slowly contaminates the space within). Worse, you have to contend with people deliberately destroying the archive, because it's valuable (they melt those disk down), because they think it's valuable (they smash your ceramic memory blocks because they think there's gold inside them), or because of some cultural reason (they discover that images of the Holy Messiah Keanu Reeves are contained within, and so destroy the whole thing as an heretical graven image). Life, human and otherwise, is much of the problem - I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one day someone finds a marker on Phobos, marking the top of a mile deep shaft at the bottom of which is a huge cavern full of nickel disks, covered with the defunct Martian civilisation's Wikipedia. Short answer: right now, I don't think there's any media that could store remotely that amount of data for that time reliably, bar an effort of titanic expense. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:01, 14 June 02010HE (UTC)

You'd probably want to encode with an error-correcting code (a very redundant one) with lots and lots of section-numbering and framing (to assist a future archaeologist in reconstructing the stream of things when a great number of sections are damaged). Constructing such a primer (so some future person can figure out what the data encoding means) is much the same problem as communicating with an Alien intelligence (i.e. you have no common cultural reference, so have to build everything up from basic bits of science and math) - that's the meat of the Arecibo message and is explored (a bit superficially) in the movie Contact. If you're not willing to pay for my expensive Lunar storage, you at least need to have multiple redundant repositories in physically very distinct locations (continents apart) in geologically inactive places. It'd be nice to say "in the desert", but places that are deserts now were relatively recently (over your timeframe) fairly lush. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:10, 14 June 02010HE (UTC)

You could probably find sites safe to be geologically stable for the next 10 thousand years. 10 million years, or even worse billion years, would be far more problematic. StuRat (talk) 14:43, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the "how not to do it" category, IMHO, goes the record of Earth sounds sent on one of the Voyager missions. It's guaranteed to be heavily pitted by micrometeorites by the time it gets to any aliens, and they then must somehow construct a turntable to play it, and, of course, they might not have ears, and, even if they do, they couldn't make any sense of random sounds from Earth anyway. Then there's the extremely slow speed of the spaceship, which guarantees that we ourselves will pick it up and put it in a museum once we have much faster ships. StuRat (talk) 14:43, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If data is stored in a digital format, then you'd need to include a device to convert that info into something useful, like video and audio. Of course, that brings up all sorts of problems of how to make such a device last that long, power it (solar panels ?), etc. StuRat (talk) 14:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the general idea is, as Findlay points out, that you'd put it in a format that would be theoretically decodable, and let the future human/alien/whatever figure out how to represent it. Then you aren't dependent on trying to make a reading device survive into the future. Such an approach, of course, assumes a minimum level of technological savvy before it could be used. (Which might be a good thing, depending on what the message tells them how to do.) --Mr.98 (talk) 16:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's a good assumption, though. We could very well have a primitive culture find this after the advanced technology is destroyed by an asteroid, mega-volcano or in a nuclear or biological war (in fact, if there was no such disruption, then the nuclear waste disposal site would still be known to future generations and there would be no need for a warning). Of course, one option might be to make the nuclear waste inaccessible to primitive cultures, say by burying it under a miles of concrete. Still, if they are sufficiently motivated, they might dig through it over generations. StuRat (talk) 17:34, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If they're really primitive, then even if the data was in a format they could read, they most likely wouldn't understand it away. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 20:23, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And also most info in Wikipedia would be completely meaningless to them, as jet engine design wouldn't be useful until they learned lots of other stuff. An AI system might need to be included that determines their level of expertise and provides info in a format and of a nature which they would appreciate. If cave men discover it, it could show them how to build a fire with videos, for example. StuRat (talk) 03:58, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The original question was not about nuclear waste, it was about encoding an encyclopedia. It's a different question altogether though it shares some common similarities about communicating across vast cultural gaps. The intent is different. You should not confuse the two—one is a warning against people who lack the understanding to comprehend the threat, the other is an attempt to preserve knowledge in a more ideal form across the ages. There are very different assumptions involved about who would find it useful and what the consequences would be if they couldn't understand the message. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

: I have come with a possibly workable hypothetical solution. Just my two cents worth...

Encode data onto gold surfaces at a density of 2MB per double-sided disc (i.e. 1MB per side), on discs with the following dimensions.

340mm diameter
5mm overall thickness
3mm titanium-nickel alloy substrate
two 1mm gold coatings (for encoding data), one on each side

Every 500 discs would be placed in a cylinder made of titanium-gold-tungsten alloy, with the following dimensions.

40cm in exterior diameter
34cm in interior diameter
256cm in exterior height
250cm in interior height

You would need a total of fifty thousand discs in one hundred cylinders. The one hundred cylinders would be placed in a sealed bunker with rounded edges, which would be constructed out of diamond, with the following dimensions.

Exterior Dimensions: 4300mm (length) x 4300mm (width) x 3200mm (height)
Interior Dimensions: 4000mm (length) x 4000mm (width) x 2560mm (height)

Diamond does not corrode, oxidize or crumble. The bunker should be buried at a great depth; either in a geologically stable yet remote location, or offworld on a celestial body such as the Moon. That way, a future civilization will not be able to access it until they have developed atleast some modern level of technology (possibly including primitive space technology such as ours), and are much more likely to appreciate the value of such an artifact from an ancient civilization, rather than simply destroy it in the hunt for gold or for religious reasons.

Rocketshiporion (talk) 03:51, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Diamond would be stolen for sure, but perhaps you could carve it on stone, It would take a lot of stone! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Diamond wouldn't be stolen if no one knew it was there, and I propose to encode the data on gold (not diamond) surfaces. As for stone, which do you suggest be made of stone; the discs or the bunker? Rocketshiporion (talk) 17:08, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gold is plenty valuable, too, and the object is to make this bunker visible, so future generations can restore all the Wikipedia info and rebuild civilization. Of course, in the interim, very primitive people may find the bunker, too, and we don't want them to loot it for valuables and thus destroy the info. StuRat (talk) 16:08, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

E-mail name

When I signed up for a Yahoo/AT&T account, they asked my name, and I put in NOYFB, because, well, it wasn't any of their business. However, once I started sending emails, they put <NOYFB>my_email_address@att.com as my name and address (not my real email, so no reason to remove it here). So, how can I permanently correct my name, after the fact ? Or, failing that, just convince it to stop supplying what it thinks is my real name, along with my e-mail address ? StuRat (talk) 14:25, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your name in sent emails is usually a setting in your email client. If you're using some sort of AT&T webmail, you'll need to browse through their preferences to change it. Indeterminate (talk) 16:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly what I'm asking about. I can't find where I change my name. StuRat (talk) 15:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hotmail

As a related query, Hotmail insists upon showing my name in capital letters. How can I change that? I have tried to change it before, could not. Thanks 92.24.183.80 (talk) 14:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice3

1) Whenever I go to open an existing letter, I get a "box" that shows the List view. I have to change this to Details, and then click the top of the date column so that the most recent dates are shown at the top of the list. Is there any way of changing the default settings so that I do not have to keep doing this over and over again?

2) Is it possible that when saving a letter using "Save As", that the former file name is remembered (so that I can make minor changes to it) rather than just getting a blank slot which means that I have to retype the whole file name completely?

3) Is it possible to make "boxes" such as the Open or Save As box whole-page, rather than having to peer through a little aperture at the information beyond? Thanks 92.24.183.80 (talk) 14:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Those issues are based on the window manager. Are you using Windows or Linux? If Linux, are you using KDE or Gnome? -- kainaw ™ 16:41, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've numbered your questions for ease of reference. Unfortunately, most of them appear to require changes to the program (coding) to improve. Some more specific comments:

1) This is the only one where it seems that there might be a setting you can change, although I don't know what it is.

2) A workaround might be to pick on the existing name to load it into the box for editing, but be aware than changing the name would cause another copy to be stored under the new name, and leave the old file as is, rather than rename it. Renaming seems to require brining up Windows Explorer (or some other File Manager). I've always found this lack of ability to rename or delete files from within most apps to be objectionable.

3) Unless there's a maximize button (a big square in the upper, right corner), the window probably isn't made to be scalable. Right-clicking on the title bar for the window is another way to bring up the Maximize option, if it has one. StuRat (talk) 16:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am using WinXP. Your answer to 2 - I think that's what I do already, but I always just get a blank slot. 3 - I don't know why programmers in general insist on people being given this weany little window to look through, since it inevitibly requires a lot of scrolling in all four directions. Its like being forced to watch a wide-screen tv through a letterbox. 92.15.10.239 (talk) 18:50, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I suspect that they sized the window when display resolutions were much smaller, like maybe 640×480, so it filled the entire screen, back then. Then they just never got around to expanding it as screen resolutions went up. Ideally, it should have been made scalable in the first place, so no coding change would be required when screens got bigger. StuRat (talk) 19:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can switch between the OpenOffice and XP save dialogs to see of one is more to your liking. Click tools - options - openoffice.org - general. There is a checkbox labelled Use Openoffice.org Dialogs. If it is checked, uncheck it. If it is not checked, check it. You will likely have to restart OpenOffice to make it take effect. -- kainaw ™ 19:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

TouchFLO 3D

In TouchFLO 3D (on a WinMobile 6.5 smartphone), on the Programs tab, is there some (any!) way to add a link to an executable which is not a program installed with an installation process (and thus not showing in the list of installed programs)? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 14, 2010; 17:42 (UTC)

Program for creating mathematical graphs

Cross-posted to the maths desk.

Hi everyone. I'm looking for a program to draw graphs easily (I do mean graphs not charts - essentially circles connected by lines). I'd like a program which has the following:

Graphical User Interface

Ability to drag/drop vertices around.

Preferably ability to resize the vertices, alter colours, alter thickness/colour of the edges, etc.

Does anyone know any software which can do this? -mattbuck (Talk) 17:53, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I asked something similar recently. (Discussion here) Dia was the answer I went with. APL (talk) 18:28, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That looks very useful, thankyou. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mac Dinosaur Game circa 1997-1998

When I was ten-eleven years old, I remember seeing a 3D dinosaur game with marvelous graphics in a computer shop. If I remember correctly, it was actually on a Mac, and not a PC. What might it have been? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nanosaur? Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out in 1997, but I don't think that it was on Mac. APL (talk) 00:23, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]