Computing desk
< January 9	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 11 >

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.

January 10

iPad charging

I have a car charger for my iPhone, will it also charge my iPad please?--85.211.148.143 (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mine does. You may be able to find more specific info on the web site of the company that made the charger. Dismas|^(talk) 07:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some do, some don't (in particular, older ones might not provide enough power, so it would be like plugging the iPad into a little iPhone charger.) --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:06, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amateur architectural design programs

Let's say I wanted to design a new home, not in a super technical way, but in a detailed enough way that I could communicate these ideas to a builder, what is the software landscape right now for that kind of task? I know there are CAD programs that can do amazing things, but those aren't necessarily oriented for residential home construction. Similarly, I know there are some cheap programs that do the same thing that you can buy at your local office supply store. I'm looking for some idea of if there's a standard, what those might be, and any other relevant points. I'm aware of google sketchup, which I've toyed around with some, and while I like, Isn't as specialized or robust as what I'm thinking of. Shadowjams (talk) 09:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, we have a List of computer-aided design editors (I don't have any experience of any of them, but the list may be worth a read)Darigan (talk) 13:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Second Life is a free 3D virtual world you can build in. fredgandt 13:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

P.s. YouTube (not new video) and guardian.co.uk report on architects in SL. There is a lively community and many groups. You could find people (some professional, some not) for advice and help very easily. Many universities and collages use SL, as do many real world architects (cite missing 'cause this isn't an article. I know SL very well). Since it is free and web based (client download required), you can also share your work with anyone who has access to a (reasonable) computer. fredgandt 13:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe worth mentioning that the standard approach is to discuss your ideas with an architect, who then draws up the plans that the builder works from. For something like a whole new house, the plans will probably need some sort of sign-off from a structural engineer. And in many countries there will be some planning approval process that checks your new house meets local building codes. The "super technical" plans are needed for all these purposes, and most builders don't have the experience or time to draw up these plans themselves. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some students at the school where I used to work, used Blender and this tutorial http://yorik.uncreated.net/tutorials/architecture-blender.html to create some amazing ideas for buildings. --TrogWoolley (talk) 15:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that link TrogWoolley, very good tutorial, I am going to try that! Von Restorff (talk) 19:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have used Google Sketchup for this purpose, which is very simple to learn and free of charge. Highly recommended! 88.90.108.120 (talk) 19:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DOWN LOAD SOFT WARE OF BENZ ACTRESS COMPUTER SYSYTEM

I WANT TO DOWNLOAD SOFTWAR OF CPU OF COMMERCIAL BENZ ACTRESS . fOR THAT WAHT I HAVE TO DO?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.153.243.16 (talk) 11:18, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mercedes Benz Biome Windows 7 Theme? fredgandt 12:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have to congratulate you for making sense of that question. I could get as far as understanding the OP wants to download some software, but the "commercial Benz actress" bit was lost on me. JIP | Talk 19:48, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Purely a Google guess. fredgandt 06:18, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly Julie Benz is the actress. Maybe something seen in Dexter? Who knows? fredgandt 07:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

C# getting the amplitude of the sound read by the microphone

I would like to have access to the amplitude of the sound being received by the microphone, what would be the simplest way to do this?Bastard Soap (talk) 11:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

15 inch cheap thin ssd like zenbook?

hi, this is what I'm looking for: a cheap, (about 700 dollars) 15 inch laptop built like a zenbook, meaning it has an SSD, is thin, has no ~~hard-drive~~ dvd or cd drive, and 4 GB of RAM, an i5 processor. unfortunately I can't find a zenbook in 15 inches... whats the closest thing to my description? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.6.71.91 (talk) 13:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Something like a Acer Aspire AS5750G-6653? It is 29 bucks over your budget, but it has 6 GB RAM. Von Restorff (talk) 20:35, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! It's promising, but is a typical laptop (not an "ultrabook") which makes it heavier. Above, I made a mistake, now corrected: by "no hard-drive" I meant "no cd/dvd drive". Basically, I would like what you linked but thinner, lighter due to SSD instead of hard-drive, and no CD or DVD drive. Maybe what I'm describing simply doesn't exist? --80.99.254.208 (talk) 10:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ultrabooks are going to be more expensive than larger laptops, because of the effort they have to put in using smaller and colder running components, and higher density batteries. I suspect you are right in assuming the machine you want doesn't exist, especially with an i5. Is there a reason you need such a fast processor in such a small form factor? Maybe an i3 powered laptop might suit your needs? 192.84.79.2 (talk) 15:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ASP.NET session expiring

In Microsoft ASP.NET, is it somehow possible to have the ASP.NET web application automatically fire an event when the user's session expires, or do I either have to wait until the user makes an HTTP request and check if the session has expired, or devise some contraption where the web application starts a new thread that periodically checks whether users' sessions have expired? All this makes me wish HTTP was designed so that the user going to a different page, or closing his/her browser, would send some signal to the web server. But no, such a thing never happens. The web server only gets a signal when the user starts browsing, not when he/she stops browsing. JIP | Talk 19:53, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Check this and the code under "Detecting when a session has timed out" and the text under "Session Timeout Event" on this page. There is an event that is fired when the session expires, so I imagine you could write an event handler for that.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 20:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can design your server-side application to communicate with a client-side script, e.g., JavaScript. For example, AJAX refers to the ensemble use of client-side JavaScript and lightweight communication between browser and server, to provide a more sophisticated application behavior.

But, is this design paradigm really necessary? Why do you need to know if a client's session has timed out, unless they are making a new request? Do you plan to revoke permission to view content that your server already delivered? Nimur (talk) 23:33, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the thing is, that this is part of a larger application, and the design is that every session allocates a resource from inside that application and starts a thread to periodically monitor that resource. I can't just keep on allocating resources and starting threads and be done with that, otherwise the server will run out of memory. Luckily these threads already know how to free their resources and stop running, they just need to be told when to do it. Therefore I figured it would be best to do that immediately when the user's session expires. JIP | Talk 19:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the trivial solution is to use a watchdog timer. In other words, pick a reasonable session timeout constant (say, ten minutes - you can obviously tune this to meet your performance and usability needs). Always terminate a session after the timeout. Design your system so that any user-action resets the server-side countdown back to zero. Nimur (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]