Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 March 23

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March 23

Ubuntu and music play counts

Greetings. Does anyone know why Ubuntu, and probably Linux in general, don't include play counts in music players? Even the non-FOSS ones never seem to include this important feature, yet about 99% of Windows music players do. I've spent months wondering if it's a Windows metadata thing but even Itunes does it, so it's just Ubuntu/Linux missing it. I really miss play counts. Can anyone explain this? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 16:26, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Amarok has play count. It has a backend database. A stripped down media player, such as mplayer, won't have a play count because it doesn't store anything. It just plays music. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:15, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, i've been looking at full fledged music players such as: Tomahawk, Lollipop, Rhythmbox, Audacity, etc. After scouring the web for 2 months and experimenting i now have a single option it seems...And it's one i didn't install because it's ugly. Any others you know of? I've been reading reviews for lots. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 17:28, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

First, Audacity is not a music "player". It is an audio file editor. I wouldn't expect it to have any features you want. Amarok is ugly and clunky. It used to be nice. Clementine forked from version 1.4 before the Amarok developers got stupid. So, you could try Clementine and see if the old Amarok is nicer. As for looks - aren't you using it as a music player? I don't look at my music player. I shove it into the taskbar and ignore it. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:42, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Minor mix-up. I've been scouring review lists such as this and this. Turns out i meant Audacious, not Audacity. Any recommendations other than Amarok? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:18, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Clementine gets my vote.--Link ^(t•c•m) 21:39, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

It took a while to get it looking half decent and learn where everything is. Thanks. I didn't appreciate it the first time but it'll do ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:00, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

FB page subscription

Not long ago I subscribed to a certain Facebook page, but don't receive any notifications about updates, be it on FB or via email (even though the notificication option is turned on in subscription). As such I'm forced to sift through their page manually to search for updates which usually appear somewhere below the top requiring scrolling. Today, for instance, I caught the update only 3 hours after publication, with no notification whatsoever. How to fix this? Brandmeister^talk 16:46, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I Googled facebook turning on all notifications and found stuff you've likely already tried. Rather unfortunately, FB hates the world and everyone in it, so advice on older webpages quickly becomes obsolete as FB endlessly changes their settings, setup, and options. If you're accessing via an Apple mobile device, this effect is doubled. Facebook does have a help centre, complete with a link to an online community where experienced users try to help with issues such as yours. One point you'll want to detail is whether you get any notifications at all (email or 'push') from other pages. If my tone earlier was not hint enough, I find FB endlessly frustrating and have encountered the opposite problem, where some pages just won't stop sending push and email notifications unless I unsubscribe completely. Matt Deres (talk) 01:46, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

You're fighting against the facebook EdgeRank sorting algorithm, which sorts posts based on a number of mysterious factors. Probably because Facebook makes money off of this algorithm (You can pay to have preferential treatment.) they make it difficult to turn off. (There's a thing you can click to see stuff sorted chronologically, but it's a per-session thing that isn't saved.)

There are third-party tools that try to make managing facebook easier. FB Purity is popular one, it may have a tool that does what you want. ApLundell (talk) 13:43, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Where do these lists come from?

I have Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge. Recently I had to reinstall Windows so this list (Top sites in File:Mercuryturnpike.png) showed up again in some cases when I would click on the URL ad the top of the screen. I don't know why it changes because I don't do anything to make it change. This list may not be the one that appears currently but when i get home I'll try to do it again.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:28, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Is there any reason you have to believe that the list is not created from your browsing history? Are you claiming that you have never, not once, been to GoComics? Are you claiming that you've never, not once, visited your contribution history on Wikipedia? You've never ever been to any of those websites? Not once? Never? Never ever? 209.149.113.5 (talk) 18:01, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I want to know why these sites? Why not others? And when I get home, there's a new list.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:04, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Do you seriously expect that a Microsoft Edge developer is going to read your question here? Microsoft Edge is not open source. Nobody can look at the source code and analyze their recommendation algorithm except the developers. Even then, I doubt that all of the developers can. I expect that there is one small group with access to that code. I do not understand why this is difficult to comprehend. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:42, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand why my question is so difficult for you to comprehend. Or maybe you just don't think it's necessary to be nice to people.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:40, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I did figure something out yesterday. I do keep going back to the gocomics a to z list, so I do use that one a lot. The same is true for "Main Street" on another site. In both cases I start with the master list and go to each comic strip or topic. Here, I keep going back to my contributions, but not nearly as often. "National TV" is not a master list on another site, though, and I don't go to "Ask Amy" that often either.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:06, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Rudeness aside, the IP touches upon a good point, though they didn't mention it directly. The algorithms that produce these suggestions are obviously going to be based in part on your history, but they're also going to be based on what the developers of the software think is a good method for predicting what you're going to type when you type in something novel. So it's also going to be based on other people's history, as well as a number of other factors, such as the current date and time (are you Christmas shopping? Doing your taxes? Planning a summer vacation?), whatever other information about you they have access to (do you run Photoshop every day? Do you regularly connect to the FTP server of a software development archive? Do you have lots of videos stored in your documents folder?) and similar information culled from people with similarities to you (do other Wikipedians often search for the names of college professors? Do people who use your banking service often search for loans from other banks online?). The actual method they use to wrangle this data into a prediction, and the specifics of the data they use are bound to be proprietary and highly protected, so no-one is likely to give you a direct answer to your question here. And if they did, they'd either be full of crap, or about to get fired from their job at Microsoft and sued for breaching their non-disclosure agreement. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, I understand now.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

This is the third time he has asked this question and the third time he has been told that the suggestions are based on his history using some sort of algorithm. He will be back next week asking where the list comes from. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:50, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but we have channels for handling disruption. When an editor is causing you frustration, we have methods for dealing with that, too. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:56, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

This was the third time I had not gotten an answer, so it was the third time I asked. Here, I was given an answer to a separate question which I should have asked separately, but not to the question I asked here. Here, I asked the question the wrong way and was first told something irrelevant because apparently the person thought I expected behavior that wasn't possible, when my question was about the actual behavior which, because I reinstalled Windows 10, had to happen all over again. Then I was given sarcasm by someone else rather than a constructive answer. Greek mythology questions are not answered on this reference desk, so that's likely the only possible interpretation.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

It appears the list did not change like I thought it had. See File:Askamy.png. "Ask Amy" was in there before. However, this one has a list of searches too, though I don't recall doing any searches at home. With my slowIinternet and concern about going to unfamiliar sites on my own computer, I make a point of avoiding Google. Sometimes I make a mistake typing a URL that sends the computer to Bing or my phone company's search. How these got chosen I don't quite understand, but perhaps it's an algorithm I'm not allowed to know the details of.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if you searched on your phone or your tablet or your computer or your television. Microsoft/Bing knows that your IP address performed searches and viewed web pages. Therefore, it feeds information about that into the recommendation algorithm. Further, if you are signed in to an account, everything you do under that account is stored regardless of the device or where the device is located. So, if you are signed into Microsoft at work and do a search, that search will impact your recommendations at home. Further, it is clear that Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook share information. For example, if I "like" a friend's comment about his new power drill on Facebook, I will suddenly see suggestions to look at new power drills on Amazon and both Google and Bing will suggest popular power drill web pages to me. It appears that you think your computer is making suggestions based solely on what you do on that computer. We live in a very connected world now. What you do anywhere - and what anyone who appears to be you does - is used to market to you. 71.85.51.150 (talk) 23:45, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Char array index

I came across this syntax feature to initialize an array (not associative array or hashtable) in Go:

 
var inverse = [256]uint8{
   'A': 'T', 'a': 'T',
   'C': 'G', 'c': 'G',
   'G': 'C', 'g': 'C',
   'T': 'A', 't': 'A',
}

Is there name for this syntax feature?

I'm trying to see which other languages have the feature, but it's kinda hard to do without knowing the feature's name. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 18:42, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

What feature are you referring to? The use of the word "var"? The bracketed 256? The colon separated pairs in the initialization? The latter is sometimes called an "associative array" and appears in JavaScript [1]. A similar concept appears in Perl where it is called a "hash" although it uses a comma or arrow between the key and the value rather than a colon [2]. In C++ it's called a map and again the initialization syntax is a bit different [3]. CodeTalker (talk) 19:49, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have clarified. It's the use of associative array syntax to initialize a regular array. As you mentioned, pretty much all languages have associative array, and easy and clear syntax for initializing them. However, the Go clip above is only one I've seen so far that allow you to initialize a regular array with the associative array syntax. I'm wondering whether there are other languages that allow you to do the same. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 20:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

This is basically designated initializers from C99, where the syntax would be

uint8_t inverse[256]={
  ['A']='T', ['a']='T',
  ['C']='G', ['c']='G',
  ['G']='C', ['g']='C',
  ['T']='A', ['t']='A'
};

--Tardis (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! That's precisely it.

Did this feature first appear in C99? Or does any precious standardizations of C have it?

I checked C++ and this particular form of designated initializer isn't supported. Is there any other C derived/inspired language that have this feature? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 19:14, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

It is not uncommon. In PHP you assign key and value as 'key'=>'val'... So it just replaces the colon with an arrow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1004:B049:9B6:CCAC:5A12:84A3:24A4 (talk) 20:58, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep, you're right. Thanks! Though admittedly PHP is cheating a bit since their array is both the regular array and the associative array. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 21:54, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Try reading up on Lisp (programming language) for an even lower-level implementation of association lists: It used to have only two fundamental data types, Atoms and (association) lists. Even statements and function definitions are all coded as a list of atoms, though modern implementations have native support for the traditional array of data types. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:33, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

In perl it is arguable that in some respects hashes are "even length array"s - and the syntax for initialising hashes may well work for arrays and vice versa, depending on whether strict is turned on or not. See fat comma. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:21, 24 March 2017 (UTC).

DOT NET emulator for Windows 10

Please can you recommend me a DOT NET version 2 emulator for Windows 10. I have several DOT NET version 2 applications that no longer work on Windows 10. They are abandonware so will never be updated to the latest DOT NET version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.10.85.15 (talk) 19:24, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

.NET 2.0 is still supported by Windows 10 but it needs to enabled (installed) as described here. So, go to the control panel/programs and features/Turn on and off Windows features and enable .NET framework 3.5. Ruslik_Zero 19:47, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• As Ruslik0 said: the best .NET2.0 emulator for Windows 10 is Windows 10. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Programming language like the Unix pipeline

Is any programming language build like a series of filters in a pipe like the Pipeline (Unix)? It looks like a cool approach, comparable to OO or imperative. --Llaanngg (talk) 20:39, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Insofar as bash is a programming language (in addition to being just an interactive command interpreter), ... the bash language encourages the use of pipes. You can also use pipelines and coprocs (if you're using bash-4 or newer). These paradigms fit very well with traditional pipe | syntax.

Nimur (talk) 21:15, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

You could do this with any functional language, though it wouldn't be as easy to read as a bash script. e.g. output = FunctionThree(FunctionTwo(FunctionOne(x, y))); or possibly:

FunctionThree(          
    FunctionTwo(         
        FunctionOne(x, y)
    )
);

(though for obvious reasons, that second example won't work with any language that doesn't ignore linebreaks, like VBA). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:35, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Does that mean that Bash is a functional programming language? If that's the case the corresponding article could benefit from a little updating. Llaanngg (talk) 22:54, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No, I would say it's a command language, (personally, I would call it an imperative language with a few data state features if I had to classify it that way.) Just like a OOP language can replicate the functionality of a functional language, a functional language can replicate the functionality of an imperative language. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:43, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

If you like pipeline, you would like the programming language Mathematica or should I cry wolf, er? Wolfram.

You can do

FunctionThree[ FunctionTwo[ FunctionOne[12.34] ] ]

or

FunctionThree@FunctionTwo@FunctionOne[12.34]

Or

if you like the postfix notation (aka the pipeline notation)

12.34 // FunctionOne // FunctionTwo // FunctionThree

Now if your function takes multiple parameters (and outputs a list containing multiple elements), for example two parameters x and y. You can put them into a list (think of a list as an array) and get the function(s) to take a list as if it were multiple parameters.

{x,y} // (FunctionOne @@ #) & // (FunctionTwo @@ #) & // (FunctionThree @@ #) &

or

{12.34,56.78} // (FunctionOne @@ #) & // (FunctionTwo @@ #) & // (FunctionThree @@ #) &

148.182.26.69 (talk) 22:57, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Do you realise the "dream programming language" you are talking about which uses pipelines would have to behave something like this

TheWorld={Value1,Value2,Value3,Value4,...,ValueN};

EndOfTheWorld = TheWorld // Function1 // Function2 // Function3 // ... // FunctionK;

DisplayFinalResultToOperator[EndOfTheWorld];

148.182.26.69 (talk) 23:51, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course you can do it all in one line! This is your ultimate pipe dream.

{Value1,Value2,Value3,Value4,...,ValueN} // Function1 // Function2 // Function3 // ... // FunctionK // DisplayFinalResultToOperator

148.182.26.69 (talk) 23:57, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Method chaining? Asmrulz (talk) 12:15, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

The phrase is dataflow programming. --Tardis (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

An older programmer I know once referred to that as a "debugging-based programming". Not that it's important, but I thought it was amusing and rather apt. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:43, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

right. one thing doesn't preclude the other, though. And the shell itself is influenced not by OOP nor by any of that fancy dataflow stuff but by 60' job control languages . (I see that one Victor A. Vyssotsky who co-developed BLODI also headed Multics which inspired Unix, so who knows.) Asmrulz (talk) 18:49, 24 March 2017 (UTC)