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November 9

Flikr too big

I'm trying to access Flikr with Palemoon, I see only the top left quarter of what I should see once I select an image. The usual <ctrl>- does not help. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:33, 9 November 2014 (UTC).

November 10

Bouvet email addresses?

I subscribe to a listserv that just got meta-spammed — someone sent an advertisement for a spamming firm, listing how many email addresses they had per country and what they'd charge to spam each of them. One entry reads as follows:

Bouvet Island 1602 Email Addresses $50 USD

I can vaguely understand BIOT addresses (perhaps they're for workers and military offices on Diego Garcia), but Bouvet, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and the Territoire des Terres australes et antarctiques françaises are all uninhabited (and the USSR is defunct), but all of them supposedly have email addresses. Do they really (and if so, how?), or is the spammer branching out into defrauding its customers? Nyttend (talk) 16:04, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

ISO 3166-1 (list of country codes) has "BV" for Bouvet Island, "IO" for British Indian Ocean Territory, "HM" for Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and "TF" for French Southern Territories (redirected to French Southern and Antarctic Lands; in French, "Terres australes et antarctiques françaises" or "Territoire des Terres australes et antarctiques françaises").

—Wavelength (talk) 17:11, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, as you already know, they're a meta-spammer - which means that they're aggregating data, which is by its very nature unstructured data, from untrustworthy sources. One of the biggest challenges of so-called "big data" is separating wheat from chaff: in other words, identifying invalid entries. Most probably, the list of "compromised emails" comes from a giant geo-tagged database, and that data contains many invalid entries. Only the most egregious and obviously wrong entries are easy to spot - so you (as a human) have a sort of immediate ability to filter out junk with high probability. But the aggregation algorithm - which, by its very nature, is run on a spambot - can't do that! Identifying certain categories of junk data-entries in an email list is a great example of a task that would be obvious and trivial for a human, yet difficult to program as a spambot-algorithm.

If I were trying to make money selling spam, I'd intentionally avoid sending the spam (it's too easy to get busted!), and I'd instead opt to monetize selling junk data to spammers, (which entails a lot less legal liability!) Besides, selling giant phony lists of contact information for purportedly-real-humans is a lot more lucrative marketplace than ordinary run-of-the-mill spamming! Nimur (talk) 17:40, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

.bv says the domain is not available for registration so I don't see where they got all those emails from. I'd guess they are untested emails that have bee put in by people in error - or because they don't want to be emailed. Anyway what do you expect from people like that. Dmcq (talk) 17:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course there are honeypots of fake addresses created by the "good guys", on their own servers for these people to harvest. If (say) the required response from 1 million spams is 10 victims, then diluting the address pool 1000 fold means these spammers are very unlikely to have a successful business model. For more details mail me: [email protected]. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC).

Wpoison is one such tool. Here it is in action. It uses random two-letter TLDs for many of its fake email addresses. -- BenRG (talk) 07:53, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Are matplotlib, gnuplot, and latex connected at a lower level?

Are they processing the same objects down there?--Senteni (talk) 18:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

matplotlib uses GTK+. gnuplot usually uses wxWidgets or Qt for graphical output (or something else, if you've got an unconventional installation). LaTeX is a stand-alone utility that produces a .dvi file suitable for conversion into some other data-type that can be rendered on screen (like a PostScript or PDF file).

Deep in the innards of these programs, all are munging with representations of visualizations that can be lumped into the broad categories of raster graphics and vector graphics. However, these three tools share very little code. In other words, although they all have common types of abstractions about plottable or drawable objects, they do not use the same implementation of these abstractions - internally, their abstractions are not even cross-compatible.

If we wanted to be very pedantic, we could make the case that none of these three programs actually draw anything to screen - that's a job that they all leave to an external graphical toolkit. Most of the time, though, if you download these packages as part of a plotting utility kit, they will come pre-linked and pre-installed with the graphical kit, so that the plots can be written to standard image formats or drawn interactively on your monitor.

Nimur (talk) 18:38, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

November 12

I just want to get this .avi to burn to a DVD

It's 2014. I have a PC (Windows 8) and a Mac (10.6.8), and for the life of me, I cannot get this .avi file (I captured with Hypercam) to convert to a proper file and burn it to a DVD. I've got IDVD, IMovie, VLC, I downloaded Burn and DVD Flik and I've been screwing around all night with them and haven't made any progress. All I want is this 23 minute video to keep its quality and be able to repeat (endlessly) playing on a standard DVD player...can you help this poor fool out? Where do I start? 74.69.117.101 (talk) 05:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The DVD needs to be in DVD-Video format. This means there must be files with names like VIDEO_TS.VOB in a folder named VIDEO_TS, and they must be written contiguously in a particular order to the disc, and the file system needs to be UDF. Any DVD authoring program, like DVD Flick, will create the files for you, but you also need a DVD-Video-aware burning program that will write them in the correct way. There may be a check box somewhere in an options dialog that you need to check to enable DVD-Video support. Alternately, if the DVD authoring program can produce a disc image (probably with a .iso extension) instead of individual files, you can use any image burning program to burn it. -- BenRG (talk) 05:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Example of how to define a URI for an XHTML/XML Document

Could anyone site an example of a URI for an XHTML/XML document.I tried looking google but couldn't get one.I haven't seen an URI which describes the XML namespace.

QUESTION

This an example taken from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_namespaces.asp.

XML FILE

   <root>
   <h:table xmlns:h="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/">
   <h:tr>
   <h:td>Apples</h:td>
   <h:td>Bananas</h:td>
   </h:tr>
   </h:table>

    <f:table xmlns:f="http://www.w3schools.com/furniture">
    <f:name>African Coffee Table</f:name>
    <f:width>80</f:width>
    <f:length>120</f:length>
    </f:table>
    </root> 

Could anyone explain how to define the namespace:"http:www.w3schools.com/furniture".I just wanted to know how could we define an namespace.More specifically should we define it using DTD or schema or whether it should have some other elements. Because if you need to write an XML file and if you don't know how to define the namespace I think it might only be possible to read an XML file. JUSTIN JOHNS (talk) 08:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Changed ref to inline link to avoid confusion with later question. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

To JUSTIN JOHNS: The xmlns URL is arbitrary; it's determined by whoever makes a standard. You could make up a URL for your own format if you wanted. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 00:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

And yes, you should probably include a DTD or schema, too. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 00:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

SQL

I have something like such table in Access

NAME	YEAR	RANK
FFF	2014	1
BBB	2014	2
CCC	2014	3
FFF	2013	2
BBB	2013	1
CCC	2013	3
FFF	2012	3
BBB	2012	2
CCC	2012	1

Is it possible with SQL (I would like to stick to the Access) to get something like this:

NAME	2014	2013	2012
FFF	1	2	3
BBB	2	1	2
CCC	3	3	1

This is just an example. The real table could contain much more rows with different and with more years.

I currently have such code (which works for the table):

SELECT DISTINCT A.NAME,
(SELECT B.RANK FROM Table1 B WHERE A.NAME=B.NAME AND YEAR=2014) AS 2014,
(SELECT B.RANK FROM Table1 C WHERE A.NAME=B.NAME AND YEAR=2013) AS 2013,
(SELECT B.RANK FROM Table1 D WHERE A.NAME=B.NAME AND YEAR=2012) AS 2012
FROM Table1 AS A;

How I can make better code, to not write a new code for each year? --Aswan fan (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This is called a cross-tab query, and they can be created in Access - see here for example, or searching the Access help for cross-tab should find it (I don't have it installed so can't confirm this). I've used a generic stored procedure that I found here to create crosstabs in MS-SQL. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There will be more than one step, as I understand it. You will need to CREATE your new table (if it doesn't already exist), and add columns using ALTER TABLE, for any columns that don't already exist (using IF EXISTS). When I have needed to do this it has been a one-shot, so I hacked something using the perl DBI, but a dynamic SQL only solution obviously has many attractions. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:17, 12 November 2014 (UTC).

For this particular query, I think a basic crosstab would work. You would put NAME in the Row, YEAR in the Column (selecting Group By for both), and RANK in the Value. If you only have one rank for each combination of NAME and YEAR, then you can select Min (or Max, or First, etc.) to get the correct results. If you have more than one rank, then you should select whichever function you want to apply to the data (i.e. do you want the maximum ranking, the first ranking, etc.).108.59.48.1 (talk) 13:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Audio cassette -> PC

I have some old audio cassette tapes (family recordings) that I need to digitize (probably using Audacity on a Linux desktop machine).

I bought an old (circa 1970's or maybe 1980's) dual-deck cassette player (no amplifier...just the deck) from the GoodWill store - and plugging headphones into the jack on the front produces good audio. But I'm having a hard time getting the PC to pick up a decent signal.

I'm betting that the answer lies in some kind of horrible impedence mismatch - and probably on which output on the deck (headphones/line) and which input on the PC (line/mic) I use. I'm having a hard time getting the right sets of cables to just try all of the possibilities...so rather than guessing, I'm hoping that someone here actually KNOWS what I should do!

TIA SteveBaker (talk) 16:13, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

@SteveBaker: As you surmise, it's a question of impedance; but also sensitivity - voltage levels and the like, see Line level. I would first try connecting line out on the deck to line in on the PC. These should match fairly well. Some cassette decks have the annoying feature of using the speaker/phones volume control to also adjust the line out level. This is useful if the PC has no input level control, but if it has, use the PC's input level control to adjust levels, and set the deck's output level to maximum. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Steve, start at line level. Keep in mind that for this situation, you do not require that the nominal impedance exactly matches (in other words, you don't require maximum power transfer).

You probably want to connect the headphone-out on the tape deck into the "Line In" on the PC. (You probably do not want to use the "microphone in," which would be suitable for a very weak signal, like a completely un-amplified microphone).

Nimur (talk) 17:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Just a thought. Have tried googling the make and model of your deck. Someone may have been thoughtful enough to take the guess work out. Also what are you plugging it into...? Meaning that the jack of your computer maybe expecting a 'mic' with a much higher impedance than headphones. See Nimur's post above on line voltage. Bear with me, I typing this on a MAC not a PC and a quick look on Preferences > Sound shows I can choose a 'Audio Line-In port' option. I'll see if I can get the chance to crank my PC into life and look a Linux flavour or two for similar options. Might save a lot of hassle.--Aspro (talk) 18:08, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yep. All my sound cards have 'line in' sockets and Ubuntu has an input option for sounds. Are we answering your question or going off on a tangent?--Aspro (talk) 18:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Or when all else fails: Follow these instructions for ripping from cassettes using Ubuntu Linux & Audacity. [1] Modern electronics will (should) compensate for any remaining miss-match and the input volume level control will adjust for line level voltage; even on a vintage deck. Final thought. To refresh my memory, just had a look at the back of my desktop towers. Does your desktop support a separate sound-card or does it just have the standard sockets? Without a separate sound card you will be connecting straight to the mother board (double check by looking inside). The sound quality will not be as good as a dedicated sound-card. Remember, computers are sold on price and so many (most) perform at the lowest common denominator acceptable to John Doe. For family archival recordings that may be handed down to future generations, this little detail may be worth checking. Final finally: Clean the heads !!! [2]--Aspro (talk) 18:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

For family stuff, record onto a good archival CD. Say... [3] Then put a CD/DVD machine in a sealed plastic bag with a silica-gel pack (and all the technical data) so that your descendants can more easily transfer the recordings to whatever the middle 21st Century storage medium is – without them (your descendants) depending on a serendipitous discover at a Goodwill Store for a vintage CD/DVD machine . As for all your Andy Williams and Barry Manilow greatest hits however, I suggest -just letting them fade away ;-)--Aspro (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah...trouble with that is that it's probably exactly what my 'ascendants' thought when they sealed the audio cassettes away. Turning the audio into numbers is obviously a good step because analog recordings fade and digital ones don't. Then it's just a matter of ensuring that the files are still there and still readable. I can use a "raw" audio file (just the sample bytes) and I'm pretty sure they can figure out the right replay speed from either the filename or by listening to some of the music in the recording. So with such a simple format, all I need to do is to store it in enough places to ensure that the files will still be there. Using a single archival medium seems to be the problem - but copying all the files that I care about from one medium to the next and the next after that means that I never have to care about getting stuck with an obsolete format that nobody can read. I still have files from floppy disks on my Atari ST on the harddrive of my desktop PC - backed up onto my cloud servers' account. Documentation for the 16 color image formats we used back then is easy to find online...so a while back, I converted them to GIF's - and now they are PNG's. The old MIDI-file music still plays just fine! SteveBaker (talk) 21:59, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course digital media degrades over time, typical life span for a home-burnt consumer grade DVD is only ~5-10 years [4]! You might want to contact an archivist if you want professional advice on this and related matters. If you really want longevity without yearly data hygiene, your best bet would be to press a metallic analog record. Likewise, if you want to preserve photos for your descendents (again, assuming no regular maintenance/transfer/backup/migration), then your best bet is to print on acid free paper. Now, you are probably willing to migrate the binary files to various formats and media over the years, but the idea that digital information does not degrade is a very popular misconception. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

So the consensus is LINE-OUT to LINE-IN, volume on the tape deck to the max, clean the heads and make sure the PC knows to use LINE levels on that sound port. Well, that's what I guessed first and I got nothing out - so I'm betting I have a bad wire or a wonky tape deck or something. Thanks! SteveBaker (talk) 21:59, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

You have good audio from the deck via headphones -yes. So that's probably OK. Use something else (other than the deck) to pump audio into the desktop. If that is OK then its probably.... Second thoughts... Your neighbors may be cursed blessed with having to drag up the odd 10 to 14 year old child. They have loads of odd cables and things hidden in their bedrooms and will be able to sort this sort of problem out in a jiffy. They may probably be able to download all the software and sort out the dependencies in order that it all works whilst they are still doing their school homework. Ask them. What have you got to loose (other than your pride and appearing in their eyes as an old fogy ;-) !! Letting them have 'hands on' to the problem is easier for them, than you trying to describe it over the ether and making sense of our ramblings based on your ramblings. Hopefully, the cloud will elevate the need to keep transferring stuff onto new media. But I guess that is what the Sumerian's claimed with their clay tablets. But what did the Egyptians do - yes you guessed it - they invented papyrus.--Aspro (talk) 23:10, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I have been told by some in the industry that an old tape player will have the heads magnetized and can damage the tape if you don't degauss it first. Plenty of guides out there for that. --  Gadget850 ^talk 22:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

November 13

USB flash drive

Seeking a 256GB USB 2.0 flash drive that doesn't cost me a fortune. I've been too lazy to look very far, but the example I found was about 4 times the cost of a 128GB version, whatever that's about. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 14:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

And your Q is ? StuRat (talk) 14:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, is there a 256GB USB 2.0 flash drive for, say, less than US$150? If there is, what is it called? ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 17:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Never mind, per "We don't do your homework for you" at the top. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 17:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Amazon has many options within that price range: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_3/185-1037091-8291342?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=256gb+flash+drive&sprefix=256%2Caps%2C210 Justin15w (talk) 20:21, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

rarreg.key

I have a file called rarreg.key which I don't know where to insert to activate the installed winrar 3.42 (evaluation copy) software. I've been given 40 days of trail period... Does anyone know where to insert this rarreg.key file? If so, please provide the steps I should follow. Regards -- (Russell.mo (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2014 (UTC))

See instructions here: http://www.winrar.co.nz/winrar-register. It just needs to be placed within the winrar folder. Justin15w (talk) 20:16, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! -- (Russell.mo (talk) 14:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC))

System's Graphics Card mitigation

Right click Computer click properties, my system information is messed up!

Long time ago, in my life time, before the second re-installation, the System section's Installed memory (RAM) was 8.00 GB (7.89 GB usable) and System type was 64-bit OS. After the second installation it turned into, Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB (2.65 GB usable) and System type: 32-bit OS. This is a big difference. I can't uninstall and reinstall again because this time I'm using an antivirus what I can not lose. What could I do to improve my RAM?

My Graphics card is:

Adapter information:

• Chip type: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
• DAC Type: Internal
• Adapter String: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000
• BIOS Information: Intel Video BIOS
• Total Available Graphics Memory: 1165 MB
• Dedicated Video Memory: 64 MB
• System Video Memory: 0 MB
• Shared System Memory: 1101 MB

Can somebody help me in regards to this matter please? I need to get as much RAM back as possible because it doesn't allow me to play games...

Note: I don't have a BIOS system, meaning, when I reinstalled Windows 7 Ultimate the second time, it disabled the functionality somehow and I can't get it back...

(Russell.mo (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC))

Nonserver versions of 32 bit Windows will only support up to 4GB (see Physical Address Extension). Actually generally less because some of the address space is used by other components. There are further limitations in how much the kernel and how much applications use (usually up to 2GB but it can vary). I don't understand why you can't just reinstall your antivirus, but you'll have to put up with the limitations as long as you stick with 32 bit Windows. In this day and age, considering the limitations, I question the wisdom of using any 32 bit OS on an 8 gb system, regardless of whether the 32 bit OS supports 8 gb via PAE, particularly if in to high end gaming and now that the new consoles mean games may actually use more than 4GB. (Admittedly your GPU isn't very strong.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I may be speaking nonsense, but it looks like you MAY have to reinstall Win 7 Ultimate in 64bit. Perhaps during your previous reinstall you chose a 32bit option? Justin15w (talk) 20:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I didn't know my system's capability at the time of re-installation, I didn't check it thereafter either. The antivirus I'm currently using, I got it from from Canada, I can't get an antivirus here, well I can, but here [where I am] antivirus costs bucks. Therefore I am stuck with this crap 32-bit OS until I relocate, which will be after a couple of years or so. Isn't there anyway I can mitigate it?

What about, how do you check how many times I installed a software... such as graphics software...? If I installed a software twice or not...? Is there anyway I can erase anything to improve the memory/graphics memory...?

(Russell.mo (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC))

32bit systems are physically limited to about 3 GB RAM utilization. See 3 GB barrier. Windows 7 does support Physical Address Extension, which will allow up to 4 GB utilization, but I cannot offer any comment on this, as I've never used it. Your graphics memory is a completely separate issue - you are using Intel HD 3000, which is a GPU built into your CPU. You can always upgrade to a standalone card, which will offer much better performance. As to the RAM issue, I believe your only option would be to reinstall with 64bit Windows 7. Justin15w (talk) 19:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstandingmy point. I don't care where you got your antivirus from, nor am I asking you to get a new antivirus. I'm asking why you can't just reinstall your current antivirus after reinstalling a 64bit version of Windows. Even if you got the AV for free from your ISP or the company you worked for or whatever, are you sure you don't have a licence which doesn't allow you to reinstall the AV if you change OS? While it's possible that you do have such a restrictive licence, I find it fairly unlikely, in any case, it would pay to read the licence terms and perhaps also ask your AV vendor. BTW, I'm fairly sure certain AV are available for free throughout the world*, without knowing what AV you are using, it's difficult to comment whether your AV is so worth hanging on to. *=well except possibly for a few places like North Korea and perhaps Cuba, but there's a good chance the EULA on your commercial AV forbids you to use it in North Korea or Cuba either. Nil Einne (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Computer games these days

Are computer games that can work on the computer locally, without requiring an Internet connection to the publisher's central servers, still being commercially developed and sold these days? Or are only hobbyist developers continuing developing games that work like they used to for the past half a century, while the entire mainstream industry considers requiring a for-pay connection to the central server for the game to even start up as taken for granted? JIP | Talk 20:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but admittedly not many. Retail version are getting to be quite difficult to track down. Mingmingla (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

GOG.com sells modern games with no copy protection. Most of them are low-budget indie games, but they are commercial games. The Witcher 3, with a reported development+marketing budget of ~$40 million, may be the highest-budgeted game on GOG when it's released in 2015. They already sell Brütal Legend, Assassin's Creed, and Psychonauts, which had budgets of $24, $20, and $12 million according to this page, but maybe they precede the phone-home-copy-protection era (although Brütal Legend's PC release was in 2013). -- BenRG (talk) 08:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Some games sold on Humble Store or through the various Humble Bundles are also DRM free. Many Kickstarters also promise DRM free copies. There are also some other developers noted for their stance against DRM, E.g. Stardock. The Star Control reboot has a budget of $5 million, tiny compared to AAA titles but clearly far beyond the typical low-budget indie [5]. I couldn't find a budget figure for Galactic Civilisations III, but I imagine it's not that dissimilar to Star Control. Note also Mingmingla's point. The DRM on retail copies varies depending on release, place etc. Some have always-on DRM. Some require a connection before every run. Some require a one time online authentication. But I'm fairly sure some simply require the DVD to be in the drive or offline authentication of the key to run. (And yes there are surely a small number which don't require any.) Some may also allow fallback, e.g. they may attempt to authenticate the key online, but if they aren't able to do so because there's no internet connection or the servers aren't working, they'll run without problem. (However if the servers say the key is invalid, then they will prevent you from playing.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

What? I am seriously perplexed by your question. While there are several companies that do what you are describing, that is not at all norm. Even among large-studio AAA games, many don't require connecting to a company-owned server, e.g. the Fallout series, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, etc. And if you are willing to consider smaller developers as "real" dame developers, take a look at indie games, most stuff on Steam, browse kotaku, rockpapershotgun etc. for many many games that don't have central server requirements. It is true on Steam that you have to have an internet connection to download the games, but you download them from Valve's servers, not the developer's servers. I'm guessing you mean to exclude console games, but of course those are computers too, and even in the newest generation most games don't require even an internet connection. Finally, keep in mind that a "small" "indy" studio today like Behemoth has a bigger team and more money than many "flagship" game studios of the past. Maybe you've just been paying attention to wrong kinds of games... :) SemanticMantis (talk) 17:06, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The OP said the publisher not the companies so it depends how you define "publisher". I don't think it's unresonable to consider Steam the publisher even for an EA game or whatever. In any case, for many opponents of DRM, it's largely a moot point whether it's Steam servers or EA servers or whatever. Also many Steam games do have Steam's DRM enabled meaning you do need to have an internet connection before starting the game, unless you put Steam in to offline mode. (And unlike with thirdparty DRM, Steam doesn't even generally tell you if the game has Steam DRM.) The last Fallout game was in 2010 so I don't think it's what the OP was referring to as the recent activation on play required craze only really took off recently if we ignore Steam. I can't seem to find any info on Dragon Age Inquisition's DRM so I'm not sure whether it's a good example either. That said, I do think as I mentioned above that the OP is over emphasing how common activate before run every time is, although it is increasingly uncommon to find AAA games which don't require at least some form of post download online activation. Steam is an example which is a bit iffy to call activate before run because of the offline mode, but clearly any game which uses Steam's DRM does need post download activation. You can't for example move the game between computers and expect it to work without online activation i.e. signing in to Steam. The list of games without Steam DRM is small BTW [6]. Well that list is probably incomplete, but I don't think many recent AAA should be on it but aren't. Of course, from an end user POV, signing in to Steam may in many cases be easier than digging out the DVD for your game, so many may prefer it to DVD required DRM, another reason I'm not sure the OP is approaching this from a smart angle. And backing up that DVD is difficult because of whatever tricks the vendor added, plus the requirements of the DRM layer may break on newer OSes or otherwise compatible emulators. Nil Einne (talk) 19:58, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

You're right, Steam isn't the best example. I guess my perspective is so different because I almost only buy/play non-AAA titles on "computer" platforms, and most of those are rather light on DRM/copy protection, in part because many of them are free (shout out to Spelunky, Cave Story and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup!). Still, I'm nearly positive that no big releases on consoles require internet connectivity for authentication, but again, it's unclear whether we should consider those "computer games." SemanticMantis (talk) 22:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Why did my computer quit working?

I have an HP Pavilion KT369AA-ABA a6512p Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2200 @2.20 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, 64 bits. Windows is 89583-OEM-7332157-00061 as of a previous reference desk question.

I hope this is not a sign of things to come, but twice in the past couple of weeks I've had to restart my computer after some weird problem right after I turned it on. These problems never happened.

The first time, I was in my Internet provider's email (when I click on the "e" for Internet Explorer, now 9) and the little hand wouldn't move when I moved my mouse. Thinking the computer froze, I tried turning it off. Normally, I see a message on a blue backgound saying "Shutting down" but this time the screen just went black. After plugging in and unplugging, checking to make sure everything was connected to everything else, and turning things on and off, I finally realized my monitor had gotten turned off. The "frame" (if you think of it like a picture frame) had come loose and pushing it back into place along with pushing the button on the lower right worked. Once I did all that and turned the computer on, everything was normal except Windows had not shut down normally.

Today, I clicked on a link in my email (it's a safe email from myself to myself which contains a safe link) and everything went black. I got a "No signal" message on the monitor so the monitor was working this time. I turned the computer off but nothing happened so I unplugged it, then turned it back on, and all was fine (except for the Windows not shutting down normally) until for some reason the window just disappeared before the email had come up, as if I had clicked on the red X in the upper right corner.

I turned the computer on again and all has been fine for the past three hours.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll ask at the store where I bought the computer, though I don't plan to go there for several weeks and hope I can avoid going there until my planned trip to the area. The two things these incidents have in common are that they happened when the computer was first turned on, and they happened when I was in the Internet provider's email.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Links in LibreOffice Writer document

I'd like a contents page listing the title of each section (e.g. Chapter 1, Introduction, Bibliography), so that clicking on each title will go straight to the section. Is this possible?→86.171.209.142 (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If you used the "Heading" styles for the titles, you can make hyperlinks to them (Insert → Hyperlink). Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 00:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

November 14

Deleting Issue (pending)

Hi guys, I need help with this please, can anyone help? The discussion is in the link, 75% solved...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2014_November_8#Deleting_Issue

(Russell.mo (talk) 15:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC))