Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 April 23

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April 23

Smartphones: resistive or capacitive touchscreen

Why does the capacitive touchscreen dominate almost completely the market of smartphones? The resistive touchscreen is cheaper and user-friendlier (you can write on the screen, and women can type with their fingernails on it). I know that the latter can poorer resolution and can be scratched more easily, but this second concern can be deal with. And if I remember well, the PDAs were more oriented toward resistive touchscreen than capacitive screen. OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:38, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Did you not read the latter article? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:46, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Reisio: your comments as always are not very useful. The articles don't say why people flocked massively to the capacitive screen. OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

it's just the style Gzuckier (talk) 04:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad I flocked. Typing this on my old resistoscreen would be out of the question. This Galaxy Tab's capaciscreen, suported right now by my temorarily crippled arm, is the closest thing to a real keyboard without the hassle of carrying one around and finding a flat space. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

A resistive touchscreen reduces the brightness and contrast of the display its attached to. On a standard resistive screen pressing it at two points is interpreted as one press, at a point between the two touches; this can make interpreting pinch-n-zoom etc difficult. CS Miller (talk) 13:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Windows 7 default file filters

In Notepad + Open/Save As, the default seems to be to only list files with the ".txt" extension. I can change it each time with a pull-down menu, but I'd prefer to correct this annoying default in the first place. I believe I see the same behavior elsewhere in Windows 7, too. So, is there a way to stop such file type filters from being the default ? StuRat (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I do not beleve there is a simple way to change this default, but you do not need to use the horrible drop-down menu if you have a keyboard attached to the computer. Indeed, if you have, you can simply write *.* followed by Enter. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Just * is enough. You can also type the beginning of the name of the file you're looking for and select it from the resulting drop-down list. -- BenRG 20:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes it a bit quicker to change. But there's still that moment of panic when I don't see my critical file and wonder how I managed to delete it, until I think to check for a file extension filter. StuRat (talk) 21:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

You might consider this a useless response, but have you considered getting a real editor (if you edit enough that this is a problem of any sort)? I imagine that most such have less rigid behavior. --Tardis (talk) 04:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh hell, the emacs versus vi wars have begun! Run for your lives! ;) — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

If anyone starts posting about vi, somebody will probably yank it. StuRat (talk) 02:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

"The Cloud"

Can someone please explain to this very aged non-teche about" The Cloud". I am prepared to believe that data is not actually sitting in a fluffy lump up there, but where is it stored? A massive server (or two) somewhere, if so where. Who maintains it, who funds it? I'd love to know 'cause I seem to use it a lot!85.211.192.200 (talk) 15:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Cloud storage is the relevant article, but will probably make things less clear for you. The succinct answer to your question is: on a bunch of disk arrays in a giant data center owned by a large company like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Baidu, Microsoft, or the like. Usually that storage is sold by the big company to smaller companies (using names like Amazon S3), and the smaller companies (like say Dropbox) resell that to consumers with a friendly interface. The storage is paid for by whomever is doing the storing (things like Amazon S3 charge so much per month per megabyte stored, plus so much per megabyte sent or received from their service). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Right. Don't be misled by groovy names, they're just renting you an online hard drive, no more no less, with no particular warranty of their still being in business at any given time in the future, or that they will continue to wish to do business with you at any given time in the future, or that they will make any effort to allow you to get your data back in these cases, as I have discovered more than once. Not dissimilar from the public parking structure which takes no responsibility for your vehicle or its contents. Gzuckier (talk) 17:14, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

A storage contract may include such guarantees, of course, but you will probably have to pay extra for them. -- BenRG 20:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

They say storage (and computation) is "in the cloud" when they mean that the responsibility for organising exactly where things are kept is devolved to the storage company. Previously a given piece of storage might be on a specific server; the idea with the cloud is you pay Amazon to store some data for you, and they can move it around or duplicate it however they like, so long as they give it back to you when you ask. Frequently, businesses pay for "high availability", meaning the data is replicated in multiple (geographically distinct) places - so if Amazon's datacenter in Palo Alto, CA was eaten by Godzilla, your data would also be in Jacksonville, FL, or South Bend, IN - and when you asked Amazon for it, you'd get it back just as if the Palo Alto datacenter was still working. If that works okay, it's a good thing for a modest sized business - it means they can keep working even if one facility is unavailable (realistically due to a powercut rather than Mothra), but they don't need to have lots of their own technicians in each datacenter around the world, making sure all that data gets seamlessly copied around. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

If you aren't paying for the storage, it's likely funded by advertising, as a loss leader for a paid service, or by venture capitalists who hope the company will become profitable in the future. -- BenRG 20:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Although, last I checked (admittedly a while ago), “cloud” services were still more expensive than ordinary shared counterparts (not that this doesn’t mean it can’t be a loss leader. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Finlay has covered the idea or intent of “cloud” stuff, but you shouldn’t confuse that with what you might actually get. It is not necessarily synonymous with redundancy or reliability or high access. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

then there's Clod Storage, where your files are kept in an Israeli kibbutz. Gzuckier (talk) 04:41, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, well thanks for all this, I'm a bit wiser now. 85.211.192.200 (talk) 05:47, 24 April 2013 (UTC)