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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 August 19

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August 19

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Hard disc I/O error

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uTorrent can't download to one of my hard discs. It used to be fine. Now, it downloads for a while, then all the downloads stop and say "Error: WriteToDisk: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

The disc works fine otherwise. I'm running and old version of XP. If you have an suggestions, I'd be most grateful. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:12, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Try running CHKDSK, run "chkdsk /f". I think you run a command prompt "as administrator" and reboot your computer to start it. It may take a couple of hours. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I'll give that a try. One thing I did is close uTorrent and start it again with a lower download speed. This is working. I recently renewed my ISP deal and they gave me much greater speed. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wording: "ID must be numeric"

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Situation: A website has an admin search menu with several IDs to look for. Some IDs are numbers, others are strings; and some of the strings are with digits only (with leading zeros added by the search function, if necessary), others with mixed characters. If someone looks, say, for a shop and enters letters in the shop ID search function, while a numeric shop ID is required, an error message is helpful. Is "Shop ID must be numeric" a perfect wording? Can it be used both for numbers and purely numeric strings? If it is suboptimal for any reason, what would be better? --KnightMove (talk) 13:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I might prefer "ID must contain only numerals" -- that way it doesn't matter if it's considered as a number or a string of numerals. I suppose you could even include something like "(0-9)" to make it more clear what is allowed. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Null Zero Deletion in MS Word

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How to delete all Null Zeros in Saved MS Word Document?--Tenkasi Subramanian (talk) 14:07, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Movie quality

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What would be better quality for a movie - an itunes download in 1080p or a 1080p "mastered in 4k" blu ray? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.251.149.21 (talk) 15:33, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All other factors being equal (bitrate, source), the 4K Blu-ray will be higher quality. Simply because iTunes 1080p uses h264 encoding, while 4K Blu-rays use its successor. However, in the real world, it's really a case-by-case comparison, because the bitrate, source, and what's being encoded all affect quality. --Wirbelwind(ヴィルヴェルヴィント) 18:36, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, there's no such thing as a 4k Blu-ray. The format is technically still under development [1] [2] with no one sure what's going to happen with it. What the OP appears to be referring to are Blu-rays where the source material is 4k until it's converted to 1080p for the Blu-ray. In that case, while there are various reasons the mastered in 4k could be better, there's no guarantee it will be.
However the blu-ray will frequently be better quality. Even though they spend a fair bit on many different languages (at least one maybe more in lossless multi channel), extras and stuff, the video bitrate tends to be quite a bit higher on the Bluray than most download formats. The compression format is frequently the same h.264 (some still use VC-1, MPEG2 is very rare nowadays and unlikely for a mastered in 4k), I'm not sure if iTunes generally uses a higher profile than that allowed by Blurays, but it wouldn't generally be enough to make up for the bitrate differences.
It's also possible the source material will come in to play. While the mastered in 4k isn't that important, download sources don't necessarily get the same level of attention that Blurays get during production.
Of course whether you can actually notice the difference during playback on your specific output device is another question. (And some people may prefer the higher compressed version for whatever reason.)
It's clear many people don't care hence why streaming and download formats are dominating and Bluray is starting to have problems. Even among copyright violating sources, it's frequently difficult to find material where the video is untouched. Heck even finding Bluray sourced material can be difficult for TV series compared to that taken from the TV stream or deDRMed web downloads (which themselves are not always easy to find in comparison).
Nil Einne (talk) 13:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Did the hardware logic been?

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Did the hardware logic (instrument logic) been or it been only the program logic?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 17:39, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Could you try rephrasing the question? I'm not really sure what "instrument logic" is. Are you trying to ask about physical logic gates versus software logic, e.g. conditional statements? --Wirbelwind(ヴィルヴェルヴィント) 18:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Could the math physical logical of material crystals of chips beening, is it a program (software) logic? I think that, the program (software) logic is simple section of chips, is it right? I seen that, the program (software) logical is been definite of all logical of computers, is it right?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 09:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It seems me, that the static memory of structure of materials proves that hardware logic been.--Alex Sazonov (talk) 11:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what your asking, but maybe Hardware description language will give you the answer. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks much. In simply case, I interested in that, did the logic been without program languages?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 14:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Alex, can I make a specific request that you go and learn how to conjugate and use the English verb to be, please? You really can't just use the past form ('been') indiscriminately for everything. AlexTiefling (talk) 14:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well. I suppose that, the crystal structure of all materials always is mobile, however it had a static memory, that’s why the simple logic without program language be.--Alex Sazonov (talk) 15:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do you realise that your response has nothing to do with what I said? AlexTiefling (talk) 15:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When using a VPN, do web-pages know their users are connecting to it through one

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If yes, do web-sites like online banks or ecommerce sites care or at least raise a red flag due to it being a potential fraud? (in a scenario where a user connect both through a VPN when on public spaces and to the same page without said VPN from home or from the office).OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Silverlight - What Does It Do?

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What does Silverlight do? The only times I have ever seen anything about it on my computer (ANY of my computers) is when I get a message on my browser saying it has stopped working. What exactly is it supposed to do? KägeTorä - (影虎) (Chin Wag) 21:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Our article Microsoft Silverlight gives a basic description of what it is and how it is used. --Mark viking (talk) 22:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For the most part, it's an Adobe Flash substitute. Netflix, for example, uses Silverlight to stream their content. Without Silverlight, you'd see a blank page. They do have some HTML5 support, but it's in the infancy. --Wirbelwind(ヴィルヴェルヴィント) 22:13, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This site claims that only 0.2% of websites use Silverlight. Other than the very notable example of Netflix, which Wirbelwind mentioned, I can't remember ever finding a site that I wanted to use which needed Silverlight to work. 87.112.89.107 (talk) 22:35, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Microsoft provides a list of Silverlight features. Among these, I find the video streaming technologies to be the most interesting and useful, because the feature-set for streaming video is significantly richer than that available in the HTML5 specification. For example, Silverlight supports adaptive streaming from multiple sources at variable bitrates, using client-side cooperation built into the Silverlight plug-in to monitor streaming performance and adjust the server-side parameters accordingly. This would be very difficult to re-implement using only HTML5 - so there's an immediate value-add for video-streaming providers who want a software solution that already works. Silverlight also provides state-of-the-art security and authentication, assuring integrity from the network layer all the way to the hardware layer - again, by relying on cooperative security provided by the client-side plug-in (addressing a very difficult problem, which is that content is consumed on machines that categorically cannot be controlled by the content-provider). This plug-in solution ranks among the more secure ways to execute digital rights management (digital restrictions management) - for better or for worse, this means that it's more difficult (prohibitively difficult) for users to save, copy, or inspect digital content in ways that the developers and providers do not authorize.
Nimur (talk) 23:27, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, Silverlight is only one case where "somebody else is innovative, and Microsoft makes an inferior knock-off product". (This sounds bad, but it isn't always a bad thing. In some cases, the MS product isn't too bad, and actually good enough for 90% of the users.)
Some examples, not all of them bad
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(This is a list, not a discussion, hatted only to save space. Notable examples may be added.)
The bad part is that Silverlight cannot possibly replace Flash, due to the popularity of Flash, which makes Silverlight a solution without a problem. If Silverlight becomes more popular, internet users are in big trouble; both products have quite a record of bad (browser-breaking) updates. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of Microsoft's products are better than the competition's. IE certainly was for a while, mainly because it worked while Netscape was so buggy it was almost unusable. (And don't forget that IE introduced DHTML and Ajax, which everyone else then copied.) I suspect Silverlight is better than Flash for similar reasons, but it's hard to know when no one develops for it. -- BenRG (talk) 19:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, IE, rather than Netscape, was the one with lots of misaligned items. Many other bugs were not in the original NN but popped up with changed API standards, with malice aforethought.
From a purely economic POV, the way Microsoft made competing products was the right (and logical) way to go. It is worth noting that in many cases, only when MS offered their product as part of their OS (as they did with DriveSpace) it became popular. Users are more likely to use a feature if it comes with the OS than to pay extra, as they had to with Stacker, before DOS/Windows offered disk compression. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 07:09, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As our article says, Microsoft has basically abandoned Silverlight so whatever they were planning to do, it's largely a moot point now. Nil Einne (talk) 13:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Replacing RAM with old RAM still in the system

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I have a set of 2x4GB ram running at 1600mhz. One of these sticks has gone bad, and it has been determined it is not a socket problem. The other one is not, so I'd like to get another stick of 4GB ram to replace the bad one. 2 questions here. Must it be the same model or manufacturer? (they are Patriot Viper 3s) Does it have to be the same speed? I'd run them in dual channel. KonveyorBelt 23:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find it prudent to swap it with the stick of the same speed, i.e. 800Mhz on a board that takes DDR2-800s. Not sure if mixing speeds would be bad but I bet it is. It should be alright to use different brands though. Blake Gripling (talk) 00:43, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the problem with mixing speeds is that they all then work at the lower speed. StuRat (talk) 23:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It may be alright to use different brands, but if you can get the same brand and/or model, by all means do. One can occasionally run into serious problems with otherwise identical sticks by different manufacturers; I know I did a few years ago!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 20, 2014; 19:32 (UTC)
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