Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 April 6

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.

April 6

Does information posted on the Internet remain forever?

Is it true that anything that is posted on the Internet stays there forever? What about posts on messageboards deleted by site moderators, or pictures taken down on Facebook? ExitRight (talk) 05:26, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

No, not always. On some sites like forums things are deleted after a certain amount of time, or they are archived. Facebook and sites that are moderated are cleaned out sometimes by users. On Wikipedia stuff stays here, for example on the reference desks old questions are archived after a certain amount of time. Chevymontecarlo. 07:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

If you're thinking of running for office, you should think of the internet as an electronic Mount Rushmore. Anything you put on it will be around forever. For places like facebook, if you take something down, it stops being publicly viewable, but you should assume that facebook itself can still retrieve it (like wikipedia admins can restore deleted articles), and that any random people who browsed the page and thought it was interesting, may have saved copies to their hard drives, that could come out of the woodwork at any time.

"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
(—Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)

66.127.52.47 (talk) 07:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Obligatory XKCD link with a nice take on this issue (warning NSFW text) [1] 131.111.185.69 (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The Wayback Machine stores many web pages after they have been deleted or altered. Google Groups stores old Usenet posts. Ordinary Internet users may create an online copy of something (often violating copyright) or have an offline copy that can later be republished. Some things will disappear forever but it's safest to work on the assumption hat anything you publish on the Internet may come back to haunt you. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The easiest way to make something vanish from the internet forever is to desperately need it once it has already been taken down. All of which is just to say: there's no guarantee that anything will be around forever—it depends on the architecture of the original site and whether it gets archived by others. Some things have a tendency to stick around longer than others. Some things can vanish without anybody caring. As with many things in life, the more people who care about something, the more likely it will persist. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:46, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Are there any websites that explain how google indexes wikipedia?

In particular, I'm curious how Google indexes redirects.

Hypothetical 1: For whatever reason, Euler's formula ranks #1 in a google search. e to the i pi exists as a redirect and gives Euler's formula a high search result, whereas e raised to pi i does not exist as a redirect and Euler's theorem is nowhere to be found. What happens when we create the redirect?

Hypothetical 2: suppose someone creates a redirect to George W. Bush based on an insulting epithet that has no appearance on the web; fuddlefucktard is an example. Would George W. Bush show up for that search?

Hypothetical 3: suppose someone edits Shmuck (which is a redirect to Schmuck) so that it points to George W. Bush. When someone does a search for "Shmuck", how will Schmuck compare in the rankings to George W. Bush?

Hypothetical 4: Someone moves motherfucker (where all the wikilinks currently point) to MotherFucker, and then changes the redirect at motherfucker to point to George W. Bush. Assuming nobody notices the apparent typo in the title, What result?

JD Caselaw (talk) 06:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Try googling "predicativity" and its redirect _target, "impredicativity". If of any relevance, I notice recently that google usually indexes wikipedia edits within a minute or so (it used to take up to a day). So a vandal who got something indexed that way wouldn't keep the placement for long, if the vandalism was reverted quickly as usual. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 07:10, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm very impressed with google's increase in speed of indexing WP edits. It's been amazing to create redirects and then see my google results change. JD Caselaw (talk) 08:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It actually scares me. They gave a lot of money to Wikipedia around the time this speedup happened. My theory is they now have a toolserver-like database feed that they are indexing on the fly and doing who knows what else with. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 10:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe they do, but you could always ask (try the IRC channel #wikimedia-tech on freenode for the quickest response). If they do, it won't be a secret. I don't see why that would be scary, though, it's just a more efficient use of bandwidth and server time. --Tango (talk) 14:42, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Doing this is easy, and no special arrangements or secret plots are necessary. Recent changes is available as an RSS and ATOM feed. Article bodies and deltas are available via the MediaWiki API. As a practical matter they'd be wise to debounce the changes on a given article (that is, if an article is changing very rapidly, you still only fetch a version every few minutes or hours). From a business perspective they'd be wise to avoid introducing vandalism into their own presentation of the content, so if they're smart (and they generally are) they'll have a rudimentary reputation system (e.g. with rules that say "don't show changes made by IPs, or by users with fewer than 100 edits; don't show changes made by users whose recent edits have been reverted; if an admin changes a page, show that change even if the cached version isn't due for update). The volume of changes done at any time is high by human standards, but it's pretty trivial bandwidth both for Wikimedia's API server and Google's system. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:21, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Macbook rapid ticking noise

I have a 2007 Macbook, and there's a somewhat rapid scratchy ticking noise (maybe 2-4 beats per second) coming from underneath the upper left part of the keyboard. It becomes faster and louder during periods of activity. Anyone know of the cause or remedy? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 08:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like the hard drive. I don't think it's the disc drive because it's located in the upper right part of the MacBook, at least for the 2009 model. You might want to try the [Apple Discussions forums] if no one here can give you a good answer. It's a user to user forum and there's plenty of knowledgeable people on there. Hope this helps. Chevymontecarlo. 08:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

There are only a couple moving parts to a MacBook (or really most laptops). The fan, the optical drive, and the hard drive. The optical drive is on the upper right. The fan is in the center. Which just leaves the hard drive. That's in the lower right, under the keyboard. Dismas|^(talk) 08:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Try your local Apple store if it's bothering you. Even if you're out of warranty they might be able to give you a clue as to what is causing it and help you, without you having to pay. Chevymontecarlo. 09:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds more likely to be the fan than the hard drive. See if there's an air inlet or outlet near where the noise seems to be coming from. Fans get full of dust and make noise and you can often quiet them by cleaning them with compressed air. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 10:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

If it is the hard drive, then that's likely a death rattle, so be sure to back-up your critical data and applications to somewhere other than the hard drive, immediately. StuRat (talk) 11:51, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree - you may not have much time left - I've seen drives go from "clicking" to "dead" in a matter of hour. You should immediately back up your valuable data - don't delay! If it's the fan, then the machine will probably shut itself down when it overheats - but it's possible for some component to be damaged - or to have its' life dramatically shortened before that shutdown occurs. If it's the optical drive - then you might as well keep using it until it fails. The easy way to find that out is to eject the drive tray and see if the clicking stops. If it does, then it's optical drive. But if it's not that - then: STEP 1: Back up valuable data. STEP 2: Get it fixed. SteveBaker (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Google UK

How many times a day on average is the Google UK site accessed? Are there any sites which document this? Thanks for any help. Chevymontecarlo. 08:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Alexa does this. --Ouro (blah blah) 10:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Subversion wanting access

Resolved

I recently installed Subversion and the Windows client TortoiseSVN on my Windows Vista PC., and both work pretty well. However, there is one thing which I have found really irritating. Whenever I want to upload an image to Imageshack, I keep getting a pop-up box from "Internet Explorer Security" saying "A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer" (as seen in this screenshot). The folder with the image to upload is not an SVN repository or a working copy known to SVN. Is this due to the nature of TortoiseSVN as a Windows Explorer shell extension, and is there a simple fix? Astronaut (talk) 08:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried clicking the "Do not show this warning again" box? --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

If I simply dismiss the message with "don't allow", it comes back within about 4 seconds. If I first click the "Do not show this warning again" box, it still comes back within about 4 seconds. I barely have time to scroll the file dialog before the message comes back. What would be the security impact of clicking "Allow" instead? Astronaut (talk) 09:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The message box is telling you that TortoiseSVN (which you installed and therefore presumably have no problems with) is trying to run outside IE's protected mode. If it was my computer, I would reason that this must be the way it works, and click the "Do not show me this message again" box and the Allow button. The only alternative I could think of would be to uninstall TortoiseSVN. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Here is the workaround (or fix), as documented on the TortoiseSVN message board. For what it's worth, I use TortoiseSVN on multiple Vista machines and do not see this error. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Comet Tuttle's link had the answer. Thanks. Astronaut (talk) 10:06, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

From normal laptop into touchscreen

I have seen some kits to transform a common laptop screen into a touchscreen, but no one really make me think that is what I want. It looks strange and clumsy, but do they work correctly? Have anyone had good experiences with this kind of kits? --Quest09 (talk) 18:36, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

No-one seems to know what you are talking about. Is this because no such device exists? I would consider it impossible. I suppose it could be some sort of touch screen that you stick on, though this sounds unreliable to me. Dbfirs 12:02, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

They are uncommon, but not unheard of. Just type touchscreen add-on or touchscreen kit on google. However, as said before they look unreliable...--Quest09 (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

GoogleMaps - scale overlaps copyright notice and is therefore unreadable

At GoogleMaps, on my computer at least (Win 7; Firefox 3.6 but also in IE8), the map scale is overlapped by some copyright crap, making the metric portion of the scale unusable. I would like to report this to Google but, in their minuscule wisdom, they decided to only allow 'report a problem' to US residents. Thus, I ask any willing US residents to please go to GoogleMaps and right click on the map, select 'report a problem', and file the report. Don't hold back on the profanity. If one or two people from Google actually used their own software, this feedback wouldn't even be necessary. Maybe the metric portion of the scale doesn't appear on US maps. ALTAVISTA!! I mean it! --84.13.110.251 (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The "Report a Problem" process seems to be for reporting problems with the data in the map (for example, incorrect streets). Instead, I went to Help, Known Issues, clicked where it says "If you've found a new problem that's not listed on our Known Issues page, let us know" and got this contact form that looks like a more relevant way to report this problem. Is that contact form available where you are? --Bavi H (talk) 02:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I can certainly confirm what 84.13 is saying. As I shrink the width of the browser window, the long line of copyright notice, eventually overlaps the map scale. It is unfortunate the copyright notice is nicely aligned with the metric portion of the scale, but I very much doubt that it is done intentionally. Yes, please do report it to Google using the contact form Bavi mentions above. Astronaut (talk) 09:10, 7 April 2010 (UTC)