Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 June 20

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June 20

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Who has the largest selection of free Flash websites? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.180.160.77 (talk) 01:41, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

My edit to an article got changed back

I edited the article for Syphon Filter 2. I changed the word "en" to "on". But I just checked it again and it is back to en again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Destroyer2000 (talk • contribs) 04:31, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

To investigate yourself, go to Syphon Filter 2 then click the "history" tab at the top. About 40 minutes after your edit, you can see that a user named Geoff B made an edit with the helpful edit summary, "'en route' is correct". Looking at the edit diffs (by clicking the word "prev" before each edit), it appears that he is correct; en route is the correct spelling. Tempshill (talk) 06:39, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That is because, while we pronounce it as "on" we write it the French way, which is "en", because "en route" is a French expression that has passed into English usage. Destroyer2000, when you make a posting to a talk page, finish it with four tildes ~ (far left key on top row, on most keyboards) to make your signature automatically appear on your post. (Which desk is this?), - KoolerStill (talk) 06:58, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

We pronounce it as "on"? I've never pronounced the phrase "en route" as "on route".... Dismas|^(talk) 07:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a very nasal "on",the French way. I don't know the official way to write it. It's certainly not "enn" to rhyme with "hen". The "route" rhymes with "root" not with "rout". - KoolerStill (talk) 07:48, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

En route is pronounced /ɑ̃ rut/. The English word on is pronounced /ɒn/, /ɑn/ or /ɔn/, depending on accent. Algebraist 11:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

A large number of English speakers aren't familiar with the sound /ɑ̃, so they pronounce it with more of an English 'n' sound. —Akrabbim^talk 12:52, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Reset

Does using the reset button on the CPU of my PC cause any damage to my Motherboard or any part of the system??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.174.130 (talk) 13:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

From a hardware standpoint, no. The reset button sends a signal to the processor that causes it to immediately reboot the machine. However, a reset provides no opportunity for the operating system or running applications to perform an orderly shutdown. Thus, any unsaved data will be lost, open files may become corrupt, and the file system may be left in an inconsistent state. (The latter problems are of the type typically identified and corrected by the Checkdisk utility.) For this reason, I would recommend limiting it's use to extreme cases where either the system has stopped responding to other inputs or where you detect evidence of runaway malware, giving you the opportunity of restarting in safe mode and running virus scan or other diagnostic software.)

(I would have referred you to the reset button article, but that article implies that a "soft reboot" occurs, which is an ambiguous term having different meanings from a hardware and software standpoint. A "soft reboot", may imply an orderly shutdown and restart, which is not the case when you press the reset button on a PC.) -- Tcncv (talk) 18:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think most 'reset buttons' do this now, for a full unchecked power off it's usual to press and hold the reset button for several sections.

It shouldn't cause any hardware damage of any sort. However, if you are resetting in the middle of running a program, abnormally and suddenly resetting the system can cause a program that is, say, writing to a file at that minute to end up with a corrupted file (imagine the program is 50% done saving some sort of preferences file for itself and then gets abnormally stopped—that 50%-written preferences file might keep the program from starting up again in the future). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

searches within specific domains

What SITES (not keywords) are searched most using Google? E.g., using format "site:www.[name of site].com [search term]" what sites are searched most? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.169.213.166 (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Because Google is a private company and its search statistics data is proprietary, this information is not available to the general public. You can contact Google directly and see if they will consider releasing such data to you. It is very unlikely, as this data would be considered "customer data" under their terms of service. Nimur (talk) 02:27, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

What you can however do is compare websites with http://trends.google.com/websites and get a list of the terms searched. Jay (talk) 09:44, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Probably sites with a bad site search feature. (Wikipedia comes to mind...) 195.35.160.133 (talk) 15:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC) Martin.

Are these photos likely not interpolated/coming from a 2MP native camera

I've been looking at some Chinese mobile phones recently and as some may know, they often give completely false specs. E.g. sometimes they claim a 1.3MP camera even though you can only save up to 640x480 (the more honest sellers at least mention this). But of course even if they can save a certain size, there's no guarantee the CMOS has a resolution that high, it could be just interpolated. I'm trying to work out if this particular phone really has a 2MP camera. I managed to get 2 samples [1] [2] contributed by users (was hoping for more but none yet). While I know it's unlikely you can tell for sure, can anyone with experience say if they see any signs the images were interpolated? I'm of course aware that the images aren't that great even for a mobile phone which is a more significant fact regardless of the native resolution but I was wondering if the 2MP claim is even true. Nil Einne (talk) 21:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert but the images said they were 1600x1200 but I saw nothing removed when I reduced them to 1280x960. It's hard to tell because saving them in jpeg has lost a lot of information too. The colours are very muted which is not inspiring. Personally I read reviews for this sort of thing rather than trying to judge for myself as they think of things I might have forgotton but which may be important e.g. photos in dim light. Dmcq (talk) 11:02, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that the lens on a mobile phone camera be so small and cheap that the effective resolution be less than the sensor resolution. Worth thinking about perhaps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

They look like 2-megapixel images to me. Megapixel counts are inflated even on high-end cameras because they count every sample that comes from the sensor as a "pixel". That's one third the raw sample count of an RGB image or LCD monitor with the same number of "pixels", or two thirds the raw sample count of a JPEG image with 2×2 color subsampling. So there's always some interpolation going on. I can resize 8-megapixel photos from my midrange Canon P&S to 6 megapixels and back with hardly any effect on detail. These images look like what I'd expect from a 2MP point-and-shoot camera. The background trees are pixelated with a stained-glass look that's probably the result of heavy noise reduction. Since it's a low-end camera you probably can't turn that off. And the overall image quality isn't great. But it's probably a 2-megapixel sensor. -- BenRG (talk) 18:49, 21 June 2009 (UTC)