Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 October 7

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October 7

Search terms highlighted on incoming link from Google

Hi all,

When I use Google to search for "Twisted", and then click on the first link (NOT the "cached" link, but the link itself), twistedmatrix.com comes up with the word "Twisted" highlighted everywhere. When I just type twistedmatrix.com into my browser (FF 3.5.3 on OS X 10.5), it doesn't.

Is it the website that is doing this, or is it Google? Does Google's incoming link supply the search terms so that the site knows what the user searched for automatically, or is that a part of Google Analytics or something? And, a secondary question, why the h*ll would a website programmer put that in when probably the most common way to reach a site is to type in the name in Google? Do they actually want their carefully-designed UI to have the most common search term highlighted everywhere?

Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.238 (talk) 14:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is the how. I have no idea of the why. --Sean 15:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The website is doing it, not Google. Google's incoming link supplies a referrer link (the link that was clicked to get there), like most sites do. The site itself is then parsing that for the search terms, and highlighting them. I find it pretty annoying, personally, totally unhelpful in 99% of all situations, really ugly, and a bad design pattern anyway (especially since it is becoming common for browsers to allow you to highlight on the fly as part of searching, anyway). It's a trick you use when trying to impress people with your 1337 Javascript and PHP but is not actually a good idea (especially if there's no way to turn it off!). File under "stupid programmer tricks." --Mr.98 (talk) 16:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a clarification: providing the referrer link is done by the browser, not by the referring site. --Sean 16:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. My bad! --Mr.98 (talk) 00:40, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your answers. — Sam 63.138.152.238 (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Embedding Videos In Word 2007

How is it possible, if at all, to embed a video into a Word 2007 document. What I wish to do is embed a video from a video site such as YouTube and have it playable without leaving the document (not auto-play, though - the video must be clicked in order to play it). Also, is then then exportable 'as-is' to PDF? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

You should be able to embed a video, yes. I don't know Word 2007 but in previous versions it was Insert > Movie. Word and Powerpoint are sort of picky about what formats they will accept... on a PC that's usually WMV, on a Mac it's MOV. (It's tricky because it depends on the particular codecs installed on the system, which makes it hard to be portable. What works on your system will often not work on even a very similar system. I do a lot of work with videos in Powerpoint and it is a major pain.) I think it defaults to needing to be clicked to play. But NO, not exportable to PDF—I think it just comes out as the first frame, as if you were printing it.

I should point out, I guess, that there is almost no situation where distributing a movie in a Word document is a good idea—you're better off just distributing the video by itself, or a link to the video (which you CAN embed in Word and as a PDF). Or, if you are worried about formats, etc., putting it on a website in Flash Video format (with a little player), and distributing the link (though this has its own downsides—need to know how to use Flash, need bandwidth, need to highly compress the video). Word is a pretty clunky container for movies. You CAN embed videos in PDFs (Google it), but it's not the simplest operation in the world, and STILL not an ideal way of distributing a video. Just saying, is all! --Mr.98 (talk) 16:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Just to clarify, what I want to do is exactly what you have described: place a link on the Word 2007 document, which then shows the video as the first frame, but after clicking on the video it will start - but the actual video itself is not part of the document. Lots of websites manage to do this, and I am wondering if it is possible to do this in Word 2007, then the same in a PDF? You have told me that, yes, it is possible. Now, how do I do that? TIA! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it's going to be a kludgey approach, I fear. If you can, try to keep it web-like—the web is much better at dealing with movies than Word. And I don't think that you're going to be able to export video from Word to PDF. Putting video in PDF entails other sorts of work (again, Google "embed video PDF" for instructions). --Mr.98 (talk) 00:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, you are a tease! :) Joking aside, can anyone tell me how to do this, now, rather than just telling me it is possible (which is not my question, if read properly). --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 07:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Laptop, USB GPS, and an iPhone 2G

Okay, so check it out, i got a laptop, iphone 2G (the one wihput a builtin gps) and a usb gps thing. My laptop is running ubuntu 9.04. (the iphone has been jailbroken). I can connect my iphone to my laptop thru wifi. Is there a way i can have my iphone grab the info from the gps connected to my laptop thru wifi? Thxbai. 64.172.159.131 (talk) 17:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I may have found something that might work. I dont know if it would work in realtime. You would have to have an active internet connection for this to work. Get 2 Loopt accounts (free). Log in to one on your iphone and the other your laptop. Allow your laptop to share it's location. Use the iphone to get said location. I hope this helped. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  19:27, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

that wont work. i would not have a internet connection. but could i mka a fake lootp server on my laptop? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 19:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

i hase given up on this.

Offline private Mediawiki

Hello there -

Is there any way to make an offline MediaWiki? My father is rather taken by the idea of documenting family history with a media-wiki style wiki, but would much rather that it be offline rather than on a website, and then distributed via USB. Is this feasible? If so, how does one go about it?

Elke —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.202.142.42 (talk) 17:21, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

You can do it, but it's not what the MediaWiki developers had in mind, so the share-via-USB-key thing will be cumbersome. MediaWiki needs a web server (usually Apache) that runs PHP scripts, which is what MediaWiki was written in, and will also want to have a MySQL database. Installations of this sort are complicated and if you're distributing this USB key to "normals", you won't want to instruct family members on how to do an Apache and MySQL installation. The solution I think of is that you would set up your USB key as an Ubuntu boot device, and set it up with all the MediaWiki components; then make copies of the USB key and instruct the family members how to boot up their computer using the USB key. This has large and obvious disadvantages.

A much easier way for the family members to get to the information would be to set up your MediaWiki server with any web hosting service, and put it all in a password-protected directory so nobody else can get in without the username and password. Have you considered this alternative? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ seems interesting. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:09, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

MoWeS is a portable web server designed to run from usb stick, and it offers MediaWiki as one of it's additional software download options. The whole thing should be very self contained, and it's portable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .avril-avril (talk • contribs) 18:27, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I second MoWeS. I use it myself, and love it. Thanks, gENIUS101 22:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(EC) An important question arises - do you plan to edit the content collaboratively? Or would the USB distribution be strictly read-only? That would be much easier - you could run a private MediaWiki (and handle the technical details); and then distribute either PDFs or static HTML (or some other method of dumping the wiki to read-only, non-wiki format). Nimur (talk) 18:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

My Brother once installed it on our Linux computer and made me a sysop. It will start by going to http://127.0.0.1/ --64.15.147.70 (talk) 19:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

weakly equivalent

Left recursion says: "A formal grammar that contains left recursion cannot be parsed by a naive recursive descent parser unless it is converted to a weakly equivalent right-recursive form..." How is the equivalence 'weakly equivalent'? RJFJR (talk) 17:34, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it's referring to the fact that they accept the same language but give you different parse trees. -- BenRG (talk) 17:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

That's correct. The weak equivalence article has this blurb: In formal languages, weak equivalence of two grammars means they generate the same class of strings. If the derivation trees of the languages are also the same, the two grammars are called strongly equivalent. --Sean 20:00, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Excel question

Hello everyone, I was wondering if you could help me with an Excel question I have. In my spreadsheet I have a list of coordinates of the globe (for example, 18.26°N and 108.55°W). I want to average two coordinates "109.14°W" and "108.55°W", where the numbers after the decimal are in minutes. When I try to average the two, I get "108.85°W", which is wrong; as you know, the minutes go from 1-60, not 1-99. How do i get Excel to only use 1-60 instead of 1-99? I am using Excel 2003. Thanks. -- 149.169.78.248 (talk) 19:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This page on a software consulting site seems to describe what you want to do in a fair amount of detail. Caltsar (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure that your coordinates are in degrees & minutes? The normal format is either decimal degrees nnn.dd or degrees, minmutes, (seconds) ddd:mmm:sss. -- SGBailey (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Degrees/Minutes is usually written as 18°26'N (18°26'03" if you also have seconds). 18.26° would be understood as decimal degrees. Also: averaging the coordinates will not give you the coordinates of the midpoint (if that's what you are after). As long as these are in mid-latitudes and the points are fairly close to each other averaging may give a reasonable approximation of the mid-point, for points far away it is way out.195.128.251.165 (talk) 21:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"Security Tool" is it bogus or is it part of the antivirus software

that comes with Lenovo laptops? I saw some things on Google about security tool spyware, are they right that it is spyware? Security Tool says we need to click on some stuff to get rid of viruses. Can you give me information or direct me to a reliable site? Thanks again. Rich (talk) 22:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't specifically know what "Security Tool" is or does, but I can categorically state that I would not use it. Does that mean that you shouldn't use it? No... I just would make sure I know exactly what it is first. I recommend AVG free for a virus scanner; it has worked well for me. Falconus^{p t c} 04:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Does it open up a window when you run it? The Help>About menu should give the details of which company it comes from. Jay (talk) 10:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I doubt it's antivirus software (and it's certainly not spyware). Here's a list of T400 bundled software. Are you talking about "ThinkVantage Client Security Solution"? If so, it's support software for the Trusted Platform Module. You can almost certainly ignore it (and uninstall it) if you're not using the laptop in a corporate environment. -- BenRG (talk) 10:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Old dot-com bubble company

I recall back in the late 90's that there was some company, WebCo or something (yes, as vague as it seems) where you could actually buy groceries online. They would have trucks everywhere. My dad used it occasionally around 1999, and I think in 2002 or 2003 it just disappeared. 99.20.133.159 (talk) 22:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Webvan. Here in the UK, Tesco offers pretty much the same service; unlike Webvan, they're making money. -- 87.113.39.157 (talk) 23:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Amazon Fresh in certain parts of Seattle, too. Tempshill (talk) 04:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Peapod was bought out by a grocery store company in 2001 and cancelled a bunch of contracts in a few cities. Livewireo (talk) 13:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There are still a few companies doing this - but it's way more expensive and way limited in coverage area. There is a company here in Austin, Texas, for example - but what they are really doing is sending some guy out to a normal store - he buys what you ask for, drives to your house and drops it off. You pay by the hour for his time. They also offer a service for the elderly with weekly deliveries for $170 a month...plus the cost of whatever you buy. In effect, you're just paying someone by the hour to do your regular shopping run.

There is still at least one company working in small areas of New York city who do it the old "Webvan" way - they have free delivery. But it's clear that the business model only works in very small, densely populated areas.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:03, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, hold on, you're saying that the US in general doesn't have online grocery shopping? Wow, that surprises me. I mean, obviously I realise that the wilds of Montana aren't going to have seamless coverage, but I kind of assumed that normal, suburban America would mostly have delivery available like we do in basically all of the UK (highlands and islands of Scotland excepted). 93.97.184.230 (talk) 19:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)