Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 September 22

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September 22

twilight/ vampire tales in byron bay refuge?

just wondering if "anyone" has heard of it? someone named alice rings bells?

This is a computing question? --68.103.141.28 (talk) 04:48, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Mozilla Firefox

After we hooked up with Comcast we couldn't use Mozilla anymore, just Internet Explorer. Is this an accidental-on-purpose technical glitch that Comcast provides Microsoft as a courtesy??Rich (talk) 08:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

It is more than unlikely. A quick web search reveals little concern about Comcast & Mozilla, but I'd expect plenty if Comcast was not playing with Moz. Comcast is alleged to throttle P2P traffic such as BitTorrent, but should honour any other TCP/IP packets. The problem is almost certainly in another area. Exactly what are the symtoms? And what firewall / anti-spyware software do you have running? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:04, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I have Comcast and can use FireFox, Safari, Opera and IE. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I had a similar problem with the initial setup, which had to be done in Windows/IE. Once the initial setup was complete, I could use my choice of OS and browser. Are you still at the setup phase? If so, finish setup in IE and then try Firefox. anonymous6494 13:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps your proxy server settings have changed. Check which settings IE is using by going Tools -> Internet Options, look under the Connections tab, and click "LAN Settings" at the bottom. Then in Firefox go Tools -> Options -> Advanced, look under the Network tab, and click "Settings". Make sure Firefox is using the same settings as IE.

• thanks everyone.71.198.176.141 (talk) 01:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Lockerz.com, what's the deal?

In my net peregrinations I'm coming across more and more postings advertising invitation giveaways for Lockerz.com, however I can find absolutely zero independent third party explanations of what that site IS.

My spam/scam sense is tingling. Does anyone have some insight? Wikipedia, to my amazement, hasn't even a stub about it... 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[1] also see their own advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y4hi6cNKlM

You earn points be getting others to join or buy stuff of something - a bit like a pyramid selling scheme but without the cash. Clever. Also trash. Probably legit though. Aimed at youth. Aimed a people who think ipods are god, but not apple geeks. Kidz.

They also sell stuff - so that might be a source of income - you get "Pointz" for participating in "Lockerz" , so it might be aimed at "Bratz" (or Niggerz)? Who knows?

fatlad's first law of the internet - "Any sufficiently advanced marketing scheme is indistinguishable from spam".83.100.251.196 (talk) 11:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's an independent evaluation [LINK REMOVED] 83.100.251.196 (talk) 11:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

For extremely small values of "independent". I've removed the link as inflammatory, inappropriate, and any other "in-" words that come to mind. ;) Grab it out the history if you really want to go there. - IMSoP (talk) 13:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The "independent evaluation" is well worth a read; the evaluation is certainly independent, albeit grotesquely partisan. I'm doubt I'm alone in feeling that the insidious marketing approach being taken by the company in question richly deserves (some of) the response it has engendered. It is also very humorous, albeit in schoolboy fashion. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Eh, since when do we not link to things? Wikipedia isn't censored. The site is stupid and unhelpful, and will tell you nothing about their business model or anything else. Still, I don't quite see it as dangerous. The site is a bunch of script kiddies planning to launch some sort of hacking attack against Lockerz. It doesn't tell you much about Lockerz itself, except that they don't like it very much (mostly because it tries a bit too hard to be cool, and because it apparently spams). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

What's the deal? The site basically is trying to grow a huge user-base by trying to entice people to get "points" for watching ads, using it, etc. They will then reward these hours of interactions with what are no doubt carefully determined trinkets that are not really worth the time spent on them. Better yet: once they get enough users, they can just sell the site and its user-base to someone else. It's how a great deal of online business works these days, where the number of people using the site is more valuable than anything else. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

After some quick Google searches on "Lockerz" it was easy to determine they were using scam-like techniques for advertising and attracting interest. I'd stay away from them, whatever they are. Mac Davis (talk) 03:14, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The chief problem with getting a sensible entry for Lockerz in Wikipedia, is that the Wikipedia editors are irrationally biased against it. My original entry on Lockerz was taken down by a hoard of whining Wikipedites who seemed to think they had the right to censor information about something they don't like and hadn't taken the trouble to understand. Lockerz is not a scam, but is genuine commercial venture that is using a clever twist on affiliate marketing to build site membership. Yes, it's annoying, but so is the lack of rational analysis of it here. Lockerz.com is one of the fastest growing internet sites around. Wikipedia should be ashamed of its inability to even record Lockerz existence.

I agree to the paragraph above. There is almost no chance that lockerz is a scam as it is funded by liberty media ,http://www.libertymedia.com/interactive-lockerz.aspx .The CEO of Lockerz is Kathy Savitt the dormer VP of amazon.com, any involvement with a scam would be "social sucide", sorry i am new to wiki so i don't know the rules, delete this if needed. More hereWyldman (talk) 21:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


ENGLISH
Maybe in the beginning, lockerz could be considered a scam, but after several months it can be sure that lockerz not a scam. There are many videos on youtube showing that lockerz is true, just enough for "unboxing lockerz" to realize the enormous amounts of "prizes" that has sent lockerz. Now his goals are not clear and I do not think the awards are forever but they already have a database with millions of people visiting the web constantly and they did it in a few months :-) Is not it better that could happen to a website? A couple of ads out there, a few thousand dollars for each trailer ... In a few months could recover everything they invested in Redeems. Finally: I do believe in lockerz, seize the opportunities this giving.

Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft2z1CFfzdQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSPbunR8RbI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg3QLxqRsOw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChUM4ARtRko&feature=related
... and more


ESPAÑOL
Quiza en sus inicios, lockerz pudo ser considerado una estafa, pero despues de varios meses ya se puede comprobar que lockerz no es una estafa. Existen muchos videos en youtube que demuestran que lockerz es verdad, solo basta buscar "lockerz unboxing" para darse cuenta de las enormes cantidades de "premios" que lockerz ha enviado. Ahora, sus finalidades no estan muy claras y yo no creo que los premios sean por siempre pero ellos ya tienen una base de datos con millones de personas que visitan la web constantemente y ellos lo lograron en pocos meses :-) ¿No es lo mejor que le podria pasar a una pagina web? Un par de anuncios por ahi, unos cuantos miles de dolares por cada trailer... En unos cuantos meses podrian recuperar todo lo que invirtieron en las redeems. Finalmente: Yo si creo en lockerz, aprovecho las oportunidades que esta dando.

Fuentes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft2z1CFfzdQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSPbunR8RbI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg3QLxqRsOw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChUM4ARtRko&feature=related
...y mas

GPGPU and integer performance

So I asked this on the GPGPU talk page, but haven't gotten a response. The article doesn't address the question of whether GPGPU is suitable to improve the performance of integer workloads or not. Can anyone shed some light on that? Google searching essentially led to garbage results at least I wasn't able to make sense of them. Thanks - Taxman ^Talk 20:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

This guy wrote an MD5 implementation in CUDA (MD5 is all integer and bit ops) and reports very good results. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)