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

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September 6

Is it safe to use an open wireless router (say, in a cafe)?

This document suggests to me that it's unsafe, but I just watched a Q&A session where professor Eben Moglen says that's biased by misinformation (12m14s through 13m) and an audience member agrees (13m42s through 14m).

Our wireless security article is too technical for me. Thanks. 160.39.220.66 (talk) 03:10, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Usually, yes. But it depends on how secure your computer is and how they configured the router. If you have a firewall turned on, then you're safe from most attacks. Also, most connections to sensitive sites (e.g., online-banking sites) are encrypted by the browser (denoted by an https instead of an http in the address). So, even though people can evesdrop on your browsing sessions (since it's an open router), they can't decode information sent to sensitive sites, since that information is usually encrypted.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 03:44, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

How awesome! How surprising!! I'm already sitting on the wikilink that will point to this question when it gets archived in a few days, so I can share it with my friends and family. 160.39.220.66 (talk) 04:32, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

However you should consider always running in incognito mode and not logging in / using any accounts important to you on unencrypted connections, or your session may get captured or at worst your password gets sent unecrypted. --85.76.85.210 (talk) 11:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Note that downloading email to an email client pretty much sends your password in the clear, so wireless snoopers and/or the cafe owner would be able to read this information.--86.148.22.79 (talk) 14:07, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The above statement is true only if the client and server do not use a secure connection. Most email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird support TLS (an encrypted connection), and many web-based systems also support secure communication (usually with HTTPS). A "properly" configured email server should actually forbid you from connecting to it in an unencrypted way, forcing you to set up and use secure communications. The user should find out whether they are connecting to their email system over an encrypted channel - they can typically find information by checking the "help" section of the email system they use. Nimur (talk) 18:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

My statement is true with the default connection with most ISPs. I therefore thought it wise to warn the OP, whilst being aware of everything you've added.--86.148.22.79 (talk) 10:59, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

And note how easy it is not to notice Wikipedia has logged you out. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:00, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Note that if you are seriously concerned about security, using a secure VPN network pretty much makes the place you connect through not an issue, as it adds a seamless layer of encryption over everything you transmit and receive. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

You just have to assume that it's no different than shouting through the room. Only it's unlikely, but possible, someone is listening. As others have said, if it's a "secure" site using SSL then you're probably safe. If the connection's unencrypted, then it's possible for others to read it. The risk isn't especially that they'd access your computer, but that they'd intercept your data. Wireless encryption doesn't provide any advantage in terms of protecting the computer against a virus or something else. But the transmission from your computer, through the air, to the wireless, is at issue. Shadowjams (talk) 06:09, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Removing IE from XP

I have a friend that has a XP Computer running Media Centre Edition. However, for some reason, he says that after his dad went to visit some sites, IE would suddenly popup at ramdom intervals. He says he di a full system scan and came up with nothing and now says he just want's to remove IE. Is this possible? Sir Stupidity (talk) 07:49, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

We have an article on everything: Removal of Internet Explorer. It is basically not easy, but doable, and might constitute infringement of copyright and/or voiding of warranty, if you care about these things. There are also other caveats, such as that the system might be less stable and certain components (I refuse to use the f word here) might not function the way they are supposed to. The article covers this all. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:34, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Just set Firefox to the default browser Quadrupedaldiprotodont (talk) 13:59, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

That's wouldn't at all fix the problem he's discussing. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

What did he do a "full system scan" with? Can I just recommend that he do a spyware specific scan with a fully updated Spybot Search & Destroy? Because removing IE is really probably not going to fix everything, because there is clearly some malware on there causing the problem in the first place. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:13, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Just to echo some of the others, the problem may not be IE. You should probably see exactly what is popping up on the screen. I'd bet dollars to donuts it's spyware, or he's somehow set IE to be the default program for one of his file types. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:21, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

He used Norton Antivirus 09 to scan it, and he says it was fully updated.Sir Stupidity (talk) 03:10, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Best and Quickest Way to a Blog

What is the best and coolest way to start a blog ? Wordpress and Blogspot seem to be unnecessarily complex. There must be a better way to put, change, add, delete, edit and fix a post in most quick manner. Also adding pics should be easy and friendly. And a newcomer should be able to comment without undergoing a discouraging ceremony like logging in, so dear to Blogspot.  Jon Ascton  (talk) 10:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Try Tumblr if you want something arranged around ease of use. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:16, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You can download Wordpress and host it yourself, then you control everything. Quadrupedaldiprotodont (talk) 13:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

He doesn't want to control everything. He wants it to be simple. Hosting everything and rewriting the software itself is not the simple solution. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

"Simple" depends entirely on user skill-level and what kind of web presence they already have; but since we know this OP from his prior questions on the desk, we can probably assume that he wants a free, third-party, hosted blog - probably with a browser-based "WYSIWYG"-style editor). You can try our list of social networking websites and pick the service that offers the features you need. Nowadays, it is common to offer many additional complex features in addition to the ability to post "updates." Because "blog" is such a vague and poorly-defined term, there is a huge spectrum to choose from. For example, I used to host my "blog" in the literal sense ("web log"), publishing all the transactions that my server had handled over the past day. It was very long and boring and technical, and very few people read it, even though it auto-updated it daily... but I contend that it was the "best" and "coolest" way to blog. It was extraordinarily simple to set up; I just added a cron job to run every midnight:

1 0 * * * cp /var/log/httpd/access_log /var/www/log/

It's hard to get a simpler web-`blog than that! Anyway, facetious joking aside, I really think it is easier to run your own server than to try to learn the intricacies of the latest pseudo-free web-host. The necessary skillset to operate a web-server is small and there are lots of free tutorials available. Once you have your server set up, updating a "blog" is as trivial as saving a file. In any case, we shouldn't discourage the OP from self-hosting on the grounds of "it's too difficult" - that's simply not true. Anyone can learn to self-host their website. It takes time and effort to learn the user-interface and configuration details of, say, Facebook; instead you could learn the configuration-details of your web-server - and presto - you have complete creative control of your website. Both methods have a learning curve, but only one signs over your soul to a corporation with insidious motives. Nimur (talk) 18:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you looking for a different host, or simply editing software such as Windows Live Writer? Smallman12q (talk) 15:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, you can start a blog just by updating an HTML page every day. But if you mean "ease of use," I'd say either [1] or [2] are your simplest ways. They won't appear to be very professional, though, as people tend not to take blogs seriously unless they're on their own hostname and not using a generic template. (Edit) Well, there's a downside to not requiring a login: spambots love it when they don't have to register a username to comment. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I've always found Wordpress to be pretty straight-forward to use: it gives you a lot of access to innards and customization, but you can simply ignore a lot of it. If you want a guide to getting started, Wordpress has one, in addition to extensive documentation: [3]. Commenting is open, if you'd like it to be -- there's a setting for that. One of the nicest things about Wordpress (and a lot of blogging software) is that the post-writing environment resembles programs people are already familiar with, like MS Word. Adding an image is a pretty intuitive process -- click an image icon, and then you get a dialog to browse to the image on your computer, or point it to a URL. Going with Wordpress (or Blogspot, for that matter) will ensure that you have *a lot* of documentation on anything you want to learn how to do, from the simplest to the most complex. Rishi.bedi (talk) 19:00, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Again, I think you all have mistaken "simple" for "best" or something like that. He gives a pretty good outline of what he means by simple — he wants very few options, he wants speed of editing and adding to be a priority, he doesn't want to waste time tweaking settings. He doesn't want "power" in the sense of being able to do 10 million things with it and recoding it from the ground up. I think given his inclinations Tumblr is probably his best bet; it's arranged around Twitter-like simplicity, out of the box, no modifications needed. He doesn't need to learn how to host things or edit code or read documentation. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Concur with Nimur in general. I am planning to set up my own server at home soon, just need to get around to it. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:08, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Nobody doubts that setting up one's own server is a great thing if you're interested in power and flexibility. But it's not a "simple" approach. Y'all got to work on thinking outside of your own priorities! --Mr.98 (talk) 11:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Mr 98: On the one side, we choose to do this, because this is hard. It's true that it's not a simple approach - until you do it, at which time you learn. I'm not trying to be snub or anything, it's just what I believe in, learning through approaching new challenges. However, until I have my own server set up, I am humbly using an external provider to get me some space on the web. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:13, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Reimaging HD

My friends laptop wouldn't boot and they left it in to get repaired the people fixing it said that they would reimage the HD, but haven't told him what caused the failure, not sure if the know themselves, if it was a hardware failure and not a software failure would this actually fix the problem and would his best option be to purchase a new HD as all his data is gone in any way due to the reimaging? Mo ainm~Talk 16:29, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

If your friend's hard drive physically failed, re-imaging it won't help. What exactly do you mean by "wouldn't boot" --- did you get a specific error message, or did nothing happen at all when you powered up? If it's a software failure, re-installing the OS will fix it -- the hard drive will be formatted (meaning it will have no data on it), then the OS will be installed, restoring your machine to factory settings. If this doesn't work, you definitely have a hardware failure -- but it may not necessarily be the hard drive that failed... any of the other components that are critical to start-up could be the culprit. Rishi.bedi (talk) 19:04, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Not to sure of the specifics it was more a general question, from what he said it just wouldn't turn on when he tried, left it into get repaired and see if any data could be recovered but the only option he was given was to reimage the HD without explanation what caused it. Not being a techy he just went along with what they said. Mo ainm~Talk 19:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it's rare to have a hard-drive equipment failure that completely screws up your system, but can be fixed with a re-imaging. (At least with equipment made in the last decade and half. HD's were more touchy in the Olden Days.)

If I were your friend, I would insist on learning exactly what went wrong. "re-imaging" the harddrive is often something that incompetent computer repairmen do when they don't know how to fix your problem. It's a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater solution that will 'fix' any software or operating system problem.

(All that said, personally, when I have doubts about a hard-drive, even irrational doubts, I replace it immediately. HD's aren't that expensive anymore. It's worth it to me for the peace of mind.) APL (talk) 19:41, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The shop can run disk diagnostics to give an indication whether there is (at the time those are run) a hardware problem that they can detect. If there is not, they are liable to assume it was a software problem; at that point, re-imaging the hard drive is, from their standpoint, a reasonable solution.

I don't think such technicians in general have the tools or the knowledge to figure out "what went wrong", mostly because it isn't economically feasible. There are a huge number of possibilities, and there is no guarantee that a world-class expert with all the tools he or she could wish for would be able to figure it out in a reasonable time. Repair shops aren't usually set up for that sort of thing, because customers are not usually prepared to pay for it.

Just picture it: "It is difficult or impossible to tell what went wrong; if you want to leave it here and have us study it, then tell us a maximum number of hours to spend and we'll do our best." Not only will people not pay for that, they will be put off by the suggestion.

I do agree that, if you're going to lose the data anyway, a new hard drive should definitely be considered.

rc (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Accept big, output small

What do you call the networking principle that says you should accept the widest range of values possible but output a very narrowly defined set? --STUART (talk) 18:00, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You're probably thinking of Postel's Law, see Robustness principle. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:47, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Oldest and Newest YouTube video, please?

What are the oldest and newest YouTube videos? Thanks, --70.179.165.170 (talk) 19:32, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The first can be found by typing first youtube video into google; it so happens that the Wikipedia article on YouTube mentions it (search for the above-mentioned phrase). As to the newest, that keeps changing all the time, as people upload new videos. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 19:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Well then, about the newest: What is the newest video as of the time you submit your reply? --70.179.165.170 (talk) 20:41, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

That will be a different answer by the time you read it. [4] claims to have "today's 101 top rated videos from YouTube™, updated daily". Dbfirs 00:39, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

In fact it's probably a fairly meaningless question since the answer is likely to be different even by the time you've finished receiving the page which tells you which is the newest video (presuming Youtube has some sort of live feed of new videos). [5] notes that 24 videos are uploaded every minute although doesn't specify when that was. This must be an average and clearly there would be less at some times particularly when those in the US and to a less extent Western Europe are sleeping or not active but even so, it's not difficult to imagine it's rare that there isn't a new video every 15 seconds at a minimum. In other words, even saying "The newest video is 'Why I love chicks and kiwis' uploaded by Duck Cheney today at 20:52:23 NZST" is a statement that even if you do get the info from Youtube quickly enough probably won't be true by the time you say it out loud. Nil Einne (talk) 08:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Secondary question: What are the most up-to-date stats on YouTube?

For example, how many videos exist on there so far, how many users, and, on average, how many videos per user? --70.179.165.170 (talk) 20:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You could try to search the web for this information. It is somewhat unlikely that someone here has up to date figures on these things in his head; so we are reduced to your web search slave service. Google for something like number of videos on youtube. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 21:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Youtube

How are youtube video urls generated? With this logic (talk) 20:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

They appear to be just unique IDs. They don't have any relation to the content of the video. An easy scheme would just to run a hash function on a very large random number (or the product of two large random numbers), check to see if that ID is already used (pretty unlikely), if so, repeat, if not, use it. Their scheme seems to be an 11-digit ID that is case sensitive, can include numbers and dashes, which is a huge possible set of IDs. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:41, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

(Specifically, a YouTube video ID is made of 10 characters from A-Z, a-z, 0-9, - and _, plus one character from AEIMQUYcgkosw048 for a total of 2⁶⁴ or about 18 × 10¹⁸ possible IDs.) --Bavi H (talk) 03:12, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Running a hash function on a long random number does not give any more randomness that using a short (i.e., 64-bit in this case) random number directly, and the latter is obviously more efficient.—Emil J. 14:05, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured that out shortly after I wrote the above. I don't know where my brain was when I wrote it! --Mr.98 (talk) 13:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)