Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 November 22

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November 22

Mysterious Folders

On unhiding all hidden folders, I discovered that my flash drive has three hidden folders on it, named ".fseventsd", ".Spotlight-V100", and ".Trashes". Can I safely rename (or better yet, delete) these folders? Pokajanje|Talk 00:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Yep, but I would recommend ignoring them. http://hostilefork.com/2009/12/02/trashes-fseventsd-and-spotlight-v100/ Trio The Punch (talk) 00:32, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Alternative to Google Documents?

Are there any services similar to Google Docs that allows multiple users to edit a document and track changes to each user?

Is there a local network software that does the same thing as Google Docs sharing capability?

Cliffbament (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft SharePoint will, but I think it has a clunky check-in, check-out type locking scheme. 87.113.165.189 (talk) 15:56, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

why is there no link between CAP theorem and Quorum?

How does Quorum (distributed computing) fail to negate the CAP theorem?

For example, given five known database servers I send my transaction request to all five at the same time.

As soon as I get a failed result from any of them I know that the transaction has failed and can report same.

As soon as I get a transaction acknowledgement from any three database servers then I know that the result is good and can report same.

In the meantime if I get transaction status unknown or insufficient responses I retry. Hcobb (talk) 17:38, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

You're confusing eventual consistency with immediate consistency; and along the same line of reasoning, conflating a retry-until-success with "availability." In such scenarios, although the system is functional for many practical use-cases, it is not complying with strict requirements of consistency, availability and fault-tolerance at every instant. Nimur (talk) 13:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Then the CAP article isn't very clear. You could make a provably minimal quorum system in the sense that it transmits the least number of messages and still is as consistent and reliable as any possible scheme given X percent failures in the system. Hcobb (talk) 15:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Scam or just desperate?

Okay, some lady, whom I appear to have no friends in common with, added me on Facebook. She has 12 friends, all of which are men. Since I accept just about anybody that isn't blatantly malicious, I accepted her request. Almost immediately she started talking about what she looks for in a man and asked what I look for in a woman. I tried to hint to her that I wasn't really interested in dating her, but she didn't seem to take that hint. She only made her account 2 hours ago, and while she says she is 20, the pictures she has posted look more like that of a teenager (if those are even really her pictures). On the other hand, she didn't seem to be afraid of the fact that I run spam traps and report spammers when I told her I have a Yahoo! account but it's a spam trap. She wants me to create a Yahoo! Messenger account and add her on Yahoo! Messenger. I tried to get her to message me via email (that would reveal an IP address), but that idea didn't work. The last thing she said to me was "okay baby". So is this some kind of scam to try and hack into my PC or is this just some desperate teenager looking for attention? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 19:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like a "flirty" chatbot. If you want to play along use a nonstandard chatclient, maybe they use a security flaw in Yahoo! Messenger. If it is a real person it may be a case of ewhoring. Google "ewhoring". Trio The Punch (talk) 19:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

This, perhaps. 87.112.97.202 (talk) 20:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think it's definitely a real person behind it, otherwise it's one hell of a good bot that is able to comprehend what is written to it. I know this because I at first thought it might have been a Mafia Wars person or someone that followed me from Conservapedia (since it has a lot of politically conservative things liked)and had a little conversation with "it". Any suggestions for luring an IP address out of "it"? I want to have a little bit of "I know what you're up to and I have your IP address" fun with this "thing". Another thought is that, considering the seemingly phony conservatism that this person is pawning off, this could be some kind of attempt at Poe's Law PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 22:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if they fixed this security flaw, but back in 2009 you could simply use netstat-n while transferring a file. Use a proxy. Send him/her/it something, e.g. your favorite song. Or ask a random Wikipedian to host a file on a http server at a URL that has never been used before. Send the person the link, search the accesslogs of the http server. Trio The Punch (talk) 23:42, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a fair chance it's neither. There are a variety of scams which don't involve any attempt at hacking. E.g. there's blackmail mentioned by 87 but also the sort of 'advanced fee' type of fraud where they'll convince you to give them money whether as a gift or to help them when for some strange reason the cops come after them or their relative gets sick or whatever nonsense. While the advance fee type of dating fraud tends to target dating websites, perhaps for some reason they think you're a suitable market. Nil Einne (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Computer not automatically booting from the hard drive

The short: Boot device not found when i turn on the computer.

What works: Selecting the hard drive from the boot menu. Leaving a windows CD in the drive and letting it time out, which then boots the hard drive

What i have tried: Confirmed the hard drive(s) are seen in the bios, confirmed that the hard drive(s) are top of the boot list. Updated/re-flashed the bios. Modified boot sequence to HD > USB > CD > NIC > Floppy. Disabled USB, CD, NIC, & Floppy. Format/reinstall Windows 7. Format/reinstall Ubuntu 12.04. Grub repair off live CD on both Windows and Ubuntu. Tried 2 different hard drives. Tried the same with bootable USB with same results.

My temp solution is to just leave the win7 CD in the drive and let it time out which then boots the hard drive.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Just to clarify; when i 'let the cd time out' what i mean is when it boots from the CD it said something like "Press any key to boot from the CD or DVD..." then after 5 seconds it decides i don't want to boot from the CD/DVD at which point it just boots from the hard drive. If the CD is not in the drive then i just get the error "No boot device found..." – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  21:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit: Tested both hard-drives and USB flash drive on a different computer, and all 3 boot just fine (well, one hard drive BSOD when windows tires to load but that is to be expected as it wasnt installed on that hardware, and the other one boots in to ubuntu just fine, as does the USB drive.) – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  21:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Could the issue be that the hard disk takes some time to show up ? I have an external hard drive like that. When I first turn it on, I might as well go get a cup of tea while I wait for it to appear. So, by the time you wait for the time-out, it may then be visible to the PC. I think the long lag for some hard drives might be because they are huge (TBs) and feel the need to do some type of startup test (obviously it can't test every bit, but maybe it tests one bit on each sector or some such thing). StuRat (talk) 06:30, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

That might be it, however 1 hard drive is 80g while the other is 200g – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  06:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Is there any difference between a cold start (PC off over night) and a warm start (reboot) ? StuRat (talk) 06:56, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Same result either way. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  14:09, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

If it's a time-out issue, does disabling quick POST help? I.e. enabling the complete RAM scan, which would give the drive enough time to rev up and do its own POST? BTW, you did not say the PC booted from DVD when DVD was disabled in the BIOS? You tried disabling DVD etc. but you had to re-enable DVD to use the DVD trick?

Since one of the PCs is to "blame", maybe reset the BIOS to factory settings? I had to do that once in 2 months on one PC, it seemed that BIOS settings got messed up there to a point where it wouldn't boot any more.

Could you tell us what caused the problem to show up? Did the PC refuse to boot when you got it, or did it only happen after a certain change? (I'd guess it could be grub, but that's only a guess. One of my coworkers had a nasty grub fail once. Why that doesn't show up on the other PCs is beyond me, tho.) - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 08:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Saving modified SmartArt in PPT 2010

I am running Microsoft Powerpoint 2010 on Windows 7. I am using the SmartArt graphics that came with the software to create organization charts and have modified the color scheme and gradient for some of the elements. Is there anyway for me to save what I have modified as a custom SmartArt style so that I don't have to repeat all the modifications for every subsequent chart? Also, it will allow me to re-use this custom smartart for other presentation files. Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2012 (UTC)