Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 June 2

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June 2

Compare meanings of words dictionary

Is there any dictionary which can compare the meanings two or more similar words. e.g. native place/home place, home/house, happy/pleasure. Thank you.175.157.38.35 (talk) 03:59, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, any dictionary will do that. If you have a more specific question, the language desk might be a better place to ask it.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

... but we don't know of any dictionary that has single entries on the comparison of word pairs. Some dictionaries such as Wiktionary sometimes mention similar words as a note in an entry. Dbfirs 11:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, many dictionaries will list similar words, and try to describe differences. For example, how "big", "large", "huge", "gigantic", "titanic", etc., compare. One problem, though, is that there are often regional differences in how they compare. For example, "apple juice" versus "apple cider" seem to have reversed meanings in US English and British English. StuRat (talk) 19:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

No, it's more within North America that there are reversed meanings. It's all juice in the UK (only cider when fermented). Dbfirs 19:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Fermented = "hard cider", in the US. StuRat (talk) 02:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

That's correct: no reversal. Dbfirs 05:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

You might try a thesaurus, possibly in connection with a dictionary. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Cloud Gaming

Has anyone tried cloud gaming, and is it any good yet?

I can't seem to find any demos or places where I can try out any current games on a cloud service. It's mostly all talk and PR material but very little goods as far as I can see. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.28.140.226 (talk) 10:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Cloud gaming lists two types, one with video streaming, where your device just plays a video, and all the processing happens at the server. That sounds unworkable to me, now, on a large scale, as the server demand and bandwidth requirements would just be too much. And these days even cell phones have enough processing power to run decent games, so I don't really see the advantage. The second type they list uses file streaming to download additional levels, etc., while you play the first part it downloaded. That seem much more sensible. (I've often thought that while reading a PDF file: "Gee, I just read pages 1-26, and now am on 27, wouldn't you think the PC could figure I might read page 28 next and download it for me as I read page 27 ?") StuRat (talk) 19:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Playing computer games on a server is completely workable, and has been for almost thirty years!!

Please do a little research before posting guesses, opinions, and misinformation. Just for a clear counterexample, NAO has been hosting/serving Nethack large scale tournaments since 1999. DCSS also easily supports hundreds of simultaneous users on the various public servers (there are over 20 users playing right now on CSZO webtiles and over 50 on CAO, and it is mid morning on a Weds - popular times see many more users. I'm also not bothering to count terminal users, who probably about double the current usage).

Now, maybe these are not the games OP is thinking of, and maybe you've never heard of them either, but they offered players instances of games on the server side, streaming to the user, long before "cloud computing" was even a phrase. Internet_chess_servers are almost as old, and probably have even more users. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Did you actually read my response ? Those games from 30 years ago sent ASCII graphics, which is "file streaming" (sending data) not sending high-res 1080p video. I said that file streaming sounds sensible. And 20-50 players doesn't seem like much of a test, either. Likewise, the chess server is going to send moves to the client, not video of moving 3 dimensional pieces (at least if they are smart). That's like 4 bytes of data versus megabytes, per move. StuRat (talk) 01:20, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I did read it. OP never said 1080p full motion video, and the DCSS webtiles framework does indeed use graphics and animations. As you put it "all the processing happens at the server", the server just uses WebSockets to send info to the browser. You basically just said something was "unworkable" because of the assumptions that you made, and the fact is, that something (hosting games on a server that performs all necessary computations and sending video output to the client) is viable, at least for many cases. And if you want to restrict to modern high resolution games, you might be interested in these performance analyses for the GamingAnywhere system. Now, I could make guesses about what other video streaming cloud gaming systems can do - e.g. Sony's cloud gaming [1] service or Gakai, or the GameFly/Amazon partnership for streaming games from a server [2], but I don't actually know much about them, and I don't have time to look in to it just to prove a point to you, because I don't really care if you realize that you're wrong. But I'm sure these tech giants will be very concerned to hear that you think their projects are "unworkable" ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

But why would anyone want to play a game that sends low-res streaming images, versus just sending the information needed for it to generate it's own hi-res images ? Sounds like the recipe for a really crappy game. And I'm not sure technology will change this. By the time they can stream full HD for thousands of games from a single server without any hiccups, devices with their own processors may be able to generate HD 3D holographic displays, and so on. One possible exception I could see is if it can send everyone the same streaming video, versus a different vid for each player. For example, you could have a car race game that shows all the players from the top view, so everyone in the game sees the same thing. Still seems less exciting that a driver's POV game, though. StuRat (talk) 23:59, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, cloud gaming works very well for many roguelike games. Feel free to drop a line on my talk page if you want more info on how to get in to these free, playable-anywhere, very challenging games :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Computer

How do ones and zeros turn into images and text on the computer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.84.2.237 (talk) 17:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, for images each pixel (dot) on the screen can be coded with 0's and 1's (that's called a bitmap). In the case of a black and white image, you can just use a single bit, where a 0 is a white pixel and a 1 is a black pixel. For colors you need more bits of data for each pixel. For example, you could use 4 bits, which have 16 possible combos (0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111). Those could be used to set each pixel to 1 of 16 colors. Early computers did this. With 8 bits per pixel, you can show 256 possible colors. Modern PCs tend to use around 24 bits per pixel, to show millions of possible colors at each pixel. Images can also be defined in other ways, like vector graphics, but I won't get into that (they also use 1's and 0's, but in a different way).

For text, it's a two step process. First, the computer needs to know which character you want. 8 bits are often used there, which allows for up to 256 possible characters. That includes the alphabet (upper and lowercase), the numbers, and lots of symbols and punctuation. For some languages, they need more characters than that, so 16 bits or more may be used.

Once the computer knows what character to display, it looks up a character map which might be just have a little picture (bitmap) of how to display that character at a given scale, font, etc. (there are other methods, too). If it's a bitmap, then it's defined using 1's and 0's just like described above. (Other character representations also use 1's and 0's, but in a different way.) StuRat (talk) 18:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Just to complete Stu's explanation: these values (1's and 0's) are stored in a part of memory called video ram (VRAM). You can think of the memory address in VRAM corresponding to the location of a pixel on the monitor (i.e if VRAM addresses start at 1000, then 1000 might be the upper-leftmost pixel, 1001 the next pixel to the right, and so on). In reality, it's more complicated than this, because various compression schemes are used to save memory space; however, the basic idea that the (1) different combinations of 1's and 0's correspond to different graphics elements (i.e. pixels, or text), and (2) the location of these elements in video RAM corresponds with their physical location on the screen IS true. OldTimeNESter (talk) 19:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Problem opening a program (Itunes) installed on my computer. Nothing I do fixes the problem

Hey.

Suddenly my Itunes stopped working. I click the logo on my desktop and nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. It just worked before, and then it did not... I've tried to "open it as administrator", I've tried to reinstall/repair, I've tried to uninstall and then install anew, but nothing changes.. I also tried to open Itunes from its folder rather than using the desktop-shortcut. But the problem lingers.

I have not installed any new software, I have not updated any drivers or done any configurations etc.

What can be possible explanations to the problem and possible solutions? The fact that not even installing it anew makes any difference is weird..

UPDATE: Now it worked *once*, but it took literally 25-30 minutes from I double-clicked the desktop-logo till it suddenly opened. So there has got to be something preventing/slowing the program down from responding, right? Beyond that I am still at a loss...

84.211.153.120 (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Could be a virus. Have you run any virus scans ? Also, I suggest you look at the Task Manager to see if a new process starts when you click on it. I bet it does, maybe one each time you click. And did you do an uninstall before doing the reinstall ? StuRat (talk) 18:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes I have tried both reinstall first and then uninstall/install. Task-manager shows nothing. But everything else works fine and the task manager shows every other open program as expected. Doesn't seem to be w virus... Computer just scanned an seem safe and healthy. 84.211.153.120 (talk) 18:44, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

UPDATE: I just figured it out.. kinda.. An EMPTY CD was in the CD-rom. Once I ejected and took the cd out the program immediately opened. And I have now tried to open, close, open, close many times, and it works. So it was the CD. But why an empty cd which I originally meant to burn on, but which I never did?

Thnx for your time anyway, @Stu. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.211.153.120 (talk) 18:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I would guess that iTunes first searches through the CD so it can list any music there. This is meant to be a quick process, but perhaps it takes very long time to search that CD, for some reason, such as not having an index defined. They really should pop up a window after 30 seconds saying that it's taking a long time to search the CD for music, and ask if you want to continue or not. StuRat (talk) 18:59, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

double redirect spam

Each month I look over my website's HTTP log for incoming links. As usual, most of the new ones are Russian spammers. Less usual, this time there's a huge crop of double redirects, like this (simplified):

SiteA/redirect?url=SiteB/redirect?url=mySite

If it's working right, which it isn't always, the first page will redirect to

SiteB/redirect?url=mySite

which in turn redirects to mySite. In many cases the redirect page doesn't work, but it also doesn't show their hot amateur porn, only an error message.

If SiteA or SiteB is legit, the other is the spammer; there are examples both ways. But either way, what's the point? No one who clicks that composite link in my site's log (if I have a public log) is going to see their advertisements for apartments in Ulyanovsk. Are they doing it to see whether spamming my site (with more conventional referral spam) is worthwhile?

(I remove my address before following any such link.) —Tamfang (talk) 23:54, 2 June 2015 (UTC)