Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 11

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November 11

MS Excel help

Ended up using =VALUE(). Thanks for all your help.--omnipotence407 (talk) 00:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

For whatever reason, I need to go through about 4500 cells (all in one column) and click F2 to edit and then it Enter to accept the changes without actually changing anything. I have tried formatting everything as text and numbers but nothing helps. I think a macro would do the trick, but I am not up on my VB. Thanks --omnipotence407 (talk) 22:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain what your goal is? Are you just trying to force a manual update of all the cell values? (Because that is very easy to do with Excel.)

--Mr.98 (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that's what I'm trying to do. From what I can tell, the cells are not being considered numbers until I edit and accept. The values are copied and pasted (as values only) from the output of Microsoft Query. I'm running 2003 if that helps. It seems like it would be simple, but I haven't found anything that would help. --omnipotence407 (talk) 01:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that sounds like Excel. Have you tried copying and then repasting them using Paste Special > Values? It might keep them from being treated like strings. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I meant with the "as values only." --omnipotence407 (talk) 03:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried copy-and-pasting first into Notepad and then from there into Excel? That sometimes helps to strip off formatting. Or save the Excel file as a text-only format (CSV for example), open in Notepad or Wordpad and do search-and-replace on any string identifiers (single or double quotes). Re the macros: there's a "record macro" button in Excel that is great for figuring out the language, but you still have to set up the loops manually... Jørgen (talk) 10:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe even a recalc command (F9) could solve your problem. -- Codicorumus  « msg 17:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

the F9 didn't work. I tried doing the record macro, but the problem was that it doesn't retain the values. It ends up replacing the contents with the one that I recorded with. --omnipotence407 (talk) 19:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, you can do the job via a formula that results in the appropriate number and then –if necessary– copy and paste as value. -- Codicorumus  « msg 20:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Paste Values is only relevant if you have copied a formula from Excel. In that case, Paste Values discards the underlying formula and only pastes the output value of the formula. However, in your case, there is no underlying formula to discard. The problem seems to be that the data is being pasted as text instead of numbers.

Here's a possible solution: After you paste the data, you might try clicking on the Paste Options button that appears, choosing the Text Import Wizard, and see if it has an option to interpret the data you pasted as numbers instead of text.

This may also be helpful: Convert numbers stored as text to numbers. --Bavi H (talk) 02:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Serious error

When I got home my computer had to be restarted. When it booted up it said it had recovered from a serious error. I copied the details on the "send error report" and they are:

BCCode : 77     BCP1 : C000000E     BCP2 : C000000E     BCP3 : 00000000     
BCP4 : 1727D000     OSVer : 5_1_2600     SP : 3_0     Product : 768_1

I am running Windows XP on a Dell Dimsension 2400 with 528 megs. Can anyone interpret this error report for me? I did install the latest version of Firefox yesterday and it prompted me to install the latest version of Flash Player, which I also did. I am running the latest version of Norton.--162.83.161.25 (talk) 00:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I cannot decode the data, but messages saying that the computer has recovered from a serious error are usually not alarming. Most often the problem never occurs again. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

As Andreas Rejbrand said, these "serious errors" are usually not serious. Bug check code (BCCode) 77 is KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR, and C000000E is STATUS_NO_SUCH_DEVICE. So the kernel tried to read a (stack) page from the page file, but couldn't find the disk where the page file was supposed to be. Why that would happen, I don't know. -- BenRG (talk) 01:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

By "serious", it really means, "I had an error with running the OS and had to reboot the whole thing and could not fail gracefully" rather than "this is a permanent problem." That being said, if you get LOTS of said "serious errors", it can be an indication of faulty/failing hardware (e.g. bad RAM will cause lots of weird errors of this sort). But if it is just one every once in awhile—don't panic. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Just so you know, I never panic. I have my towel with me at all times.--162.83.161.25 (talk) 04:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had a lot of intermittent serious errors / BSOD's recently and it turned out to be a faulty RAM chip. If it happens often, it might be worth it to run a full diagnostics check on your computer (e.g. from ultimatebootcd.com). But like the posters said, it could be anything. Sandman30s (talk) 11:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Resuming downloads

Hi. I use firefox to download files of several megabytes. But my connection often fails, and when it reconnects, I have start the download over again. Is there a way to change the settings to resume the download from where it stopped when the connection terminated? I'm using Firefox 3.5.5. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.124.189.173 (talk) 04:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

This add-on] should do the job and has lots of downloads and a 5 star rating, so I would go for that if I were you. --Tango (talk) 05:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

note that some sites don't support resuming no matter what addons you install. they simply won't resume. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 11:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Downscaling a 1280x720 video? To 854x480 or 720x480?

So utterly confused. I want to resize a 1280x720 video to a smaller size. I though it was suggested to go to 640x360. Which is the more popular resizing. For example, for 640x480, it is frequently resized to 320x240. What is 1028x720 frequently resized to? I've seen 720x480 used a lot, but it's not 16:9 ratio. Thanks. Mahanga^Talk 04:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

For what purpose are you resizing the video? That will help to answer what size you should resize it to. — QuantumEleven 10:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't you mean 1280 and not 1208? 1208 just doesn't make any sense to your question. You can resize the video to any size you like so you really have to tell us what your application is, and what the screen size of your intended display is (both in physical inches and the number of pixels height X width). Zunaid 11:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Check out this graphic if you want to know what "standard" resolutions there are, and why "720x480" etc. is used a lot (it is NTSC). If you pick a small resolution in the same color on that graphic, it will be the same ratio. So 1280x720 (HD 720) cannot be smoothly resized down to another common size other than WVGA (854x480) without either cropping a bit or adding blank borders. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

My mistake, I meant 1280. I'm resizing because I would just like a smaller file size (for online video streaming) and simply don't need the large 1280x720 size. I think I'll resize it to 854x480 so that there's no cropping. It's just that I don't see many videos at that resolution (or 640x360), it just seemed a little odd. Thanks, Mahanga^Talk 16:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It really doesn't matter what physical size it is—if it were me, I would just chop it in half, or even in half once again and double it up in the player with smoothing. For many purposes, that works fine. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

640×360 is nHD, exactly a quarter of 720p and a ninth of 1080p. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Pendrive

When i inserted a Kingston pen drive into my laptop (which has Windows Vista), the computer tried to find Data Traveler 2.0 device driver software from Windows update but it couldn't find. So the computer asked me to manually install it from a folder. I didn't have the device driver software so I searched for it in the internet and downloaded it. But when i double-clicked it for installing, i got an error message that it was only for Windows 98. But then, the next time i inserted the pendrive, i accidentally clicked the option named "Do not ask me to install software for this device again". So now if in insert the pendrive, nothing happens; i don't even get the prompt to manually install the software. Does anybody know how to bring back this automatic searching of sofware and prompting of the computer to install the software? I want this propmting to occur because i found a way for the pendrive to work and this way needs the pronpting of the computer. And if you have any other way of bringing the pendrive icon (without the prompting of the computer) in the MyComputer, that is also welcome. Please help me with this as I have some important documents in the pen drive. Thank you very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.246.57.2 (talk) 05:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

To get the prompt, insert you usb drive into the computer, then go to the Start menu and type "devmgmt.msc" without quotes into the search box (that's assuming you're using the default vista start menu. If you're using classic, go to Start -> Run and enter "devmgmt.msc" into the box). Now find your usb drive in the list, right click it and select properties. Go to the Driver tab and click Update driver. The prompt should then appear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 12:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple FaceBook application

I have an online community which i would like to spread to my friends via Facebook. I hear you can make your own applications and simply have your app be a window to a certain URL.

I have a java applet which hooks directly to my chatroom, so it would be PERFECT if the application could just bring the Facebook user to a page with my applet on it. Is there anyone who can help me do this? Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: I managed to get the application started, but for some reason people cant add it to their profiles? If anyone is skilled at doing FB apps please let me know, im having a pretty difficult time trying to get the application be able to be added to peoples profiles. Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 09:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you gotten an API key from Facebook? You can't just add anything to FB, you have to use their process for adding apps. See here, for example. --LarryMac | Talk 13:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah i think i know what you are talking about. It says i have 4 fans but no one "uses" the app. I dont know how to design the app to "hook into facebook" so people can add it to their profile and etc. I know nothing at all about php, and the app is just supposed to be a portal to a web chat, which works. Is there any way i can get a very simple phpish thing that just hooks into FB and does nothing else, so my friends can use the app and it "counts" it on facebook?

137.81.112.176 (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Unresolved

I want to know the turnover, the number of employees of quechup.com or idate corporation

Hi, I'm german and translated the article quechup into german. Now I want to complete the article with informations about the enterprise. I've searched with Google to estimate the turnover, the number of employees of quechup.com or idate corporation, but without success. Perhaps somebody can give me these or other background informations. Thanks in advance Jan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jan Renzlow (talk • contribs) 09:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC) -- Jan Renzlow (talk) 10:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Their "investor relations" link, which you must have already investigated, yields very vague information, which is typical of a small private company. Their whois record shows a registrant in Las Vegas, Nevada, and checking with the Nevada secretary of state's corporation lookup, a search for "idate" yields a "revoked" domestic corporation at this page showing the officers' address in Newbury, Berkshire, which must be where the company is located. These records don't list an employee count, and the fact the corporation's status is 'revoked' doesn't mean much; they could have reincorporated in another state for their US purposes, or have simply decided to not maintain a US corporation. Sorry. Maybe there is a British or EU website where you can look up a company and find out how many employees they have, and possibly even what their turnover is (though that's highly confidential data at every company and I think it's unlikely you'll be able to find it). Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Comet Tuttle, I 've still known the officers' address in Newbury, Berkshire. The WhoIs-database search is unfortunately offline for routine maintenance. I'll try it later -- Jan Renzlow (talk) 09:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

'Find' feature in Mac OSX Leopard

What I want to do is search a specific folder for items modified after a specific date. Back in the day this was easy, and possibly still is, but I can't find a way of reliably doing it. The Finder search bar will do this only if I also specify a name of the document so I can get round it by searching for individual types of document (ie searching for '.pdf' then'.indd' then '.qxp' etc. but I would like to get a consolidated result with all the files modified within the time span. Thanks in advance!   pablo_hablo. 09:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Go to the folder that you want to search, then hit Command-F. This will start the search feature. Click on "folder name" at the top. Change the search criteria to "last modified date" and fill in your timeframe. Dismas|^(talk) 11:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good but I'm not getting a "folder name" option to click on; just 'This Mac', "pablo" (my home folder), 'Shared' and then the options "Contents" and "File Name".   pablo_hablo. 11:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

That's odd. I'm running Leopard. So, using my iTunes music folder as an example, I navigate to that folder, hit Command-F, and along the top I have "Search: This Mac "iTunes Music" | Contents File Name Save -" If I click on "iTunes Music" and limit my search by "Last modified date" within the last 10 days, it gives me a list of items. Although, just the stuff in that folder. Not the files within those modified folders... Dismas|^(talk) 11:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Mine's 10.5.8 - are you running Snow Leopard?   pablo_hablo. 11:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Same here. 10.5.8. Dismas|^(talk) 11:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Weird. I can specify the folder to search if I use the search bar but not if I use the ⌘F option. However - typing modified:>=01/01/2009 in the search bar seems to be doing the job at the moment, but I am now concerned as to why my machine behaves differently to yours ...   pablo_hablo. 12:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If you've got XP, is there much point in upgrading to Vista?

A lot of Vista install disks with COAs are available very cheap now. I've got XP. Is there much point in upgrading to Vista? From what I've read on the internet it seems Vista is poorly thought of by many/some. 78.149.246.109 (talk) 11:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want your computer to run slow, lag randomly, make it difficult to find drivers and have a cool interface, then sure, go ahead and upgrade to Vista. F (talk) 12:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Unless you are upgrading your hardware to something which XP doesn't have driver support for, there's no reason to install to Vista. It's actually less stable than XP and has many of the problems listed above. If you're thinking of upgrading, Windows 7 is the way to go - it's basically a version of Vista without all of Vistas problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 12:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Windows Vista is a much better OS than XP. The user interface is much more appealing, the system is more stable, the start menu is improved, it is much easier to search for files, browse folders, copy/move files etc. But, of course, Windows 7 is even better. Window snap and other features are great. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure Vista has lots of cool menus and themes (personally I always use classic) but Vista is very unstable compared to XP and generally runs slower while consuming more resources. See Criticism of Windows Vista

I think the real problem with Vista is that it needs lots of memory - I just booted my Vista system, and with nothing loaded, it was using 1.35 Gigs. If you've got a PC with "only" a Gig, I think you'll find it a poor upgrade. With lots of memory, I'm happy with it as an OS and do like some of the features mentioned above. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista is awful compared to XP or 7. I'd rather have a fast system than lots of unnecessary "cool" looking features, themes and start menus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista runs fast on my four-year old (quite high-end, though) Dell Dimension. But, probably, Windows 7 will run even faster. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

<obligatory>Switch to Mac.</obligatory> Tan | 39 15:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

On my computer (hp 530, 2GB ram) Vista was slower than XP, and took much more harddrive and ram. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukipuk (talk • contribs) 15:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft has put together a comparison of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 for your convenience. It is up to you whether the added features in Vista are "worth it." I think many people were dissatisfied with Vista, but I never had any trouble at all with it in terms of stability or performance (and I spend my day-job benchmarking high-performance computers - so I suspect that most people who claim "poor performance" are either blowing smoke or incompetently repeating blog-o-web hype that is counterfactual). Vista improved hardware support, introduced the Windows Display Driver Model framework - vastly improving throughput and consistency to video cards, the PCIe bus, and other peripherals [1]; dramatically rearchitected multithreading in support of modern CMP and SMP computers [2], DMA, ... the numerous technologies which Vista added make possible vastly higher performance computers. The question of whether it will make your computer any faster can only be answered by benchmarking your hardware. The new features do incur an overhead, and in some cases (especially if your old hardware cannot benefit from the new performance-enhancements) the overhead may be higher than the performance gain (as has been pointed out above). Nimur (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Any figures coming from Microsoft are highly suspect, as they of course want to sell you the new stuff, so they will just skip listing any features that were available in XP that have been dropped in both Vista and 7 (although they did list one that was dropped in Vista and restored in 7). They also don't list the much higher system requirements for both Vista and 7, which gives you a real idea of how many more resources they use. The chart is also full of opinions and exaggerations, like "more easily", and my favorite, "Find files and programs instantly". Instantly ? Really ? Absolutely no time is required ? That's a nice trick. A real comparison chart would have objective facts, like times and numbers of clicks and Megabytes, rather than subjective terms like that. StuRat (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

To follow up, here are the system requirements for XP [3], Vista [4], and 7 [5]:

            Memory (MB)       Speed (MHz)     Free Disk Space (GB)
          Min/Recommended   Min/Recommended   Min/Recommended
          ===============   ===============   ====================
XP          64-128           233-300           1.5     
Vista      512-1024          800-1000          15   
7         1024-2048              1000          16-20

So, as you can see, there was an absolutely huge leap in system requirements from XP to Vista, with only a modest increase from Vista to 7. I'd pay particular attention to the speed requirement. If you need a computer that's 3-6 times faster to run Vista than XP, that's likely because Vista is 3-6 times slower. Now, to answer the original Q, I'd wait and get Windows 7. There's a reason why Vista is on sale so cheaply now: it's junk. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The anti-Vista hyperbole is just that, hyperbole. The new driver model makes Vista much more stable than XP, in my opinion; I have never gotten a BSOD in Vista, whereas my XP machine has suffered 20 over the years. That said, I never upgrade an OS unless there is a need. If your system is stable and your applications work, don't mess with it. What is making you consider an upgrade? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has Features new to Windows Vista, Features removed from Windows Vista, Features new to Windows 7, and Features removed from Windows 7.

A lot of the changes that people talk about are really changes in one application, explorer.exe. You don't have to use Explorer to copy and search your files any more than you have to use Internet Explorer to browse the web. Explorer has never been all that good and the changes don't make it all that much better. For the cost of a Windows 7 upgrade you might as well buy Directory Opus, which has a zillion more features than Explorer will ever have. Changes to the Start Menu don't matter to me because I so rarely need it. If I want to open the Run dialog I press Win+R, if I want to open my web browser I press Win+W. The first is a standard key combo, the second I defined myself using AutoHotkey. I've never entirely understood why people care about the 3D compositing user interface. I don't want my operating system to entertain me with animated cutscenes, I just want it to run my applications. Since I don't care about UI themes I'm not very familiar with third-party skinners, but WindowBlinds was/is one such. If you just want cool-looking window borders, it'll do fine.

There are some more meaningful improvements to the OS proper, of course. But keep third-party alternatives in mind, especially if you'd have to pay for the upgrade. -- BenRG (talk) 18:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Forget Vista; the only upgrade to consider is Windows 7. I've been happy with it thusfar; 99% of my programs work well with it, the 1% being the odd driver that doesn't work, and so I have a dual-boot into XP for that reason. Windows 7 has a lot of "new" features that third-party programs did in XP. The main reason to upgrade IMO is that the world will slowly migrate away from legacy 8/16/32-bit code and you'd rather be part of the move. Win7 boots up a lot faster than XP and is more stable in certain areas. Downside is that the meaty bits are hidden and the new interface will take getting used to... but that is normal and nowhere near as bad as the move from DOS to Windows was! Sandman30s (talk) 11:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu v. Windows: reliability, speed, compactness, error recovery?

Putting aside issues of ease of use, how do the two compare in the technical aspects above? To be more specific about Windows, currently I have WinXP, I suppose I could upgrade to Vista. 78.149.246.109 (talk) 11:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading to 7 would be ideal, and would be faster/more reliable than vista or XP in my opinion. Though I don't use Ubuntu, so I can't give a comparison Chris M. (talk) 14:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In the process of reinsalling Win XP to get rid of a major malware problem, I used a xubuntu live CD to backup all the user's documents, photos, music, email, etc. onto an external disk. I noticed that xubuntu was noticably quicker at copying than XP. Astronaut (talk) 15:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have hp530 laptop (upgraded to 2GB ram) with WinXP and Ubuntu (Xubuntu 8.04). I have tried Windows Vista and Windows 7. WinXP gives best performance, folowed by Ubuntu, next Windows 7, with worse performance achieved by Vista. On th reliability scale, windows XP did best, and Ubuntu worse (there was lot of problems with wifi and laptop special buttons, things that worked stopped working on reboot). I cant say much about 7 and Vista, i didnt use them long enough (because of low performance). I dont know what exactly do you mean by compactness, but Vista and 7 has lot of bloat which i really didnt need (voice recognition and similar stuff), on the other hand there was some neat new things like search and lot of user interface tweaks. Ubuntu have some cool things too, imo the best is package manager, where you can install software literally with one click (no more web searching). This is not meant to be objective comparison, just how the things works for me...hope it helps :) Lukipuk (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When you ask about "speed", your question is extremely vague. "Speed to do what"? Are you referring to responsiveness of the user interface? FLOPS count? Boot time? Disk access? Nimur (talk) 16:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Question seems to cause responses to be highly susceptible to personal bias. Kushal (talk) 16:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep i meant responsivnes of UI, and things like the time between double-click to program icon and actual start of programs, booting time etc. The laptop is just for internet and terminal Lukipuk (talk) 18:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The question is too vague for us to be able to answer. It all depends on what applications you are going to be using. You don't have to choose just one or the other, by the way; you can set up your computer to dual-boot and choose either Ubuntu or Windows at startup. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The following sheds some light on the issue of reliability: [6]. I have also timed how long it takes to boot Windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, and openSUSE on multiple computers. XP was the fastest, followed by Vista, then openSUSE, and finally Ubuntu. There are tweaks that you can perform to increase the performance of Linux, though. One thing I do is choose ext2 as the file system during installation. Since ext2 doesn't use journaling, disk operations are faster. As for compactness, all modern operating systems include un-necessary bloat. Ubuntu includes a braille service (Brltty), for example.--Drknkn (talk) 21:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above, but in fairness and in deference to accuracy, Ubuntu's brltty does not need to be installed; nor does it need to be configured to run at startup; so if it is running and you feel that it is unnecessarily bloaty and damaging your performance, you can easily turn it off or uninstall it. Some users are very happy that this service exists, but most of us do not need it. Nimur (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Difference between property files and XML file in java

Hi,
What is the difference in using property files and XML files in Java....
In which cases property files would be helpfull and in which cases XML files would be helpfull.... Thanks,
- Atchays —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 11:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Properties files are much simpler and are stored in a very direct plaintext representation. XML is a structured markup language, so it adds a lot of complexity - but the benefits are more extensible, better-organized data that can be produced and consumed by many other applications. You can read about .properties files and XML at our respective articles. Nimur (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Tuples

I came up with the idea of tuples in imperative, procedural or object-oriented, languages many years ago. A tuple is simply a collection of variables, or values, treated as one single variable, or value, exactly preserving the number, order, and types of every single variable or value. The best idea is to show by example, assuming a hypothetical extension to, for example, Java:

(int, String) myTuple = (1, "Hello world!");
(int, String) copyOfMyTuple = myTuple;
int i;
String s;
(i, s) = copyOfMyTuple; // now i equals 1 and s equals "Hello world!"

Trying to mix tuples with different numbers of members, or with the types of members conflicting, is an error.

The only thing that is undefined is what happens in an assignment such as the last line above when several lvalues refer to the same actual variable. I suppose this could be resolved by defining that assignment happens in strict left-to-right order, so the assignment that happens last is the one that stays in effect.

Now so far tuples might just be syntactic sugar for several variables or values written together, but coupled with generics, we can have:

List<(int, String)> listOfTuples = new ArrayList<(int, String)>();
listOfTuples.add((1, "Hello world!"));

where tuples are a kind of inner classes. I don't think this, coupled with the assignment to individual type lvalues I showed above, can easily be done with existing languages.

My questions, therefore, are:

1. Have I thought about this correctly or have I made a mistake, resulting in a contradiction or open question, in the above?
2. Has anyone else thought about this?
3. Since I can design new features for programming languages pretty easily, but can't actually implement even a simple compiler to save my life, is there an existing language extension that does this? JIP | Talk 19:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Attempt at answering third question: You wrote "for example, Java". If C++ is an acceptable substitute, there is the Boost tuple library [7]. Does that satisfy your requirements? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, your concept of a tuple sounds very much like a PL/I structure, which goes back some 45 years. StuRat (talk) 02:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand. Aside from the syntactic sugar - why are your tuples any different from a classic C or C++ 'struct'? If (in your example), I declare a 'struct T { int A ; string B ; };' then I have a "collection of variables, or values, treated as one single variable, or value, exactly preserving the number, order, and types of every single variable or value"...your definition of a tuple. The only real difference is that you have some slightly streamlined syntax...which would cause immense problems in a practical language because of yet another overloading of the meaning of '(' and ')'. But I could come very close to your example with some fairly minor syntax changes:

 struct int_String { int _int ; String _String ; } ;   // I have to declare my tuple - but that's not a bad thing, IMHO.

 int_String myTuple = { 1, "Hello world!" } ;
 int_String copyOfMyTuple = myTuple;
 int i;
 String s;
 i = copyOfMyTuple._int; s = copyOfMyTuple._String;

...the only material difference is the last line...which you could fix in C++ with a 'Get' member function:

 copyOfMyTuple.Get(i,String)

Aside from some rather tiny syntax variations - why wouldn't I just use a C++ structure? Ditto JAVA, ditto almost every modern language. With some macros and some fancy operator overloads, I bet we could get even closer to your syntax. For your second example, all we need is a suitable constructor function:

List<T> listOfTuples = new ArrayList<T>();
listOfTuples.add(int_String(1, "Hello world!"));

SteveBaker (talk) 06:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I much prefer the angle-bracket syntax, as seen in pair (the C++ 2-tuple):

pair<int, string> duo(1, "hello");
typedef pair<int, string> IntString;
list<IntString> intStrList;
intStrList.push_back( duo );
intStrList.push_back( IntString(2, "world") );

C++0x adds a tuple type:

tuple<int, string, double> triplet( 1, "2", 3.0 );
int i = get<0>(triplet); // get the first (0th) element of the tuple

list< decltype(triplet) > triplets; // eqv. to list< tuple<int, string, double> >
triplets.push_back( triplet );
triplets.push_back( { 4, "5", 6.0 } ); // list-initialization

decltype (talk) 10:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Tuples can also be found in ML-family languages. Haskell uses parentheses and commas for tuples:

       myTuple = (1, "Hello world!") :: (Int, String)

-- BenRG (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm well aware that everything that my hypothetical tuples could do can already be done. This is similar to what has already happened in real programming languages. People were doing object orientation when languages were still completely procedural and did not support object orientation directly, for example. It's just that things can be done more simply with these kinds of new constructs. I think I would be able to accurately design a translator from "tuple-language" to its real parent language, but not actually implement it yet.

Now, if the number of items in a tuple were fixed, these "tuples" could already be implemented, for example:

public class Pair<T, U> {
  private T myT;
  private U myU;
  public Pair(T t, U u) {
    myT = t;
    myU = u;
  }
  public T getFirst() {
    return myT;
  }
  public U getSecond() {
    return myU;
  }
}

but I don't think there's yet an existing way to have tuples of an arbitrary number of items. Another idea in these hypothetical "tuples" is that the types themselves never need to be named, they can just be made up from their component types. My proposed syntax is very elegant, as it's mostly just the component types, but if C++0x's tuple type construct supports an arbitrary number of items, then it's just a difference of having to type the word tuple, which is not a big deal, really. Then the only difference the absence of a way to assign the tuple's items to several individual lvalues with a single assignment statement, but this can, of course, be achieved with several assignment statements, one for each item.

I'm also well aware that functional languages have had these tuple types for decades, but my idea all along was to have them for imperative languages. Functional languages don't even use assignment statements. JIP | Talk 19:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Python has tuples very much like these. It is, however, strongly but dynamically typed, so some things do not apply. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Was just going to say the same thing. Tuples in Python work great and are highly useful. You should check the language out. Belisarius (talk) 04:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the C++0x <tuple> library supports any number of items, and is implemented using variadic templates. Using only C++03 features, you can make a tuple template that supports up to a given number of arguments (Boost.tuple supports up to 10 elements), and the syntax is very similar to the C++0x version. As for the ability to assign tuple elements to individual objects, this can be achieved using "tiers":

int i;
double d;
string s;

tuple<int, double> duo { 1, 2.0 };
//assign the duo to i and d
tie(i, d) = duo;

// generate a triplet on the fly, and assign to i, d, and s
tie(i, d, s) = make_tuple(1, 2.0, "3");

// assign only a subset of the tuple's elements
auto quadruplet = make_tuple(1, 2.0, "3", '4'); // type is tuple<int, double, const char*, char>
tie(i, d, s, ignore) = quadruplet; // assign all but the char

the tie template is available in boost.tuple as well, with the same semantics. decltype (talk) 12:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Outlook email backup

At work I use Outlook and the archiving function is disabled where you can save bunches of emails into .pst files. THere is no chance of enabling the .pst functionality or using different software or installing any kind of additional software.

However, saving individual emails to the hard drive is allowed. I was wondering if there's a way I can create a macro to simply save every email to a folder on my hard drive? I don't have any experience in this but I have heard of using macro's for routine, systematic manual tasks like this. Any chance somebody could get me started?

Thank you -Joe 173.30.18.29 (talk) 19:36, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When I left my last job, I managed to copy all my mail from Outlook. It was a while ago now, so I'm unsure of the exact details, but I either copied the standard .pst files from my company PC onto a CD (they were always on my PC - I never let the server keep the mails), or I exported the mail to a format suitable for my home email client. I did this a few days before I left, so I could try out several methods to see which one worked. The only problem I had was to get my email contacts backed up. No matter which method I used, I could only get a text file with them in - I ended up re-entering them all. Astronaut (talk) 19:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

What version of Outlook? What happens if you create a new folder, double-click it to open it, leave it there on the desktop, open Outlook, click one e-mail in your Inbox, hit ctrl-A (for "Select All"), then drag all those e-mails into the open folder on the desktop? What happens if you locate the .pst file and make a copy of that to another computer, and have that computer's copy of Outlook open the .pst file? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Quite simply, you can right-click on Inbox and select Properties. There you can set up an auto-archive where every inbox item goes to a selected folder in your PST. Alternatively you can set up filters to do a similar thing, but I can't remember how to do that - you can check Outlook's help. Sandman30s (talk) 11:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

how to p[lay mission 7

I have a game Immune attack on my computer.I have already completed 6 levels (missions) of it. But in mission 7 which is "Eat staphylococcus ", I can elliminate staphylococcus But in the next step I can not differentiate between healthy and infected cells. Can anyone Guide me?--True path finder (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Immune Attack has some links... surprisingly, this might potentially fall under our do your own homework clause... Nimur (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we're not that sort of reference desk. GameFAQS is thataway -> HalfShadow (talk) 22:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

uh huh, so exactly what kind of reference desk is this? One which filters topics and only decides to answer things which we think fit into the "reference desk coverage area"? Last time I checked, we answer any question which doesn't fall under medial, legal or other illegal advice. And yes, I get that OP will probably get a far better answer at GameFAQs or other game specific sites, but telling the OP that the ref desk outright doesn't answer those types of questions because it isn't "that sort of reference desk" is pure bs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 00:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)