Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 13

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December 13

Wordpress site to mirror other sites' blogs?

Hi! I know it'd be best to just dive into the wordpress forums, but I figured I would start here as I'm not even sure what the vocab for what I'm trying to do is. I have a wordpress site for a gallery I work at. What I'd like to do is "feature" other blogs and sites (not necessarily other wordpresses) by "mirroring" (?) blog posts about local arts/culture that pertains to what we do (obviously, they want to be featured on our site). We already have a photo widget that pulls in a certain hashtag for instagram and twitter, but I don't know if anything like that would work for this. I'm not even sure where to begin and any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 67.242.181.28 (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

@67.242.181.28: I'll let someone who's practiced web design in the past 5 years respond with the best way to approach this, but I noticed a red flag, though I may be misunderstanding your intentions. Reproducing someone's work without their permission is in most cases not allowed under US copyright law (I see you're writing from a US-based IP). Even if you credit the author and link to their site. We don't like getting into areas that are better handled by lawyers here, but I'll say the more common practice is to summarize in your own words, use limited quotes where appropriate, and credit where you got it. Huffington Post and Gawker are empires built on doing just that. The Digital Media Law Project, formerly the Citizen Media Law Project (i.e. directed at regular people like bloggers, podcasters, and vloggers rather than corporations) out of Harvard Law School is a great resource for an overview on this sort of thing. --— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:22, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: and @67.242.181.28: First, yes we aren't lawyers so this is not legal advise that is worth anything, just opinions but if I'm understanding what 67.242.181.28 is talking about doing I think it sounds fine. Keep in mind there is a very significant difference between what can be done on Wikipedia and a blog in general. If we are talking about a Wikipedia article then absolutely pasting material from other sites (except for short attributed quotes) is almost NEVER acceptable. But for another blog I think 67.242.181.28 is correct. In virtually all situations people WANT you to repost their stuff on your blog as long as you: 1) make sure to attribute it properly 2) Summarize their post (i.e., have an excerpts but not the whole blog post) and most importantly 3) have a link to their site. That last thing is critical I think, that is why people are usually fine with pasting content from their blog because it's a way to drive more eyeballs to their stuff. Also, there should be a legal notice on each blog. That will tell you a lot. Most will say essentially "you can repost this IF you do proper attribution". Also, as a courtesy (and because you might get them to put a link to your blog) I would always contact the site owner and let them know I want to repost their stuff before I did it. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:25, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

@67.242.181.28: One last thing: we got into the question of whether you can actually repost but I don't think we answered your question. The simplest way to repost is to of course do it manually: copy the text and add proper attribution and a link back to the source. But I know there are widgets or gadgets that can also automate this. For example if site Foo.com has a post called "Daily Foo Update" and you want the Daily Foo Update also reposted on your site automatically I'm virtually positive there are things to do that automatically. What widgets to use I can't say because I've never done it and because it's specific to which blog tool you are using. I would say search the widgets for things like "Live feed"; although especially if you are doing some kind of recurring repost like that I would definitely get the permission of the host site first. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:49, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11: I think it's odd to say that the other bloggers would want you to reproduce the whole post. I'm sure many would much prefer you to put up a quick summary with a suggestion to visit the original blog, and a link, so that they get the advertising revenue from the person reading the full post, rather than you. Regardless of the wishes of the majority, copying the other post wholesale onto your blog (even with attribution and a link to the original) is copyright infringement unless it's suitably licensed. MChesterMC (talk) 10:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The above answers are good points about whether this is an acceptable thing to do. For the technical side of how to actually do this, you could start at the article on Web syndication. Wordpress implements many syndication features including RSS feeds (which let you pull the latest content automatically) and Pingbacks (which let the person whose article you used know that you're using it). As a general rule, I'd say that if a site offers an RSS feed, it's okay to make use of it! Some sites will reproduce all their articles in their feed, while others will give only headlines or summaries. —Noiratsi (talk) 10:24, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

@MChesterMC: We are in violent agreement. I apologize, I thought that is what I said above: to NOT repost the whole article but just an excerpt and a link to the source; but in any case I definitely agree that makes more sense and that is what all the sites that repost that I commonly frequent do: Huffington Post, Richard Dawkins site, CrooksAndLiars.com etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:36, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

"SubOS" - is this actually a thing?

Hi Ref Desk/Computing folks!
This is about a very short new article that came very close to being deleted: SubOS.

First off, a confession. I think it is hilarious to see "sysop" next to my name. To my understanding, things start off with a whole lot of tiny, tiny magnets that are either "I" or "O". At the other end, teh internets comes out a plug in the wall. What happens in between is pretty much a mystery to me; as they say, it may as well happen by magic. So, be nice if I say something really stoopid, OK!

From what I can see from surfing the interwebs (does anyone say "surfing" any more? Come to think of it, does anyone use the "interwebs" joke any more?) a "SubOS" is either

• an OS that runs parallel to another OS
• an OS that runs inside another OS
• software in one OS that emulates another OS.

Or maybe two or all three. Can these things even happen? I wouldn't have a clue. But I know I'd appreciate your help.
Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 07:37, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

These are the only things I turned up, [1] and [2], neither being the same thing. Does the person who made the page have any sources? I'm not seeing a lot of immediately related information out there. I'm not sure that your first option is possible - if you mean at the same time. Any meaning of the second, aside from being equivalent to the third, also doesn't seem possible given what an operating system is - though, that is not to say that the term can't be broadened, by someone, and I only have a cursory knowledge of the subject.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:30, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the article should not have been speedied--twice! But I am not sure that SubOS is a notable topic. The Ioannidis paper Phoenixia1177 mentioned is the only reliable reference I was able to find, and it is primary. In the paper, a subOS is an operating system that runs on top of another operating system, for the purposes of creating a security sandbox that potentially malicious/dangerous programs can be safely run in. The concept is not a new one; virtual machines have been used for the same purpose for a long time. --Mark viking (talk) 11:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

In the Ioannidis paper a SubOS is a much lesser thing than a virtual machine. It seems to run in the same operating system it just sets the sub-userid to the owner of the file so it does not have the same permissions as the person running the file.

I've updated SubOS with the links mentioned above. I've not sure either use really meets notability requirements.--Salix alba (talk): 12:54, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you:-) The results from the paper do not appear notable, unless there is more research out there (I haven't found anything expanding upon it, but haven't looked far either). In the second case, I'd imagine that there must exist more info out there, especially in the form of community discussion, tutorials, and examples - however, I'm not sure any of that would be an RS, nor, even then, how far any of it went; at any rate, it seems that it could be notable, or just enough so, and that there might be some sources out there (I am not the person to work that out, however).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 08:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

As OP, my sincere thanks to *everyone* who posted here and worked on the article. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 12:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Firefox default search preference

The Firefox search box is defaulting to Yahoo, and has to be manually changed back to Google every time. Anyone know where this default is set/saved? —Steve Summit (talk) 15:42, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

@Scs: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-bar-add-change-manage-search-engines-firefox Avono (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Vectorized database

What means that a DB is vectorized? (no page for this available).--Noopolo (talk) 17:10, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea, but after a quick search found this:

• Vectorwise#Technology: The Vectorwise architecture makes use of "Vectorized Query Execution"— involving the principles of vector processing and single instruction, multiple data (SIMD)— to perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously

HTH. --CiaPan (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Noopolo I think what "vectorizing" refers to is the ability to perform some operation on a bunch of sections of memory all at once, it's one technique for designing super computers: to make them so that what on a conventional machine would require the CPU to iterate through memory can be performed on a super computer all by the same instruction: e.g., because the super computer has N processors it could say do an addition or subtraction not just to one value in memory but to a whole section (i.e., an array or vector) all at once. For a database I think that would mean that for example if I want to search a db field to see if any rows have the value "foo" that on a vector architecture I can search a whole set of tables (a vector) all at the same time. I should admit I'm just going off what was in that article and what I remember from a computer architecture class I took back when Reagan was president so it's been a while but I'm pretty sure that's correct. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

"Vectorized" means that vectorized query execution is possible. In a normal query execution, one row is processed at a time. In vectorized query execution, blocks of 1024 rows are processed at a time (while 1024 is the norm, it is possible to use different block sizes). The rows all come from the same source and, therefore, have the same column definitions. So, instead of viewing the data as an array of rows, they are seen as an array of column vectors. Performing operations on the column vectors is faster than processing one row at a time for most comparison operations. 209.149.115.79 (talk) 13:25, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Reinstalling Windows 7 to remove bloatware

I am soon to receive a new laptop with Windows 7 installed (if it matters, a Lenovo E440). I have read some things online about reinstalling Windows on a new computer to remove bloatware, and it sounds like something worth doing, but I don't understand all of it. Some comments appear to recommend removing extra partitions such as the manufacturer's recovery partition, and some don't. If anyone has experience doing this, I'd appreciate any guidance or tips. I also bought a separate copy of Windows 7, since some of the comments said that was necessary, and I have that disc now. One question is whether the manufacturer's installation includes any drivers than aren't included with the separate Windows install. I assume I can get drivers from the Lenovo website, but I don't know how to determine which are needed. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 23:19, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

You didn't need to buy a new copy of Windows7, aslong as you have a valid key for your current install. The DVD image is available a download to burn yourself. The main problems I had with it is that the brightness and WiFi control Fn-Buttons didn't work until I installed a driver. And the WiFi didn't work until the updates were downloaded, which I had to do by connecting by wired ethernet to my router. It is upto yourself if you want to remove the re-install partitions, on my machine it takes about about 10Gbytes of storage. CS Miller (talk) 20:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the tip about not buying a new copy, but it's already bought. Apparently the online "help" wasn't as expert as it appeared to be.

Re drivers, I take it it's play-it-by-ear, don't worry about it unless I have a problem.

If I understand correctly, the extra partition(s) are needed only if I wanted to return to the bloatwared system, which presumably would never happen. So, sure, it's worth a little effort to get that 10GB back. And I gather it will be apparent enough how to do that, once I get into it. Thank you. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 21:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

What I would do is boot up the "bloatware" system (without it being connected to the internet, and without activating Windows), go to Device Manager and make a note of the drivers required for the video card and network devices, download those from the manufacturer's website on another computer and store them to a USB stick or similar device, then do a complete reformat with your new Windows 7 disk. You only need the video and network drivers, as you'll be able to download any more that you need when you have network connectivity, although getting a more complete set won't do any harm. Install your anti-virus software (you do have some anti-virus software? If not, get some now!) before installing the network drivers. I personally wouldn't keep the recovery partition, although you might want to create one of your own. Tevildo (talk) 23:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I got all of that except for the part about going to Device Manager without activating Windows (since DM requires Windows to run). ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 23:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

See Microsoft Product Activation. You can boot Windows to get to Device Manager, but you don't need to activate it - the process where your computer contacts Microsoft to validate your licence key. This probably won't be necessary on your as-delivered computer (but it will be necessary after you reformat it) - however, if the as-delivered system asks you to activate Windows, say "No". (I think you have 30 days or thereabouts after installation before it stops working, if it's not activated). Tevildo (talk) 00:21, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

If you have a recovery CD/DVD an all data on the hard drive may be deleted, you can use a linux live CD, and an fill the whole disk with zeros by using the DD command. This clears the partition table, boot sectors and all data. If the is essential data on the hard disk, not not use this. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 19:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

@Csmiller, Tevildo, and Hans Haase: Thanks for the assistance. The reinstall was confusing and stressful but I got through it. The only format option I saw ran for only about 5 seconds, far less than I expected from Tevlido's "complete reformat". Capacity of the C: drive went from 447 to 464, and there was a 1.5GB partition that wouldn't delete for some reason. That leaves about 34GB unaccounted for on a HDD that was advertised as 500GB. Free space went from 414 to 445, so I got rid of roughly 14GB of bloatware. I still have a major problem with recurring inexplicable hangs of about 30 seconds. I click something and nothing happens, not even the faint sound of HDD activity. I wait about 30 seconds and it finally responds to the click. I wouldn't know how to begin diagnosing that problem, but there it is. That, plus a power cord that's too short for my needs, are preventing me from switching to using the new laptop. Just wanted to say thanks for the most competent and most hassle-free tech advice available. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 03:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)