Computing desk
< December 7	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 9 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 8[edit]

Cellphone theft[edit]

Thieves swipe over 1 million smartphones in the US each year. What's the point of stealing a cellphone? Sure, I can understand if you steal a handbag and discover that the owner's cellphone was inside, but presumably that's not happening more than 1,000,000 times. I can't understand why you'd steal a device that only really works by connecting to a communications network in a way that makes it geolocatable, even if there weren't such things as the remote kill switches that the article mentions. Nyttend (talk) 17:17, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond the cell networks, the phone itself is still hardware, and there are various ways to get rid of the kill switches and failsafes. Then you just have the hardware, and you can sell it raw for money or install a prepaid sim card and use it. I'm pretty sure there's a large black market, also, for smuggling phones to other countries for sale. KonveyorBelt 18:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A popular crime is to steal a phone and then, with only a couple of hours turnaround, deliver it to another criminal who runs a "phone cafe" (often in places like a back alley or warehouse). There he effectively rents it by the minute to people who call relatives in other countries (on the legitimate owner's contract) for the couple of hours it may take either for the owner to realise his phone is gone and have the phone blocked, or for the phone company's fraud detection algorithm to notice an especially unusual pattern of calls. When the owner gets his bill, he discovers he's been charged for (and often is liable for) £500 of phone calls to a variety of random countries. Once the phone is disabled, the criminals just dispose of it; they've charged the callers 25% of what they'd otherwise pay, and their only expense is paying the original person who stole the phone and passed it to them. This scheme is especially effective if the phone is stolen from someone who is on a night out, who might not notice their phone is gone until the following morning. I've heard of the criminals immediately extracting the SIM (which is what's bound to the contract) and using it in an unlocked phone - this defeats any attempt at tracking or blocking the phone with a service like Prey. Mobile phone companies (at least here in the UK) generally say they "can't" impose credit limits to allow you to limit your exposure to this crime. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 20:26, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Each mobil phone network component has a International mobile subscriber identity called IMSI. If not manipulated, the IMSI is like an network cards MAC address. It is labeled on the phone and can be displayed on many phones. Similar to the Darwin Awards, in "The Reemtsma Hijacking", the hijacker used a mobile phone to order the ransom money and located himself over the phone network. --Hans Haase (talk) 08:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 95[edit]

Are there people still actively using Windows 95 because they prefer it? --Allin Bagsnott (talk) 18:02, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I'm sure some grandma somewhere still uses Win95 and AOL on a dino of a computer because they don't know better, and for the power user, Win95 is still useful in a VM for running games that only worked on 9x systems and broke when XP and later cam around (see Abandonware).

As well, some companies use Embedded systems for things like cash registers or price checking systems; those can run a modified version of Windows known as Windows CE, some of the early ones are based on 9x, and it costs a lot of money to upgrade these things, so companies may have gotten the earliest ones and still use them today. I saw a price checking tool revert to the 95 desktop once, and another one I saw bluescreened. KonveyorBelt 18:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Key applications in industrial environment which have not being replaced is still using its old configuration. If responsible maintained, an internet access is blocked or restricted. --Hans Haase (talk) 08:26, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Prolog: help for beginner[edit]

I tried looping with something like: forall(between(1, 10),(write('Hello world!'), nl). but it seems more complicated that it. (in swi prolog console). How can I print 10 x "hello world"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noopolo (talk • contribs) 19:18, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's almost it. The between predicate needs a third argument (here the variable for the generated number), even though you are not using its value.

forall(between(1, 10, _), (write('Hello world!'), nl)).

should do the trick. --88.152.132.111 (talk) 21:12, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Missing dll file[edit]

I recently bought a new laptop, with Windows 8.1. I have a bunch of old Windows MS Word 6.0 documents. I tried to copy the program files from my old PC to my new laptop, since I do not have the original installation CD. The program gives me the message that a missing "mso95.dll" file is not there. I suspect that IF I had that dll, probable the MS Word 6.0 program would work and I could then use all these old Word documents that were made with this program. How do I safely download this dll and where would I get it? Thanks.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 21:23, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First, do not download any dlls online, they are by and large scams. Go on your old computer, go in the Windows File Explorer, and search the entire computer for mso95.dll by going to C: and then doing a search. Copy it and bring it to the new one. It is likely that it will require other dlls too, so you can find and copy over those too. KonveyorBelt 22:41, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for idea on how to solve the problem. Will let you know tomorrow how it goes. Thanks for advice!--Doug Coldwell (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the DLL is likely to be in C:\Windows\system32 or similar, not in the program installation directory. GoldenRing (talk) 23:24, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great. I'll look there. Will let you know how it goes tomorrow. I think it will get solved by following ya'alls ideas.--Doug Coldwell (talk)

I'm not actually all that hopeful. Did Word 6 know about the system registry? If so, you're almost certainly out of luck. But my memory is a bit grey in this area. GoldenRing (talk) 03:41, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah!!!!!!! I copied the "mso95.dll" file from the old PC hard drive C:\Windows\system32 and pasted it onto my new laptop and now Word 6.0 works just fine. That did the trick. Thanks a bunch = you made a happy Wikipedian.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:25, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]