Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 3#Latin characters in Unicode

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= January 3 =

Pop up blocker for specific site?

I have an Imac and I use the latest version of Firefox with pop-up blocker on but it only works sometimes. Some pop-ups continue to... pop up and especially ones from one site. Is there a way to target popups if you know a part of the URL? Alternatively, is there a Firefox add-on or other program that will be more effective? In the scheme of things, it's a minor annoyance, but enough of one that I'm asking.--108.46.103.88 (talk) 01:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:I'd say AdBlock Plus is what you're looking for. -- 88.67.154.4 (talk) 09:41, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:[http://www.admuncher.com/ AdMuncher] (not free) is pretty good, too. I use both at the same time. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:56, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

MySQL5 password brute force

I have Extreme GPU Bruteforcer and with 3000 PasswordsInThread and 512 streamprocessors and both min and max length 8 chars I get about 300.00M p/s. How can I improve this without spending money?

Is there better software out there (sorry, I do not own a Macintosh, but I am willing to install a Linux distro)?

This is just for fun, it is my own site and I know the password. Von Restorff (talk) 10:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Firefox Stopping & Starting

My firefox (v9) has developed an annoying habit (since around v4). It works fine for about 8 seconds, then seems to freeze for 3 seconds. The content of the page doesn't seem to matter, as while I type this, it is freezing on and off (resulting in half a sentence suddenly appearing). I can be scrolling up or down the reference desks, and it will freeze, then suddenly jump to wherever it was I would have been. It's very annoying and for this reason I prefer to use Opera, however, firefox does have some features I like to use once in a while. I believe it might have something to do with constantly checking for updates to addons. Is it possible to get firefox to just check for these addons once a day? I mean, if there was no update 5 seconds ago, I doubt there'd be one now. It only happens with Firefox and nothing else. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:Start [http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Safe%20Mode Firefox in safe mode]. If the problem disappears it is likely that it is caused by an add-on/plugin. Von Restorff (talk) 18:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:: ... and if it is a plugin, try disabling them one at a time until you find the culprit. You can disable Firefox updates completely by unchecking the boxes in Tools > Options --> Advanced --> Updates. Dbfirs 20:42, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:::Do not disable FF updates, browsers need to be up to date. Von Restorff (talk) 04:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

::::I have my FF updates disabled (for reasons of poor internet access), but I do update manually. Perhaps I should have written "you can disable Firefox addon updates by unchecking the addon box". Dbfirs 08:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::My guess is that updates are not the problem. Von Restorff (talk) 09:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

::::::Yes, you're probably right. Firefox doesn't check for updates that often, even if it has dozens of addons. What else in Firefox could be causing the problem? I suppose it could be one particular addon, possibly downloaded from an unapproved site. Perhaps it would be worthwhile trying Help --> Restart with add-ons disabled. (Sorry, I've just noticed that you suggested exactly that above) Dbfirs 08:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Mercury (element)

Your article on mercury states the following:

A heavy, silvery d-block element, mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure; the only other element that is liquid under these conditions is bromine, and metals such as caesium, francium, gallium, and rubidium melt just above room temperature. With a freezing point of −38.83 °C and boiling point of 356.73 °C, mercury has one of the narrowest ranges of its liquid state of any metal.[1][2][3]

My question is, If mercury is a liquid at room temperature; How can the freezing point be -38.83 degees Celcius? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.111.46.103 (talk) 17:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:Elements are in the liquid state when their temperature is between the freezing and boiling point. Maybe you're unfamiliar with the celsius scale? Room temperature is usually around 25°C, which is between the freezing- and boiling- points of pure mercury. Mercury will freeze into a solid metal if you make the temperature very much colder - around −38 °C, which is much colder than your household refrigerator or freezer (but not as cold as, say, some parts of Antarctica in winter; or some biology-lab freezer equipment; and certainly not as cold as a vacuum freezer apparatus in a low temperature physics lab). Nimur (talk) 17:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:(EC) In the same way that water is a liquid at room temperature, and its freezing point is 0°C. Its freezing point and its state at room temperature are unrelated. In any case, this is a question for the science desk, not the computer desk. Feel free to re-post it over there to get some more detailed answers. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

MySQL fuzzy select field name

I have 30 fields named diag1, diag2, diag3, diag4... I want to get a list of rows in which any of those fields have the value '410'. I know this will not work: select * from er where 'diag%'='410'. Is there a way to fuzzy-select all the fields at once? -- kainaw 18:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:I don't think there's a way to use wildcards in your field names (with the exception of the * column wildcard). I think you will have to just make a very large query of it ("where diag1='410' OR diag2='410' OR ..."), which is pretty easy to generate, no? --Mr.98 (talk) 19:39, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

::I can't think of a way to do it with a single query. Possibly in a program/script of some type, using a "SHOW COLUMNS FROM <table name>" statement to start with. --LarryMacUser talk:LarryMac 20:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:::I have considered using a show columns subquery, but I don't think it is possible to use the results of that subquery as a field name, only as a value. -- kainaw 20:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

::::This may not be an option for you, but it would be nice to adjust the schema to better fit the data. If you have a large number of things that you want to treat uniformly, it's probably best to represent them as rows rather than columns: create a new 'Diag' table that contains two columns, a key into the original table, and a value representing whatever the diag columns contained, and fill it with 30 (or however many) rows per row in the original table. Then, the number of diags wouldn't be built into the schema, and you can simply query that table to find something with the value '410' and join on whatever other information you need. Paul (Stansifer) 21:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::Trust me... If I were the one who created this database (which is read only), I wouldn't have had a table structure like this. I also wouldn't have used "ADYEAR" and "ADMONTH" to be the year and month values, but "ADDAY" to be the day of the week (completing omitting the day of the month). -- kainaw 21:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:Well, for MySQL 5.0 and higher, this should get you the list of the column names:

select *

from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS

where TABLE_NAME = 'Foo'

and COLUMNS like 'diag%'

:However, I'm not sure how, or if, you can then use this list of column names to do what you want. StuRat (talk) 17:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Latin characters in Unicode

What fonts support Latin Extended-C and Latin Extended-D and is there anywhere I can download them? --Theurgist (talk) 22:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:[http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/latin_extended_c/fontsupport.htm C] & [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/latin_extended_d/fontsupport.htm D]. [http://www.quivira-font.com Quivira] is a font that is free to use for any purpose, including commercial usage, and it has a nice name. Try [http://evertype.com/emono/ evermono] if you like this. Code2000 is the most complete Unicode font available. Von Restorff (talk) 01:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

::Thanks! I can now see all Latin characters in Unicode. --Theurgist (talk) 09:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

:::YVW. Offtopic: I like your userpage; maybe I am going to steal it. Von Restorff (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

User Limit on Software Installation

Hello. How do software developers keep track of the number of PCs on which a program with a specific serial key is installed, especially if your PC crashes and you have to re-install the program? If a license on your PC is 1-user and your PC crashes, how does the software company know that you are not installing the program on a second PC? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

:Digital rights management outlines several of the techniques. Many of these technical solutions have holes; many of them inconvenience users; but some of them work very well. You might read floating license and software metering as well. Nimur (talk) 23:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)