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Referring to this question, a man came to my house this morning and replaced the phone line. He said it was old and just barely working. They've been talking about that for quite some time. When I was told I could get a faster speed at no charge, the men who came didn't do anything because there was no way to do it without drilling a hole in the wall. I said it was fine if they didn't. I thought they were going to do it behind some heavy furniture where the outside equipment was. The last time anyone came to my house nothing was done inside and there was no talk about replacing the phone line. But the man this morning wanted the line to go in the house near my computer, and there was nothing heavy to move.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vchimpanzee: I'm glad you have tracked down the source of your problem, apparently a dodgy phone line. It's quite possible that the phone company is offering you a fiber installation of some kind for no extra charge. Ask the phone company for the technical details about the new connection they are offering, and write them down. Then tell us. We may be offer you some advice. You will almost certainly already have a hole drilled in a wall (or possibly by a window frame) where your existing phone line (or cable) enters your property or apartment. This may have been installed before you moved in. In any case, the phone guy should be able to drill a hole somewhere close to the existing one, to install the new connection. He should seal the hole on the outside. He will also probably install a new router, and before they visit again, ask them to provide a network cable (RJ45) from the router to your computer if it's some distance away. If you have a laptop, it will almost certainly have a built-in wi-fi adapter which you should be able make a wireless connection with. Or you should be able to buy a wi-fi USB adapter for a desktop PC, if that's what you have. Otherwise I strongly suggest you should engage the services of a computer professional to visit your house, who should be able to work out exactly what you need within five minutes, and if need be to act as an intermediary between you and the phone company if you don't understand what they are saying. It's impossible to sort out your specific needs from 4,000 miles away. MinorProphet (talk) 19:33, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know of a use case for electronically notarizing a plain text file in the United States or country with similar laws? The reason is that rules for notaries public are being developed in my state that, depending on how they are written, might make notarizing such files more difficult because they might require the notary's signature to be present as a graphic image (JPEG or the like) which is not supported in somes kind of computer files. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because laws don't keep up with technology, a company I used to work for used a workaround. They printed out a large hash of the text files (mainly computer code) and notarized the hash. So, the file itself was not notarized, but the hash of it was. So, in court, if the file has the same hash you can state that the hash the file has is the hash that was notarized. There is a minor limitation. It is possible to alter a file while not altering the hash. It isn't common, but with hashes, there is always an issue of collision. That wasn't a big enough issue for the needs of the company. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@12.116.29.106: I was aware of that approach, which is why I said that not supporting graphic images in a file merely made it more difficult to notarize. While respecting everyone's privacy, can you describe why it was necessary to indirectly notarize computer code and the other files? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is one thing to create a sequence of bytes matching a given hash. It is another thing to do this such that the sequence of bytes is not gibberish, and not even just something meaningful, but something meaningful that conveys an intended message.  --Lambiam 13:41, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why did we have to notarize computer code? Darl McBride went a bit crazy and claimed that his company had a copyright on all computer code. In court, he was required to state exactly what code other companies had that violated the copyright. He said all of it. It went back and forth and at one point the company I worked for had to send his company source code. We had to notarize what we sent and it was important to do it in a way that our lawyers could tell the court if Darl's company altered the code to make it look more like theirs, which they did. Then, luckily, I retired before it got real silly. Basically, if you are mixing law and programming together, you have to find a legal way to protect the programming. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:29, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]