Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Wikipedia:Reference desk/headercfg

September 6

Turing

I wanna learn the basics of programing on turing. Can anyone recommend a good starting online tutorial or help. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.156.52.228 (talk) 00:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

See Turing machine. There is no tutorial for programming one because, in general, they do not really exist. Models are built from time to time just for fun. Under normal circumstances, they are theoretical devices used in fields such as discrete mathematics and automata theory. -- kainaw™ 02:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The questioner may have been talking about Turing (programming language) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 02:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yea, my question is about the "Turing (programming language)". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.93.133.237 (talk) 11:27, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

• The Turing article has pointers to a variety of tutorials. This one says it's for people with no prior programming experience. --Sean 13:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

iPod and itunes

should I play songs bought from itunes in my iPod or can I play any mp3 file in my computer in iPod? What is the case in other company players like Zune and creative and samsung mp3 player? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.141.253 (talk) 09:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You can add any mp3 on your computer to your iTunes library, which will add it to your iPod when you sync. You don't have to buy music from the iTunes store at all if you don't want to. Other players won't be able to play songs bought from the iTunes store (except maybe iTunes Plus files, if the player supports AAC), but they'll be able to play mp3s from your computer. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 11:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You can however generally convert files into a compatible format; not always easy if DRM is involved as Matt said. --jjron 08:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Neither Windows Live Messenger or live.com is working for me

I haven't been able to log into Windows Live Messenger all day and now I'm not able to even go to live.com. Can someone who's not me go there to see whether they have some sort of problems with their server or something (although that seems unlikely) so that I can be sure the problem is on my end. Thanks! --Oskar 13:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

My live messenger has been logging out sporadically this past week too, I assume they're having some problems. Capuchin 14:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm in Malaysia and I have no problem accessing either. Though the Internet Traffic Monitor says that traffic around the world is relatively slow at the moment. x42bn6 Talk Mess 14:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Assuming that you are from Sweden and having Telia as your ISP this IDG article] may interest you. You just have to wait until the ISPs fix this problem. Jeltz talk 14:46, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It is also likely that users of other Swedish ISPs and maybe even ISPs in other countries that peer with Telia may experience the same problems. For example Com Hem is affected too. Jeltz talk 14:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it! I can't access any microsoft website (I'm using Com Hem, which uses Telia's network) although I haven't had any problems with other sites (wikipedia obviously works). I guess I'll turn on TOR or something in the meantime. --Oskar 14:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, it works now! Cool. --Oskar 15:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Red Hat Linux update

I'm running red hat linux on my computer. I see an icon on my task bar in the form of a red exclamation mark. When I click it, the OS starts to update. Then I get an error saying my system is not entitled. How do I make my system entitled? Should I pay for my updates? Is there any other easy way for me to update my system? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.164.136.62 (talk) 19:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Beats me! --69.150.163.1 21:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC) User:Kushal_one

Why you would pay for anything in the first place I have no idea. Details? Splintercellguy 22:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Most likely your entitlement has expired. You will not be able to use the Redhat services to upgrade or install packages until you pay for an entitlement. If you are unwilling to pay for software updates, you could always switch to using CentOS, which will give you nearly the same packages, but you're not paying for service or support entitlements. -- JSBillings 13:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

How did type I error in hypothesis testing come be known as "false positive"?

The Wikipedia article on type I error, as well as numerous Google search results, refers to type I errors as "false positives". This appears to run counter the common-sense interpretation of the latter. How did "false positive" come to be equated with type I error? --64.236.170.228 19:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Evidently your notion of common sense clashes with mine. —Tamfang 20:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Because, well, you think you've got a positive result, but it's, um, false. I'm not sure how that goes against common sense. Are you sure you haven't misread what the article is trying to say? The definition given is not the easiest one to follow by far, but at least the example given would seem fairly reasonable:

For example, a test saying a woman is pregnant when she is actually not pregnant is an example of a false positive.

Or do you in fact find that somehow counterintuitive? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:49, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this clarification: the "positive" comes from the fact that the obtained answer is a "positive" one, e.g., "the test says she is pregnant". The "false" is because the answer is wrong. Perhaps looking at its opposite will help: the test saying a woman (who is indeed pregnant) is not pregnant is known as a false negative. Hope this helps. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 14:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Visual Basic menu Click() event

I am trying to write a calculator program in Visual Basic and I would like to have a main menu like those that are common in Windows programs (File, Edit, View, etc.) Anyway, I can't figure out how to handle the MenuItem_Click() event and I can't get a subroutine to handle a click on any item in any of the menus. I tried to figure it out using the help files that came with Visual Studio 2005 (my development software) and the files in the MSDN database, but I keep banging my head against a wall.

Does anyone either know how to program this event, or have some sample source code (maybe from projects of your own.) that demonstrate how to handle the Click() event on a MenuItem? A sample in any programming language would be appreciated.

Here is the code I tried; it's supposed to change the size of the items in the form:

 Public Sub getMenu()
    Dim MenuStrip1 As New MainMenu()        
    Dim mnuView As New MenuItem()       
    Dim mnuView_large As New MenuItem()
    Dim mnuView_small As New MenuItem()     
    mnuView_small.Text = "Small Buttons"
    mnuView_large.Text = "Large Buttons"
    mnuView.MenuItem.Add(mnuView_small)
    mnuView.MenuItems.Add(mnuView_large)
    MenuStrip1.MenuItems.Add(mnuView)
    AddHandler mnuView_small.Click, AddressOf Me.mnuView_small_Click        
    Me.Menu = MenuStrip
 End Sub
 Private Sub Form_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
    Call getMenu()
 End Sub
 Private Sub mnuView_large_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles mnuView_large.Click
    If Me.FontHeight = 8 Then
        mnuView_large.Checked = True
        mnuView_small.Checked = False
        Me.FontHeight = 12
    Else
        Exit Sub
    End If
 End Sub
 Private Sub mnuView_small_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles mnuView_small.Click
    If Me.FontHeight = 12 Then
        mnuView_small.Checked = True
        mnuView_large.Checked = False
        Me.FontHeight = 8
    Else
        Exit Sub
    End If
 End Sub

Again, any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. 69.205.180.123 20:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I will try and look at one of my old projects in VB.NET and see if I can figure it out. In the meantime I see a probable typo in your code:

    mnuView.MenuItem.Add(mnuView_small)
    mnuView.MenuItems.Add(mnuView_large)
    MenuStrip1.MenuItems.Add(mnuView)

Not that you have added to MenuItem the first time, and MenuItems the second and third. Not sure which is right, but they ought to be the same... --24.147.86.187 22:30, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Prohibiting image downloads

Is there a simple way to show images on a web page but keep people from saving them to their hard drives? Basically, I'm setting up a small photography web site for my wife and she'd like to keep people from taking her photos. They're not high res or anything but still doesn't like the idea of them just being right clicked and saved en masse. Dismas|^(talk) 20:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

In a word, no. If they can see it, they can save it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

(after EC) You can put up roadblocks, but there really is no effective way. I think IE lets you mark an image as downloadable, but Firefox just laughs at that setting. And a person can just do a screen print anyway. --LarryMac | Talk 20:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Some image hosting places do a referrer thing, so that only their site can put it up (that is, only transmit the correct image if the referrer in the HTTP header is some specified server). I'm not sure if that will work to stop the right-click, Save Image As function, but it might. You can fool those if you're tricky, and as LarryMac said, nothing can stop a screen-grab --Oskar 20:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I just tried that in firefox and it doesn't work. Sorry, you'll have to live with the pain. --Oskar 21:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You could add a watermark or something similar, as a deterrent. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 21:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Expanding upon my earlier answer, what you want is essentially Digital Rights Management. That article should do a reasonable job of explaining why it doesn't work very well, not even when you're a major movie studio with astronomical amounts of money to throw at it. There are ways in which you could make saving the images more difficult, possibly enough that most people would not bother. Unfortunately, creating such obstacles tends to be rather difficult in itself, and they also tend to easily interfere with legitimate viewing. Ultimately, the fact is that there's very little difference between viewing and downloading, so it's hard to stop one but not the other. And a determined person will always be able to work around any protection schemes, if only via the analog hole. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Put a watermark on the bottom that links back to the website and has her name on it. Then if anyone does re-use them they'll be advertising for you. Don't worry so much about a few people causally saving photos to their desktop. Professional photo services (CORBIS, Getty Images) can't stop that from happening and they have a lot more to lose from it. --24.147.86.187 22:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You can at least put a statement on the page where you show the pictures about the copyright, and also inlcude the copyright in the images them selves. This will discourage a few. On the way to make it difficult to save, you could break the image into 16 little tiles and then assemble it on the screen in the html. But there is way to stop it completely! Graeme Bartlett 23:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You could separate the image into 16x16 grids and have 256 little blocks so you can't save them as easily, but that still doesn't fare well with the screen captures and website retrievers. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 23:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Many of the response before have let the perfect be the enemy of the close enough for jazz. I was tasked with something similar for a photography site dinesfavorites.com. You can view source on the page to see what was done, but the short answer is that I overlaid each of the pictures with a transparent gif scaled large enough to cover the photo. It won't prevent someone from doing a view source to get the picture url, but it keeps the casual user from stealing the picture. As an aside, I was pointed at onemodelplace.com as a site which had some protections for images. When I tried to see what was there, though, I kept getting model pages with nude photos, much to my embarrassment (looking at the site recently, they've done a big redesign on how photos are presented... in any event, I ended up using a different method than the onemodelplace technique since what I did do didn't require a lot of heavyweight javascript). Donald Hosek 00:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Jim Dines's photographs are lovely, but the protection is pathetic. If they were larger images, I would now have some beautiful nature for my desktop in less than 30 seconds. Nor was a "view source" required. The bottom line remains: if you can see it you can save it. Use a little common sense; to display the image on your monitor, your computer must have the image data in its memory.

Instead, try using the images as teasers and free advertising. If someone likes the image and looks at it again and again with a name and a Web address, eventually they or someone looking over their shoulder may come to buy. Artists want their work to be seen, and they want to make a living; tempting images with ad text can help do both. The aesthetic challenge is how to overlay the ad text without violating the integrity of the image. --KSmrq^T 21:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Again, I never claimed to have strong protection (personally I think that the pictures are way over-priced and would never buy them... in fact, that particular site was put up because nobody was' buying them!). Just something good enough to keep a casual thief from taking pictures off the site. If it's viewable, it can be downloaded. This provides a relatively low cost way to keep the pictures from being taken from a casual thief. Donald Hosek 00:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I just visited your site, casually clicked the "disable CSS" button, and saved the image to my hard drive. No big deal. --Carnildo 21:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

As said above, you want DRM. This is wrong, and thankfully it's quite impossible. You want the user's computer to process the image but only in a way that you find acceptable.. unfortunately for you it's their computer and they have control over it. If you're not already discouraged by all these people who know what they're talking about telling you it's technically impossible, consider it on moral grounds. --froth^t 03:18, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that visitors can only view an image after they have downloaded it (thinking the two are separate is a common mistake). In msWindows, they would be placed under 'temporary internet files', which I have on occasion used as workaround to save 'downloadprotected' images. DirkvdM 09:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Getting windows licence from installed windows

I (well, family members who won't run anything but) have two Windows XP Home machines. One install has been corrupted and needs to be reinstalled. But I don't know which license is installed on which machine. The serial number shown in the "system" control panel applet of the surviving machine doesn't bear any resemblance to an XP license. Is there a way to dig a license out of a windows install (even a digit or two will be enough to let me figure out which to use). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Magical Jellybean Keyfinder? Splintercellguy 22:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

USB Flash drive giving me flack

I just bought a Sandisk U3 Cruzer Micro USB 2GB flash drive. It came with all sorts of U3 software nonsense on it that not only I didn't want, but I couldn't even use anyway (I run a Mac). After poking around I found a U3 removal utility (http://www.u3.com/uninstall/), and ran it from Parallels (a Windows XP virtualizer). Well, it ran for awhile, then locked up, then crashed. Great. Now I can't use the drive for anything — the Mac OS X Disk Utility thinks it has no partitions and is not writable. In Windows it thinks it has zero drive space free and zero drive spaced used.

I have nothing on the disk, I want to wipe it and reformat it as a single partition. What's the easiest way to do this at this point? I'm immensely irritated with this U3 nonsense (it mounts a fake CD drive when you put it in and then launches all sorts of software—not exactly what one expects from a blank USB drive, and it makes it incompatible with some of the hardware I need to use it with at that) and that it is taking so much time to just wipe this thing.

Disk Utility (OS X) doesn't seem to be able to do it; I tried using the old FORMAT from the DOS command prompt but it gives me "Error in IOCTL call" as a message in response. Blah. The drive mounts, and I can view its driver properties just fine, but I can't wipe it. Arrggg. --24.147.86.187 22:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

OK... nevermind! In removing it and putting in back in a few times it now let me erase and re-partition it in Disk Utility. Phew. WTF. I love it when hardware developers decide to "make things easy" for you by adding junk you never asked for. Just what I wanted, a USB drive pre-loaded with SKYPE and other things that I could have obtained if I had really wanted them! Hey, loading up an OS with extra, unwanted junk worked so well for Windows, why not apply the model everywhere!! --24.147.86.187 22:27, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Psst, blame the software developers. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 23:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Psst, the software developers probably have little to do with it. Blame the product managers, the marketers, the sales department, and all the higher-ups who instigated and approved it. David 10:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand that U3 may not be for everyone but I use a U3 flashdrive and find it incredibly useful. The apps on it are more stable than most portable programs I use and, despite the odd problem I encounter on the school network I use it on, the U3 apps are very handy. I understand why you might be frustrated by it but U3's not all bad

Mix Lord 12:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It's the sort of thing I think should be an option to install, not an option to remove. They shouldn't assume I want such a thing, or want it to set up an unwritable partition that pops up every time it is installed, and doesn't even work on my system anyway. Additionally I find it irritating when removable media comes pre-loaded with software — the point is supposed to be that it is blank media, not that it has 20 MB of stuff already on it that is set to auto-launch on insertion. It is a bad approach. If you want to make a useful, "killer app", do so, get the word out, put advertising all over the package; but don't install it automatically. --24.147.86.187 14:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I also had a sandisk cruzer, and the attitude was just palpable in the software that the developers wanted to give you every possible opportunity to uninstall U3 and the only reason it was preinstalled was because their bosses told them. IIRC one of the auto-execced U3 apps that popped up when I put it in for the first time was actually a U3-signed version of the U3 uninstall utility! --froth^t 03:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Which Java ORM?

What's the best of the open-source Java ORM libraries out there (I've seen this list already). How do they compare in terms of stability, adoption, power and ease of use? Or perhaps, most importantly, which would be most helpful on my resume? Donald Hosek 23:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Opening Word 2007 with 2003

Is there anyway I can open a Word 2007 document in the .XML format if I only have Word 2003? Could I open it with IE or Firefox and then just copy and paste the content into Word 2003? Thanks. Acceptable 23:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Try this — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 00:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have information about Macs and opening Office 2007 .docx files in Macbook with MS Office 2004? --16:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kushal one (talk • contribs)

There's an opener on the Microsoft website.

Atlant 22:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

September 7

LaTeX pictures

Hi,

I'm trying to write a document in LaTeX using TeXnic Centre, am I'm having trouble with figures. It seems to only let me have one image per page, and just bumps all the rest of the figures to the end of the pdf. Is there a command to let it squeeze more figures on each page? Thanks Aaadddaaammm 03:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Objects that can move like that are called "floats" in LaTeX; here is a discussion about changing the rules about their use. You can also not use the picture environment, which creates the float; if you just include the graphics directly, it'll be in-line with the text as if it were a letter. The downside to that is that it can no longer get an automatically-formatted caption and doesn't participate in the references-to-figures system (making Figure 2 an inline will make Figure 3 be known as Figure 2 unless you modify the counters yourself, and there will be no way to use \ref to get a reference to the original Figure 2). --Tardis 15:15, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Font sizes in Excel

I have a number of Excel spreadsheets, all with similar text in them. I have formatted the text in one particular cell of each spreadsheet to 24pt Arial. But when I print the spreadsheets, this text is bigger on some sheets than on others. Does anyone know why this should be? My guess is that it is something to do with scaling - under Page Setup, I have selected the Fit To option - but beyond that I have no clue. Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 07:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If you use "Fit To" then Excel adjusts the size of the printout accordingly, and font sizes change in proportion. So if the sheet is shrunk by 50% to fit the number of pages you specify, text that is 24pt in the original will be printed as 12pt. AndrewWTaylor 07:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

has apple launched a PDA silently in the name of ipod?

Is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.106.235 (talk) 09:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

You mean iPod Touch which look a lot like the iPhone? --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

yes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.127.32 (talk) 13:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Certainly it does a lot that a PDA can so I guess it depends on what you consider a PDA to be. I think...Touch screen, web-enabled, has applications, has a primative 'operating system' and bags of memory - very much like a PDA to me. It just needs to have calendar, document and perhaps a spreadsheet to make it official! I wouldn't be amazed if a defined PDA version is released in the futureny156uk 23:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

<scratch es head> do not understand what "primative" means. </scratch> --Do not click me! 19:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The Boyhood of Raleigh

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities Exxolon 13:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Color in Excel

Hi all:

I have an excel file with a grid that has different numbers in each cell. I would like to visualize the patterns better, and I was wondering if there is any way to program Excel to choose a background (or font) color for the cell based on the value of the number in that cell. For example, I would like the small numbers to be black, and larger numbers to be white (with shades of gray in between)... Thanks! --Waldsen 11:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

In excel2000 (not sure how other versions are similar), Select the cells that you want to apply the formatting to and go to Format --> Conditional Formatting.., that should open a dialog that you can set whatever constraints you want and get it to format the cells based on the conditions you set. You should be able to set a condition for each shade you want to get the effect you describe. Hope that works for you :) Capuchin 11:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Excel 2003 is the same. One limitation is that you can only apply 3 conditions, but you can add a fourth by pre-formatting the text. For example, if you want x<10 red, 10<=x<20 yellow, 20<=x<30 green, and 30<=x<40 blue, you can manually format all the text red, then make conditional formatting for the other 3 situations, which would override the red for x of 10 & up. jeffjon 20:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

You could write a macro that sets the colour rather easily. I forget the syntax exactly but it would be something along the lines of assessing the box's value and then setting the cell shading to be whatever you desire. ny156uk 22:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I paste below an excerpt from my sudoku solver written in excel basic (If anyone wants it, I could provide the entire thing):

   For y = 2 To maxgrid
       For x = 2 To maxgrid
           v = Worksheets("Answer").Cells(y, x).Interior.ColorIndex
           Worksheets("Answer").Cells(yy + y, x).Interior.ColorIndex = v
       Next x
   Next y

-- SGBailey 08:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

uninstalling of spy-shredder without license/

≥ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.52.77.50 (talk) 12:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• This seems to be a comprehensive guide to it - [1] - but as it says - use at your own risk Exxolon 12:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Online Form Fill Pre-Popping

I could not find the definition for the act of allowing information to be displayed on an online form fill when passed as part of the URL query string. Is there a standard definition or what term would this fall under? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.216.185.98 (talk) 14:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What you refer to is nothing more than prefilling a form. You may be thinking about registering variables though. This is a weakness in scripting languages that allow it. For example, if you "register globals" in PHP, a user has the ability to set variables that should not be set by sending them in the query string. -- kainaw™ 15:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

.xnk (Outlook)

Microsoft Outlook allows me to create a shortcut to an Outlook entity (e.g., a folder in Public Folders); this has a .xnk extension. With Windos XP and Office 2003, I could double-click to open it. With Vista and Office 2007, the extension is no longer recognized. I'm trying to find a way to open the shortcut. A Google search was unhelpful. I wanted to associate Outlook with the extension, but it didn't show up on the list of available programs. Matchups 18:01, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I searched around google and picked up a hit that the removing of the .xnk is a feature, not a bug. According to the article, these are dangerous as they can make your more vulnerable to hackers. You can enable it though; just review the steps on this page. [2] Please keep me posted. Monkeynoze 19:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good information. However, the steps don't quite work in Windows Vista. You need to right-click on the .xnk file, select Open With, and then enter the text suggested on the web page. You can also try saving the text below as a .reg file and importing it into the registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xnk] @="xnk_auto_file"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xnk_auto_file] @="Outlook link"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xnk_auto_file\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xnk_auto_file\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xnk_auto_file\shell\open\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" /x \"%1\""

Matchups 18:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Weird Image

When a wiki has an external link like this there is a little image of a box with an arrow coming out of it. Also when you link to an mp3 file like this there is a little speaker next to it. Does anyone know what those images are called and where they are located?

Wikiman232 18:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Called? Background images. Really. They're placed there by the [CSS] and it's done with selectors; for example

#bodyContent a[href ^="https://"],

.link-https {

background: url(lock_icon.gif) center right no-repeat;

padding-right: 16px;

}

will apply that background to every HTTPS link, with enough padding on the right so no text overruns it. --Blowdart 19:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• The code to make that magic happen is at http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?97 , and the images themselves are at http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/external.png and http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/audio.png . --Sean 19:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Functionally I'd call them icons. —Tamfang 16:52, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

September 8

Slow down animations

I use MSIE7 in WinXP. Is there a way to slow down animations such as to, say, 1/10th the speed? -- SGBailey 08:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but it will take GIF editing software. Basically what you want to do is to increase the amount of time per frame by 10X. I would use Adobe ImageReady for that but I'm sure there is also a free way to do it. --24.147.86.187 12:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh — do you mean, "is it possible for me to have GIF animations play slower in my browser?" If so, the answer is probably no, unless there is some sort of outrageously clever Firefox addition that takes care of it. --24.147.86.187 13:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The latter is what I meant. Ah well. Thanks. -- SGBailey 21:44, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

One possible way is to have a seriously slow PC that does not have enough CPU power to keep up with the speed! Graeme Bartlett 00:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

BBC News 24 live online

I live in South Korea and I want to watch BBC News 24 live online. However, every time I try, the stream is not loaded.

I tried http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/n24/bb/wm/video/news24_bb.asx . However, my computer can't access to that asx.

Four addresses inside that asx also failed:

• mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/news/news24_bb_s1
• mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/news/news24_bb2_s1
• mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/news/news24_bb_s2
• mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/news/news24_bb2_s2

Now, what can I do?--JSH-alive ^(talk)_(cntrbtns)^{(mail me)} 10:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

What browser and OS are you using? --24.147.86.187 13:28, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Windows XP and both Firefox and Explorer.--JSH-alive ^(talk)_(cntrbtns)^{(mail me)} 13:51, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I just tried that address (IE6,XP,WMP 11.0), got the WMP, but after awhile it gave up trying to find the content. I live in USA. I doubt that your location matters. David 11:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Works fine here - I'm in the UK. That link may be to the UK-only stream (see here). Try going to news.bbc.co.uk and clicking the 'Watch' icon in the top left. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 18:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It does not works.--JSH-alive ^(talk)_(cntrbtns)^{(mail me)} 05:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

usage of lattice constants in automotives and information about quantum computation

Hi, i want to know about the usage of lattice constants in automotives and quantum computers so please help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sankar sudhan (talk • contribs) 11:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

game consoles

why do game consoles have processors in it when computers themselves have processors anyway? do I get any free games when consoles are bought? How much does a game cost? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.119.141 (talk) 14:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The Wii is the only current console i know of that comes with a game, and games for the wii usualy cost around $40. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 16:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

1) Game consoles are, essentially, specialized computers. 2) Depends on the console. Sometimes special bundles are offered at a discounted price than if you bought the console and game seperately. 3) Varies from free to very large amounts for "Special Edition" versions. -- 68.156.149.62 16:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Processors just run program instructions. Games are just types of programs. Consoles are just computers made to do one specific task (play gmes). --24.147.86.187 17:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking why game companies don't just write games for general-purpose computers? One reason is homogeneity. All the consoles of a certain type have exactly the same computational hardware, so they don't have to worry about dealing with different vendors' buggy drivers and providing a low-detail mode for low-end computers and so on, which saves development time. Another reason is intellectual property. Console vendors like proprietary systems because they can charge royalties on every game sold, and game companies like proprietary systems because they make piracy harder. -- BenRG 23:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Nintendo’s Wii costs US$250 and comes with a game: Wii Sports. New games for the Wii generally cost US$50 each.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 60GB version costs US$500 and comes with no games, the 80GB PS3 costs US$600 and comes with a game: Motorstorm. New games for the PS3 generally cost US$60 each.

Microsoft's Xbox 360's three versions cost US$279, $349, and $429 respectively. None of them come with a game. New games for the Xbox 360 generally cost US$60 each.

Sony’s PlayStation 2 costs US$130 and does not come with a game. New games for the PlayStation 2 generally cost US$30 -$40 each.

Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube are no longer in production and the prices of the consoles vary widely if you can find them at all. New games for these consoles are rare, but games for them are generally priced similar to, or slightly lower than the PS2’s games.

Hope that helps. 69.205.180.123 00:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I hate the idea of game consoles (these people are still living in the pre-Amiga days..) but I'll admit one major advantage to them is the lack of operating system overhead. You do have to have a pretty good API to outperform directx and the like, even if you're running on a dedicated system, but theoretically you can get much better performance by trusting the game software and totally forgoing memory protection and other performance-draining features necessary to a real OS. I won't go into how undesirable it is to own a non-programmable computer or the ethics of signing "licensed" games and similar DRM (it's wrong.). --froth^t 22:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Turn off the touchpad

In Linux, how do I turn off the touchpad on my Toshiba Satellite 5000, preferably only while a USB mouse is connected? NeonMerlin 15:15, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm taking a guess you are using Windows XP and not Vista, 2000, etc. You can find the directions here [3]. Keep me posted. Monkeynoze 19:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It'd help to read his question. He uses Linux. First two words. OP: I don't know, though only turning it off when the USB mouse is in won't be an easily found feature. JoshHolloway 20:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Ummm he clearly said he's using LINUX? It would help to state your distribution, and it's better to ask on their forums than in here. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:59, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It's Kubuntu 7.04. NeonMerlin 02:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Some laptops have a button (near the touchpad) or a key combination (e.g. Fn + F7 or something like that) that turns the touchpad on or off. Your manual will tell you. --141.156.250.167 23:48, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

My thinkpad lets you control it via Fn+F8 (though those drivers aren't installed right now) and via the BIOS configuration utility. Look through your bios configuration. --froth^t 22:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I use syndaemon(1) in Linux to disable the touchpad while typing. Assuming you have the synaptics touchpad driver (it's pretty ubiquitous), you should already have syndaemon; check out its man page. If you want to disable the touchpad completely (all the time, not just while typing), there seems to be an option value of the synaptics driver which you can stick in the relevant InputDevice section (look for 'Driver "synaptics"') of your xorg.conf:

       TouchpadOff (Integer)
              Switch off the touchpad.  Valid values are:

              0   Touchpad is enabled
              1   Touchpad is switched off
              2   Only tapping and scrolling is switched off

A good heap of further information is on the synaptics(5) man page, so take a look. -- Daverocks (talk) 13:00, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Both laptops I own have buttons somewhere on them that disable the touchpad. Have you tried looking for one? Luigi30 (Taλk) 14:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Detecting removable hard drive

I recently bought a removable hard drive(USB 2).When I plug it to the USB port of my PC, it is not detected by the explorer.How can i solve this problem.Thank u. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.70.64.15 (talk) 17:51, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

What OS version are you using (Windows XP, Windows 2000, mac, etc.) What brand computer do you have? Do you have a laptop or desktop. Thanks. Monkeynoze 19:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

One problem I had; I have some network drives which are disconnected. When I plug in a USB stick, Windows assigns it the drive letter of one of these drives - and proceeds to forget it's there. Maybe that's your problem, in which case you can view the drive in Disk Management and give it a different letter. Rawling4851 14:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

gps in cell phones

a coworker claimed that all cell phones in the last few years have GPS, but that it's not necessarily enabled. True/false? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.199.246 (talk) 23:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wireless Enhanced 911. I'm not sure if they're required to have it, but a lot of them seem to. Essentialy, it's more than just a GPS, it also used the cell-towers themselves to pin-point you. Many phones seem to have an option to turn this on for all calls, or just on for E911.(Default) My old phone had an option to turn it off entirely, but I'm just now noticing my current one doesn't. APL 23:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Accidentaly closed tab

I accidentaly closed a Firefox tab. Wikipedia in Portuguese was opened and I has just translated an entire article, and I didn't save anything. Is there a way to get the information back? A.Z. 23:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I could find it! There's a feature called "recently closed tabs". It wasn't actually an entire article, since there's one section left. A.Z. 23:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

You can also right-click on an open tab and choose "undo close tab" from the menu. It's a great feature. --Sean 23:52, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

different connections for different applications

Hi. Can I have different applications use different network connections on my computer? For example, can I have my browser use my wired connection, and have my email client use my wireless connection to a particular wireless network, both connected to the Internet at the same time? Directions for Windows and/or Linux would be appreciated. Thanks. --141.156.250.167 23:51, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Dual 12V rails on PSUs

If an ATX power supply has "dual +12V rails", does that mean that some number of connectors are on rail 1, and the others are on rail 2? Is there a way to figure out which connectors are on rail 1 or 2 if it isn't documented? Or do all of the 12V connectors pull from the same power source (then what's the point of "dual" rails..)? Thanks! --72.66.219.162 23:57, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

September 9

Microsoft Excel question, probably a dumb one

I have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, it's not for math or formulas, just to keep notes on something. Many of the cells have a lot of text in them (up to a paragraph) but I don't want all the text to be visible in the spreadsheet, as long as I can see it when I click on that cell. Does that make sense? This usually works fine, but occasionally Excel will automatically resize the cell for me, making the entire row taller so that I can see all the text in that row at once. I don't want this; it is annoying and frustrating that I don't know why it sometimes does it or how to fix it. I know that I can change it back by going to the Format menu and selecting Row and manually adjusting the height, but is there an easier way? Instead of fixing it like that each time, I'd rather just know why it's doing that so I can avoid the problem. Thanks in advance for any help you can give. --Grace 01:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It's really hard to tell since we have no idea what you're doing with the spreadsheet. But there are several easier ways: Try selecting the cell, the column the whole sheet, or whatever you want to be displayed in this way and hit Ctrl+1 (the number one). This will give you the Format Cells dialog. In the Alignment tab, either unselect Wrap text or select Shrink to fit, whichever you like better. — Sebastian 09:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, that seems to have worked, thank you. --Grace 23:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

OS X Address Book and Default Email Address

Hello,

Is there anyway in OS X address book to set a default email address? I have many contacts with multiple email address and I would like to be able to specify one as the one to always send mail to.

Thank you,

--Grey1618 11:02, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Running a game in windowed mode

Hi, I have a game that I would like to run in windowed mode. None of the configuration files I have come upon so far seem to allow such an option to be turned on. The target is "C:\...\RomeTW-BI.exe", do I need to add anything to this to force it to run windowed? Thanks in advance. :)) 81.93.102.185 11:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Some programs allow it, some don't. First see if the game has the option to run windowed mode through any of its in-game options. If not, go to the shortcut of the game (or create one) and try changing the target to have a " -window" (with a space) or " -w" and running the game - the two most common switches for windowed mode. Otherwise, you'd have to run an emulator or a sandboxing software that runs in a window to force it to be in a window - but that is often more trouble than it's worth. x42bn6 Talk Mess 12:40, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, try ALT-ENTER while in-game. This is a common Windows shortcut for toggling between fullscreen and windowed modes. 68.183.218.134 15:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Googling "Total War Windowed Mode" comes up with some options. Try running the application with the switch -ne; apparently that works for some versions. --24.147.86.187 21:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

No Emacs in Fedora 7?

I recently updated my Fedora system from version 5 to version 7. The new system boots up nicely, and even remembers my complete profile, but for some reason it doesn't seem to have Emacs installed. What the heck? How can there even be a Unix system without Emacs? JIP | Talk 17:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It may not have been part of the default basic install. Just install it then. Go to Add/Remove Programs and it's listed in there somewhere. --Spoon! 17:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I tried, but pirut said that pup was already accessing the update database. Pup has been doing that for half an hour now, clogging up my Internet connection, without showing any signs of actually installing anything. Well, it did say there were 165 updates available, so I guess downloading all of them is going to take a while. I'll have to see tomorrow morning at the latest. JIP | Talk 17:47, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't use any gui package managers. I install it from the command line: yum install emacs. -- kainaw™ 22:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if pirut is updating packages in the background, it's possible that the RPM database will be locked, or that there will be a yum lock. Annoying for the first boot, until you can disable it. -- JSBillings 13:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Emacs is not a standard Unix program, so you can't just expect it to be there by default. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.78.64.102 (talk) 22:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Now why would you expect Fedora to include a competing OS in its default install? :) --froth^t 22:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

cost of cell phone plans

Is the cost of cell phone plans expected by analysts to decrease in a year? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.199.246 (talk) 20:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Difference between Mirroring, Failover, Clustering and Load balancing?

What is the difference between Disk mirroring, Failover, High-availability clusters (a.k.a. Clustering?) and Load balancing?

It would seem that Load balancing is different in that it involves a server that redirects traffic to an array of servers which then handle the traffic from there, and each of the servers in the array may be slightly different.

Mirroring / Failover / HA Clusters seems to be multiple servers that [may or may not?] have identical disk images that each act as a backup ready-to-go in case the primary server failed.

Perhaps Mirroring / Failover / HA Clusters may not actually have identical drive contents? Maybe they are all server data in unison, just without another server acting as a Load Balancer?

Help?

--Eptin 22:09, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a lot of questions. Did you check into each of the articles you linked? Keep in mind that many of these look and act the same. Or, you may use multiples of them at the same time. That is, if you have a number of web servers fronted by a load balancer, you could call that a high-availability cluster of load-balanced servers, exhibiting failover. If a web server fails, the load balancer fails over to the remaining ones. There is a cluster of them, and when they are not in a failure state, you can balance the load across them.

Mirroring, in my mind, just means that you've got two identical drives, and you always write the same thing to each. If one drive fails, you still have the other drive -- you can fail over to it. --Mdwyer 04:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Smells like homework; however; disk mirroring is generally on a single machine (setting aside remote mirroring provided by SAN clusters.) failover is when you have a hot standby machine, with the master writing data to a shared drive (NAS or SAN) and is brought up after the master fails, load balancing is where two or more machines run at the same time and requests to them are split between machines (with the machines synchronising between themselves if the requests actually change things), high-availability clustering is a combination of load-balancing and failover (where, because two or more machines are running at the same time there is no delay in failover as would happen with non-clustered failover, and data is synced between the machines if they don't share storage). However a lot of the time they're used interchangeably in marketing materials. --Blowdart 05:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Bots

Hi, I know about four programming languages, and I know how to put a bot up for approval etc, but what I was wondering was, what do most people find as the most user friendly interface for building a bot, like PASCAL or Python. Thanks! Yamakiri 22:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

First, you have to define "bot". There are many definitions of that term in Computer Science alone. -- kainaw™ 00:55, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like the question is in reference to bots on Wikipedia. It doesn't really matter what you develop the bot in; so long as it is compliant with the standards (i.e. it can be deactivated by an admin if it malfunctions, etc). You might consider a technology that allows for easy standard data interchange, such as XML. What are you trying to do? That will help narrow down the "preferred" technology choices. See Wikipedia:Creating a bot for details and tools! Nimur 01:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason most people use Python, anyway, is because there are already classes written in Python to help you interact with the Wiki. That is, you can skip pretty much to the "what should the bot do?" phase rather than worrying about the "how does the bot connect to the internet? how does it log in? how does it differentiate the content? how does it search?" etc. sorts of things. I could be wrong on this, though. --24.147.86.187 01:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Since MediaWiki is written in PHP, I'd be rather surprised if there aren't already premade libraries for PHP as well. -- kainaw™ 01:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It wouldn't help things that MediaWiki is written in PHP, since you wouldn't be interacting with its code directly—just its HTTP outputs/inputs. While I find PHP a pleasant scripting language, it is not generally used for things like bots because it does not lend itself to being run endlessly (most PHP scripts have very quick execute times are normally set up to automatically exit if they take more than a few seconds to execute). While you can make PHP iterate over a set of instructions again and again (or run it from command line interface), this is not really what it is good at and not really what it is designed for, and there is no real advantage to using it for such a thing in any case. --24.147.86.187 07:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, that's good then thanks! Didn't think about the PHP part though. Yamakiri 10:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Most people use Python, so I would probably use that. The library will be better, the number of people who can help you will be better, the chances for someone joining in on your project will be better, etc. --Sean 12:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

September 10

Latex equation captions

Is it possible to add a caption to an equation in LaTeX? Thanks. 139.80.7.123 00:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

What you're trying to do doesn't make sense. Either you want to put an equation into a figure (with a caption) or you want to talk about the equation in the surrounding text rather than caption it. Donald Hosek 17:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Laptop AC Adapter Problems

A few hours ago, as my Dell Inspiron e1505 laptop was running off of the AC adapter, the adapter suddenly stopped working - the battery icon indicated that there was no adapter power and the adapter's green status light had turned off. I unplugged the adapter and replugged it into several different sockets, and after some tries, the light turned on again.

Just now, I had the same problem, and "fixed" it by the same method. However, as soon as I plugged the adapter into the computer, the green status light ceased. It is now broken for good as far as I can tell.

I was just going to buy a new adapter, but when I asked my friend about this, he said that he had the same problem himself twice (i.e., the status light turned off as he plugged it into his Dell laptop), and both times his computer stopped working and had to be sent for repairs. Both times customer service fixed it and told him that his motherboard had been fried.

Thus, my question is: Is this a problem of my adapter (in which case I should just get a new one), or is this a problem of my computer's motherboard or whatever (in which case I should be more worried)?

Thanks, -MagneticFlux 03:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Unfortuately, this is a dell manufacturing error. My sister's laptop's adapter of the same model suddenly stopped working and a replacement was needed. (Another reason not to choose dell in my view, Go Acer!) ::Manors:: 16:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Pascal

Where is Turbo Pascal help available?Beta alpha 07:14, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

http://shhs.1earth.net/kla/compstud/PascalTutorial_de_nz/fh-jena.de/~gmueller/Kurs/default.html is a helpsite for pascal. It's been about 10 years since I studied turbo pascal but I suspect that a large amount of it is the same as plain old pascal. ny156uk 18:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

multithreaded UNIX kernel

I am first year student of M.C.A. having diffculty in finding information about MULTI-THREADED UNIX KERNEL.So, give me brief introduction of MULTI-THREADED UNIX KERNEL.203.193.189.22 09:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)pimpale_manjeet

Have you read our fine articles on Unix and POSIX Threads? Splintercellguy 09:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that POSIX threads generally don't have anything to do with kernel threads, although I guess it's possible that some O/S out there uses them in kernel space. I'm not aware of one, though. --Sean 12:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

A little politeness would be nice too. ::Manors:: 16:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you interpreted my clarification as impolite. It certainly wasn't meant that way. Or do you mean SCG's response, which helpfully pointed the asker to the relevant articles? --Sean 17:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps he means the OP, who used caps in part of his response. Splintercellguy 16:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

How do I set the hostname on Fedora 7?

How do I set the hostname on Fedora 7, so that it will apply even after I reboot? hostname only applies until I reboot the computer. JIP | Talk 10:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

There are multiple ways (all done as root)

• run hostname your.host.name
• Edit /etc/hostname and put your host name in the file
• Edit /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf (where "eth0" is your network device) and add send host-name "your.host.name"

I'm sure there are at least 27 more ways. -- kainaw™ 12:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the Fedora way is to edit /etc/sysconfig/network. -- JSBillings 13:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is a program you can run (as root) in Fedora called system-config-network. You may need to yum install system-config-network first. -- kainaw™ 13:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Go to System -> Administration -> Network, DNS tab, and enter the hostname. --Spoon! 15:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

That's 3 more ways. Only 24 more to go... -- kainaw™ 15:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Email

Why we have asked to enter the verification code, while creating E-mail? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.247.255.10 (talk) 12:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific? Creating e-mail where? You may be talking about a CAPTCHA; they're used by some webmail providers to make sure it's a human creating the account. Computers can't read the text in the CAPTCHA image so they can't create an account. If computers were able to create accounts without the help of humans they could create large numbers of accounts automatically and use those accounts to send spam. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 13:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that while computers have difficulty reading CAPTCHAs (I wouldn't put it past a bot able to use an OCR program or algorithm to read the letters, although it is difficult - note the noise and patterns), the hash associated with the CAPTCHA can be cracked. So, in other words, it doesn't solve everything but it certainly stops the most basic scripts - ones that can be written with a few minutes of thought and AutoIT, for example. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

online money

how to make real money online from a country like saudi arabia ??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.107.116.238 (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Sell something people want. Market your business so people who want what you sell know you are selling it. -- kainaw™ 17:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

can you give me a place where i can sell pc games and things like this ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.107.116.238 (talk) 17:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Ebay, Craig's List, Postaroo... there are hundreds of places. -- kainaw™ 23:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Vista and Ram

Hello, can anyone please tell me the maximum amount of DDR2 RAM windows vista will allow you to use without upgrading to 64bit? thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.12.32 (talk) 18:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

This site says 4GB. This one agrees. The operating system shouldn't care about DDR2, that would be a consideration for the motherboard. --LarryMac | Talk 18:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Or try...http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-maximum-memory-in-32-bit-windows-vista/ Not sure from a quick read over it what the answer is - but seems to suggest that with 4gb installed you'll not be able to utilise it all effectively. All very confusing unfortunately. ny156uk 18:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the short version is that a 32-bit processor has a limited number of addresses, and everything must have an address. That is, those addresses are used for both memory AND for communicating with devices. So, even if you fill the entire address space with memory, some of it will still be occluded by other things in the system. This is still a problem with 64-bit addressing, but the system area is unrealisticly far away. --Mdwyer 20:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Two firefoxes, one profile

I have Firefox portable on my flash drive, as well as the Mac Firefox. I would like to set it up so that the profile for each is the same. Is there some way I can redirect the windows Firefox to use the mac's profile, or vice versa?

Thanks in advance, --Omnipotence407 21:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If you have IRC, irc://irc.mozilla.org/firefox might help. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I don't have IRC, if you could summarize or something, that would be great. --74.37.228.44 00:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The profile is stored as a load of files in a folder. I don't think you can change which folder it uses - it will always place them on the hard drive (although you can make the folder a symlink in OSX).

However, you can copy the contents of the folder by hand. I don't know of any way to make this automatic.

Some files can have information on locations of files on the disk (for example, if you set .ram files to always open with realplayer). This will change between OSs and may cause problems.

You should be able to copy your bookmarks (bookmarks.html) between profiles without any problems (until Firefox 3 is released). There's some firefox extensions which put bookmarks online for sharing between different computers - [4][5] - which would do this for you.

Hope this helps somewhat - take a look through http://kb.mozillazine.org/ for more info, and you should backup before doing anything risky. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's possible between Windows and Mac. I did it between Ubuntu and Windows once, and it worked fairly well. Some very complex plugins/add-ons might not work, but ones like AdBlock do. Basically, run firefox.exe (and/or thunderbird.exe) using the "-profilemanager" option. That allows you to change where the profile points to on the drive. So just set them both up to point to the same directory. But backing up your data first would definitely be a first step. --Bennybp 02:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

September 11

Computer Rebooting

I have a computer with Fedora on it that keeps rebooting randomly. It is not rebooting when a specific device is used, a specific program is run, or after a specific amount of time. I strongly suspect the memory is bad, but I was wondering if there are any Linux utilities that can keep a very close eye on the entire system and give me a good analysis of what happens just before each reboot. -- kainaw™ 00:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

One linux utility is strace. You use -p with pid number to indicate what you want to trace. It records all the system calls. using the -f option will also record all the child processes. It would be best to put the output to a file with -o option, and then try to read the file after a failure. The next step up is to use a debugger, though I expect there will already be too much output. It may be better if you can get hold of a memory tester. I havent seen one of these for at least 12 years, but they should still exist! Graeme Bartlett 04:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

strace only traces syscalls of a particular process, and won't help much here. I suggest checking the syslogs to see if anything is logged before it reboots. You might want to set up syslog to log to a remote host, in case the disk drivers crash before it reboots. In the end, you're going to want to test the hardware -- if you suspect bad memory, I suggest using the memtest86 memory testing tool. -- JSBillings 10:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Log files reported nothing. Memtest86 ran all night - no help. No reboot though, so it isn't something inherently bad in the power supply (or power source from the wall). Ran with ide=nodma, still rebooted. I'm going to open it up and look for a loose cable. -- kainaw™ 12:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've had similar problems after i reseated the heatsink on the cpu, it could be overheating. If you have acpi setup you might be able to look at the cpu temp somewhere in /proc/acpi/. I solved my issue by cleaning the heatsink and using new heat-conductive paste. -- Diletante 14:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've seen this happen with systems that had a lot of "noise" in their power, or irregular power dips. Most electronic appliances work just fine with these problems, but computers are overly sensitive to irregularities in power. Also, if you suspect it is your CPU, try monitoring the temperature of your CPU. -- JSBillings 20:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

After memtest86 claimed the memory was OK, I checked further. Nothing in logs. Swapped out a lot of components. Finally, I believe I tracked it down. The CPU fan appears to be flaking out - just stopping every now and then. The BIOS doesn't provide monitoring of the fan to the OS, so it wasn't logged. I found out by having the case open and examining the inside while it was running. The fan just stopped. I tapped it and it started back up again. A few minutes later, it stopped again. Hopefully that's the source of this and I won't have to poke around this case anymore. -- kainaw™ 22:16, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Turned out that the fan was stopping because the power supply was acting up. Just thought someone might want to know the status of this odd problem. -- kainaw™ 01:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah when my power supply was getting overloaded my computer kept on rebooting sporadically is well. It also gave the harddrives a lot of "clicks of deaths" (probably just head reset due to insufficient power), which lead to frantically getting more harddrives, which lead to more clicks... --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Add a string of text to the end of every line of a text file.

Is there any options on a Windows application, that will find the end of every line (newline) and append a string of text to it. I know on with the Linux application VI (VIM) you can add text to the end of every line with the character "\n" representing a newline. I can't remember if this used a find and replace command, I just looked up the command and copied it. I was wondering if anyone knew a windows app that will do this. Preferably I use edit.exe a.k.a edit.com but if notepad, wordpad, or Microsoft Word had an option like this? – 69.150.209.13 01:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if those other apps can do it, but you can get vim for Windows. --Allen 02:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You could write a script, or find a text editor that uses Regular Expressions. Nimur 02:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

:1,$s/$/ia string of text

in vi, or sed could do the job too. Do you want to use wordpad or word for windows to do the job? Graeme Bartlett 03:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

On Windows, I'd recommend Notepad++ for an advanced text editor. You can use the replace function with regexps by pressing CTRL+R. — Kieff | Talk 04:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

In word for windows you can do edit replace, click more, click special and select paragraph mark, this can the be replaced with your trailing text and a new paragraph mark with a replace all button. Graeme Bartlett 04:29, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Nod32

Hi, I am going to purchase Nod32 antivirus and would like to know what firewall is compatible with it. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Erendis (talk • contribs) 07:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Anything, I suppose, since I'm not sure how a firewall could conflict with an AV. Splintercellguy 16:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep they're nothing alike. Though you'll need to allow access to the AV for "autoupdates"- a bad idea btw, I always download virus definitions with my browser and manually install them. --froth^t 22:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Using ADBLOCK to remove a specific wikipedia link.

Hello, as I try to revert as much vandalism as possible in the shortest amount of time, I often mistakenly click the stupid 'Edit summary' link when one goes to edit the page, instead of clicking "Save Page" button. Now is there a way using adblock (or any other program) running in firefox or even in the background to block that link, ie make it not clickable? Phgao 09:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you can do that with adblock, but I've made Greasemonkey scripts for similar purposes. -- JSBillings 10:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You can also edit your monobook.css to hide that link by doing the following:

• go to User:Phgao/monobook.css
• add the line #minoredit_helplink {display: none;}

Rawling4851 22:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: Sorry, if you don't use the monobook skin, you'll have to edit your CSS for whatever skin it is you use. Rawling4851 22:03, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You may want to familiarize yourself with the access keys on Wikipedia. I have found that they greatly increase the speed of editing and navigation. For instance, saving a page is just access key 's'. I find the default key combination in Firefox slightly annoying, so I changed (in about:config) ui.key.contentAccess to 4 so that Alt+key was the combination instead of the default 5 (Shift+Alt+key). --Pekaje 11:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Removing Windows Media Center

I play a lot of DVDs on my computer, for which I use Windows Media Player. Whenever I put in a DVD, Windows (in its infinite wisdom) automatically starts Windows Media Center, which I despise and have absolutely no use for. WMC doesn't seem to exist as a normal, removable program, but I'm desperate to remove it. Is there any way to uninstall it or, failing that, disable it? Thanks! Bhumiya (said/done) 09:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This is based from your autoplay settings for the DVD drive, and can be changed. It's easy to do in Windows XP, while Vista has a slightly different configuration. --Sigma 7 10:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You can remove it (xp) - start,set program access and defaults, "remove/uninstall", scroll down the list, press 'delete', or start help and search for uninstall...83.100.251.220 12:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't know how to get rid of autoplay altogether. Bhumiya (said/done) 13:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Regex in Java: finding expression 1, but not if it's part of expression 2

Hi all,

I'm having trouble writing a regular expression in Java. I want to find all instances of the string cde, but NOT if it's part of the string abcdefg.

So if I gave my parser the text abcdefgcdex, it should only find this "cde": abcdefgcdex.

Is that possible? I'm really not sure how to go about creating such an expression.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks, Mary. 16:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You can be verbose to make it very understandable. For example, simplify it to "cde" as long as it doesn't follow "ab" (you should easily how this can be expanded to check for following "fg"): (cde.*)|(.cde.*)|(.*[^a][^b]cde.*). In other words, if "cde" has nothing in front of it, that is fine. If it only has one character in front of it, that is fine. If it has two or more characters in front of it, they better not be "a" followed by "b". -- kainaw™ 17:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

How about something like this:

(?<!ab)cde|cde(?!fg)

"cde" as long as it's not preceded by "ab" or not followed by "fg". --Spoon! 17:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Spoon,

That works great, thanks! However, I'd like to be able to put a regex within the "(?<!ab)" section -- let's say an a followed by any number of b's. I would think that I should be able to say "(?<!ab*)" or "(?<!a(b)*)" or something, but I get an exception. Do you know what I could do?

Thanks!

Sam

Sorry. As far as I know lookahead assertions can take any regex; but lookbehind assertions can only take a fixed-width regex (because otherwise it is difficult to figure out where to start). --Spoon! 22:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Rate of return

In determining the yield of a stock, I understand the most recent annual dividend is divided by the price. How do I find the "most recent annual dividend" of a particular stock? Thank you. Magemote —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magemote (talk • contribs) 17:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Go to the firms website and look at their investor relations section. You should be able to find it there, alternatively try sites like bloomberg or FT.com as they may well have the details available. I use www.iii.co.uk myself. ny156uk 20:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Random Microsoft Word Question

On my new Lenovo Thinkpad T60p with Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2007, the scroll wheel (button or pad, actually), which works on websites and other things, does not work in Microsoft word. As in every time I want to scroll down the page, I either have to drag the scroll bar on the right or press the down key. This is not the case with Excel. I don't get it. Is there any way to fix this? It's really annoying. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.42.228 (talk) 20:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm, works for me. Try using microsoft drivers instead of IBM's? devmgmt.msc > Mice > whatever > driver > uninstall --froth^t 22:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This website (http://www.techtalkz.com/microsoft-office/49769-re-how-can-i-enable-mouse-scroll-wheel-function-word-2007-a.html) seems to suggest it might hold the answer. For some reason my browser won't load it, but it's the top result of a google search for word + scroll + wheel + enable ny156uk 22:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Zone Alarm

I have an old copy of Zone Alarm. If I uninstall it then I can not view Google Maps or Google Earth although I can view Mapquest maps and satellite images. If I reinstall Zone Alarms then I can view Google Maps. What is going on? Is there a way to view Google Maps without reinstalling Zone Alarm? Clem 22:59, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

September 12

Hard drive light/motion

I have a Lenovo laptop, a few months old. For certain periods of time, I will notice every second or two the harddrive light flashing and the harddrive turning (soft "clicking" sound). It will sometimes last continously for a quite a while, and even when no functions are being performed on the computer, no applications are running, and I'm not typing or inputting anything. Does anyone think this is a cause for concern? Thank you for your help. --24.211.242.80 01:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The S.M.A.R.T. capability on my hardrive indicated it might fail. It finally did today. The sounds coming from it are a scraping and clicking sound like an oldtime '78 record player but with metal on metal scraping. Clem 02:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The drive is very likely heading towards failure. The read head thinks it is out of alignment (it may or may not be). It is trying to get back in alignment. Since it is not a viable option to repair whatever is causing the head to think it is out of alignment, your best option is to back up your data and get a new drive - fast. -- kainaw™ 02:14, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm the person with the first question...mine is making a light clicking sound, not a heavy scraping sound. Do you think my harddrive is still in danger? Thank you. --24.211.242.80 02:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It could be failing, or there could be some sort of hard drive processes going on that you don't know about (logging by background processes which do not appear as applications in your taskbar; or potentially attempts by your computer to access virtual memory stored on the drive). I would first try getting something that would let you monitor hard drive I/O writes and see if it is actually writing or reading anything when it does that. In any case you should get some sort of external backup drive (a good practice anyway). As for possibility of failure, it can vary. I've seen drives with what I would call "minor" noises eventually fail, and I've seen others that kept on sounding like that for years without problems. At this point it sounds like a rather indefinite symptom, and so it is hard to diagnose not only what is causing it, but any sort of long-term prognosis. --72.83.173.248 04:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Zipped (compressed) folders

I need information on what happens when files contain large amounts of information are zipped (compressed) for a research project if you could help that would be great..

Thanks Teresa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkilpatrick (talk • contribs) 04:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear on what you are asking, but you could try Data compression and ZIP (file format) for starters. --jjron 08:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

change directory to user's home

In linux/bash there is a command to change directory to the user's home "cd ~" I was wondering if there is a command in windows/cmd.exe which will do the same? – 69.150.209.13 07:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't have much experience with Windows or its limited shell, but you might be able to use some of the predefined variables listed here. Also, in bash it is not necessary to type "cd ~", as "cd" on its own brings you to your home directory by default (Windows might do something similar, try it). Another shortcut worth mentioning is "cd -", which brings you back to the previous directory you were in. --Pekaje 11:14, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Need Information About RTMX .O.S.

Hi ALL,

       I Am in big trouble! I really don't know what is 

" RTMX.O.S."

so please if you have any information reagarding this then put it here! I will be very very thankful to you!!!203.193.189.22 09:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)--203.193.189.22 09:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Loading device drivers

How can a user load a device driver without administrator privileges in Windows, without a system administrator doing it for the user or giving them administrator rights? Think outside the box 09:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Online based revision control software

I am starting a small project (~1000 lines) with a teammate this semester and I would like to use some sort of revision control for the code we will write. SVN has many nice features but I do not have access to a public server where I could install SVN and create a repository. Are there any web based RCS available? Ideally, I would need to be able to upload, download, merge and compare revisions all from a common web interface. --Jcmaco 12:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

transitor/logic gate switching energy

(I've been looking at a model of a processor that would need ~10¹⁸ logic gate transistions per second.)

My question is: what is the lowest transistor/logic gate switching energy currently available or likely to be available?, and what about the switching energy at smaller than current feature sizes. Thanks.87.102.16.32 12:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Application for ordering lists.

Is there an application that will re-arrange a list, putting it in alphabetical order, based on the first letter of a line? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.10.86.63 (talk) 12:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Whenever I need that, I use sort. Without knowing more context, that's all the help I can provide. Some examples of what your requirements are, and information on your computing environment, would be very helpful. --Pekaje 12:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Alas, I run Windows XP. My list consists of movie titles, formatted as:

Donnie Brasco
Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster
Being John Malkovich
etc. 202.10.86.63 12:40, 12 September 2007 (UTC)