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February 21

Web Browsers

Can i get your guys opnion on some web browsers. I dont know which one is (argubly) the best and would like a real good one. thanks :) BonesBrigade 00:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This is an endless debate. There isn't necessarily a "best" one (although there are certainly browsers that suck), there are different ones that do different things well. Really big into Web 2.0? Try Flock! Are you kneeling down at the feet of Steve Jobs? Try Safari! Do you like slick proprietary code and Norwegians? Use Opera! If you just like a good all-round web-browser which will render the entire internet pretty much as intended, Firefox is probably your best bet. Try different ones, and see which one you fancy the most. 83.250.201.184 (talk) 00:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want horrifically bloated feature creep, try Seamonkey. Chances are you also like emacs :D :D\=< (talk) 00:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want a browser that "just works" and is very fast to load, with quite a small memory footprint, try Opera. If you want a browser that is highly customisable try Firefox with its large amount of addons, but the tendancy to use a horrible amount of memory after a few hours of use. If you want a browser with a very slick font rendering engine and a GUI that clashes with Windows have a look at Safari although this is still in beta on Windows. All these browsers are free, Firefox is Open Source to boot. TheGreatZorko (talk) 09:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If your computer has 1 GB of RAM or more, Firefox will not disrupt at all. If you have an older operating system like Windows XP, you can actually get away with 512 MB of RAM. Kushal 11:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not that Firefox uses a lot of memory, it's that it leaks memory. No matter how much RAM and swap space you have it will eventually fill it all, at which point it will crash and any other program that was trying to allocate memory at that moment will go down with it. As an experiment I made a local page with about 50 megabytes (uncompressed) of inline images and repeatedly opened and closed it in Firefox, and the memory footprint increased by 50 megabytes every time. So it seems to leak 100% of the image data, and probably other stuff as well. At least, that has always been the case on my machine, and disabling all my extensions didn't fix it. I eventually worked around this with an extension (I think it was MR Tech Local Install) which can close and restart the browser with all the same windows and tabs, including page history and partially filled out forms. Fortunately this seems to be fixed in 3.0 beta 3, so you could try that. All of this on Windows XP, incidentally. -- BenRG (talk) 13:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Technically, it's not "leaking" memory, it's just managing it very very poorly, in many cases due to questionable design decisions. To the end user, the effect is the same, or worse. A lot of improvements seem to have been made in FF3, but only time will tell. --LarryMac | Talk 14:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it's massive caching. You can tweak it in about:config :D\=< (talk) 14:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If it were caching then reloading the same page with the same inline images wouldn't cause a footprint increase each time. That's contrary to the whole purpose of caching. I did try tweaking the seemingly relevant parameters in about:config and never managed to make the problem go away. I guess it's possible that it's specific to my machine, caused by a rogue plugin or something. -- BenRG (talk) 15:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

And just wait till you see the final specs and minimum requirements for Firefox 3! Kushal 11:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It always annoys the "cool kids" (cough) , but I love Internet Explorer 7. It looks nice (especially in Vista), it's finally got tabbed browsing, and it works. Neıl ☎ 14:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Toss out all the pejoratives you want (while being mindful of NPA of course), but lips that touch ActiveX shall never touch mine. Or something like that. --LarryMac | Talk 14:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

We "cool kids" are not amused. IE7 stole a lot from Firefox, which stole a lot from Opera, which stole a lot from [help me out here]. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 14:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Netscape Navigator, probably. Neıl ☎ 15:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This is completely irrational. First of all, if you don't need ActiveX you can globally disable it. Second of all, all that ActiveX does is download software and run it on your machine (asking you first, of course). On what basis do you trust any of the software that you run? If you trust a web site enough to download software from it (like, say, mozilla.com or opera.com), there's no rational reason not to allow ActiveX controls from the same website. The computer illiterates who install "free" download managers and end up with malware infections are going to get infected regardless of whether the vector is an ActiveX control or DLManagerInstall.exe. Internet Explorer is a good browser. I'm sure its dominance is due in large part to being bundled with Windows (and in part to other browsers spoofing it, like the way every browser now claims to be Mozilla), but that doesn't change the fact that starting with version 3.0 it was clearly a better browser than the contemporary version of Netscape. I use Firefox now, and I guess it's better, despite having major bugs that go unfixed for years that would probably be considered release-blockers by Microsoft. -- BenRG (talk) 15:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 7 is generally good enough. It is way better than IE6, especially the version on Vista. Of course, some people will never use IE7, but for most people it is fine. Most websites will also render just fine, which you can't necessarily say about some of the other, minor browsers. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 17:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I really dont like IE cuz it doesnt allow twinkle to work. And no one really went into detail about opera which i am curious about. BonesBrigade 17:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Twinkle not working on IE is not Internet Explorer's fault. Neıl ☎ 00:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Tell that to my friend who got an XSS attack on Internet Explorer. He is using Firefox now and there is no problem, even though he does not use NoScript. Moreover, we are getting Cross session resuming beginning firefox 3. I think the best thing to do if you are on Internet Explorer is to switch to Mozilla Firefox, if you can. Kushal 17:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I use IE6 because I hate tabbed browsing. Useight (talk) 18:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Who is forcing you to use tabs? --LarryMac | Talk 18:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That's true. You can set Firefox to open new links in windows if you are so inclined. You can even make it look exactly like IE. I have yet to find an extension, however, that slows down the loading of web pages to match IE (I don't know if anyone else has this slowness problem). The best browser is probably the one someone I used to know used. It was called "Avant" or something. Uses basically no resources. I never gave it a try because I like the 'fox so much. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

How can you bear to use IE7, let alone *shudder* IE6? Don't you realize that every time basically anything at all looks right, it's because some special version of the page is being presented to you as a kludge to not completely exclude IE users? Do you realize that internet explorer completely defies established web standards? The W3C literally said "your browser needs to behave like this" and microsoft said "no we like our way, take your standards and shove em". Microsoft can't just do that, and you are unbelievably stupid for buying into their garbage. :D\=< (talk) 04:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

With all due disrespect to Microsoft, that last comment looks like an WP:NPA. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Does User:Microsoft exist? Is Microsoft a Wikipedian? I think, at least they are not officially Wikipedians as a company. Kushal 18:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

No, but User:Neil and User:Useight do, and saying they are "unbelievably stupid" is inappropriate. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Any free programs that let u turn text into mp3?

Does anyone know any free programs that turn texts into mp3? I want to put it on utube. --Gary123 (talk) 00:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Text is a form of written expression. MP3 is a form of audio expression. YouTube holds primarily video expression. What is it that you want, exactly? There are ways to go between the mediums but you'd better be specific or you'll get answers that won't help you. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh let's take a guess... Speech synthesis#Specific_programs and LAME (surprised that Category:Speech synthesis software and Category:MP3 encoders didn't exist) --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I work with text-to-speech software on a daily basis; it's really not that good, unless the text has been specifically marked up (using, for example, SSML) to create proper prosody. Depending on the type of text you want to use as input, there might be other problems - as a real life example, I recently received a call from a company that was going to install something at my house. The street I live on is something like "Rosewood Drive", abbreviated as Rosewood Dr.. So the automated system that called me wanted me to verify that I live at "123 Rosewood Doctor."

Bottom line, yes you can use a combination of the software that tcsetattr linked to, but the results might not be what you expect. And for the benefit of 98.217, there are more audio-only "videos" on YouTube than one might imagine. --LarryMac | Talk 02:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Word - keyboard puzzle

Very often, when I type the word "country" in Microsoft Word, the letters "cou" appear in the document - then the 'Save As' dialog box suddenly opens. When I type the word "Congress", the "Congr" appears on screen - then the preceding sentence is immediately copied and pasted right in the middle of whatever I'm typing. This happens frequently, but not every time I type those words (I use them both a lot). This is a little bizarre. Am I hitting on some secret keyboard shortcut? I can't find anyone else with the same problem, and I can't find any keyboard commands in the Tools/Customize menu that might be responsible. Can anyone enlighten me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.201.197 (talk) 02:42, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It could be software, but it could also be your keyboard: a keyboard does not have a wire for each key, but rather they are combined. So if you press two keys at once, it can appear to be a totally different key. It's called chording I think. Anyway, try a different keyboard. Also try pressing various two keys are once and see what happens. Your keyboard could even be damaged. Ariel. (talk) 06:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I often find that strange stuff like this happens when the Ctrl, Alt, or Shift keys are "stuck" and the keyboard thinks they are pressed when they actually aren't. What works for me every time is tapping all those keys repeatedly until the problem stops. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 14:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This is usually an OS-level problem—the key-up event got lost somewhere and it will continue to think the key is down until it gets another one. So it should only be necessary to tap each key once, but you have to remember to tap both the left and right ones (if your keyboard has both) because they're handled separately by the OS, even though they have the same effect in most software. -- BenRG (talk) 15:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the replies. It looks like it might have been a 'chording' problem - I did some more experiments, and realised that it was only happening when I typed very quickly, i.e. pressed multiple letter keys at once. I've deleted all the default keyboard shortcuts for the 'Save As' and 'Repeat' commands, and that seems to have solved the problem. 140.247.201.197 (talk) 04:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Mercury Levels in Laptops

I am hearing that most laptops have mercury within them. Is there a way to avoid contact with the chemical and how much mercury could the average laptop contain.--logger (talk) 07:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Most computer hardware will contain small amounts of mercury (less than a thermometer unless the PC has a very old CRT monitor) and as long as you don't go setting fire to your laptop you will be perfectly safe from mercury poisoning. I am not 100% sure where the merucury is though. Possibly in the Capacitors. TheGreatZorko (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You might be interested in our articles on Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive and Battery Directive. --Sean 17:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The cold cathode fluorescent lamp used as the backlight for most liquid crystal displays contains mercury. It may also be that certain battery designs use/used mercury. It's unlikely to be anywhere else in the laptop.

Atlant (talk) 17:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC

Thank you--logger (talk) 09:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

MIDI to WAV

Hey I'm looking for a freeware product which will convert MIDI files to WAV files. This can't be all that difficult to do, and so I'm becoming annoyed that all of the products I'm finding which are pay-for or trial only. Any suggestions? The Evil Spartan (talk) 12:24, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

TiMidity -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Quicktime Pro will allow you to save as wav. Radiofred (talk) 18:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

how to use a plotter?

can a plotter be used to plot text, such that it looks to be hand written? if yes then what will such a plotter cost? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.94.116.106 (talk) 15:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes it can. There is nothing special about such a plotter, just check the prices for any plotter. The hard part will be programming each letter. If you really want it to look like text you're going to have to change the appearance of the letters each time they are used, and that's going to be even harder (if you need that). Plus cursive will need special joiner letters for letters that join their tails at various spots. I'm sure such code exists somewhere though. Ariel. (talk) 10:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't exactly recall the context, but there was a device that was used to do original signatures, it was a type of plotter. So I'm sure the device you're speaking of does exist. Rfwoolf (talk) 10:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

An autopen will reproduce a signature. (As seen on an episode of CSI: Miami.)

Atlant (talk) 13:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Recurring appointments in Outlook/Pocket Outlook

Is there a way to fix how Outlook (and, specifically, Windows Pocket PCs) handles recurring appointments? Here is an example. Suppose I have a meeting scheduled for the 15th of every month (i.e., on 1/15, 2/15, 3/15, 4/15, and so on, with no end date). Suppose that the meetings on 1/15 and 2/15 went as planned, the 3/15 meeting was re-scheduled for 3/18, then the 4/15 and 5/15 meetings went as planned, but starting in June the meeting is permanently re-scheduled on the 20th (so it would be on 6/20, 7/20, 8/20, and so on).

My problem is with the June's meeting. On a Palm-based device, I could re-schedule the 6/15's instance for 6/20, and it would leave all prior instances alone (i.e., the meetings that happened on 1/15, 2/15, 3/18, 4/15, and 5/15 would stay there), while at the same time taking care of all future instances (6/15 would be moved to 6/20, 7/15—to 7/20, etc.). Outlook, be this stupid thing damned forever, in all its eternal wisdom re-schedules all meetings on the 20th (so the 1/15 meeting shows up on 1/20, 2/15 on 2/20, 3/18 on 3/20 (!!!!), 4/15 on 4/20, and so on). One way to avoid this, of course, is to enter the 5/15 end date for the 5/15 meeting and then to create a new thread starting on 6/20, but, considering that I have to do such a task at least once or twice a week, it is a great pain in the butt.

Is there a solution of any sort that would make Outlook and especially Pocket PC calendar behave just as Palm OS calendar did? At this point I no longer care if such a solution would be free or if it costs hundreds of dollars; I just want my calendar to work the way it should be working. The only option I don't have is going to Palm OS, but I'll consider anything else. Any pointers on this one?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Prevent Apple Software Update ever starting in Windows XP

Hi,

I usually prevent unwanted processes (dozens of update apps, notifiers, etc) from running at startup by using msconfig and services.msc. My problem is that I can't find the process name for "Apple Software Update" (google is useless due to the generic terms, even with various combinations of quotes) and can't really find and disable it in the two tools I mentioned above. It is very annoying to have the window pop up while I am in the middle of doing something else (breaking one of apples own gui guidelines), and I am not interested in updating iTunes just for a new point version.

Oh yeah, one last thing I should mention is that the shortcut properties for the update has a blank target, so they're probably using a deep windows api to do it all or something. Thanks for any help, Krackpipe (talk) 17:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes one thing is left running after msconfig and services. I go crazy and go on a deleting spree only to find that it was in the "startup" folder the whole time. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 17:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You could always go to the app itself and alter your preferences. The program can most likely be found on your start menu: START > All Programs, or you can simply search for the terms "Apple Software Update" on your computer. Once you have the program pulled up, go to the "Edit" menu, go to your "Preferences", and select the update option "Never". Hopefully that should work for you. :) Let us know it if doesn't. --JamieS93 19:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Try Autoruns or just uninstalling that piece of junk :D\=< (talk) 19:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That's the thing about apples, they tend to rot very easily in certain environments. If you want to keep Apple applications, keep them in a Mac environment. Also, I hate iTunes, and I usually take music from my friend's iPods using just Explorer. Turns out that all iTunes does is rename all music to a 4 letter file name and stick it in random hidden folders. A $70 mp3 player I bought just copies them over with the original filename and it works fine - with no bloated software, might I add. What exactly is Apple's agenda? 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Um, the agenda is obvious, it's an attempt at simple DRM, the idea being that iPods won't be major vectors for sharing mp3s. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

206.252.74.48, it sure takes balls to act so indignant while admitting to stealing music. —Nricardo (talk) 19:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It sure takes balls to bleat your way into conformity with the RIAA's biased terminology. I bet you saw that MPAA video putting "stealing" movies next to stealing a car. And liked it. :D\=< (talk) 04:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, there are always these smaller programs like Juice (software) for podcast downloading, VLC media player or Winamp(proprietary) for playing music and so on ... if you don't like iTunes.

However, I am pretty sure that iTunes does allow you to disable automatic updates. I would try doing what Jamie suggested above. Kushal 22:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Edit->Preferences..., the "General" pane, uncheck "Check for updates automatically".

Atlant (talk) 13:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

my.yahoo script mystery

Starting a few months ago, trying to close my my.yahoo page or leave it via a link causes a box to come up "A script on thsi page is causing Explorer to run slowly. if it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?" with yes and no buttons. of course, it closes promptly whether i hit yes or no. anybody know what the heck this is? tia.Gzuckier (talk) 20:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

PowerPoint

Is there a way to change an Excel Chart in PowerPoint while it is in View Show? 68.193.147.179 (talk) 22:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it. View Show is not the place to be changing things! If you want to have it transition from one chart to another, just put a different chart on each page of the slide (page 1, value = 3, page 2, value = 4, whatever). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

FLV joiner

Hey I'm looking for a freeware product which will join flv, I've searched the internet but all I could find were demos. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.232.121.164 (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You'll probably have an easier time converting the FLVs into other formats (with something like ffmpeg) and then joining those. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Mozilla and download manager

Hey all, anybody who uses mozilla firefox would notice that when u want to download a file, the browser takes charge of it. Is there a way I could change that option because sometimes I'd like to download a file using download manager instead(right click on the download button doesn't help). Thx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.232.121.164 (talk) 22:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Try FlashGot. It's what I use with Firefox and Internet Download Manager. —Wayward ^Talk 03:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

If its a direct link to what you want, right click and select "Copy link location". Then open your download manager and past the link into it. Think outside the box 13:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikilinks.js

Hi! I am a french user on Wikipedia FR. For the canals IRC Wikipedia-Fr and Vandalism-fr-wp on ChatZila, I looking for apply the script Wikilinks.js on the french irc for user. I write: [[test]] on Irc and I open the link and I am on test. The goal is the page fr:test. How did I modify the script? Sorry for bad english.--207.134.151.96 (talk) 22:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean Wikipedia:Scripts/Wikilinks? I've written a very quick French version at User:x42bn6/Sandbox which is probably not complete - I've replaced the links to enwiki to frwiki and replaced Template by Modèle but it's not fully translated, but see if that helps. x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It is bizzare, I changed the first line that you have changed, but the revised version did not appear. I closed IRC and it worked:) I had the answer already made:) Thanks + + --207.134.151.96 (talk) 22:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

February 22

Odd DNS-related (maybe?) Internet problem

I'm on a university wireless network, and lately I've been having an odd problem. I'll be using the Internet normally, then suddenly I'll lose the connection - but my computer will still think I'm connected to the Internet through the network. I still can't visit or even ping any sites though, or use instant messengers, etc. Even stranger, sometimes I get a similar problem, but I will still be able to visit anything on the domain I was visiting at the time the Internet went down, and I can stay on instant messenger, but I can't visit any other site. Flushing the DNS cache does not fix this. Neither of these problems can be fixed by any method I have figured out (disabling and enabling the wireless card, disconnecting and reconnecting from the network, etc.), except by restarting my computer, and this happens frequently enough that having to do that every time is a major annoyance. Any ideas? -Elmer Clark (talk) 00:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

When this happens, can you access web resources by IP? F'rinstance, tracert www.google.com gives me the IP 74.125.47.147. Then, if you have IP connectivity but for some reason don't have DNS services, you can simply type that IP into a browser window. If you get Google, that's it. You can still pass packets back & forth, but don't get DNS services. -SandyJax (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I also had this problem at my university. Running a DNS server on my computer fixed most of these issues (I used TreeWalk for XP; BIND is available for the Unices, I do believe) Washii (talk) 05:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I confirmed that it is indeed a DNS problem - I could access Google via IP while the problem was occurring. I've tried using OpenDNS instead of the default DNS servers here, hopefully that will do the trick. If not, I'll try TreeWalk. Thanks a lot for both answers. -Elmer Clark (talk) 07:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows Live Messenger on USB?

Hello,

Is there any way that I can run Windows Live Messenger off a USB. I've tried freeware like Pidgin, and Miranda IM, but I want Windows Live. How can I do this?

Perfect Proposal ^{Speak Out!} 01:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that is possible unless there is a U3 smart drive version of Windows Live Messenger, which I don't think there is. Kushal 05:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC) Since this is a Microsoft product it hooks into the registry a whole bunch, so it probably isn't possibleTheGreatZorko (talk) 13:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hydra on ubuntu PPC

I am trying to build Hydra on my PPC Ubuntu box. This is the error:

hydra-ssh2.c: In function ‘start_ssh2’:
hydra-ssh2.c:34: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘options_new’
hydra-ssh2.c:34: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
hydra-ssh2.c:44: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘options_set_wanted_method’
hydra-ssh2.c:44: error: ‘KEX_COMP_C_S’ undeclared (first use in this function)
hydra-ssh2.c:44: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
hydra-ssh2.c:44: error: for each function it appears in.)
hydra-ssh2.c:45: error: ‘KEX_COMP_S_C’ undeclared (first use in this function)
hydra-ssh2.c:46: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘options_set_port’
hydra-ssh2.c:47: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘options_set_host’
hydra-ssh2.c:48: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘options_set_username’
hydra-ssh2.c:50: warning: passing argument 1 of ‘ssh_connect’ from incompatible pointer type
hydra-ssh2.c:50: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
hydra-ssh2.c:82: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘ssh_error_code’
make: *** [hydra-ssh2.o] Error 1
  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.170.32 (talk) 04:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC) 

I added <br>s to make your post readable. It sounds like you're not including some required header file, or have the wrong version of one. Unfortunately, the only suggestion that occurs to me would be to search for the undeclared identifier in the source you obtained: "grep -r 'KEX_COMP_[CS]_[SC]' .". Does that turn up anything? --Tardis (talk) 18:30, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Reformatted. --Kjoonlee 09:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I ran the grep command menioned above, I get this:

./hydra-ssh2.c: options_set_wanted_method(ssh_opt,KEX_COMP_C_S,"none");
./hydra-ssh2.c: options_set_wanted_method(ssh_opt,KEX_COMP_S_C,"none");
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.170.32 (talk) 16:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

KEX_COMP_S_C is defined in the libssh documentation here, but it doesn't appear in the libssh2 headers on my ubuntu machine or (as far as I can tell) in the libssh2 documentation here. I can't find a list of dependencies for Hydra, but I'd guess that (being a bit old) it depends on version 1 of libssh, and you have libssh2 installed (that's what's in the Ubuntu repositories) [Note that that "ssh2" in the filename probably refers to the version of the ssh protocol, not the library]. So I'd guess that you don't have v1 of libssh installed (either you have no libssh or you have libssh-2-dev). In most current programs the autoconf script should have noticed that you don't have the requisite headers in place, but Hydra's build may not. You could try to manually install libssh (v1) from somewhere (and make sure its location is on the include and lib paths). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Quicktime in the site www.nveil.com

I need to get feedback on the video quality and usage issues in a site I designed with quicktime. The site is www.nveil.com The videos are in the signage and video art pages. I used 386KB/sec encoding on Sorenson. How do you like/ dislike the experience? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.110.79 (talk) 04:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It was pretty good with a wired broadband Internet connection. Great job! Kushal 16:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

PDFs

Hi

I am trying to check whether a PDF is accessibleor not the PDF was saved as my own from another source but when i try to make it accessible it comes up with This direct object already has a container what does this mean/

thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gmcgregor (talk • contribs) 10:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you using Adobe Acrobat Professional? Which version? Kushal 16:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

auto variables(local variable)

what is the actual part of any program when local variable get memory allocation? 1. at time of declare or 2. at the time of use in program?

124.30.211.128 (talk) 13:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)sankalp

Relocation may help. It depends on the language, I believe. x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

If you really mean "automatic variables" in the way that the C language means them, automatics are usually allocated on the processor's stack. So the storage for them comes into existence as the containing subroutine is called and goes out of existence when the containing subroutine returns.

Atlant (talk) 13:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP - Password

A friend got an old PC from a wife of a friend who passed away. Now he has the PC but can't log in, as it requires a password. He also has no back-up disks or any windows disks, What is the best thing to do? Is there a way that a new account can be made at the login screen? --ChokinBako (talk) 13:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

If see the Welcome screen pop-up, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to get the alternate log-in dialog. Enter "Administrator" in the user field and nothing in the password field and see if you can log in. Many people don't set an admin password (however, I think it prompts you to do so when you install Windows, but it is worth a shot anyway. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 13:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

You could try this site, which seems to provide a tool to recover lost Windows XP passwords. Also have a look at this site, which provides a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid account on a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista system. Think outside the box 16:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to note that I've used the utility on this site (which is free) many times in the past with great success. Don't pay money for it—they're likely giving you the same software but making you pay for it. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Try Active Password Changer to just clear the password flag. It's on the Hiren's livecd, google it :D\=< (talk) 16:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that Hiren's boot CD is a massive copyright violation. There are free-software alternatives, like this one (already linked by Think outside the box). Another option is ophcrack, which actually reveals the current password instead of changing it. The commercial site linked by Think outside the box is probably running it on their server. Also, you didn't say how old the system is, but if it's running Windows 95/98/Me, you should be able to just click Cancel at the login dialog. -- BenRG (talk) 22:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Digital Camera TYPE

I've seen some people outdoors taking some pictures. They do this quite often. These People! This isn't a lot of info here, but out of all the cameras that I've seen, I like one. But I'm not sure the brand/type. Here's a brief description:

Small size. Maybe marketed for teens. I'm not sure what the front looks like. But the back, LCD fits the entire back end. It's like the back of the camera is an LCD.

Cheers, 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)there will be OIL!

It would be a 'compact' or 'ultra compact' camera, with, by the sounds of it a 3" plus screen (presumably no viewfinder either?). I think that makes it similar to the Fujifilm Finepix F11 (an excellent camera) but there is a site that lets you compare cameras so maybe that will help. Here's one set for 3i-inch screen ultra-compact (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp) and here's one of just compact ones http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp. You'd have to 'go into' the details to try find a back-shot of them. ny156uk (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Standby and Hibernate Modes

I understand standby mode puts the computer into a low electricity mode so I can swiftly startup again but what is going on? What does "hibernate" mean on the computer? How can I start it up again if it's already on? I have DSL so in standby or hibernate am I still connected to the internet? Am I vulnerable to viruses if my virus protection isn't getting enough power? I understand I might want to put it into one of these modes if I'm only going to be gone for an hour or so but what about overnight, a day, a week or a month? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each and why use one and not the other? No one else has access to my computer and I pay a flat rate per month, not by time used. If an update or scan is scheduled to run while it's in one of these modes will it "turn itself on"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.41.190 (talk) 20:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible that there's some variance in how manufacturers use these terms, but typically "hibernate" means "dump a copy of memory to disk, and turn off." This means when you start back up, instead of the OS booting and you starting all over, whatever you were doing is restored. All the stuff that was open before will still be open. In either standby or hibernate, the computer isn't really running- consider it to be "asleep", or perhaps "in a coma" for hibernate mode. Friday (talk) 20:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

First of all, you could turn off your antivirus indefinitely and you'll be fine. Also, hibernating is identical to shutdown except a dump of the memory is made and then restored on startup instead of following the normal boot sequence. There's probably other things going on too, like networking being disabled so it doesn't think it's still online when the memory is reimaged. I don't know exactly what's going on "standby".. I think it's just a low power mode where the CPU is just looping checking for the power button being hit, and all peripheral and output devices are shut down. Obviously in either of these states your computer's not "connected to the internet" in the sense that any daemons are running on the computer listening on ports. The cable's still connected, but the balls are inert. :D\=< (talk) 21:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

No, absolutely not! You should not turn off your antivirus. If you do that, your computer will soon become a zombie that spreads viruses, sends millions of spam e-mails or performs denial of service attacks.

Further, whether the computer is in stanby, hibernating or even fully turned off, it may still be awaken by network or modem if that option is enabled. - PauliKL (talk) 23:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

oh lord.... :D\=< (talk) 06:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The advantage of standby over hibernate is that it's faster to come back to life. The disadvantages are (1) it still draws some current, though a lot less than when turned on, and (2) you'll lose unsaved work in a power outage just as though it were turned on. A hibernating machine is actually powered off and you can unplug it completely. For anything more than overnight you should probably use hibernate. Often you can choose whether to have the computer wake up to perform a scheduled task. In the Windows task scheduler there's a checkbox you can check. -- BenRG (talk) 22:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Some, including Joel Spolsky, suggested that the sleep and hibernate functions can be integrated into one. The idea would be to dump the momory to the hard disk, (park the hard disk head), and set the computer on a low powered state for a predefined amount of time, and turn off the system.

They wanted this to happen in Windows Vista but I don't know if Windows Vista got the feature. Maybe in Service pack 2? Kushal 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that if you have a desktop, you might just turn off the monitor when you leave, and let the computer run as usual. That would still be doing something and if you have autoupdate enabled, the computer will update itself with the latest Tuesday patches. Kushal 14:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

That is definitely not a good idea. A computer consumes some 150W to 250W of power. It may well be over 50% of all the electric power consumption in your household if you keep it running all the time. You should always turn off the computer, to save the World. - PauliKL (talk) 23:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kushal, I'm the person who asked the question. After reading this I tried standby and hibernate modes with and without a program running. I also found the Windows task scheduler. After restarting I looked for the copy of memory which had been dumped on disc but didn't find it. It seems like it would take a lot of space on the disc so it should delete it after you come back on. Then could it reuse that same space the next time you went into hibernate? Could you have the copy of memory put on a removable disc and bring it to another computer and start that one just as if it had been the first one? But when you tried to restart the first computer it would look for the removable disc to read from and not find it unless you put it back in. I was thinking of running full scans while sleeping but I'll first do that while keeping watch on it to see if it turns itself off again. Thank you very much for all this very interesting information. Now I have a new toy to play with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.118.98 (talk) 21:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hard disks are usually so much bigger than RAM (which is what must be written to it) that the lost space is insignificant. (However, one might consider it a serious security issue to have your RAM written to disk.) The space can certainly be reused for the next hibernation. You can't usefully transfer a memory image between computers -- even if they happen to have the same amount of RAM, the hardware is different and would disagree with the RAM image. (Even two "identical" computers will have different MAC addresses, hard disk serial numbers, etc.) If you did hibernate to a removed disk, the first computer would have no way of knowing that there was supposed to be a disk, and would probably start up in the normal fashion. (Note that booting in the normal fashion prevents ever using a memory image; the act of booting (in almost all cases) effectively makes the computer a different computer that can't share it. So you have to use the memory image the very next time you use the computer.) --Tardis (talk) 02:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The "memory image" loading is handled by Windows, not any BIOS magic. When I restore from hibernation, it boots just like normal with the GRUB prompt.. I can even boot into xubuntu for days then next time I need windows --oh what a pleasant surprise I have a fast boot cause I hibernated the last time I shut down. :D\=< (talk) 10:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, if your various OSes mount any of the same filesystems (read/write) then the cached information maintained by one will be invalided by the other(s). I left that detail out for the benefit of the OP, who probably does not use multiple operating systems or (if so) know off-hand which filesystems which OS mounts read/write automatically. --Tardis (talk) 19:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

HOLD ON - THIS IS WEIRD Up above BenRG said in shutdown the CPU is just looping waiting for the power button to be hit, all input and output devices are shut down. Well all I have to do is walk near my computer in standby and it starts up again! I don't need to touch anything! The floor is carpeted and very solid underneath and the desk is quite solid, so I don't think the modem is being shaken, and I don't have a microphone so I don't think it's picking up any sounds. HOW DOES IT KNOW I'M APPROACHING? Also, I set it up to run a virus scan during the time it was in standby mode and to turn itself on for this. I watched it and nothing seemed to be happening, no sounds, no lights etc. so I turned my desktop on and clicked on the virus program and it said that the scan was running and had been running for ten minutes. It hadn't come on the screen when I first turned it on.74.233.118.98 (talk) 19:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible that your computer has become sentient. Buy a webcam, plug it in, and talk to your friend in the next room about how you hate your computer and you're going to throw it out. Then see if it gives you any problems. :D\=< (talk) 01:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That was a riot, I laughed till I cried! Now I'll tell my computer I love it and it's a good, sweet angel.

(Added by mysterious user: Try placing the computer case (your desk even) on an antistatic mat. Stray electrical charges (such as your walking across the floor approaching the pc) can play havoc. Fact: Your body needs to build up thousands of volts before you even sense static electricity. I understand a single spark can carry about 25,000 volts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.118.98 (talk) 07:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 23

iMac HD upgrades

According to OWC.com, they have internal hard drive upgrades for the iMac. I know the iMac isn't exactly the most upgradeable Mac, but are they talking about the new Aluminum iMac? Thats what I am using right now, and i was just wondering. --Randoman412 (talk) 01:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered the option of an external hard disk drive? Kushal 14:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I know about external drives, but the way OWC had it worded, it sounded as if you can upgrade your iMac HDD. That's what i wanted to know. --Randoman412 (talk) 19:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible, but it's rather involved. Check out this illustrated guide [1] --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Malfunctioning recycle bin

I'm on a Dell Latitude D620 with Windows XP, just in case this helps. Anyway, I have an item in my recycle bin that isn't being deleted, isn't able to be restored, and it's not allowing other files to be deleted. What can I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.16.89.112 (talk) 04:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are an administrator on your system, try going to C:/recycled in the run command (Start > Run). Do you see the files there? Can you work with these files? Kushal 14:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Problem in Hibernating my PC

I use Windows XP Pro with 2GB RAM and 80GB HDD.My motherboard is INTEL 945. I enabled the hibernation option in power properties. After that, from C drive(my OS drive) windows took 2GB for some file hiber.sys I guess. Already there is a 2.5GB file called pagefile.sys.Apart from that I maintained 1.2GB free space in C drive.After restarting, next time after completing my work I tried to hibernate, it first started to initialize hibernating by displaying the screen in it's blue background colour that the "Windows is hibernating"...but within a couple of seconds screen goes black and desktop gets reloaded with a warning\error msg at the hiding icons taskbar position stating "Insufficient system resources exit to complete the API"..The lan gets reconnected but all my programs remain the same...It doesn't affect memory. I have eveything sufficient!, this error only appears when I hibernate. But not 100% times. Some times I've had hibernation performed without any such problems. What could be the cause of it...Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.63.36 (talk) 04:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hibernating depends on writing the entire contents of the RAM onto a storage media, your hard disk. The operating system needs to make sure that your computer has enough hard disk space so that it does not fail on you when you decide to hibernate.

I had a Windows XP Pro SP2 desktop and hibernation did not always work perfectly for me either. However, even when my system had only 128 MB RAM, I never got the "Insufficient system resources exit to complete the API" error. Kushal 14:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have service pack 2 (SP2) installed? According to Microsoft support, as linked at [2], this seems to be a fixed bug.

I believe you can go to the Microsoft support website and install the update in the page, if you do not already have Service Pack 2. If you already have Service pack, please let us know. We would love to help you further. Kushal 14:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks "Kushal",I couldn't make it earlier.I have SP2 installed already....While googling with the error message I could see many have got such problems but no proper solutions have been delivered other than FORMATTING OS DRIVE. I don't understand why fellas suggest to format to clear a solution. This is not a solution after all.But for most of the guys who've got this error had the trouble of multiple or continous restart of windows ever...but I haven't come across such problems yet.

Hi AllThis is Nitin(ask.nitin@yahoo.com), Please try the patch by microsoft KB909095, Download it, Install it and restart the computer. Iam sure it will resolve the issue.Will wait for your response.:-( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.49.139 (talk) 09:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Boot ISO from HDD

Instead of burning to a CD, is there a way to boot from an ISO image (linux live CD for example) stored on a hard disk? What kind of boot loader could do this? xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are ways to "burn" CDs into the hard disk and access them using the software. I am not sure if you can boot from the image, though. Kushal 14:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been able to copy the contents of a image to HDD, but I'm looking for some sort of CD drive emulator (maybe to run in DOS?) that boots and runs any ISO image you've got on your drive. I've have seen this done with floppy images. xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

VMware Workstation, but it costs money. Microsoft's Virtual PC sucks, but it's free of cost. :D\=< (talk) 15:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok ok, my fault, I should have been more clear. I'm not looking to view files in an ISO image from inside the operating system, I'm looking to "boot" them. For example, I have a blank hard drive and put one ISO file (Slax Linux live CD or Windows 95 install disk, etc) on it. I turn on the computer, and that ISO image is mounted from the HDD and run as an actual CD-ROM would be have been, enabling it to boot up and run whatever is on the virtual disk. xxx User:Hyper Girl 15:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

No.. you'd have to extract the files from the ISO with WinRAR or something, then put them on the hard drive and write a boot loader to the hard drive to load up the files. You have to mess with jumpers or BIOS settings if you're using a real ATA/SCSI hard drive; USB drives/flash sticks are easier but different. The boot process from a mass storage device is different than from a bootable CD, so you can't just copy the files over.. certain files have to be written to the boot sector, which requires a special tool- it can't be done from within Windows. You can use dd (Unix) to write to the boot sector if you have linux (or cygwin?), but in any case it's not just a simple procedure, it's different for what you're specifically trying to do. isolinux, which many linux livecds are based off of, IIRC has readmes for putting it on a flash drive.. but that would be completely different from putting a DOS floppy on a usb mass storage device, in which case you might be looking for memdisk. :D\=< (talk) 16:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

oooh, I like the memdisk link. But I'm still not sure I'm explaining myself properly. I know you can extract all the files from an ISO and copy them to a HDD or flash drive, and that they can be booted if you write something to the MBR. But is it possible to just load the ISO as a CD-ROM, keeping it as an ISO file on your drive? Can the BIOS or some sort of boot loader dect an ISO file is on a drive and give you the option to use it as a CD? The data calls would be emulated by perhaps a DOS or linux command line file. Ok, maybe I'm asking for the impossible. Thanks anyway everyone for helping my in my insane computer experiments! xxx User:Hyper Girl 16:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I've ever heard to that is the "bootfrom" cheatcode at the Knoppix boot prompt. AFAIK it only works with booting the knoppix kernel, and you can only boot from bootable iso files. See this newsgroup posting :D\=< (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox search suggestions?

When I type into the search box in Firefox, it builds a little drop-down menu of search suggestions. Anybody know where those come from (I'm guessing google), and via what protocol? —Steve Summit (talk) 18:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It's called Google Suggest. I'm assuming, since it works behind my proxy, that the protocol is HTTP. 78.86.140.185 (talk) 18:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha. A bit of tcpdump action reveals that it involves a URL like http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?qu=whatever.

Anybody know how to turn it off? (Firefox 2.0.0.11, if it matters.) I'm asking more out of curiosity than because the feature bothers me, but I don't really use it, and I'm surprised not to see any reference to it in the regular Preferences dialogs. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Right click on the text (where you type in your search query) and uncheck "Show suggestions" Dlong (talk) 20:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha again! Thanks. (Us old Mac users always forget about right-click...) —Steve Summit (talk) 21:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Weatherbox

Hi - is there any software that will help me draw a weatherbox or temperature chart please? --79.68.228.72 (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)--Seahamlass 18:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Game Name

I remember playing this game when i took computer classes a while ago. It involved motorcycles/cars drawing colored walls behind them trying to make them collide with another motorcycles/cars. What was it called?--Randoman412 (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Tron (the light-cycles subgame) or one of its clones. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Sounds like Light Cycles, as introduced/popularized by Tron. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

If the game was in 3d then try GLTron or Armagetron Advanced. APL (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Apple remote in Powerpoint presentation in MacBook

Hi, I have Office 2004 for Mac on my Macbook. Could anyone help me on how to use the Apple Remote to advance between slides? Is it even possible? Kushal 19:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

First hit via google using the words "apple remote powerpoint": MacWorld article. —Noah 22:07, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The MacWorld article suggests purchasing a utility; you don't need to do that, there are free ones out there. I have used iRed Lite to great effect—basically you run iRed Lite and tell it you are using Powerpoint (it's one of its options). You can also customize extensively if you are interested (I made it so that pushing one of the buttons made everything go black, for example). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Three-part question: Building a PC, Programming, and Hardware website

1. What is the best book on how to build a PC? I have a good knowledge of PC parts and stuff but I've never taken one apart or built one.

2. What language are common applications programmed in? And if Firefox is open-source, does that mean if you know whatever language it's written in, you can change any part of it, or can you only make add-ons?

3. What's a good website for looking at and buying computer parts?

4. Why is there no airline called Cartesian Planes? --Charmpiano (talk) 22:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

1. I'm not sure you need one. Are you asking about how to choose components or how to physically assemble it? The latter is much more straightforward than one might think, and there is also plenty of information online if there is any specific step you are having trouble with. For the former, this provides a good overview.
2. C or C++ is the standard among "hard-core" programmers. There are of course many other popular languages, depending of the requirements. Yes, if a program is open-source then you can download its source code, make whatever changes you want, recompile it and use it.
3. Newegg is fairly popular if you live in the US.
4. Because the Earth is round.

-- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 23:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

1. I'm not sure about a good book for that, but if you're already familiar with the components, just look inside another PC and you'll get a good idea of how it goes together.
2. C++ is good, as mentioned above, but don't forget Java and C#.
3. Don't forget www.tigerdirect.com
4. That just wouldn't be any fun. Useight (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Never, ever buy from tiger direct. Their customer service borders on actionable fraud. Even if you've never had a problem-- Newegg is legendary for how it cares for its customers, please support newegg and bury tigerdirect. :D\=< (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never had a problem with TigerDirect. I've even returned a $330 video card no questions asked. Useight (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

If everyone was paranoid and obsessively checked with consumer watchdog groups before exercising spending power, the world would be a far better place. Read their reviews, or just search google for "tigerdirect returns" and see what percent of the results are positive. Anyway heres the resellerratings link, have fun. http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1983-p1-s2-d1.html#reviews :D\=< (talk) 01:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

4. Imagine that you are off to Hawaii for summer (after the finals in May). How would you feel to have a "pop quiz" in College Geometry all over again on the flight? How would you like your flight attendants if they started behaving like your teaching assistants? lol Kushal 04:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

February 24

Linksys Wireless-G Router

I've recently inherited a router, but the previous owner does not know the username and password for it, is there any default admin password, or can i reset the password? ThanksVagery (talk) 15:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there a reset button on the back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.34.177 (talk) 19:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

AHA! It took a bit of digging, but I knew I've seen this before. It should be blank for username, and password being "admin". Taken from here [3] Hpfreak26 (talk) 22:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Amarok requirements

What are the hardware requirements for the current stable Amarok? Would my 1.1GHz P3 with 512MB RAM and onboard sound and video meet them? NeonMerlin 03:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Amarok isn't that demanding. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Then what's bogging my laptop down? It probably isn't Kubuntu -- it only requires 256 MB RAM -- and I don't run that many tabs in Firefox or keep OpenOffice.org open when I'm not using it. NeonMerlin 03:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

run top and find out --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 03:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Recognizing the uniquely-decodable property of a set of strings

I want is a reasonably efficient algorithm that determines, for a finite set S of strings, whether S is uniquely decodable. Or I want a description of a property that characterizes unique decodability. Or I want a reference to the literature where I can find such a thing. Details follow.

Suppose you're given a finite set S of strings over some alphabet Σ. Let's say that S has the "uniquely decodable" property if, for every string s over Σ, there is at most one representation of s as a concatenation of elements of S.

For example, {a, ab} is uniquely decodable: any string, say aaababaabab, can be decomposed into a concatenation of as and abs in at most one way, a a ab ab a ab ab in this case. But {ab, b, abba} is not uniquely decodable, since abbab can be decomposed as either ab b ab or as abba b.

A number of sufficient conditions for unique decodability are known. For example, if S is a prefix code (that is, no element of S is a prefix of another element of S) then S is uniquely decodable. But this condition is not necessary, since {a, ab} is uniquely decodable but is not a prefix code.

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer. -- Dominus (talk) 03:47, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of anything more efficient than just trying every offset and seeing if you have more than one solution.. straightforward to code but it's going to grind :D\=< (talk) 05:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Trying every offset in what? -- Dominus (talk) 05:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

How about you construct a directed graph as follows. Nodes are of the form $((s,i),(t,j))$ where $s$ and $t$ are words in $S$, the $i$'th letter of $s$ matches the $j$'th letter of $t$ and $(s,i)\neq (t,j)$. Additionally, we need a distinct start node $n_{0}$. From $((s,i),(t,j))$ there is a directed arc to

• $((s,i+1),(t,j+1))$ if $i$<$|s|$ and $j$<$|t|$,
• $((u,1),(t,j+1))$ for all $u\in S$ if $i=|s|$ and $j$<$|t|$,
• $((s,i+1),(u,1))$ for all $u\in S$ if $i$<$|s|$ and $j=|t|$, and
• $n_{0}$ if $i=|s|$ and $j=|t|$.

From $n_{0}$ there is a directed arc to all nodes of the form $((s,1),(t,1))$ with $s,t\in S$.

As far as I can see, there is a one-to-one many-to-one correspondence between non-empty paths from $n_{0}$ back to $n_{0}$ in this graph, and strings over $\Sigma$ with at least two distinct decodings. The proof is left as an exercise for the reader... 84.239.133.86 (talk) 13:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Correction: strings with more than two decodings correspond to more than two paths in the graph. 84.239.133.86 (talk) 14:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

This is by no means certain, but the problem smacks of the Post correspondence problem to me. I imagine that your problem is not undecidable, but it may still be hard. --Tardis (talk) 15:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I had been thinking the same thing, but I couldn't think of a reduction. Thanks. -- Dominus (talk) 17:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The above graph construction does not easily extend for the Post correspondence problem, because of the requirement that corresponding words from the two sets be chosen in the same order. It seems that adding more state information to the nodes leads either to an infinite graph, or (using the notation in the Post correspondence problem article) you need to bound by a constant the difference between the lengths of $u_{i_{1}}\cdots u_{i_{j}}$ and $v_{i_{1}}\cdots v_{i_{j}}$ for $j=1,\dots ,k$. Interestingly, in terms of the reduction from a Turing machine shown in the article, the latter requirement means that the length of the tape is bounded by a constant, which of course makes the halting problem decidable.

Since the above graph contains less than $N^{2}+1$ nodes where $N=\sum _{s\in S}|s|$, and less than $N|S|$ arcs, depth-first search provides a polynomial-time algorithm for the problem. 84.239.133.86 (talk) 21:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume that you already have a working algorhytm {{eg for each term search 'A' search for a match in each of the other terms, then all the combinations (in pairs) of the other terms, PLUS if the pairs string length is less than 'A' then this pair must be added to the list of combinations (and find the combinations)... effectively I'd probably try to generate a list of cobinations that exceed the string 'A' length, then search - not impossible for simple cases (hope I haven't missed something eg got it wrong)..(NOTE I missed a bit - when found a match need to search for constructs that make the remainder eg for string 'de' in constructed string 'abddeghh' I find 'de' but then get 'xxxabd' and 'ghhxxx' - apart from testing for 'abd' if unsuccessful I still need to test for 'xabd' where 'x' is any of the available characters etc Whether or not that can be simplified is another thing.. }} 83.100.158.211 (talk) 17:56, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

One possibility would be to search for the shorter strings first - and hope it terminates (ie not unique) early, in the real world I imagine that would be useless to you.

If you could specify the type of strings you would expect that might help fine tune it.. in the general case though all I can recommend as now would be to sort your strings in lengthwise order and do the shortest first because 'ae' is more likely to match than 'aeiou' in random data...

If the data is not totally random there may be more hope..

Most speed ups would come from finding non-unique sets - if the sets you were checking were all unique (for whatever reason) I would start scratching for specks of hope for speed up.83.100.158.211 (talk) 18:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC) - method not complete or workable sorry - left in case reading it helps

(BY the way if not satisfied here try the maths desk - it's definately a maths problem - including the simplification of the task - so try there if you want)83.100.158.211 (talk) 18:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

OK ignoring stuff I wrote above - I think I have a method based on searching through all combinations of strings that are at least as long as the string A (and going through all strings A) - looking for matches at the beggining of the list and producing a table of 'radicles' eg 'ab' in 'abcdef' produces the radical 'cdef'. I then repeat this process through the radicals using the set of strings (producing more radicals if matches occur) (I also will have to expand the radicals if they are shorter than the strings.

Eventually I will have put all strings through radical number 1, and mark it as finished, then repeat through the rest of the radicals, ignoring any result that produces a duplicate radical. Eventually I reduce a radical to null eg "" or end up marking all the radicals finished..

This might be the same as the method another poster describe above - didn't understand the code used..83.100.158.211 (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have the answer. The following reasonably simple and efficient algorithm will decide whether a specified set of words is uniquely decodable, or produce a witness pair that it is not:

       sub ud_pair {
         # Code words
         my @c = @_;
       
         # $h{$x} = [$y, $z]  means that $x$y eq $z
         my %h;
       
         # Queue
         my @q;
       
         for my $c1 (@c) {
           for my $c2 (@c) {
             next if $c1 eq $c2;
             if (is_prefix_of($c1, $c2)) {
               my $x = subtract($c1, $c2);
               $h{$x} = [[$c1], [$c2]];
               push @q, $x;
             }
           }
         }
       
         while (@q) {
           my $x = shift @q;
           return unless defined $x;
       
           for my $c (@c) {
             my ($a, $b) = @{$h{$x}};
             die unless defined $b;      # Can't happen
             # $a$x eq $b
       
             my $y;
             if (is_prefix_of($c, $x)) {
               $y = subtract($c, $x);
               next if exists $h{$y};  # already tried this
               $h{$y} = [[@$a, $c], $b];
               push @q, $y;
             } elsif (is_prefix_of($x, $c)) {
              $y = subtract($x, $c);
               next if exists $h{$y};  # already tried this
               $h{$y} = [$b, [@$a, $c]];
               push @q, $y;
             }
       
             return @{$h{""}} if defined($y) && $y eq "";
           }
         }
         return;                       # failure
       }

       sub is_prefix_of {
         index($_[1], $_[0]) == 0;
       }
       
       sub subtract {
         substr($_[1], length($_[0]));
       }

Thanks to everyone who offered assistance with this. -- Dominus (talk) 08:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it up .. I didn't spot I could search both ways and would have had to have an extra bit of code.. Most enlightening keep up the good work.87.102.42.162 (talk) 15:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox searching Wikipedia

I have found that using the "find" option in Firefox very often fails to find text that is definitely present on the page. Are others having this problem, is it known to the Firefox developers, and will it be resolved? JFW | T@lk 09:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, you're typing it wrong.. find definitely works :D\=< (talk) 09:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

<sarcasm>Right, because FireFox is perfect, and if it behaves unexpectedly then it's obviously the user's fault.</sarcasm>

I am not familiar with this problem. Can you give an example where it happens? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you searching by / or by ctrl-f? Can you run ctrl-f and check if you have ☑ Match case selected? --Kjoonlee 10:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with froth, this is not a bug in firefox. Either you have case enabled (that's happened to me a couple of times), or you are using ' to search, which only finds links. As Kjoonlee said, use Ctrl+F and make sure the checkbox isn't clicked in. If it still can't find it, the only other thing I can think of is that either the text is in an image (that is, not really text at all), or inside a flash-application or a Java-applet or something. If it is on the page itself, Find will find it. 83.250.202.130 (talk) 23:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You are being completely ridiculous. Of course, it is very likely that the problem is one of those mentioned, but declaring "Firefox is flawless" without further information from the OP is silly. Is it that unthinkable that there is some bug in Firefox that prevents find from working properly in some special circumstances? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

This unfound text is not in side panels or something... I ignored the possibility that you are searching for text in a bitmap image??? Otherwise please give an example eg html page and text that fails to be found.87.102.42.162 (talk) 15:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Arabic transliteration font

File:Arabic.JPG Hi, hopefully you can help! This is a screenshot of a bit of the Ḏāl article. As you can see, I have all the proper Arabic fonts, but something has gone wrong with the font for the transliterated letters with diacritics. They should be just normal-looking letters with a dot under them (s, h, d, t), but somewhere along the line I must have downloaded some other font that superseded the correct one. So, does anyone know what this font might be, so I can get rid of it? I hope that is enough info to work with. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a wrong font is selected in Internet Options => Fonts. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 18:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

No, I've played around with that already. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:50, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Operating systems?

I'd like something very minimal that just boots quickly and can run a browser. It would also need to be able to start (and install without destroying anything with) Windows XP later on when someone has to do something heavier. What to get? --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You might try one of the "desktop" type Linux distributions listed at Mini Linux; perhaps the easiest way is to install it onto a USB2 flash drive and configure your PC's BIOS to boot to that (if it's present) or to the normal internal hard drive it if isn't. This should boot more quickly that a Live CD, but not as quickly as if you partitioned your hard drive and installed the distribution there (something that those new to Linux sometimes find challenging). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

QNX is a lightweight microcernel based Unix-like operating system. There was even a bootable floppy that contains QNX operating system, web browser, web server, some demos and utilities all in a single floppy disk. -- PauliKL (talk) 23:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Splashtop is a small Linux distribution that lives in your BIOS and is instant-on (though some people's definition of "instant" is questionable; the article says 5 seconds). It is read-only and does not affect your normal heavyweight OS. --Sean 15:56, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Vista explorer issues

Hi. I just installed a fresh copy of Vista Home Premium on a self-made machine I had lying around. It was working fine the first few restarts, but now it seems that when I open an Explorer window or anger it in some way, Explorer crashes. That is to say, the task bar disappears, my desktop goes blank, and all Explorer windows close. The sidebar and any running applications remain alright. No event is logged in the Reliability Monitor, and Explorer can be restarted through a run dialog from Task Manager. Any advice? Also, this time I restarted, I got an error message saying: "Error in C:\Users\[Me]\AppData\Local\Temp\wtskarfk.dll Missing entry:run". I Googled that dll to no avail, and I can't use Explorer to find what the hell it is. Might I have possibly opened something I shouldn't have? Did I install something wrong? (Please, no "Linux is problem free" or "get a Mac" posts)... Thanks. -76.118.157.170 (talk) 18:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sound like a virus (due to the fact it has an unintelligible name and it's located in Temp). Admiral Norton ^(talk) 18:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You may have become infected with Spyware; some types hook into the system and you may have one that has done so unsuccessfully, making Explorer crash when the extension they've installed tries to work. First you should run a complete scan with an anti-virus program, as Admiral Norton's hunch is a good one. After that try a good antispyware program (like Spybot). If those don't work then use System Restore to roll your OS back to a version immediately post install (and then run MSupdate to download all the patches released since then). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply, guys. I thought it might be spyware, but Defender didn't pick anything up. I then swept it with Symantec's online scanner (Norton, you sure you don't have a vested interest in this? :-P), but it's taking forever and hasn't found anything so far. From my experience, System Restore does absolutely nothing in the event of a virus, but I may have to do that eventually. Using command prompt to CD to my temp folder, I can see that the file was created at 10:13 this morning, as was another file, slftycqn.dll. When I try to delete either of those (running cmd as Administrator), I get an access denied message. Advice? -76.118.157.170 (talk) 19:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC) UPDATE: Symantec scan didn't find anything. Though another suspect file, jkhff.dll, seems to be involved with Trojan.Vundo and calls itself Winlogon Notify. Is this a real process, or can it be killed? -76.118.157.170 (talk) 19:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh boy, I had malicious stuff that attached itself to winlogon in Windows XP pro which meant that I could not even logon to the computer in any way except in safe mode.

If it is a freshly installed computer, I would suggest you go ahead and format the hard disk and start all over again, making sure that the install media itself is not compromised in any way. Kushal 22:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming what I heard is correct and it takes less than half an hour to install Windows Vista as opposed to about two hours that it would take to install Windows XP. Kushal 22:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, after years of being on a Windows machine, I am on a mac now. ... and trust me, I am not telling anyone to "Get a mac". But if you have not done a lot of housekeeping already, I would strongly suggest a clean reinstall of Windows. Moreover, if you want Linux later, you can add Ubuntu or SuSE or Fedora core on top of Windows but unless times have changed, you cannot do things the other way round. Just go ahead and get Windows Vista.One last comment,iIf you are just into everyday computing, I would suggest you to stick with FAT32, however. Kushal 23:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Why? Doesn't seem like great advice. FAT32 is relatively prone to corruption, and has size limitations. Journaled filesystems like NTFS, EXT3, and HFS Plus are great. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Most filesystems have size limitations.. FAT32's are just tiny :D\=< (talk) 14:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Unless NTFS write support in GNU/Linux has vastly improved in the last three years, the OP will have a hard time dual booting. That was my reason for suggesting FAT32. Kushal 16:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

It has. NTFS-3G and Captive NTFS are both safe. Or you could just get an EXT2 driver for windows and use that (they will still mount EXT3 volumes, just without journaling support). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That's great news! (Obviously, I have been living in archaic times. If I remember correctly, the last time I installed Linux on a computer and actually used it was SuSE Linux 8.2 A friend had told me to stay clear of NTFS and I just said "OK!" Kushal 17:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Linkedin

I have a little flag next to my current position on my linkedin profile. Does that mean someone flagged that position meaning they think it's incorrect or not true or something else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.230.145.66 (talk) 20:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume you have tried LinkedIn? Anyways, if you have not, it does not mention the flags. Could you tell us here what color the flag is? Kushal 17:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

iTunes problem

I am having a problem with my iTunes. With the last 2 cds I imported, the last track won't import. It just hangs trying to import. I've been waiting over ten minutes for a song to import when it should have taken 30 seconds. What can I do? MalwareSmarts (talk) 21:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

(I assume the CDs are new and not scratched.) The first thing I would do is just let iTunes do its thing for a while. If it got outrageously slow, I would a. try playing the last song from the disk in the computer and b. try to think if it is the cd player on the computer that is at fault. Unless I had problems with every CD, I would not think about the second option too hard, though. Kushal 23:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

• I've had this problem. The cd seems to spin, then slow, then spin, etc. I have to force the cd out and iTunes normally crashes. I use a Macbook Pro, so I get as many tracks as I can, then import the cd by dragging the file icons to the desktop, a data copy. Then open it up in iTunes and convert to MP3 that way. Radiofred (talk) 11:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux

Could someone explain linux to me, or direct me to a website that will explain it? For someone that doesn't know advanced programming stuff? I want to be able to do what I can do with Windows XP for example, just normal home usage, using the web, typing, watching videos, using photoshop, etc. Is this possible to do with Linux for free without being a hardcore programmer? If so, could you suggest what I should get(distribution or whatever)?--Charmpiano (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Those who like and use Linux a lot will quickly pipe up and say, "of course! It is easy! A child could use it, especially for the things you want to do with it!" Personally I have found otherwise; it's not any harder to use than XP when things work correctly, but when things go wrong, suddenly you're stuck with a Unix command prompt, a handful of cryptic acronyms, and precious little place to turn for help. All of the people I've known first-hand who used Linux (all of whom were what you might call "hardcore programmers") spent a huge amount of time just trying to get things running correctly, and that isn't pretty. If it were me, I'd stick with XP, as sad as that is to say. You can get most of the free programs that people use on Linux also on XP as well (e.g. The GIMP). If you know how to keep XP working fine, then you'll probably find it easier not to switch. I'm sure people will find this a heretical statement, but if you aren't ready to play around in bash (quick test: do you find this scary?) then you shouldn't get Linux, in my view. As has been said, Linux is free—if your time is worthless. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely. If everything works it will be easy, but that's a big if. It doesn't hurt to try - install it, if it works - great, if not - leave it until it matures a bit or you find yourself with more time to get it working. This can greatly depend on your hardware, you would want to avoid anything too new.

Note that the software that runs on Windows will not necessarily run on Linux. You have mentioned Photoshop - this particular software will not run easily on Linux, but Linux has software equivalent to it, as well as to any other commonly used software.

If you are in any way altruistic, this can be another argument in favor of switching. The more people use Linux, the more hardware and software developers keep Linux in mind, thus Linux will enjoy greater compatibility and be used by more. This positive feedback loop will help shatter Microsoft's current vendor lock-in to the benefit humanity.

Ubuntu is a popular distribution, focusing on user friendliness, with an active community that can offer assistance in the forums. Personally I have tried it, was unsatisfied, and returned to Windows; I intend to give version 8.04 a try in a few months. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 00:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I had used Unix casually (I had a Netcom shell account for most of a decade) so bash didn't terrify me; but after a few years of frustration I was relieved to go from Linux to MacOS X, which is Unix in a pretty Apple wrapper. (vim is still my primary editor.) The main annoyance with Linux for me was that, whenever I wanted to do anything beyond day-to-day Net use and some very simple programming, I had to look it up in three different books, without much confidence that I'd find it. The trouble is that it's made by hackers for themselves, rather than for customers. —Tamfang (talk) 02:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Not to argue with you, but that last is not necessarily trouble -- it's what I've always loved about Unix! —Steve Summit (talk) 03:45, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you don't know exactly what you're doing, never touch linux. :D\=< (talk) 01:39, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you don't know what you're doing, don't try to administer your own unix box. No harm in being a user on a machine run by someone else. In fact, that's how you get to know what you're doing. Try to skip the "non-root user" stage of learning, and you get in trouble. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 02:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm... If I am not the administrator on my MacBook, who is? Mac OS X, for all its flaws, is Unix-like. It may not be the best operating system in the world but it works for a casual user. Kushal 17:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It's tempting to say, "Aww, you guys are being too pessimistic; Linux isn't that bad", but then, I'm what you might call a hard-core programmer.

So, Charmpiano, what made you think about trying Linux? Dissatisfied with XP? Want something free? Want something that's not a viral cesspit? Looking for something new? Looking for a challenge?

It's true, if you've never worked with Linux before, it won't be what you're used to. If there's anything nonstandard about your hardware setup, Linux may not install as cleanly on it, and you may have bizarre problems with arcane or non-obvious solutions. (And of course, the same can be true of Windows!) But if you have a good distro and standard hardware, Linux can be very easy to install and use.

With that said, depending on how significant your need is, you may find the price (which in the case of Linux is measured in risk/uncertainty, not dollars) worth it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:42, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been using Ubuntu 7.10 for ~5 months and like it so far, despite having no background in programming. It is tough to get used to -- installing a single program, for instance, usually involves going to the website, looking at cryptic instructions, and fiddling around in bash for a while, although the more times you do it the easier it gets -- but if you're dissatisfied with Windows and want to try something new, sure, Linux is a good alternative. It will take some work to get just how you like it, and there are some things you just need Windows for (gaming, for instance), but yeah, once you get the hang of it it's pretty enjoyable. I think that the pros far out way the cons, but that's just me. I really only use my computer for word processing, music, and the Internet, so there's a lot of stuff that could very well not work at all in Linux that I'm not aware of. Why not dual-boot via Ubuntu 7.10's automatic partitioner and see what you think of it? --((FLYINGNINJAMONKEY)) ^((BANANA!)) 04:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually if you have a problem it's much more solvable in Linux than in Windows. Linux you have logs, which help tremendously: I once had this case where a phone's memory, when connected through USB, is always mounted as read-only. A simple dmesg shows that Linux had detected errors in the file system, while in Windows it would happily let you copy new files in, and throws an error only when you try to copy files out. In contrast, I have this problem with Windows that whenever I video chat for more than 20 minutes, Windows will enter a semi-crash state, with ping returning "host unreachable" to everything, mmc refusing to open (not enough quota or something like that), and basically the system is crashed. Nothing shows up in the event log, and I have yet to solve this problem after the second reinstall. This goes to show that problems are a lot easier to fix in Linux, provided you know how to view the logs, and then you can go on forums like ubuntuforums.org and ask about that particular error message; whereas in Windows it's more dependent on luck and more luck. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Most apps in Ubuntu just require a simple 'apt-get install programname'. I actually prefer using a package manager like that to hunting around for stuff. Though certainly if it's not in the package repository then installation can be a great pain. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you consider playing around with a logical and transparent technical system with vast amounts of free software to be "fun", then Linux would be a good choice. If you just want to run Photoshop and other non-Linux apps and don't want to twiddle any knobs, then it probably isn't a good choice. Windows security problems are so bad that the only real option for less technical users is MacOS, in my opinion. --Sean 16:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

for your usage, complete waste of time - stick to windows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredrick day (talk • contribs) 16:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it's the other way around. Since the OP has not expressed an interest in modern gaming or specialty software, Linux might be perfectly suitable. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The user did add the disclaimer that he wanted it to be just like Windows. Anyone who wants Linux to be just like Windows should not use Linux. It is not just like Windows. Some buttons are in a different spot. Some programs will need to be changed for a mostly similar alternative. None of these changes are huge things, but they all come at once and build up to a huge frustration. -- kainaw™ 18:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Not to get all meta here, but the user said no such thing. Saying "I want to be able to do what I can do with Windows XP" (a direct quote) is nowhere near semantically equivalent to "[I want it] to be just like Windows." In any event, Photoshop (one of the example apps) is probably going to be the dealbreaker. Maybe GIMPShop would do the trick though. Despite all the naysaying above, I'd still recommend running a live CD distribution, probably Ubuntu. That will give access to most of the functionality desired and allow him/her to get a feeling for the system. The decision to move forward to a full install can proceed from there. --LarryMac | Talk 21:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Very well said, as always, LarryMac. :) Kushal 17:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

February 25

Overclocking a G4 Powermac

I don't know the model or anything, but it is a 667mhz G4. It is running Ubuntu server. I'd like to overclock it, for the experience. I really don't care if the computer breaks, it's old and worthless now. Does anyone have a tutorial on how to overclock it? Software overclock preferably. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.170.32 (talk) 03:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Good luck. Last time I looked into overclocking a Macintosh, it involved really old-school overclocking techniques: re-soldering resistors around the oscillator chip. --Carnildo (talk) 00:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PNG/FLAC are lossy?

I took an image and converted it into a 24-bit BMP (uncompressed), then I converted it into a PNG (with the same color depth - in this case 24-bit), then I converted the PNG to 24-bit BMP (uncompressed) using the same application which used to create to original BMP (MS Paint/FastStone Image Viewer/The GIMP/IrfanView) with the same parameters.

By comparing the md5sums of the BMP files I noticed that the BMP file was changed. Why?

I did the same thing with WAV (PCM, 2 channels, 44100Hz, 16 bit per sample) and FLAC. The WAV file was changed too. Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.155.165 (talk) 12:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

PNG isn't necessarily lossless, and anyway decompressing and lossless-recompressing doesn't guarantee you the same data- just the same image information. Also file headers are really crazy and probably change based on the date of last modification or revision :D\=< (talk) 14:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, PNG is lossless. You're as misleading as always. It's true headers can be different, but not for the reasons you mentioned. It's because there's more than one way to write a valid BMP/WAV file. Let's say you have one HTML file with "<p>here comes a paragraph</p>" and another file with "<P>here comes a paragraph</P>". Sure, the md5sums will be different, but the display will be the same. --Kjoonlee 14:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Grrrr, you're wrong. Deflate is lossless but the file can be altered before deflate is run to maximize its efficiency. In fact, this is the default on many PNG implementations, including irfanview. I already made the second half of your point. :D\=< (talk) 15:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

As was said, after compression and decompression you end up with the same data but not necessarily the same headers. To check that this is indeed the case you can extract the raw data (i.e. without headers) and checksum this before and after. Morana (talk) 14:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I used the same application to create both of the BMP files. The headers should be the same unless they stores the date up to the seconds or something like that. How can I verify the image store the same image? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.165.111 (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

By converting them to a raw format and comparing them. If I were in a pinch I'd try to load both versions in GIMP, do a colour inversion on one version, then paste over and adjust layer settings until I get a white or black screen. Then I'd merge the layers and check if all pixels are either pure black or pure white.

With FLAC files, get the original .wav file, and compress it using /usr/bin/flac -V, where -V is the verify option. Then you run /usr/bin/metaflac --list on the file and note the embedded md5sum. This should be the same for all FLAC files with the same audio data. --Kjoonlee 17:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

To detect almost-identical files, I sometimes use xdelta. If the delta from one file to the other is much smaller than the size of the files, they must have a lot in common. If the files are the same size and I suspect that only the headers are different, cmp -l can confirm it. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows comes with a command-line utility called fc for comparing files. It's not very good, but it might be good enough for this depending on what's going on. For a binary compare you do fc /b file1 file2. I agree that this is mysterious. Neither BMP nor WAV has a time stamp, or any other field I'd expect to change in different saves by the same application. -- BenRG (talk) 22:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

'programmable' stack

a. I'm wondering if such a thing already exists - let me describe it..

I can push a series of values onto a stack (memory), (these will be n-bit descriptors - such as an item list number) If I push the same value twice onto the stack hardware detects the match and doesn't write it a second time.. (I believe L2 cache does something like this - but can it be used in this example) Obviously I need to be able to pop values back off the list.

b. Also wondering about hardware supported z-sorts - as above but this time I push two values 'z-depth' and 'descriptor' - the hardware automatically sorts every new value down the stack - so that when I pop the values back off they are arranged in z order) - Is such a thing common - is there a device that has this functionality.. 83.100.158.211 (talk) 14:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

A stack is not a physical thing. It's just memory in the computer like any other. It's the software the treats it like a stack. Ariel. (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm asking about a hardware stack. ie if a architecture (that exists) has ever supported such a thing as described above. Should have said...87.102.42.162 (talk) 14:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Like this: Stack machine? Ariel. (talk) 01:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Erm.. No. (thanks anyway) - I was thinking of a more covnentional processor (eg 1,2 or 3 operand instruction set in the language of that article) with a stack as an extension to the architecture.. The stack would work like a conventional software stack, but it would have additional co-processor functions that operated automatically on the stack eg a z-sort.87.102.93.245 (talk) 11:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Juice sync with Sansa c250 on Tiger

Hi, I am on a Macbook with Tiger 10.4.11. I recently installed Juice (software). Can I automatically sync my Sandisk Sansa c250 (which the friends at #rockbox recently helped me "unbrick") with the podcasts? Please suggest me how to do it if it is possible. Kushal 16:30, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Seemingly Bricked Thinkpad

I've had a Thinkpad T40 for the past 2 years, and it has never given me any problems until 3 days ago when it inexplicibly restarted while I was using it. I had no need to use it for a few days, so I just ignored it. Yesterday I turned it on, only for it to freeze on the Windows XP welcome screen, so I restarted it. Thereafter it restarted at random points while using Windows (but never at the XP loading screen). I did a System Restore to a week ago and it worked fine and stayed on for about 2 hours before it started restarting at random again. Now it has degraded to the point where it restarts seconds after I turn it on (at the IBM logo). During all of these restarts it was receiving steady AC power from different outlets each time. Can anyone think of anything I can do to fix this, or do I have to get it repaired? 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I had my desktop computer do this for the last 6 years. I changed everything: motherboard, graphics card, memory, processor… Your situation degrades much faster so it could be a memory problem, definitely not the problem I had. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 18:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be a hardware related problem. Just to make sure that it is not Windows misbehaving, could you try to run (NOT install) a LiveCD version of Ubuntu (Linux distribution)? Kushal 18:44, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

(I am the OP) I've tried a Linux boot CD, and here is my experience: I push the power button and nothing happens, so I push it harder - it turns on. It gets to my BIOS password entry and the keyboard doesn't work. I restart it myself. This time the keyboard works and I get the boot screen of the LiveCD and press enter to get it going. It starts to load Linux and the screen turns black (well, LCD gray, actually). It was then that I turned it off. Definately a hardware problem - but of what? The motherboard? How much would it cost to fix this thing, I've already spent too much this week. Chris16447 (talk) 23:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Depends what the problem is. If it's a RAM problem then it's easy to fix (just swap out the bad RAM with good RAM); try running memtest86 if you can and see what it tells you. If it is a major problem with the motherboard itself, then the cost becomes quite expensive (hundreds of dollars just for the part, no to mention the labor, which will be a lot as well) to the point of being prohibitive. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If it was the motherboard on a laptop, I would not replace it. It is just not worth the headache and sleepless nights of figuring the problem with the old one, finding a new one, buying it, waiting for shipping, installing it, making sure it works, and making sure it won't fry up the instant I press the power button, and so on.

If it is the motherboard, and if I had the money, I would just go out and buy a new computer. Kushal 01:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I bought the laptop at half-price for $500. Thusly, I am willing to pay up to $500 to what the full price would have been. Will repairing a busted motherboard cost any more than 500 USD? 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

SRS reporting

Need information or tutorial on how to build SRS reports —Preceding unsigned comment added by LeLeRags (talk • contribs) 18:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

SRS could mean a ton of things. Could you be more specific, please? Kushal 02:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume this means SQL Server Reporting Services. Google "SSRS tutorial" and try something like this link. 207.148.157.228 (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

where i could find the the different interesting programm codes that could run on borland version 3.0 of C++

116.71.177.95 (talk) 19:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm puzzled why you would want to compile programs using Borland C++ version 3.0. Check out the article I linked to - it's ancient, and speaks an obsolete C++ dialect. Is it for learning purposes? If so, there are better and free alternatives (such as version 5.5. of Borlands compiler). Is it because you want something to work on an old DOS machine? If you could explain a bit more, it would be easier for us to give a better answer. What kinds of programs interest you? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 26

Laptop and External Monitor Resolution

I have a VGA out port on my laptop. The laptop has a 1280x800 native resolution. Now, my question is, can I connect an external LCD monitor that has a higher resolution, say 1440x900 or a 1680x1050 and have content displayed on the external monitor at the native resolution of the external monitor, even though the built it screen has a lower one? Sorry if this isn't worded very well, I'm not too good with computers. (The laptop's running Vista btw.)(And it also has a HDMI and S-Video output, if that matters) RedStateV (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible - maybe you should supply the type of graphics chip the laptop has so that someone can tell you if it's capable of outputting a higher resolution. Alternatively open 'help' and search for 'monitors' or 'graphics' you might be able to get the answer there..83.100.138.74 (talk) 05:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The graphics card is a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. RedStateV (talk) 05:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

look around here : http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600M_techspecs.html - the 'chip' has quote "Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz " - there are the max resolutions. 87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you want to clone or extend? In other words do you want the external display to have the same content as your primary one, or do you want extra desk space like as if you have a super wide monitor? If it's the latter, then yes you can, but if the former, no they must operate at the same frequency, and so will be limited to 1280×800. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

What do "clone" and "extend" mean? Hah, I really don't know that much. RedStateV (talk) 17:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

"Clone" means that the exact same image is displayed on both screens, "extended" means that your desktop is spread across both screens, and you can move windows between screens. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

With reference to a previous answer I don't think the only two possibilities are 'clone' and 'extend' the other option is to turn off the laptop screen and only use the external monitor. The graphics card is almost certainly capable of different and higher resolutions, so I guess the answer to the original question is yes. BUT you might need to find out how change the settings - the hdmi should automatically detect the correct resoloution for it, whether or not it will automatically turn on, and whether or not it will turn off the laptop screen depends on the software you have.. maybe someone else can answer these points.87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

With all this new information, let me try to refine my question, can i plug in an external monitor at a resolution of say 1440x900 while keeping the laptop resolution at 1280x800; both screens at their full native resolutions? RedStateV (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if you run them on extend mode. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox Resources

I've noticed that after having Firefox running for a long time, and then look at the "Mem Usage" in the Task Manager, Firefox has gone from a relatively small number to a relatively large one. It does this on both XP and Vista and my question is why does this happen and is there anything i can do to fix it? Thanks Deltacom1515 (talk) 03:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Try disabling all your addons and see if it changes anything. Ariel. (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a result of known problems in Firefox's memory management. It should be fixed in Firefox 3. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Time-Consuming Machine

How long should Apple's Time Machine take to backup a disk for the first time? Mine has been running for 22 hours now and has moved less than 16 GB. (The external HD that I got for the purpose claims 480 Mb/sec, which ought to move the whole 80 GB in 22 minutes.) I guess it compresses as it goes, so one shouldn't expect "raw" data speeds, but still ... —Tamfang (talk) 05:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

i would count in days, not hours. the whole point is for you not to have to notice it (as a resource hog on your machine being backed up)!! it's ideal, and better than other backup solutions precisely BECAUSE it chooses to be so discreet you dont notice it's going on the background, but when 8 months from now you still haven't turned it off and need a backup, VOILA. can more intensive backup solutions say that? that they don't get turned off to make things faster? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.84.247 (talk) 09:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, it ought to run at low priority; but during most of the day the computer is doing nothing else but screen-saving, so what's it waiting for? —Tamfang (talk) 19:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Screen-saving possibly? :D\=< (talk) 22:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Specially enumerated list in LaTeX

Hi! Does anyone know how to, in LaTeX, produce a list that looks like this?

1.1 asdf
1.2 asdf
2.1 asdf
2.2 asdf
2.3 asdf

Thanks. —Bromskloss (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

According to Guide to LaTeX (Fourth Edition), you can use \renewcommand to change the label for the second nested list \labelenumii, and have it include the label for the first nested list.

Unfortunately, if you don't have any first level items, I think you'll have to blank \labelenumi. So:

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{}
\renewcommand{\labelenumii}{\arabic{enumi}.\arabic{enumii}}

followed by something like:

\begin{enumerate}
\item\begin{enumerate}
\item asdf
\item asdf
\end{enumerate}
\item\begin{enumerate}
\item asdf
\item asdf
\item asdf
\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}

which compiles fine for me in "LyX". Hope this helps. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 18:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that works for me. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of the indentation. —130.237.45.207 (talk) 08:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

iPod managers

Which of the iPod managers (Comparison of iPod managers), thats compatible with Windows Vista, allows the user to transfer songs and videos to the iPod without ever having to install iTunes and without needing access to the internet? 99.240.177.206 (talk) 12:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

List files

Is there an easy way in Windows XP to make a list of files contained in particular folders (e.g. as a txt file)? 200.127.59.151 (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Pretend it's Unix. Open a "cmd" window and at the prompt, type: dir > temp.tmp. A file name temp.tmp will be created containing the output of that directory command.

Atlant (talk) 13:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

But go ahead and call your file temp.txt so that it will open in Notepad. And if you don't want to clutter up the directory whose contents you are listing, give it a full path, such as dir c:\temp.txt. And if you only want the filenames, and not all the size and timestamp malarkey, use the b switch (b is for bare) - dir /b c:\temp.txt. Oh, and I'd say that's pretending that it's DOS, if it were Unix, you'd have to type ls -al or something similar and cmd.exe would choke. --LarryMac | Talk 14:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If you put it in the same directory as the dir you're diring, the listing itself might show up in the listing. Depends on buffering and such :D\=< (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Back

A year or two ago, whenever I pressed the "back" key on my browser (IE), I almost always got precisely the same page I had previously been looking at: presumably taken from my own computer's cache. Yet lately, pressing "back" takes me to an updated version of the page - rather like I'd pressed "back" then "refresh".

My question is this. Suppose I prefer things the old way: is there a setting where "back" means (or, at least, defaults to) the version in the cache. AndyJones (talk) 13:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's IE6, try this - go to Tools\Options\General then click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section. Change the radio button at the top to Never. This may cause you to need to use refresh a lot more often, depending on your browsing habits. IE7 might be similar, but I don't have access to it right now. --LarryMac | Talk 14:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try it. AndyJones (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Excel data sieve

I have a spreadsheet laid out kind of like this:

   A      B
1  Alan   Yes
2  Bob    No
3  Carol  Yes
4  Dan    Yes
5  Ellen  No
....

What I want to be able to do is harvest the data from this list on a separate worksheet, to give an automatically updating list of all those entries in column A that correspond to a "Yes" in column B, like this:

   A
1  Alan
2  Carol
3  Dan

I've tried approximating this using a list, but that is only compatible with more recent versions of Excel, and this needs to work across older versions as well. I also tried Pivot Tables, but that didn't seem to work. I'm sure I've seen this done before. Any suggestions? Thanks, jeffjon (talk) 14:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, Excel. Unable to do very obvious and simple things without a lot of trouble. The easiest approach, and it isn't very easy, would be to write a VBA function to harvest the information for you. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

A pivot would work. You would highlight the data range (or simply columns A:C) and then pivot. Youc an then add "B" into the 'page field' filtered to 'yes' and then 'a' into the row/column field. This will provide you with a list of only those with "Yes". The only problem is that this would mean if 2 Carol's appeared in the list it would only have one entry rather than two. Your best bet is to use VBA - it's not a difficult function to write (though I don't unfortunately have the time to write an example for you). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:07, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered using an Autofilter? This would let you show just the "Yes" names without needing to have an extra worksheet. The tricky part of your question is the "automatically updating" bit: I presume you mean by this that if you change Bob from No to Yes then his name will appear in the filtered list without any extra action. I've worked out a way to do this using only worksheet functions: let's see if I can explain it here:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	Name	Select?	Yes so far	Numbers	Count	Item	Name
2	Alan	Yes	=COUNTIF($B$2:B2,"yes")	0	=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$9999,D2)	=1+E2	=IF(F2>COUNTA($A$2:A65536),"",INDEX($A$2:$A$9999,F2))
3	Bill	No	=COUNTIF($B$2:B3,"yes")	=1+D2	=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$9999,D3)	=F2+E3	=IF(F3>COUNTA($A$2:$A$9999),"",INDEX($A$2:$A$9999,F3))
4	Charlie	No	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...

Copy down as far as you need. If I haven't messed up, then column G will show precisely the names from column A that have Yes against them in Column B. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S> Just to explain the idea behind this: I work down the rows counting how the cumulative number of Yeses. The number of times each of these numbers occurs are the sizes of the gaps between the names to be selected. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you please fix the row numbers? It's driving me crazy every time I look at this page.  :-) --LarryMac | Talk 19:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Andrew, that works perfectly. It took me a bit to realize what was going on here, but it's very clever. Thanks for your effort. To 194.221.133.226: I did try Pivot Tables, but specifically what I couldn't get to work was the backwards compatibility; it has to work in Excel 2007 and 2002. VBA is a last resort for me. Thanks to all. jeffjon (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Frontpage = problem...

I was trying to show someone how to do the basics of Frontpage and they accidentally made my desktop a website. Is there a way to reverse that? Thanks!! --Zach (talk) 16:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Control panel > Display > Desktop > Customize Desktop... > Web > uncheck anything that's checked — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried that but there was nothing checked... --Zach (talk) 20:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you tell us which version of Windows you are running? Active Desktop is sometimes enabled by settings in the Folder Options dialog, if I'm not mistaken. --LarryMac | Talk 20:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just say no to FrontPage! (luckily, discontinued by Microsoft in 2006). EdJohnston (talk) 01:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux Puppy display problem

I'm completely new with anything but Windows, so I have no idea what to do. I installed Puppy Linux on a usb-stick a few days ago. Now the problem is that when if I choose to use Xorg for my display, it only shows a part of what "there is to be shown", about 1/4 of it with 1280x1024 resolution, less with smaller. This seems somewhat intended since the view can still be moved around with mouse. Xvesa works fine resolution less than 1280x1024, but at 1280x1024 ironically gives me an error that 1280x1024 is the optimum display mode. I really would like to have higher resolution. What to do? --212.149.216.233 (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

HELP

I AM NOT TYPING IN ALL CAPS ON PURPOSE. something is messed up on my keyboard. have to hold down each key for one second to type - all caps was because i must have held down caps lock. Also audible click from hard drive when each letter appears. Please help - no extra keyboard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Me again. I restarted the computer, and now it's fine - including no audible click when each letter appears. What was going on? --71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Assuming you're using Microsoft Windows, it's possible you accidentally activated some of the Accessibility Options in Control Panel. Then again, I find that some applications sometimes seem get confused as to whether the Shift or Control keys are up or down, with annoying and confusing results. Usually tapping the offending keys and switching between applications fixed the problems, but in extreme cases it might be that only a reboot would do. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it. If accessibility options got reset each time you restarted the computer, that would be the most stupid accessibility software. Kushal 06:16s, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Stupid or not, it does seem to be the case, at least for the Windows Sticky keys option. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

February 27

Executing a command over ssh doesn't preserve the return value.

I'm trying to write an automated check to see if a machine has the latest installed kernel currently running on it. To this end, I'm comparing ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1 against uname -r. I want to run this check via ssh on a central server. Unfortunately, I've run into a bit of a snag. In short:

I ssh to my server and see this:

$ if [ `ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1` == `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi
BAD

I do it from another server and see this:

$ ssh otherserver "if [ `ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1` == `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi"
GOOD

I can manually run each component of the test remotely, and they return what they should. Why does running the command over ssh make a difference? grendel|khan 00:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I think your backticks (``) are executed locally and substituted in by the local shell before ssh is run. Maybe you want to use single quotes instead of double quotes. --Spoon! (talk) 01:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the backticks are interpreted by your shell on the local machine. One good way to fix this might be to put this stuff into a shell script and just "ssh otherserver scriptname". Friday (talk) 01:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

There are three main differences between single quotes ' ' and double quotes " " in the Unix (and therefore Linux) shells:

1. Shell variable expansion using $ is still performed inside of double quotes.
2. The backtick mechanism `...` works inside of double quotes.
3. Using the backslash \ to escape special characters (basically ", $, `, and \) works inside of double quotes.

(Inside single quotes, on the other hand, nothing is special, and among other things there's no way to have a single quote inside a single-quoted string.)

Number 2 is little-known, but Spoon and Friday are right, it accounts for the OP's problem. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Other problems in that command waiting to bite you later include the bashism '==' comparison (correct syntax is a single = for string comparison in the test ([...]) command) and the bad ordering of arguments to ls (options belong before non-option arguments; allowing them backward is a non-portable feature of GNU getopt). And I really don't like the implication that you've got an ls that shoots multi-column colored output down a pipe, but that's probably just an alias in the wrong place. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, all. What a wallbanger. And it turns out that my ls doesn't actually shoot multi-colored junk down a pipe; that was just me building it out of blocks I wrote by running each bit in an interactive terminal, and assuming that it did. So I'm left with the following. grendel|khan 03:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

ssh otherserver 'if [ `ls -1t /lib/modules/|head -1` = `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi'

Computer longetivity

Is it bad to keep the computer on continuously? Does that shorten it's lifespan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.226.26.154 (talk) 02:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The computer will start running slower. It's RAM will get full, it will be running tons of processes, etc. I turn mine off every night. We sleep at the same time. Useight (talk) 02:58, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That's not true at all. It's a good idea to shut off the computer when you're not doing anything with it (it wastes a lot of power when lots of people leave it on), but it doesn't "start running slower" on account of being left on. Well-written programs that don't have memory leaks will not fill up your RAM unnecessarily; processes don't just start running on their own. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 03:02, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

A Utopian computer will not get full of memory leaks, hung processes, and random unforeseeable errors over time. However, we live in the real world. Programs are not perfect to begin with. They do have errors. Also, many (if not most) users install all kinds of garbage on their computer that is written by people who know very little about proper programming. This tends to include spyware and related nasty programs that run whenever they feel like it. All together, computers are helped by a periodic restart to clean everything out.

As for shortening the lifespan of the computer, the common belief is that turning a computer on and off will shorten the lifespan of the electronics. How much? Not a lot. I have had servers die in a matter of months and they are rarely turned off. I have a laptop I bought in 1997 that I turn on and off all the time (often multiple times each day). It hasn't died. So, protecting your electronics by leaving them on all the time isn't based on a hard fact that your computer will die after a specific number of boot-up times. It is rather random - just about as random as having a spider climb in while the computer is turned on and shorting out a couple components. -- kainaw™ 03:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Nearly lost the info due to an edit conflict... any ways...Make sure to restart the computer regularily. This will remove any background processes that may have come up, by your own doing or even by spyware and adware programs. However, keeping your computer on longer may be helpful, for example allowing Google Desktop to index files, or other such things. But you should probably turn off the computer, or put it in hibernation. (Please be aware that hibernation is not the same as turning off the computer, as it saves all processes running and shuts down. Read more on the hibernation page). PwnerELITE (talk) 03:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

See, told you, 98.217.18.109. Useight (talk) 03:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If you need to reboot constantly to maintain performance, you're either using a pre-NT version of Windows, or something is wrong. You shouldn't just accept that as a part of using computers; it isn't. Malware or extremely craptastic software might cause this, though usually with the latter you can just kill and restart it. Standby/suspend/sleep is a good idea though, or hibernate for longer periods / for computers that can't suspend properly. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as the software goes, Linux is said to be much more friendly towards continuous operation than Windows.

For the hardware, in usual circumstances, as kainaw points out, unnecessary turning off\on can cause more damage than continuous operation. However, I guess that if your computer has a problem with its cooling and your parts get overheated, continuous operation can be harmful.

98 mentioned power, and said that a lot of power is wasted by "many people leaving it on". I think the last is faulty logic. If you take any phenomenon and multiply it by the number of people involved, of course you will get a large number. To reach an objective decision we need to measure the cost\benefit at the individual level. So think about your computer as a heating stove that runs on a few hundred Watts. If it's winter, you're possibly operating stoves anyway so nothing is really wasted. If it's summer, you're possibly operating air conditioning, so you'll have to pay for energy the computer takes and for the energy required to cool the heat generated by it (which is on the same order of magnitude). It's up to you to figure out how significant this cost is to you. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 10:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Gamer Fo life :P

Anyone play guildwars? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 04:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I know someone who does. Could I ask what the question is? Kushal 04:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Just reaching out to People and saying HI There isnt much to do in a place like fallon nevada unless your gonna knock someone up or your in a Gang...I love playing with people :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 05:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:Tyop The Typo project is fun. - You can help! :-) Kushal 06:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

ha ha im amused :P >.> <.< >.< not really im soooo sorry i inconvinced you with my edjewkated tipoes i trwy ta mak Em beta fo yaz! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 06:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Tell me how this is done

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8471/1204033097892lt6.th.png http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8471/1204033097892lt6.png

Browsing 4chan last night, I found this very curious image. Those two are the same image. The first is the thumbnail of the second. You can download and open it in photoshop, but the full size image became the image in the thumbnail. There is a sly trick to this... the way the pixels are arranged maybe? But I can't figure it out. Enlighten me please? Aurora sword (talk) 05:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The big one has a gamma tag. The image gamma is set to 0.015150 or about 1/66. This convinces your image viewer that the image is very bright and needs to be darkened to be displayed correctly. Of course that only works if you are using an image viewer that understands and respects the gamma tag. The first viewer I tried didn't, and for a minute I wondered what was so weird about it since the images looked the same. Both images are actually present in the big one, but only one of them is bright enough to still be visible after the large gamma correction is applied. The other one becomes so dark that it is just a bunch of single-pixel-wide black rows and columns which aren't noticeable unless you zoom in. You should be able to see both at the same time if you look at the big one adjust the gamma (brightness).

The smaller one, in spite of having .png on the end, is actually a jpeg, with no gamma tag. The conversion process has lost more information than a typical image resizing, because the gamma tag is gone. Also, it seems to have lost enough detail that the other image is not visible regardless of brightness level. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 06:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I see, gamma tags eh? In other words it fools the viewer. The bright pixels contain the girl image and the dark pixels contain the forest image. Thanks a lot. Aurora sword (talk) 06:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

a lightweight (couple of megabytes!!) LOCAL web server with cgi support for windows?

I want to test my python cgi script locally, what lightweight web server can I download (a couple of megabytes) that doesnt' require a bunch of configuration?

Harddrive misreporting size

Hi everyone,

I have a DELL Inspiron 6000, which, I am about 99% sure came with a 40gig harddrive. Now, when I right click on C drive and go to properties, it reports a 71 Gig harddrive. I've had a pretty massive computer slowdown in recent weeks, and I'm considering reformating, but I want to solve this problem first.

thanks! --Cacofonie (talk) 12:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)