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November 9

Visual Dictionary for OS X?

I'm looking for a visual guide to what all the parts of OS X are called. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.253.80.241 (talk) 03:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The Apple HIG will tell you what everything is along with examples of each interface element. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 16:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Video problems with Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

A friend of mine recently bought this game for the PC. He installed it, created a character, and it worked perfectly fine until he tried to load his character. After that happened it wouldn't load his character. It would minimize the game and keep saying DirectX 9 failed to start, and that it would fix the problem. Then he would click back into the game and try to load the character again and it would try to minimize the screen and then would freeze, requiring us to open the task manager and end the process directly. It did this every time we tried it. We installed the latest DirectX (I believe it was 10). It still was not working. I think it is his graphics card but we are not sure. Here are the system specs. They are all above the recommended speeds for the game.

HP Laptop (Not sure of the model) Windows Vista Home 64-bit 2.00GHz processor 4GB RAM 512MB dedicated video RAM

What do you guys think, would it be the graphics card or what? Thanks guys.

RandomAccessDawg (talk) 04:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Try upgrading the drivers for the video card. If that doesn't work, try loading a different character. If that STILL doesn't work, try reinstalling the game. If that STILL doesn't work, then your video card may be incompatible with the game. Since you are using a laptop, you're out of luck. Check the system requirements for the game and see if a list of supported video cards is available. If yours isn't on there, you cannot play the game. Also, the game might not be supported under Vista or 64-bit. (Wow this is a long answer)  Buffered Input Output 13:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I've played that game a few months ago and remember all kinds of gripes about 64-bit issues. I don't think it works very well in Vista either and you'll be lucky to get it stable there. If you can, dual-boot into XP 32-bit; it works very well there. It's not too fussy what video card you have but you will probably lose out on nice effects with the watered-down graphics cards on laptops. Sandman30s (talk) 22:28, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Netbeans or Eclipse

I am learning J2EE....
Which tool will be better for me....
Eclipse or Netbeans....
And why???....
What is the difference between them???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 06:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Both are great tools. Eclipse was originally developed by IBM, while NetBeans was originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Both companies, who were strong proponents of Java, released the projects as a sort of "open consortium". NetBeans has a very nice integrated J2EE environment, complete with the official GlassFish J2EE web application server; it is very convenient for both toy projects and full-scale enterprise development. Eclipse has similar features and a J2EE edition; it also boasts an active user-community (probably more so than NetBeans). Both are very good tools; either will work for learning J2EE; you can learn both, or specialize to learn only one; depending on how much effort you want to put in. In my experience, more corporate J2EE development is done with Eclipse and its proprietary variants. Nimur (talk) 00:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Why didn't you mention that it is far easier to develop GUIs in Netbeans? You just drag the components onto the form and double click on them and event handlers are added by the IDE.--Drknkn (talk) 10:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

GUIs are not part of Java EE; they are part of Java SE (which is a subset of Java EE). I was highlighting the EE toolkits. Nimur (talk) 14:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Win7

Why wasn't Windows 7 given an official name? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 09:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you think "Windows 7" is? If you want to know why it was not given a different official name, I'd guess that Microsoft's Marketing expects more sales this way, probably because they want to try some understatement after the general disappointment with Vista. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, yes, that's what I meant. Why wasn't it given a name with an abbreveation or word? Why did it go back to the naming convention of the DOS/9x based operating systems? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

hopefully they continue the trend and call the next one windows 8 or something. much less confusing than random names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 11:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is a Microsoft blog post on the topic. It says that Windows 7 was the internal development code name (many products will be developed with a simple codename and then named later once marketing people have done their work), and they decided to release it under that name. Mike Nash of Microsoft explains:

The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We've used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore "Windows 7" just makes sense.

So they don't have any aspirations, or rather, their aspirations are to make something just like Vista, except a Vista that actually works. --Lesleyhood (talk) 12:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

There are 3 things which a version name/number should do:

1) Allow you to distinguish between versions. All three MS naming schemes did that.

2) Allow you to tell which is newer and which is older. Both numbers and dates allow that, although numbers are somewhat better, in that they can have many levels to them.

3) Tell you how old a version is. Only date names did that.

So, the names like XP and Vista were the absolute worst system, while dates or version numbers are both much better. Personally I'd settle for either of those two options, as long as they remain consistent. Changing the naming scheme with each new version is truly idiotic. StuRat (talk) 13:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The trouble is that Windows 7 is actually version 6.1, as you can see by opening a command prompt for example. That's the version number that's reported to applications. So the marketing name and the internal version are still different, but now they're similar enough to potentially cause confusion. -- BenRG (talk) 21:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd be interested to know how Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, NT, XP, and Vista map to standard version numbers. Does anyone have a list ? StuRat (talk) 00:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, "does anyone have a list?"? This is Wikipedia, of course we have a list! Windows#Timeline of releases. Keep in mind, they split the development between desktop and servers at one point and then merged them again, which is why none of the numbers make any sense. --Tango (talk) 00:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It's too bad that Windows 7 doesn't match the internal version number. StuRat (talk) 13:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

MS PowerPoint - startup macros

Hello,

I am trying to create a way of running a macro (the macro prompts the user for some text and puts it onto the slide master) as soon as the user opens a particular PowerPoint template. This makes sure that the user has to complete the text box. I have got the macro working fine but the problem is running it.

From some research online, it is not simply a case of naming the macro 'autoexec' like you can do in Word/Excel/Access. This does not work. There is a way of doing it that involves using 'Add-Ins'; I don't know anything about Add-Ins but I am pretty sure that they have to be loaded on each user's machine for this approach to work - NOT practical and way too much of a fuss, we are trying to make this as painless as possible to the end-users.

Another approach I considered was setting up an object that, when clicked, runs the macro. This works fine if you run it in slideshow mode but it does not work in editing mode so definitely not ideal. Is there some way I can create a button or something that works in editing mode, runs the macro and then deletes the button itself? Or any other suggestions for this would be appreciated. It is too much to ask of our users to have to go into the slide master every time and manually edit the text box! Thanks! GaryReggae (talk) 10:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I can only speak from the recent experience of getting a maacro to be invoked in opening an excel file. The solution there was to create a ThisWorkbook object underneath Microsoft Excel Objects in the Visual Basic editor, and then have that object invoke a form which provided the user interface of (in my case) a data collection system. The code in the ThisWorkbook object was nothing more than:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()

frmLayer1.Show

End Sub

PowerPoint seems to offer exactly the same VB editor as Excel, so I guess the technique will be much the same - you'll call your form which collects the information from the user and which provides a button causing the collected data to be written into the slide master. Obviously it is easier if, like me, you have a minion or two handy who has/have a clue what they're doing...but I hope this helps somewhat. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista

What does the Vista part of Windows Vista's name mean? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

See wikt:Vista. Dismas|^(talk) 11:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That page doesn't exist. Vimescarrot (talk) 12:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

This one does, though. Vimescarrot (talk) 12:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That's odd. It worked for me when I posted it. And it worked for me just now. Dismas|^(talk) 11:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

File, exported from evolution calendar

Can I import this file into other calendars? (like I can import txt, doc or jpg into different applications) Quest09 (talk) 12:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Not the admin of a network

If I am not the admin of a network, can I scan it and discover what users are connecting to it? I suppose the user names are not encrypted, are they?--Quest09 (talk) 12:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Users do not use a network. Computers do. What you will see on pretty much any modern network is a bunch of TCP/IP packets racing about. The only thing you can do is reassemble them into a message that will have source/destination IP addresses (computers, not users). However, you can't do much of that because most modern networks use switches/routers. So, you can't see much traffic other than the traffic to/from your own computer.

In the realm of Windows, you can search the Windows network. You can often see the names of computers that have joined the Windows network. Sometimes, those computer names are based on the primary user for that computer. If that is the case, you can assume that the user may or may not be using his or her computer. -- kainaw™ 13:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Most networks consist of a router which is connected (possibly indirectly) to the Internet. The router has a load of wires coming out which connect to computers, including yourself. These are the computers in your local network. The router normally assigns each computer an IP address (using DHCP) when they are connected to the router. An IP address is a number (actually 4 numbers) which identifies the computer. The IP address the computer is given is one of the IP addresses in the Private Network address space (see rfc1918).

You can connect to computers in your local network (or the internet) using their IP address, so you can find all the computers by trying to connect to each IP address in the Private Network address space. There are tools like nmap which will do this. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Python wont work with glade

My code will not let me use the module gtk.glade

The error code is "The specified module could not be found."

I've looked and cannot find the module either. So where is it?

PS I am running Python 2.6 on Windows with PyGTK and all requirements installed.

Thanks.  Buffered Input Output 13:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You should use gtk.Builder instead. It's an official part of gtk and has replaced libglade. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 14:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Word (and VBA) in MS Works and MS Office

Is Word the same in Word as in Office? Can they both do grammar checking? And is VBA included in both Works and Office? I only want to use Word and Excel, and possibly VBA, and I am wondering to what extent my wants will be covered by the cheaper package. (Note - please do not mention OpenOffice etc - I am already familiar with that/those and it is not the subject of this question). Thanks 92.27.152.41 (talk) 14:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean, is MS Word the same as the word processor in MS Works. My understanding is the Works is scaled down in its features—in both its word processing and its spreadsheets. I used to use it, years ago, and I recall it being fairly limited in both. Works is fairly crippled.

The biggest problem is that Works saves its documents in a different format than Word does. It can read Word documents, but it can't save in them. So if you plan to send documents to anyone else, they will have to get a converter so that their version of Word can read the Works file.

My understanding is the MS Works does not support VBA. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:22, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Download the 60-day free trial version to check. (Sorry to sound like an MS marketing bot for supplying the link here and below, but I think it's the proper answer for both questions.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Writing stock or pro-forma letters to a few addresses - freeware?

I often have to write the same letter to four or five different addresses. The letter itself is a standard letter with a few details changed. Is there any freeware or no-pay software available that will help me do this quickly, rather than doing a lot of cutting and pasting in a word processor. When I worked in an office long ago, rather than people dictating complete letters they would just tell the typist to put stock paragraphs 2, 7, and 19 (for example) in the letter. I'd like to find something that can do something like that. Thanks 92.27.152.41 (talk) 14:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you need a mail merge function - Microsoft Word will do this but that isn't free! You could try OpenOffice.org, it is a freeware suite of software, including a word processor that has similiar functionality to MS Word but I can't comment on whether it will do a mail merge as I haven't used it for that. Basically, you just compile your standard letter and put in 'fields' that contain the variable sections, such as people's names', address, company name, etc...you then get a spreadsheet or database containing the data that you want to put into those fields and a mailmerge combines the two. Hope this helps GaryReggae (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I recently used Microsoft Word to do this (the version in Microsoft Office 2007) for 70 letters I had to make. I was surprised to find it was a little more difficult than I had expected — Word has had this function for over 15 years and I would have thought that by now, it would be easier to move back and forth between using the wizard and manually doing it — but in the end it was a good time saver. As GaryReggae points out, it isn't free — though you could download the 60-day free trial version and see whether that works for you. I think the trial lets you print. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:18, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, although I've tried mail merging in the past, and together with your comments above I suspect that it would be quicker to do it the way I've done it in the past. Isnt there a better way to do this? I may have given the wrong impression above - the addresses I have to write to are new addresses, not routine addresses. 92.27.67.136 (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Since it's only five addresses, why don't you just use Word (or the OpenOffice equivalent, or whatever) to write the first copy, then copy and paste it 4 times, and then manually make your minor changes to the other 4? Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

D'oh! 89.243.191.11 (talk) 17:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I still have not found any suitible software to do this. Possibly a light-weight word processor might do it: the ones that can do mail-merge, are free, and operate in Linux or Windows are: AbiWord, KWord, IBM Lotus Symphony, and Open Office. Open Office is not light-weight though, have not investigated the others yet. Update: "form letter" seems to be American english for this, and searching for that finds the Form Letter Machine, a donationware program. 89.240.203.81 (talk) 14:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Virtual LED vu meter

I want a program that displays the sound on my computer like this. I'm using windows 7 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 15:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

[1] Works on XP, not tested on 7. F (talk) 00:53, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't work in 7, it keeps saying it can't detect a sound card. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 10:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

executable decompiler

Does anyone know of a decompiler that decompiles executables and shows me the source code and allows me to edit it and export another exe? I've searched the internet but none of the products I've found mention these features. -- penubag  (talk) 16:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an expert by any means but I suspect the answer is no, as EXE files can be created by many different applications, programming languages and formats - Flash animations can be EXEs, Visual Basic and C++ applications use different types of code but can both create EXEs, there are also many propriatery applications that can create EXE files. Hopefully somebody more knowledgable about the subject will be able to shed further light on this for you. GaryReggae (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You can get back to assembly code (or other high-level code) with a disassembler. But it's automatically generated code based on the machine code - it's not the code that was used to create the .exe in the first place. That means it's hard to read. Some .exe files contain symbols, which will help, but most commercial software will not have that. --h2g2bob (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) No such program can work in the general case, since after a program has been stripped parts of the source code (local variable names, for example) are simply not stored. There are many other difficulties that will make it a major project to understand any reasonably large project after decompilation. See decompiler, and the info pages for dcc and Hex Rays. --Sean 17:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

To paraphrase what has been said above, many tools will give you a source code, which will be functionally equivalent to the executable program; but it is generally not possible to reconstruct the exact source code which was originally used to build that binary program. The most obvious issue is that the variable-names will probably be machine-generated; but other details like certain flow-control constructs and most data structures and some program flows will be generated via disassembly - functionally equivalent to the original structures, but not at all easily usable or understandable to a human. Nimur (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for your answers; you've clarified for me how these things actually work. Do any of you recommend any specific decompiler for me to look into. I have a Windows so the linux applications above won't run. -- penubag  (talk) 02:09, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Stupid Server Question

Forgive my ignorance... but suppose I set up a simple server (using Ubuntu Server) on a home LAN, and I use the Samba fileserver program to set up shared folders and whatnot.

What exactly stops random Internet users from discovering and accessing files on my server just as they would on an Internet server?

I'm pretty new to networking, and I'm trying to figure out waaaay too many things at once, so any help would be appreciated. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 17:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Your question is a smart one. If you have a router with firewall and NAT abilities, as most consumer routers now do, then when a bot on the Internet pings you to find out what ports are open at your IP address, the bot will get silence in return, thanks to the router. It won't be able to send any packets to your Ubuntu server. ShieldsUP, at www.grc.com, is a great tool you can use to ping your location and tell you whether you're visible from the outside or not. You don't have to install anything; just find the ShieldsUP web page, and tell it to probe your ports. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 18:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, Samba has an authentication system, and several different levels and types of security. The Samba HOWTO for security explains how to set this up. In this case, even if a random user does penetrate your firewall and discover that you have a Samba service running, they can still be denied access to it. Depending on your needs, multiple levels of security are often advised (e.g. firewall + internal authentication); this redundancy helps mitigate security threats. Nimur (talk) 15:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding something to XP's right-click contextual menus

Used to be, on my Windows XP machine, when I right-clicked in a folder and moused over the "New >" item, I could create a new .txt (notepad) document. Now that option is missing. How do I add it? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have forgotten if these items are stored in the registry or in the file system. However, I do remember that the "Send To" items are stored at

C:\Users\Andreas Rejbrand\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows

(replace my user name with your own), at least in Windows Vista. It is possible that the "New" items are stored somewhere near this directory as well. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I am actually quite sure that they are stored in the file system. Indeed, when you select a "Create New" item you get a copy of this template in the current directory. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It really should be

C:\Users\Andreas Rejbrand\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates

I think, but strangely enough, my folder is empty (as is the "All Users" quivalent). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1838907,00.asp ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That extremetech article was interesting — TXT was not listed as a "registered file type" on my machine — but it doesn't explain how to modify the right-click context menu to add the ability to make a new text file. It just talks about how to add the ability to run an app (Outlook, in the example given) with the selected file as a parameter. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Provided you have your folders set up to show full filenames, you could right click and make a new anything and then simply rename it to XXXX.txt as a work-around. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This had actually never occurred to me! You're correct! Thanks! I'll give it a try. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple Java Counter

I am trying to write a simple program in java that increments or decrements a counter when certain keys are pressed. It is not a graphical program, it is just in the command line. What method can i use to take use the pressing of a key, and how can it be used? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.142.60 (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

There are many ways to get keyboard input in Java. Since you have a command line program, with no graphical interface, your usage does not fit into the normal Java pattern of creating a Key Listener and attaching it to your graphic window. You can try to fit that design model on to your needs, but you might also want to consider using the Java System.in (equivalent to stdin in the C language). You can poll this - I am guessing you are a novice programmer, so you may opt for this simple design - but you should know that it is inefficient because it relies on a busy wait. Your main program would thus contain a while-loop and attempt to read from System.in. A better (but much more complicated) method would be to attach the Standard Input (System.in) to an event-listener or an asynchronous stream reader in the java.nio package. What is your ultimate goal - a quick test program, or a deployable, maintainable code? Nimur (talk) 00:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It is just going to be a simple test program to try and get a simple program working with Java. Ideally i would want it to increment when a key, such as i, is pressed, without having to press enter aswell. Would the busy wait thing involve pressing enter after every increment or decrement key pressed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.11.134 (talk) 13:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Technically, that "feature" (requiring an enter after input) is a detail of your console, Windows command prompt, or linux terminal emulator. (It is unfortunately not a feature of Java, so within your code, you can't do much about it). Before your keystrokes get to your Java program, they are "owned" by your terminal or console - and the console gets to decide what to do with the individual keypresses. Apparently, your terminal is set up to buffer its input by lines and waits until it sees a "\n" before actually sending the data to stdin of the program. (See this forum-posting for similar trouble). For this reason, Java's preferred method is to create a Swing GUI and attach it to a KeyListener. This guarantees that your keystrokes are never owned by any other program; and you can process them immediately. If you specifically do not want a GUI, you will need to find a platform-specific way to reconfigure your terminal so that it doesn't buffer its input; or use a different terminal emulator.

At this point, I expect that the C-coders are probably starting to lug out the anti-Java propaganda; "why is it so hard to read one character!? I do that all the time with getc(stdin); but while C programmers may be familiar with a getchar() similar "unbuffered" single-character read from the terminal, they may be unaware that they are actually compiling a macro down to system-code for a platform-specific routine that will interfere with the operating-system's normal I/O handler. So, the "detail" that the terminal is buffering its keystrokes is often overlooked because you are overriding the system I/O handler. This also leads to numerous programming pitfalls. (Ultimately, C is a system-programming language, and you can compile code which does anything with C, circumventing any operating-system conventions which are not protected by special hardware-modes). Java forces you to properly follow the rules laid out by the operating system specification - and not to steal other programs' keystrokes until those programs politely hand them to you. This includes keystrokes in the terminal.

This is probably more than you wanted to know about buffering, terminals, and so forth; but remember that Java is a platform-independent language specification and so it must handle a huge range of different methodologies and conventions. (Not only Windows/Mac/Linux, but also Symbian, AIX, QNX, eCOS, J2ME, VCR RTOSes, ... these systems will break your average C programmers' conception of "terminal" and "stdio" convention). Again, Java's platform independent mechanism is to create a Swing GUI and keep your I/O operations in there. The KeyListener interface is very simple and extremely platform-portable. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

In C, getc(stdin) and getchar() are buffered, OS-legal operations, just like in Java. If the OS is using buffered input and not sending characters to stdin until Return is pressed, then getc(stdin) and getchar() won't be able to read them until Return is pressed. This is a common question from newly starting C programmers as well. It is true that most OSes provide a C interface to bypass the buffering and actually read the keystrokes directly, but then you're no longer being OS-legal, and your code is intimately tied to a specific version of an OS. Although the interface is written in C, it's actually part of the OS itself, not part of C. (Most new C programmers can't actually understand the difference.) So you have the right idea all along in your reply, it's just that the example functions you mentioned don't illustrate your point. JIP | Talk 18:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction... subtle but important point. Even I got tripped up by it... Nimur (talk) 19:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see what this has to do with system independence. getchar() ultimately calls read() on Linux and ReadFile() on Win32. A function to set raw console mode would ultimately call tcsetaddr() on Linux and SetConsoleMode() on Win32. What's the difference? Standard C and Java could have provided raw-mode-setting functionality in a platform-independent way. Not every platform supports raw mode, but, as you said, not every platform has a console to begin with, and not every platform supports Swing. Java doesn't abstract away every difference between machines. It could perfectly well have allowed you to set raw mode on platforms where that makes sense. -- BenRG (talk) 01:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a good point. When you come to think of it, it feels like there's no reason for standard C to define setrawmode() and setcookedmode() functions. setrawmode() would feed every single keypress to the program, both allowing and forcing it to react to them instantaneously, while setcookedmode() would make the OS responsible for formatting an entire line, which was then fed to the program. It would then be the programmer's choice between having full control over every single keypress, and not having to care about whether the user has made a typo and wants to repair his input before sending it to the program. The functions would even have had return values, where if raw mode was simply not supported, a call to setrawmode() would have returned an erroneous status code and remained in cooked mode. JIP | Talk 20:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Source code for a simple System.in poll

public class Poll {

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
 char c;
 while((c = (char) System.in.read())!='q') {
  System.out.print(c);
 }

}}

Here is a slightly more elaborate scheme, showing a Java command-prompt reader. Nimur (talk) 00:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

How can I safely view a phishing scam site?

I just got an e-mail purporting to be from a major bank which I don't have an account with. It claims that errors were discovered on my account and that access to my account will be restricted until I've corrected the errors. It's obviously a phishing scam. Clicking the e-mail's link appears to send you to pop zelda dot com. (I Googled and Binged the site, but didn't find anything relevent.) But I'm curious to see how the phishing site works. How can I safely browse the site? As long I don't enter any personal information, am I safe (i.e. can they access my history, bookmarks, autocomplete info, etc.)? I supposed I can create a Virtual PC with a freshly installed version of Windows, download all the security updates and turn off JavaScript, or is that overkill? 12.165.250.13 (talk) 21:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't enter in anynformation, they probably cannot detect anything. They cannot access your history or bookmarks. They probably cannot access your autocomplete, but it would be an interesting trick to try and get the browser to enter it into a form and then submit it (I'm not sure it can be done, but it's the only thing that seems within the realm of possibility). I am not sure you could get much information from looking at the page itself—it will at the most minimal just be a false front, at most be a complicated man-in-the-middle (e.g. they take your information, "log in" as you on the other site, and then send you the information that you would normally see). If it were me, I would view it with a non-Windows machine, first off, and secondly, I would use the "privacy mode" in Firefox that uses no cookies or autocomplete, and I would probably turn off Javascript too, just to be safe. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The safest way to do things is to have two computers, a "secure" one that you never use to browse random sites, much less ones like this, and an "unsecure" computer you use to browse such sites, but never enter any personal information into. No names, no account numbers, nothing. In this case, there is nothing to steal. Obviously, make sure the secure and unsecure computer are not connected in any way. It might be a good idea to put one on DSL and the other on dial-up, so they don't share a network, either. StuRat (talk) 00:04, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

You could just virtualize the OS, though—you don't really need an entirely "clean machine" to do that, I don't think. Even in that case, I think with something like "privacy mode" in Firefox (or Safari, or whatever), there is no chance of them having access to your personal data, esp. if you are not using IE. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that by just visiting the link you will confirm to them that your email address is accurate and someone is reading it. You may get more spam that way.F (talk) 00:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

You would want to strip out all of the GET variables that are passed in the url (so if it is http://fakesite.com/?id=2asd8asd8asdas you'd cut everything after the last slash, before the question mark), to avoid this. That's probably a good idea even if you aren't worried about getting more spam. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

linux's ping -M dont/want options

Google doesn't seem to help much. The man pages neither. I understand that do can help me discover a network's MTU because if I set the packet to be too large I'll receive an error, but I don't get much information with the other two, it just pings normally. Help! --Belchman (talk) 21:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Android and Linux

Is it possible to install Android onto a mobile internet device (Archos 5G) that comes with Linux? Android is free, but where does one get it? Thanks if you can enlighten. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 23:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You might want to start at Android (operating system) to get an overview of what Android is and isn't and to find links to the official sites. Aside from that, it seems that Archos has released a model called the Archos 5G Internet Media Tablet, which already runs Android. If you have a different 5G (nice of them to confuse us by re-using model names), then you'd probably either have to find where somebody has already compiled a version of Android for that device, or modify and compile it yourself. --LarryMac | Talk 15:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

November 10

Where is DOM Storage Located?

Hi. I've been looking all over the Internet but can't find an answer. Where is DOM storage stored on the hard drive (by either Firefox or Internet Explorer)? Thanks.--Drknkn (talk) 02:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Firefox's Gecko (layout engine) keeps the DOM in memory, not on the hard drive (unless there is not enough RAM, and memory paging occurs by the operating system). Technical details are described on the Gecko Developer DOM FAQ and the more detailed sourcecode documentation linked from there. This older documentation shows a diagram schematically illustrating the relationship between Gecko's DOM and its painting engine.I was unaware that "DOM Storage" refers to a specific technology - not "storage of the DOM in general". If you feel like getting your hands dirty, here is the C++ source code which implements the Gecko DOMStorage and some elements of the rendering engine for recent versions of Firefox (you'll have to browse through many related files to find exactly whichever feature you are looking for). It looks like a C++ class called a DOMStorageEntry is instantiated and placed in a nsTHashTable (an implementation of a hashtable, which appears to be in-memory - on the stack, no less). Its entries (DOM entries) are on the heap. Internet Explorer probably uses a similar methodology, but because it is not an open-source project, exact answers may be more difficult to come by. Nimur (talk) 07:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, now I'm confused, because further reading indicates that DOM storage allows persistent storage of large quantities of data - suggesting that it must be written to disk at some point. The distinction may be between "session" and "local" DOM storage; this persistent storage is a new feature I am not familiar with. It seems that I should read up on DOM Storage before I attempt to answer any further. Nimur (talk) 07:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, here's the answer: in your profile folder, in a SQLITE file called webappsstore.sqllite - which is a binary, SQLite formatted data file. Nimur (talk) 07:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing all of that research. I think I found where IE stores it, too. I used Process Explorer while reloading a test page (http://www.advantage-computer.biz/test.htm) and found that it was writing to the following file: C:\Documents and Settings\[my user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStore\K706A34J\www.advantage-computer[1].xml. It is inside a hidden folder. When I refresh the page in Firefox, it writes 5 KB to the disk. But, when I browse for cookies inside Firefox's Options dialog, nothing from that site is shown. Likewise, the Cookies folder used by IE does not contain the DOM storage object. This lack of control presents some privacy issues, IMO. Thanks again.--Drknkn (talk) 08:24, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I was surprised to see that the webappsstore.sqlite file that Firefox 3.5 uses for persistent storage is not cleared or deleted when "clear private data" is performed. This may be a feature, but I think it warrants a bug-report to the Mozilla developers. Nimur (talk) 13:57, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Volatile vs Synchronize

Hi...
What is the difference between volatile and synchronization in JAVA....

This link from IBM might help: Java theory and practice - Managing volatility. "Volatile variables share the visibility features of synchronized, but none of the atomicity features." These are Java's standard ways to guarantee that there is no RAW-hazard (volatile) or WAW-hazard (synchronized). If you need some help with this technojargon, you might want to read about parallel computing - specifically, data hazards. We also have articles on atomicity and synchronization. And as always, I really recommend the official Java Tutorial on Concurrency from Sun Microsystems. Nimur (talk) 14:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleting

When you delete a program or a file on a computer, on the electrical level, how does this occur?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

See File deletion. What happens is something like this. The disk consists of a large number of places where data can be writtem. The file is wriiten into some and the name and index to the place where the file starts and its size is written into a special file called a directory which the operating system can find. When the file is deleted the entry in the directory is removed by marking it as not in use. A pointer to the space that was taken up by the file is placed instead in a free space 'directory' which is bit like a normal directory but doesn't give names for the bits of space. The space will be allocated to another file if needed from thew free list. So normally the contents of the file are left on the disk for a while after deletion except if special action is taken to overwrite the space. Dmcq (talk) 14:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Since you're asking about the "electrical level", you might want to read about different kinds of persistent storage hardware: Hard disk drive is most common for personal computers and servers, though solid-state drives are also becoming common. Magnetic tape is electrically similar to hard-disk drives but the mechanical layout is different (... it is in tape form, instead of circular-disc form). Other types of nonvolatile storage include NVRAM, optical discs, and you can see many more at Category:Computer storage media. As Dmcq has pointed out, the software will decide what file system changes represent a "file delete" operation; and then it will commit those changes to the hardware (by writing the correct control words to the firmware and the correct data-words to the I/O path). From the purely electrical perspective, there is no difference between a "delete" and a "write" - that distinction is a higher level interpretation of the meaning of many pieces of data that form a file-system. The actual device only knows that it is committing a change to the persistent storage. In most storage forms (specifically HDDs), the control commands will first activate mechanical changes (like a hard-disk motor spinning up and moving its disk head to the correct location; then, they will control the electrical signals that commit the change to the storage medium. (In the case of magnetic disk, this means that symbols will be sent as sequences of electrical currents that are timed to coincide with when the disk head is near the correct location on disk; those currents induce magnetic fields to re-align the magnetic elements on the disc). Each bit can be as simple as a "present" or "not present" (or opposite-direction) electrical current (corresponding to a stored polarity on the magnetic disk); or it may be a symbol-code to reduce the likelihood of incorrect interpretation of the analog data later on. Nimur (talk) 15:42, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It is important to note that simply deleting a file will only remove its directory entry, and mark the space the file occupied as freely usable space. The actual contents of the file will stay there, until another file is written in their place. What is really important is, as I've heard, not even this is enough - the digital bits making up the software-land contents of the file are actually physically manifested as analogical electricity charges, with enough of a charge one way meaning "0" and enough of a charge the other way meaning "1". (So sue me, I'm lousy at electronics. But this is the general idea.) Now, in the real, physical analogical world, electricity charges don't switch 100% completely on or off, but usually switch only part of the way, but enough to make the computer realise they're now supposed to be "0" or "1". What this means is, when a bit is overwritten, a trace of the original bit actually stays there, and with some highly technical equipment, it's possible to figure out what the original bit was. Because of this, heavy-duty industry- or military-scale file wiping operations overwrite the file's contents multiple times, each time with different data, to make sure the charges change randomly enough for these traces of bits to become impossible (or at least impractical) to detect. JIP | Talk 18:39, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It's actually somewhat controversial as to whether it takes more than one wipe to securely wipe a harddrive—so says this article, anyway. It appears that writing over more than once is just paranoid overkill (which, considering how low the "cost" is, isn't necessarily a bad thing if you REALLY want something deleted). Anyway, just an aside! --Mr.98 (talk) 19:43, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a (mostly theoretical, I think) possibility that the hard drives' head positioning mechanism doesn't perfectly follow the same circular path each time you reposition it over one of the data tracks on the hard drive. Sometimes it'll be a little bit off to the left - other times a bit off to the right of the idealised centerline. So if you write magnetic data when the head happens to be a bit over to the left - and erase it by writing over it when the head is a bit over to the right - then while maybe 95% of the width of the track will represent the new data - there would be a thin strip that's just 5% of the width that wouldn't have been overwritten - and which would still contain the old data. Clearly, when you read back the data, even if the head is way over to the left again - the head is mostly picking up the new data - and because it's a digital system, the slight variation in magnetic levels due to that thin strip of old data will get ignired when the signal is force to be a 0 or a 1. The theory is that someone with really special equipment could use a really narrow disk head - positioned really carefully over that 5% of old data and read it back...even after you erased it. However, this seems to be more of a theoretical possibility than something people do on a regular basis. It turns out that when people have investigated this, that a lot of people in the disk recovery business believes it can be done - but none of them can actually DO it. So - can some secretive government spy agency do it? Maybe...just maybe. Can anyone else do it? No. It's probably just an urban legend. Certainly there is no routine mechanism to recover data that's actually been physically deleted - you'd have to dismantle the hard drive in a clean-room environment, use multimillion-dollar custom equipment - take days or weeks fiddling with the adjustments. If it's possible at all, it would be a nightmare of a job. So theoretically - you might need to erase the data many times - probably by writing random numbers all over it - to ensure that the disk head has covered the entire width of the track. SteveBaker (talk) 04:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When you are deciding how to protect your data it is very important to decide who you are protecting it from. If you just want to avoid the next person to use this computer at the public library from stumbling across it, then deleting the pointer is plenty. If you want to avoid opportunistic criminals that buy 2nd hand computers in the hope of finding people's bank details by running off-the-shelf recovery software over the hard-drive, one overwrite is probably wise (personally, I keep computers too long for it to be worth selling them so when I throw them out I just open the hard-drive case and hit the platters a few times with a hammer). If you a criminal trying to avoid the authorities from finding the evidence of your crimes, it is probably worth doing several overwrites just in case they do have clever recovery devices. --Tango (talk) 04:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

PS The same principle applies to encryption. In the first case, just password protecting the file is enough. In the second, you might want to encrypt it using a 64-bit key (or whatever is medium security for the type of cipher you are using) or something. In the final case, you can go the whole hog at use 512-bit encryption just in case they decide to throw a military supercomputer at the problem. If the person you think might want to read your files doesn't have access to a military supercomputer, then long keys are completely unnecessary. --Tango (talk) 04:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Copying a user's settings

Due to a very stubborn infection of malware which resisted many attempts at removal, I was recently forced to reinstall Windows XP Professional on my sister's family PC. It was a significant hassle (several hours work) to backup all the documents, photos, music, email; then reinstall everything and configure the 6 users required by the large family. One thing that could have save quite a while, would be to configure one user then copy that one to the 5 others. Unfortunately, the user settings are not in one place but are spread over several folders and many places in the registry. Is there a program (preferably free - as in free beer) that will copy one Windows user's complete settings to another? Astronaut (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't what you're asking for, but one tip: Once you've got it set up, use Norton Ghost or Clonezilla or a similar program to make an image file of the hard disk. Next time they download and install malware, it'll be a lot faster for you to hit the reset button, so to speak. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I've already done that - only after I set up all six users. Astronaut (talk) 14:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Madriva XP dual boot and compatibility question

On my WinXP Pro machine I would like to install Mandriva additionally. The machine is rather old with SDRAM and IDE HDD. I have downloaded mandriva-linux-one-2009.1-KDE4-europe1-americas-cdrom-i586.iso. I don't know how to go about with the installation. Can I boot from CD ROM (ISO burnt on a CD ROM) and install and then add a bootloader? --Wanttolook (talk) 18:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about Mandriva, but in principle, yes, that is the process. Probably a bit easier if you use a Live CD (such as Ubuntu) as a base, in which case you can try out the system (and make sure it works with your particular hardware) before committing. Your Mandriva image might well be a live CD, I don't know. I believe most modern Linux distros are fairly clever at realising that there's Windows co-existing on the system and help with the necessary setup to make it dual-boot. It's been five years since I've done this the last time.195.128.251.41 (talk) 23:24, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Does Microsoft have a record for every Windows computer on earth?

This is implied by each MS operating system instalation having a unique product key. How much memory would this require? 89.243.191.11 (talk) 19:53, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

well, the Microsoft product keys are (at least they were for XP), five clusters of five characters each. Using A-Z, 0-9, that gives you quite a lot of possible keys. But a database that contained keys that had been already registered (that is, did not contain all possible keys), would only have to be as large as the total number of registered computers, not all possible keys. (You enforce the product key by checking if another is already registered with that key.) For a physical card file, this would be a daunting task. For a computer database, it is not very tough. How many copies of Windows are there out in the world? My guess for all versions is between 200-400 million, but that is just a guess. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the number is much larger (at least 1.5112 x 10²⁵). The number of possible keys can be obtained like this using permutations:

26 letters + 10 numbers = 36 characters

25 characters in a serial number

₂₅P₃₆ = 25 x 24 x 23 x 22 ... 1

Which equals 15,511,210,043,331,000,000,000,000. Since each character is a byte, this equates to billions of terabytes.--Drknkn (talk) 20:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it would be 36²⁵ because each character can be used multiple times, so that would be 80,828,127,746,476,406,064,313,960,045,654,000,000 --omnipotence407 (talk) 22:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

That's if the imaginary database contained all possible keys. The number we need to find is how many units of Windows OS that Microsoft has sold, and multiply that by the memory that an individual key uses. Tan | 39 21:09, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

And the total number of acceptable keys is probably much smaller than the total possibility anyway—they are probably generated using some sort of algorithm that can be easily re-run for verification before it ever tries to contact the Microsoft servers about any given key. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed I was about to make the same point. Those aren't even all possible keys. Trying entering a random key into Windows when installing. It almost definitely won't work... Windows has an internal algorithm for validating a key, as does every single application I know of that accepts some sort of serial number (that's one of the points). Key generators often exist which generate valid keys which will be accepted by the application usually made I presume either by cracking the applications internal algorithm or more likely I think by disassembling it and working out how it works. (These may not of course every possible valid key but simply a subset.) Sometimes it may even be documented by someone interested in such things so you don't need to go to such lengths yourself to work out the real number of possible keys. However even this list contains many more keys then would be necessary. For example, it isn't uncommon that companies will change their internal algorithm so that keys that were formerly accepted will no longer be but all valid old keys will be (I'm not talking about a blacklist of certain keys although it's possible if the key generator didn't generate all possible keys but a subset the blacklist may be against all keys generated with this method.) In fact, IIRC this happened with Windows XP. Bear in mind we're talking entirely of things which happen at the application leve here without any reliance on an external server Nil Einne (talk) 06:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

No. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 20:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Then what's your answer? Are you just trolling? Tan | 39 20:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Learn the definition of trolling for starters. As for an answer, "no" is correct. Microsoft does not have a record for every Windows computer on earth. If I have a windows install disk, I could install it on any number of computers without microsoft knowing (espcally older versions or computers without net access). Now add to that piracy (lets say I downloaded my install disk from the net). It is impossible that microsoft would have a record of EVERY windows computer unless they literally scanned every square inch of the earth with some windows detector. Does that satisfy you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 22:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

What's your problem? If you want to give helpful answers, then do that. If you don't, just go somewhere else. Nobody's forcing you to participate. In any case, my understanding is that on OSes from XP onwards at the very least, Microsoft uses all sorts of software "phone homing" whenever you need to update the OS and other things of that nature which require a valid key. There were, last time I checked, ways to circumvent that. But it doesn't negate that Microsoft does have a very substantial key database. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? How is my answer not helpful? OP asked "Does Microsoft have a record for every Windows computer on earth?"[2] and I answered "no"[3] to which I was accused of trolling[4], and in response I rebuked the accusation of trolling and expanded upon my answer[5]. In addition to the question, the OP clearly states "every Windows computer on earth", which in my mind includes everything from Windows 1.0 to the present day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 22:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

"No" is not an answer when there are at least two questions, and it is not helpful, especially when you are determined to take the OP's question to mean something rather impractical. Then getting snippy when other people ask you why you are bothering to post it doesn't help much either. Anyway, if you want to contribute, please do. But don't be difficult just for its own sake. It doesn't help and you're wasting your own time as much as anyone else's. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I took the OPs question at face value, the way it was asked. I'm not going to guess at what the OP might have meant, I simply answered the question which was asked, however impractical the question might have been. How is that time wasting? As for "getting snippy", I think I've got the right to be a bit put out by someone calling my correct answer "trolling". Anyway, none of this meta discussion is actually helpful to the OP, so can we please stop it now?

This is the Reference Desk. You are supposed to supply references. One-word answers with no further information for the OP do not belong on the Reference Desk. Answers that seem logical to you but have no references are only slightly better. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

References are only really needed for controversial claims, which mine wasn't.

I think a dose of Wikipedia:Assume good faith would help here... Mitch Ames (talk) 10:08, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

"No." --Mr.98 (talk) 14:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that each Windows installation doesn't necessarily have a unique key though. Businesses with a Volume license key have a single product key for potentially thousands of desktop machines (and that's not including any pirate copies that will have the product key from another machine). ZX81 ^talk 22:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

That's true, and reduces the total database size even more. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The previous answer ("No") isn't very useful - but it's obviously correct. It's simply impossible for Microsoft to have caught every single Windows-based computer's serial number - for not one single one to have slipped through the cracks in 25 years! Not least because in the days of Windows 1,2 and 3 - there was no Internet access for the overwhelming proportion of PC's. The amount of memory is rather trivial though. Let's get silly and suppose that every person on Earth has had 10 Windows-based PC's each. That's 60 billion machines. If it took a thousand bytes to store each record - with no compression or anything, that's 60Tbyte. You could store that quite easily on a single computer with a decent RAID array of a dozen 1Tbyte hard drives. That's just nothing to a company like Microsoft. SteveBaker (talk) 04:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

How do you store 60TB of data on a dozen 1TB drives? --Tango (talk) 04:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... are we missing an article Programmer's dozen here? Jørgen (talk) 11:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I was last interested in Microsoftware about six years ago. Back then, its CDs came with very elaborate keys that you had to type in to get the software to install. Sometimes I'd remember to take the CD with me but forget the key. I'd then look around on the web and download the same very short PDF file that had a small number of keys for each fairly recent MS product; more often than not, the first of these keys would work. Things could be different now though. -- Hoary (talk) 14:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Star Trek TOS, film quality, and HD re-release

I'd like to know if rereleasing the original series in HD would actually be any better quality than the DVD versions already out there. Is the condition of the original film reels good enough to support HD? Or are we essentially getting an HD-sized copy of the DVD image quality? Thank you! 61.189.63.142 (talk) 22:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It is possible digitally to enhance the image quality, and save the result as a HD movie. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

But if the original resolution is low, it won't really be HD, and it wouldn't look nearly as good as actual HD. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought TOS was shot on film, in which case an HD version would look far better, if the film was ever located and cleaned up. And, of course, if they used that as the source material for the Blu-Ray version. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

As you can see here - StarTrek TOS was filmed on excellent quality 35mm EASTMAN stock - they were filming on tripods in studio lighting - so we may assume the quality was pretty good. This site says you can expect to get between 12 and 20 megapixels out of a frame of decently shot 35mm film. 1080p HDTV is 1920×1080 pixels - 2 megapixels. So even without processing, the original 35mm film has plenty of resolution to make crisp HDTV images. The film stock from even the earliest shows dates from maybe 1964 - it's only 45 years old - that's not ancient by cine film standards.

None of this guarantees that the quality of the HD version will be better than the regular DVD's because sometimes companies don't do a good job. But there is no fundamental technological barrier to them being vastly better if the company who did the conversion did a diligent job. SteveBaker (talk) 03:41, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have the first season of TOS on Blu-Ray, and I can tell you it looks far better than any previous release of the series I've seen, including on TV. They did an amazing job cleaning up the series. I highly recommend it if you are considering it (or even if you aren't). ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with 日本穣—they did a fine job on the Blu-rays, and Steve's technical explanation is correct. After buying Season 1, I also bought Season 2 and pre-ordered Season 3. The picture is much sharper than, for example, DS9 on DVD. Bear in mind that you're getting a very good picture of a show from the 1960s, with less technology and a smaller budget than modern series. That means that the picture is sharp enough to see the cheapness of the sets, the seam in Spock's ears, etc. You will see that they weren't always precise with the camera focus or didn't always have enough depth of field, and the style at the time was to shoot women in soft focus. Occasionally you can tell that the film has deteriorated more than usual, or the exposure was off when shot. But as long as you understand these limitations, you'll find that the Blu-rays look much better than the series ever has before. (BTW, I'm also impressed with the Blu-ray release of The Prisoner.) -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

November 11

MS Excel help

Ended up using =VALUE(). Thanks for all your help.--omnipotence407 (talk) 00:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

For whatever reason, I need to go through about 4500 cells (all in one column) and click F2 to edit and then it Enter to accept the changes without actually changing anything. I have tried formatting everything as text and numbers but nothing helps. I think a macro would do the trick, but I am not up on my VB. Thanks --omnipotence407 (talk) 22:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain what your goal is? Are you just trying to force a manual update of all the cell values? (Because that is very easy to do with Excel.)

--Mr.98 (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that's what I'm trying to do. From what I can tell, the cells are not being considered numbers until I edit and accept. The values are copied and pasted (as values only) from the output of Microsoft Query. I'm running 2003 if that helps. It seems like it would be simple, but I haven't found anything that would help. --omnipotence407 (talk) 01:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that sounds like Excel. Have you tried copying and then repasting them using Paste Special > Values? It might keep them from being treated like strings. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I meant with the "as values only." --omnipotence407 (talk) 03:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried copy-and-pasting first into Notepad and then from there into Excel? That sometimes helps to strip off formatting. Or save the Excel file as a text-only format (CSV for example), open in Notepad or Wordpad and do search-and-replace on any string identifiers (single or double quotes). Re the macros: there's a "record macro" button in Excel that is great for figuring out the language, but you still have to set up the loops manually... Jørgen (talk) 10:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe even a recalc command (F9) could solve your problem. -- Codicorumus  « msg 17:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

the F9 didn't work. I tried doing the record macro, but the problem was that it doesn't retain the values. It ends up replacing the contents with the one that I recorded with. --omnipotence407 (talk) 19:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, you can do the job via a formula that results in the appropriate number and then –if necessary– copy and paste as value. -- Codicorumus  « msg 20:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Paste Values is only relevant if you have copied a formula from Excel. In that case, Paste Values discards the underlying formula and only pastes the output value of the formula. However, in your case, there is no underlying formula to discard. The problem seems to be that the data is being pasted as text instead of numbers.

Here's a possible solution: After you paste the data, you might try clicking on the Paste Options button that appears, choosing the Text Import Wizard, and see if it has an option to interpret the data you pasted as numbers instead of text.

This may also be helpful: Convert numbers stored as text to numbers. --Bavi H (talk) 02:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Serious error

When I got home my computer had to be restarted. When it booted up it said it had recovered from a serious error. I copied the details on the "send error report" and they are:

BCCode : 77     BCP1 : C000000E     BCP2 : C000000E     BCP3 : 00000000     
BCP4 : 1727D000     OSVer : 5_1_2600     SP : 3_0     Product : 768_1

I am running Windows XP on a Dell Dimsension 2400 with 528 megs. Can anyone interpret this error report for me? I did install the latest version of Firefox yesterday and it prompted me to install the latest version of Flash Player, which I also did. I am running the latest version of Norton.--162.83.161.25 (talk) 00:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I cannot decode the data, but messages saying that the computer has recovered from a serious error are usually not alarming. Most often the problem never occurs again. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

As Andreas Rejbrand said, these "serious errors" are usually not serious. Bug check code (BCCode) 77 is KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR, and C000000E is STATUS_NO_SUCH_DEVICE. So the kernel tried to read a (stack) page from the page file, but couldn't find the disk where the page file was supposed to be. Why that would happen, I don't know. -- BenRG (talk) 01:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

By "serious", it really means, "I had an error with running the OS and had to reboot the whole thing and could not fail gracefully" rather than "this is a permanent problem." That being said, if you get LOTS of said "serious errors", it can be an indication of faulty/failing hardware (e.g. bad RAM will cause lots of weird errors of this sort). But if it is just one every once in awhile—don't panic. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Just so you know, I never panic. I have my towel with me at all times.--162.83.161.25 (talk) 04:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had a lot of intermittent serious errors / BSOD's recently and it turned out to be a faulty RAM chip. If it happens often, it might be worth it to run a full diagnostics check on your computer (e.g. from ultimatebootcd.com). But like the posters said, it could be anything. Sandman30s (talk) 11:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Resuming downloads

Hi. I use firefox to download files of several megabytes. But my connection often fails, and when it reconnects, I have start the download over again. Is there a way to change the settings to resume the download from where it stopped when the connection terminated? I'm using Firefox 3.5.5. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.124.189.173 (talk) 04:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

This add-on] should do the job and has lots of downloads and a 5 star rating, so I would go for that if I were you. --Tango (talk) 05:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

note that some sites don't support resuming no matter what addons you install. they simply won't resume. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 11:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Downscaling a 1280x720 video? To 854x480 or 720x480?

So utterly confused. I want to resize a 1280x720 video to a smaller size. I though it was suggested to go to 640x360. Which is the more popular resizing. For example, for 640x480, it is frequently resized to 320x240. What is 1028x720 frequently resized to? I've seen 720x480 used a lot, but it's not 16:9 ratio. Thanks. Mahanga^Talk 04:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

For what purpose are you resizing the video? That will help to answer what size you should resize it to. — QuantumEleven 10:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't you mean 1280 and not 1208? 1208 just doesn't make any sense to your question. You can resize the video to any size you like so you really have to tell us what your application is, and what the screen size of your intended display is (both in physical inches and the number of pixels height X width). Zunaid 11:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Check out this graphic if you want to know what "standard" resolutions there are, and why "720x480" etc. is used a lot (it is NTSC). If you pick a small resolution in the same color on that graphic, it will be the same ratio. So 1280x720 (HD 720) cannot be smoothly resized down to another common size other than WVGA (854x480) without either cropping a bit or adding blank borders. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

My mistake, I meant 1280. I'm resizing because I would just like a smaller file size (for online video streaming) and simply don't need the large 1280x720 size. I think I'll resize it to 854x480 so that there's no cropping. It's just that I don't see many videos at that resolution (or 640x360), it just seemed a little odd. Thanks, Mahanga^Talk 16:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It really doesn't matter what physical size it is—if it were me, I would just chop it in half, or even in half once again and double it up in the player with smoothing. For many purposes, that works fine. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

640×360 is nHD, exactly a quarter of 720p and a ninth of 1080p. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Pendrive

When i inserted a Kingston pen drive into my laptop (which has Windows Vista), the computer tried to find Data Traveler 2.0 device driver software from Windows update but it couldn't find. So the computer asked me to manually install it from a folder. I didn't have the device driver software so I searched for it in the internet and downloaded it. But when i double-clicked it for installing, i got an error message that it was only for Windows 98. But then, the next time i inserted the pendrive, i accidentally clicked the option named "Do not ask me to install software for this device again". So now if in insert the pendrive, nothing happens; i don't even get the prompt to manually install the software. Does anybody know how to bring back this automatic searching of sofware and prompting of the computer to install the software? I want this propmting to occur because i found a way for the pendrive to work and this way needs the pronpting of the computer. And if you have any other way of bringing the pendrive icon (without the prompting of the computer) in the MyComputer, that is also welcome. Please help me with this as I have some important documents in the pen drive. Thank you very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.246.57.2 (talk) 05:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

To get the prompt, insert you usb drive into the computer, then go to the Start menu and type "devmgmt.msc" without quotes into the search box (that's assuming you're using the default vista start menu. If you're using classic, go to Start -> Run and enter "devmgmt.msc" into the box). Now find your usb drive in the list, right click it and select properties. Go to the Driver tab and click Update driver. The prompt should then appear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 12:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple FaceBook application

I have an online community which i would like to spread to my friends via Facebook. I hear you can make your own applications and simply have your app be a window to a certain URL.

I have a java applet which hooks directly to my chatroom, so it would be PERFECT if the application could just bring the Facebook user to a page with my applet on it. Is there anyone who can help me do this? Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: I managed to get the application started, but for some reason people cant add it to their profiles? If anyone is skilled at doing FB apps please let me know, im having a pretty difficult time trying to get the application be able to be added to peoples profiles. Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 09:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you gotten an API key from Facebook? You can't just add anything to FB, you have to use their process for adding apps. See here, for example. --LarryMac | Talk 13:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah i think i know what you are talking about. It says i have 4 fans but no one "uses" the app. I dont know how to design the app to "hook into facebook" so people can add it to their profile and etc. I know nothing at all about php, and the app is just supposed to be a portal to a web chat, which works. Is there any way i can get a very simple phpish thing that just hooks into FB and does nothing else, so my friends can use the app and it "counts" it on facebook?

137.81.112.176 (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Unresolved

I want to know the turnover, the number of employees of quechup.com or idate corporation

Hi, I'm german and translated the article quechup into german. Now I want to complete the article with informations about the enterprise. I've searched with Google to estimate the turnover, the number of employees of quechup.com or idate corporation, but without success. Perhaps somebody can give me these or other background informations. Thanks in advance Jan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jan Renzlow (talk • contribs) 09:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC) -- Jan Renzlow (talk) 10:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Their "investor relations" link, which you must have already investigated, yields very vague information, which is typical of a small private company. Their whois record shows a registrant in Las Vegas, Nevada, and checking with the Nevada secretary of state's corporation lookup, a search for "idate" yields a "revoked" domestic corporation at this page showing the officers' address in Newbury, Berkshire, which must be where the company is located. These records don't list an employee count, and the fact the corporation's status is 'revoked' doesn't mean much; they could have reincorporated in another state for their US purposes, or have simply decided to not maintain a US corporation. Sorry. Maybe there is a British or EU website where you can look up a company and find out how many employees they have, and possibly even what their turnover is (though that's highly confidential data at every company and I think it's unlikely you'll be able to find it). Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Comet Tuttle, I 've still known the officers' address in Newbury, Berkshire. The WhoIs-database search is unfortunately offline for routine maintenance. I'll try it later -- Jan Renzlow (talk) 09:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

'Find' feature in Mac OSX Leopard

What I want to do is search a specific folder for items modified after a specific date. Back in the day this was easy, and possibly still is, but I can't find a way of reliably doing it. The Finder search bar will do this only if I also specify a name of the document so I can get round it by searching for individual types of document (ie searching for '.pdf' then'.indd' then '.qxp' etc. but I would like to get a consolidated result with all the files modified within the time span. Thanks in advance!   pablo_hablo. 09:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Go to the folder that you want to search, then hit Command-F. This will start the search feature. Click on "folder name" at the top. Change the search criteria to "last modified date" and fill in your timeframe. Dismas|^(talk) 11:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good but I'm not getting a "folder name" option to click on; just 'This Mac', "pablo" (my home folder), 'Shared' and then the options "Contents" and "File Name".   pablo_hablo. 11:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

That's odd. I'm running Leopard. So, using my iTunes music folder as an example, I navigate to that folder, hit Command-F, and along the top I have "Search: This Mac "iTunes Music" | Contents File Name Save -" If I click on "iTunes Music" and limit my search by "Last modified date" within the last 10 days, it gives me a list of items. Although, just the stuff in that folder. Not the files within those modified folders... Dismas|^(talk) 11:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Mine's 10.5.8 - are you running Snow Leopard?   pablo_hablo. 11:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Same here. 10.5.8. Dismas|^(talk) 11:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Weird. I can specify the folder to search if I use the search bar but not if I use the ⌘F option. However - typing modified:>=01/01/2009 in the search bar seems to be doing the job at the moment, but I am now concerned as to why my machine behaves differently to yours ...   pablo_hablo. 12:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If you've got XP, is there much point in upgrading to Vista?

A lot of Vista install disks with COAs are available very cheap now. I've got XP. Is there much point in upgrading to Vista? From what I've read on the internet it seems Vista is poorly thought of by many/some. 78.149.246.109 (talk) 11:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want your computer to run slow, lag randomly, make it difficult to find drivers and have a cool interface, then sure, go ahead and upgrade to Vista. F (talk) 12:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Unless you are upgrading your hardware to something which XP doesn't have driver support for, there's no reason to install to Vista. It's actually less stable than XP and has many of the problems listed above. If you're thinking of upgrading, Windows 7 is the way to go - it's basically a version of Vista without all of Vistas problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 12:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Windows Vista is a much better OS than XP. The user interface is much more appealing, the system is more stable, the start menu is improved, it is much easier to search for files, browse folders, copy/move files etc. But, of course, Windows 7 is even better. Window snap and other features are great. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure Vista has lots of cool menus and themes (personally I always use classic) but Vista is very unstable compared to XP and generally runs slower while consuming more resources. See Criticism of Windows Vista

I think the real problem with Vista is that it needs lots of memory - I just booted my Vista system, and with nothing loaded, it was using 1.35 Gigs. If you've got a PC with "only" a Gig, I think you'll find it a poor upgrade. With lots of memory, I'm happy with it as an OS and do like some of the features mentioned above. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista is awful compared to XP or 7. I'd rather have a fast system than lots of unnecessary "cool" looking features, themes and start menus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista runs fast on my four-year old (quite high-end, though) Dell Dimension. But, probably, Windows 7 will run even faster. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

<obligatory>Switch to Mac.</obligatory> Tan | 39 15:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

On my computer (hp 530, 2GB ram) Vista was slower than XP, and took much more harddrive and ram. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukipuk (talk • contribs) 15:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft has put together a comparison of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 for your convenience. It is up to you whether the added features in Vista are "worth it." I think many people were dissatisfied with Vista, but I never had any trouble at all with it in terms of stability or performance (and I spend my day-job benchmarking high-performance computers - so I suspect that most people who claim "poor performance" are either blowing smoke or incompetently repeating blog-o-web hype that is counterfactual). Vista improved hardware support, introduced the Windows Display Driver Model framework - vastly improving throughput and consistency to video cards, the PCIe bus, and other peripherals [6]; dramatically rearchitected multithreading in support of modern CMP and SMP computers [7], DMA, ... the numerous technologies which Vista added make possible vastly higher performance computers. The question of whether it will make your computer any faster can only be answered by benchmarking your hardware. The new features do incur an overhead, and in some cases (especially if your old hardware cannot benefit from the new performance-enhancements) the overhead may be higher than the performance gain (as has been pointed out above). Nimur (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Any figures coming from Microsoft are highly suspect, as they of course want to sell you the new stuff, so they will just skip listing any features that were available in XP that have been dropped in both Vista and 7 (although they did list one that was dropped in Vista and restored in 7). They also don't list the much higher system requirements for both Vista and 7, which gives you a real idea of how many more resources they use. The chart is also full of opinions and exaggerations, like "more easily", and my favorite, "Find files and programs instantly". Instantly ? Really ? Absolutely no time is required ? That's a nice trick. A real comparison chart would have objective facts, like times and numbers of clicks and Megabytes, rather than subjective terms like that. StuRat (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

To follow up, here are the system requirements for XP [8], Vista [9], and 7 [10]:

            Memory (MB)       Speed (MHz)     Free Disk Space (GB)
          Min/Recommended   Min/Recommended   Min/Recommended
          ===============   ===============   ====================
XP          64-128           233-300           1.5     
Vista      512-1024          800-1000          15   
7         1024-2048              1000          16-20

So, as you can see, there was an absolutely huge leap in system requirements from XP to Vista, with only a modest increase from Vista to 7. I'd pay particular attention to the speed requirement. If you need a computer that's 3-6 times faster to run Vista than XP, that's likely because Vista is 3-6 times slower. Now, to answer the original Q, I'd wait and get Windows 7. There's a reason why Vista is on sale so cheaply now: it's junk. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The anti-Vista hyperbole is just that, hyperbole. The new driver model makes Vista much more stable than XP, in my opinion; I have never gotten a BSOD in Vista, whereas my XP machine has suffered 20 over the years. That said, I never upgrade an OS unless there is a need. If your system is stable and your applications work, don't mess with it. What is making you consider an upgrade? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has Features new to Windows Vista, Features removed from Windows Vista, Features new to Windows 7, and Features removed from Windows 7.

A lot of the changes that people talk about are really changes in one application, explorer.exe. You don't have to use Explorer to copy and search your files any more than you have to use Internet Explorer to browse the web. Explorer has never been all that good and the changes don't make it all that much better. For the cost of a Windows 7 upgrade you might as well buy Directory Opus, which has a zillion more features than Explorer will ever have. Changes to the Start Menu don't matter to me because I so rarely need it. If I want to open the Run dialog I press Win+R, if I want to open my web browser I press Win+W. The first is a standard key combo, the second I defined myself using AutoHotkey. I've never entirely understood why people care about the 3D compositing user interface. I don't want my operating system to entertain me with animated cutscenes, I just want it to run my applications. Since I don't care about UI themes I'm not very familiar with third-party skinners, but WindowBlinds was/is one such. If you just want cool-looking window borders, it'll do fine.

There are some more meaningful improvements to the OS proper, of course. But keep third-party alternatives in mind, especially if you'd have to pay for the upgrade. -- BenRG (talk) 18:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Forget Vista; the only upgrade to consider is Windows 7. I've been happy with it thusfar; 99% of my programs work well with it, the 1% being the odd driver that doesn't work, and so I have a dual-boot into XP for that reason. Windows 7 has a lot of "new" features that third-party programs did in XP. The main reason to upgrade IMO is that the world will slowly migrate away from legacy 8/16/32-bit code and you'd rather be part of the move. Win7 boots up a lot faster than XP and is more stable in certain areas. Downside is that the meaty bits are hidden and the new interface will take getting used to... but that is normal and nowhere near as bad as the move from DOS to Windows was! Sandman30s (talk) 11:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu v. Windows: reliability, speed, compactness, error recovery?

Putting aside issues of ease of use, how do the two compare in the technical aspects above? To be more specific about Windows, currently I have WinXP, I suppose I could upgrade to Vista. 78.149.246.109 (talk) 11:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading to 7 would be ideal, and would be faster/more reliable than vista or XP in my opinion. Though I don't use Ubuntu, so I can't give a comparison Chris M. (talk) 14:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In the process of reinsalling Win XP to get rid of a major malware problem, I used a xubuntu live CD to backup all the user's documents, photos, music, email, etc. onto an external disk. I noticed that xubuntu was noticably quicker at copying than XP. Astronaut (talk) 15:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have hp530 laptop (upgraded to 2GB ram) with WinXP and Ubuntu (Xubuntu 8.04). I have tried Windows Vista and Windows 7. WinXP gives best performance, folowed by Ubuntu, next Windows 7, with worse performance achieved by Vista. On th reliability scale, windows XP did best, and Ubuntu worse (there was lot of problems with wifi and laptop special buttons, things that worked stopped working on reboot). I cant say much about 7 and Vista, i didnt use them long enough (because of low performance). I dont know what exactly do you mean by compactness, but Vista and 7 has lot of bloat which i really didnt need (voice recognition and similar stuff), on the other hand there was some neat new things like search and lot of user interface tweaks. Ubuntu have some cool things too, imo the best is package manager, where you can install software literally with one click (no more web searching). This is not meant to be objective comparison, just how the things works for me...hope it helps :) Lukipuk (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When you ask about "speed", your question is extremely vague. "Speed to do what"? Are you referring to responsiveness of the user interface? FLOPS count? Boot time? Disk access? Nimur (talk) 16:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Question seems to cause responses to be highly susceptible to personal bias. Kushal (talk) 16:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep i meant responsivnes of UI, and things like the time between double-click to program icon and actual start of programs, booting time etc. The laptop is just for internet and terminal Lukipuk (talk) 18:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The question is too vague for us to be able to answer. It all depends on what applications you are going to be using. You don't have to choose just one or the other, by the way; you can set up your computer to dual-boot and choose either Ubuntu or Windows at startup. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The following sheds some light on the issue of reliability: [11]. I have also timed how long it takes to boot Windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, and openSUSE on multiple computers. XP was the fastest, followed by Vista, then openSUSE, and finally Ubuntu. There are tweaks that you can perform to increase the performance of Linux, though. One thing I do is choose ext2 as the file system during installation. Since ext2 doesn't use journaling, disk operations are faster. As for compactness, all modern operating systems include un-necessary bloat. Ubuntu includes a braille service (Brltty), for example.--Drknkn (talk) 21:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above, but in fairness and in deference to accuracy, Ubuntu's brltty does not need to be installed; nor does it need to be configured to run at startup; so if it is running and you feel that it is unnecessarily bloaty and damaging your performance, you can easily turn it off or uninstall it. Some users are very happy that this service exists, but most of us do not need it. Nimur (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Difference between property files and XML file in java

Hi,
What is the difference in using property files and XML files in Java....
In which cases property files would be helpfull and in which cases XML files would be helpfull.... Thanks,
- Atchays —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 11:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Properties files are much simpler and are stored in a very direct plaintext representation. XML is a structured markup language, so it adds a lot of complexity - but the benefits are more extensible, better-organized data that can be produced and consumed by many other applications. You can read about .properties files and XML at our respective articles. Nimur (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Tuples

I came up with the idea of tuples in imperative, procedural or object-oriented, languages many years ago. A tuple is simply a collection of variables, or values, treated as one single variable, or value, exactly preserving the number, order, and types of every single variable or value. The best idea is to show by example, assuming a hypothetical extension to, for example, Java:

(int, String) myTuple = (1, "Hello world!");
(int, String) copyOfMyTuple = myTuple;
int i;
String s;
(i, s) = copyOfMyTuple; // now i equals 1 and s equals "Hello world!"

Trying to mix tuples with different numbers of members, or with the types of members conflicting, is an error.

The only thing that is undefined is what happens in an assignment such as the last line above when several lvalues refer to the same actual variable. I suppose this could be resolved by defining that assignment happens in strict left-to-right order, so the assignment that happens last is the one that stays in effect.

Now so far tuples might just be syntactic sugar for several variables or values written together, but coupled with generics, we can have:

List<(int, String)> listOfTuples = new ArrayList<(int, String)>();
listOfTuples.add((1, "Hello world!"));

where tuples are a kind of inner classes. I don't think this, coupled with the assignment to individual type lvalues I showed above, can easily be done with existing languages.

My questions, therefore, are:

1. Have I thought about this correctly or have I made a mistake, resulting in a contradiction or open question, in the above?
2. Has anyone else thought about this?
3. Since I can design new features for programming languages pretty easily, but can't actually implement even a simple compiler to save my life, is there an existing language extension that does this? JIP | Talk 19:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Attempt at answering third question: You wrote "for example, Java". If C++ is an acceptable substitute, there is the Boost tuple library [12]. Does that satisfy your requirements? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, your concept of a tuple sounds very much like a PL/I structure, which goes back some 45 years. StuRat (talk) 02:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand. Aside from the syntactic sugar - why are your tuples any different from a classic C or C++ 'struct'? If (in your example), I declare a 'struct T { int A ; string B ; };' then I have a "collection of variables, or values, treated as one single variable, or value, exactly preserving the number, order, and types of every single variable or value"...your definition of a tuple. The only real difference is that you have some slightly streamlined syntax...which would cause immense problems in a practical language because of yet another overloading of the meaning of '(' and ')'. But I could come very close to your example with some fairly minor syntax changes:

 struct int_String { int _int ; String _String ; } ;   // I have to declare my tuple - but that's not a bad thing, IMHO.

 int_String myTuple = { 1, "Hello world!" } ;
 int_String copyOfMyTuple = myTuple;
 int i;
 String s;
 i = copyOfMyTuple._int; s = copyOfMyTuple._String;

...the only material difference is the last line...which you could fix in C++ with a 'Get' member function:

 copyOfMyTuple.Get(i,String)

Aside from some rather tiny syntax variations - why wouldn't I just use a C++ structure? Ditto JAVA, ditto almost every modern language. With some macros and some fancy operator overloads, I bet we could get even closer to your syntax. For your second example, all we need is a suitable constructor function:

List<T> listOfTuples = new ArrayList<T>();
listOfTuples.add(int_String(1, "Hello world!"));

SteveBaker (talk) 06:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I much prefer the angle-bracket syntax, as seen in pair (the C++ 2-tuple):

pair<int, string> duo(1, "hello");
typedef pair<int, string> IntString;
list<IntString> intStrList;
intStrList.push_back( duo );
intStrList.push_back( IntString(2, "world") );

C++0x adds a tuple type:

tuple<int, string, double> triplet( 1, "2", 3.0 );
int i = get<0>(triplet); // get the first (0th) element of the tuple

list< decltype(triplet) > triplets; // eqv. to list< tuple<int, string, double> >
triplets.push_back( triplet );
triplets.push_back( { 4, "5", 6.0 } ); // list-initialization

decltype (talk) 10:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Tuples can also be found in ML-family languages. Haskell uses parentheses and commas for tuples:

       myTuple = (1, "Hello world!") :: (Int, String)

-- BenRG (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm well aware that everything that my hypothetical tuples could do can already be done. This is similar to what has already happened in real programming languages. People were doing object orientation when languages were still completely procedural and did not support object orientation directly, for example. It's just that things can be done more simply with these kinds of new constructs. I think I would be able to accurately design a translator from "tuple-language" to its real parent language, but not actually implement it yet.

Now, if the number of items in a tuple were fixed, these "tuples" could already be implemented, for example:

public class Pair<T, U> {
  private T myT;
  private U myU;
  public Pair(T t, U u) {
    myT = t;
    myU = u;
  }
  public T getFirst() {
    return myT;
  }
  public U getSecond() {
    return myU;
  }
}

but I don't think there's yet an existing way to have tuples of an arbitrary number of items. Another idea in these hypothetical "tuples" is that the types themselves never need to be named, they can just be made up from their component types. My proposed syntax is very elegant, as it's mostly just the component types, but if C++0x's tuple type construct supports an arbitrary number of items, then it's just a difference of having to type the word tuple, which is not a big deal, really. Then the only difference the absence of a way to assign the tuple's items to several individual lvalues with a single assignment statement, but this can, of course, be achieved with several assignment statements, one for each item.

I'm also well aware that functional languages have had these tuple types for decades, but my idea all along was to have them for imperative languages. Functional languages don't even use assignment statements. JIP | Talk 19:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Python has tuples very much like these. It is, however, strongly but dynamically typed, so some things do not apply. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Was just going to say the same thing. Tuples in Python work great and are highly useful. You should check the language out. Belisarius (talk) 04:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the C++0x <tuple> library supports any number of items, and is implemented using variadic templates. Using only C++03 features, you can make a tuple template that supports up to a given number of arguments (Boost.tuple supports up to 10 elements), and the syntax is very similar to the C++0x version. As for the ability to assign tuple elements to individual objects, this can be achieved using "tiers":

int i;
double d;
string s;

tuple<int, double> duo { 1, 2.0 };
//assign the duo to i and d
tie(i, d) = duo;

// generate a triplet on the fly, and assign to i, d, and s
tie(i, d, s) = make_tuple(1, 2.0, "3");

// assign only a subset of the tuple's elements
auto quadruplet = make_tuple(1, 2.0, "3", '4'); // type is tuple<int, double, const char*, char>
tie(i, d, s, ignore) = quadruplet; // assign all but the char

the tie template is available in boost.tuple as well, with the same semantics. decltype (talk) 12:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Outlook email backup

At work I use Outlook and the archiving function is disabled where you can save bunches of emails into .pst files. THere is no chance of enabling the .pst functionality or using different software or installing any kind of additional software.

However, saving individual emails to the hard drive is allowed. I was wondering if there's a way I can create a macro to simply save every email to a folder on my hard drive? I don't have any experience in this but I have heard of using macro's for routine, systematic manual tasks like this. Any chance somebody could get me started?

Thank you -Joe 173.30.18.29 (talk) 19:36, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When I left my last job, I managed to copy all my mail from Outlook. It was a while ago now, so I'm unsure of the exact details, but I either copied the standard .pst files from my company PC onto a CD (they were always on my PC - I never let the server keep the mails), or I exported the mail to a format suitable for my home email client. I did this a few days before I left, so I could try out several methods to see which one worked. The only problem I had was to get my email contacts backed up. No matter which method I used, I could only get a text file with them in - I ended up re-entering them all. Astronaut (talk) 19:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

What version of Outlook? What happens if you create a new folder, double-click it to open it, leave it there on the desktop, open Outlook, click one e-mail in your Inbox, hit ctrl-A (for "Select All"), then drag all those e-mails into the open folder on the desktop? What happens if you locate the .pst file and make a copy of that to another computer, and have that computer's copy of Outlook open the .pst file? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Quite simply, you can right-click on Inbox and select Properties. There you can set up an auto-archive where every inbox item goes to a selected folder in your PST. Alternatively you can set up filters to do a similar thing, but I can't remember how to do that - you can check Outlook's help. Sandman30s (talk) 11:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

how to p[lay mission 7

I have a game Immune attack on my computer.I have already completed 6 levels (missions) of it. But in mission 7 which is "Eat staphylococcus ", I can elliminate staphylococcus But in the next step I can not differentiate between healthy and infected cells. Can anyone Guide me?--True path finder (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Immune Attack has some links... surprisingly, this might potentially fall under our do your own homework clause... Nimur (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we're not that sort of reference desk. GameFAQS is thataway -> HalfShadow (talk) 22:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

uh huh, so exactly what kind of reference desk is this? One which filters topics and only decides to answer things which we think fit into the "reference desk coverage area"? Last time I checked, we answer any question which doesn't fall under medial, legal or other illegal advice. And yes, I get that OP will probably get a far better answer at GameFAQs or other game specific sites, but telling the OP that the ref desk outright doesn't answer those types of questions because it isn't "that sort of reference desk" is pure bs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 00:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

November 12

Mobile programming

What should I download if I want to write programs for my phone in Java? My computer is Windows XP. F (talk) 04:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You'll need the Java SDK to start, but don't underestimate how many additional steps you're going to have to go through to get a program running on your phone. Depending on the phone, it might not be possible to run outside code on it. What kind of phone is it for starters? Shadowjams (talk) 06:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Nokia 3500 classic. I have copied programs over and they work. F (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The Mobile development article is probably relevant. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Nokia's Developers site is here. Astronaut (talk) 10:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

in my client-server network, i want to do that-user can use only notepad.sure that he can not use any other application.

active directory security

PHP & OOP, tutorials that actually DO something?

I'm trying to wrap my head around OOP in PHP and have read(& sometimes skimmed) a half-dozen free tutorials and am getting frustrated. I understand the basic structure, the analogies with cars & carparts, etc. But I'm having a really hard time visualizing real-world implementations of PHP OOP. (I'm new to this programming thing, if that wasn't immediately obvious)

I would be very grateful if someone could point me towards a tutorial that actually uses OOP to construct something, rather than just going over the definitions and relationships for the 100th time. I am having absolutely no luck turning up any project-driven tutorials. Thank you. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I find the tutorials in those programming books useful. Visit your local bookshop and see if they have books by Wrox Press or Apress and others. Personally, I find books in the ... For Dummies series less useful, but many people find them useful. Try to visit a real bookshop - you can always buy online, but it is helpful if you can look through a selection of books. Alternatively, try your local library. Astronaut (talk) 11:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I second the notion that you ought to check out the bookstore/library. I have found published books much better than online tutorials, which, as you point out, are often just descriptions of details rather than things that walk you through understanding. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Life cycle failure pattern of CPU-Fan

I search a statistic for failure of a Cpu-Fan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.242.195.103 (talk) 09:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

is piracy of apps a problem for apple?

Is Piracy of iPhone/iPod touch apps a problem for Apple? If so, what are the major sources/channels of piracy Apple has to deal with (by name), and how does Apple fight these in general and specific? Is there any that, like the Pirate Bay, is specifically "immune" in some way from Apple/a particular thorn in its side? This is not homework. 92.230.70.54 (talk) 12:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you Google "apps apple piracy," it appears that yes, there is some piracy, and some apps with mechanisms that let them check such a thing report rates of 90% or so. I don't know where they are pirating from, though, but if you put in "iphone app" on Pirate Bay, it definitely comes up with a lot. Does the piracy harm Apple, per se, more than the developers of the apps? I don't know, but it's likely to be the source of whether Apple themselves cares much. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of Firefox

I've discovered that Firefox reports a particular web page as not found, whereas Internet Explorer quite happily retrieves it. Has anyone else come across this, and what it the cause of it? --rossb (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

what's the url —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's here --rossb (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I use Firefox, and it loaded just fine for me. Tan | 39 15:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It worked for me, under Firefox 2.0.0.20, too. StuRat (talk) 15:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

works here. perhaps you have ad block or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not pretty, but I can view it. I don't use Internet Explorer.   pablo_hablo. 21:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Works in Linux running Iceweasel AND Lynx as well. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Runescape classic cheat server

How do you enable the cheat server?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You can't. The current RSC servers are only released as a test to see how popular they are (it says so in the news post). You might be able to on the full release, which won't be for a while yet. (Next time, this would be more suited to the Entertainment desk.) Vimescarrot (talk) 16:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

First, they said that there would be cheat servers. Second, this is ok to post here or on the entertainment desk, as it is COMPUTER game, and an ENTERTAINMENT game.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm only advising you as to which desk would get the best response. There are no cheat servers. Vimescarrot (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a good guideline would be that questions about actually playing modern computer games ("In World of Warcraft Deluxe Edition, how do I get the Sacred Thingamajig of Howdoyoostan, twice blessed?") should go to the entertainment desk. Questions about getting computer games to work in the first place ("I've been trying to install World of Warcraft Deluxe Edition for days now, but Windows keeps telling me WOWOBJECTS.DLL is corrupt. What do I do?") belong here. JIP | Talk 20:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok I will prove to you that jagex said that there were. And if someone wants to move this, go ahead.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 15:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I know they said there would be. They also said (as I've stated before) that the current RSC release is a trial, not the full final release. Vimescarrot (talk) 01:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Powerpoint slide is not opening

I am trying to open a power point file which has 98 slides, but instead of opening, it is showing a message that my anti virus (avira) is preventing the file from opening. So disabling it for a while will solve that issue, I mean then the file will open. I have disabled it and try to open file but nothing happened. Again the same message. Then I uninstalled that anti virus and tried to reopen the file, but again it refused to open and told me to deactivate anti virus. It showed the following messages :

The presentation cannot be opened. Your antivirus program may prevent you from opening the presentation. To fix this problem, make sure your antivirus program is current and working correctly. If the problem persists and the presentation is from someone that you trust, turn off your antivirus program, and then try to open the presentation again. If you do this, make sure you turn on your antivirus program again after you open the presentation.

How can I rectify this problem (open the file)? Thanks--119.30.36.45 (talk) 17:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be a memory problem...Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 18:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A memory problem problem with bad RAM? Unlikely. Please do not guess write too vaguely and accidentally send the OP on a fruitless search for more RAM. The first thing to check is whether the file is defective. Does it open on other PCs? If not, there's something wrong with the file. If so, the default bonehead tech support suggestion would be "Please uninstall PowerPoint, reinstall it, and try again", which might possibly work. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Accdude92, I read your terse answer as "bad RAM" rather than "not enough RAM" which I think is what you meant. This is unlikely to be the problem with a PowerPoint presentation on a modern machine what with today's virtual memory and such. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I hate to ask something obvious, but have you scanned the file for viruses? I mean, it's pretty odd for your AV to reject it, and the behavior you are describing what happens when you disable AV is not encouraging (it sounds like an autorun macro going crazy). Powerpoint files can carry viruses in the form of VB macros. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• I had this ppt file in my pendrive. I scanned pendrive with avira and it found some viruse which were repaired immediately. I also scanned each file individually. No virus at all. My other ppt files from pendrive can be opened easily except this particular file. I have just opened another ppt file and then drag and dropped that file (which is not opening) file into it. But a new message appeared like: The server application, source file, or item can't be opened or returned an unknown error. You may need to reinstall the server application.--119.30.36.45 (talk) 21:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

My first guess is that your ppt file was damaged, either directly by the virus or by the antivirus program when it removed the virus (though you aren't specifically saying above that the virus on the pendrive was attached to the ppt file). What happened when you tried opening the file on another PC? (Alternatively, if you don't have another PC handy with a copy of PowerPoint, you could use GMail to mail it to yourself and do a "View as HTML" so that GMail attempts to view the ppt file.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Ok I tried to view as HTML. But instead of opening it shows error in new tab and shows this message The attachment cannot be viewed as HTML. Download the attachment to view it in its original format. I downloaded it and tried to open the file. But not succeeded.--119.30.36.33 (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If other PPTs on the same drive open, but this one doesn't, then I'd go with Comet Tuttle's theory that the several viruses you had have damaged the file. I've occasionally had luck fixing horked Office files by opening them in OpenOffice.org and saving them off as a new office file; it depends on the nature and extent of the damage. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Greasemonkey script

I have the following simple code that will reload a web page in firefox every 60 seconds:

(function()
{
    setTimeout("document.location.reload();", 60000);
})();

What I need is for the script to somehow scan the webpage before it reloads it for the text "The URL you requested was not found" and if detected, not to reload the page. This in effect makes the script update to the very latest version of a particular web page before it's deleted (the site I'm going to use this on deletes pages after a certain amount of time). Is this at all possible? Regards, 82.43.89.85 (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You can't, generally speaking, due to the race condition where you check the URL, it's OK, and then you reload the page, but by then it's not OK. Perhaps the safest and easiest method will be to load the page into a hidden iframe, check that the iframe's contents are not "page not found", and then display the iframe if it's OK. --Sean 22:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

How would I go about doing this? I have almost no scripting knowledge, are iframes hard to use? I'd be extremely grateful if you could link me to an online guide which explains what I need to do. 82.43.89.85 (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

November 13

Question about web searching

How can I do a web search where I can search for one term over multiple web sites? For example, how would I search for Wikipedia at cnn.com, ask.com, cbs.com...all in one search? 63.231.178.198 (talk) 02:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Well using Google you can specify multiple sites in the advanced search http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search?q=example&hl=en . The advanced search is right beside the search button. Or you can use, for example, site:en.wikipedia.org reference desk. Lanfear's Bane | t 10:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The Google Advanced Search page didn't correctly search multiple sites for me. But you can form your own Google search for multiple sites by using something like site:cnn.com OR site:ask.com OR site:cbs.com Wikipedia --Bavi H (talk) 02:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you asking for a metasearch engine? 69.228.171.150 (talk) 07:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

mobile phones for businesses and multiple people

many businesses use landline phones so a call would be received throughout the business's building. is it possible for businesses to go completely landline free and use multiple mobile phones that are connected to a single number? so if a customer calls a number, five staff mobile phones would ring and the first to answer would take the call. if this is not possible, why? wouldn't this completely eliminate the need for landline phones in most areas? (pricing aside) Bonusbox (talk) 02:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It might be possible, but seems totally nuts for the following reasons:

1) Cell phone reception is often worse than land lines.

2) Cell phones are less reliable.

3) Cell phones can get lost.

4) Unlike land lines, most cell phone plans make you pay for incoming calls.

So, considering that for these reasons just about nobody would want to do this, there may not be any cell phone company that actually offers this service.

Cell phones instead of land lines can make sense for businesses where there is no office or people are often out of the office, but not for a business where people all stay in the office. In that case, you might consider land lines with cordless phones, so people can still move around the office (but be aware than many cordless phones are not secure, so a cord phone should be used when security is needed). StuRat (talk) 11:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that paying for incoming calls using cell phones is, AFAIK, a US-only feature. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd say that was a good thing, but there may actually be an advantage to being charged for incoming calls, in that most telemarketers don't even try to call you on a cell phone, knowing that they will be greeted with even more than the usual hostility if they do. StuRat (talk) 14:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me the cost telemarkets pay is likely to be a bigger disincentive then callee 'hostility'. I've definitely never heard of telemarkerters calling people here in NZ Nil Einne (talk) 06:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

If this hostility means you won't buy whatever crap they're selling, that's the biggest disincentive of all. StuRat (talk) 13:43, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's perfectly possible, and it's a service offered to businesses by most major developed-world telcos, and by third party providers too. In essence one outsources the company PABX into the telco cloud, which then reroutes calls (generally back over the PSTN) to individual phones, or to daughter PBXs at fixed sites (generally over ISDN). Such systems can thus reach branch offices, cellphones, employee's home phones, or to fixed phones that are directly connected to PBX equipment in a company's site. All modern PBX equipment either runs directly off an internal IP switch, or has a simple IP bridge card, so this enables enhanced service VoIP. Such systems make a lot of sense for companies that have a lot of motile people (sales-heavy companies, event organisers) or that have no premises (where everyone is either on-the-road or working from home). Typically an employee registers a given device as their current location, be that their home phone or their laptop-voip or their cell or the normal extension in their office, and the PBX makes calls to that extension ring at that location. Digital PBXs are very capable and feature laden, with support for any number of complex ringer groups, fallback ring groups, night service ring groups, and ring groups discriminated by calling and called phone number. You get all the same automated attendant, VPS, and voicemail capabilities whether the PBX is hosted or sitting in your office. D-PABX systems are beginning to migrate to running over IP rather than the POTS/ISDN PSTN, as IP affords enhanced services like directory and a unified messaging system (where texts, emails, and voice mails are all presented by the same system, over a range of interfaces from web to voice); in practice VoIP on mobile phones is still a bit crufty to be relied on for serious business use (and D-PABXs will fallback to PSTN). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Not quite what you were asking, but for a long while I had my desk phone forwarded to my mobile. It worked well for me, without disrupting others and made me more "available". However, it often annoyed my manager who was never quite sure if I was at my desk, in my car, or out at lunch :-) Astronaut (talk) 02:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Java Screenshot program

Hello! I'm working on a Java program that sends periodic screenshots from one computer to another over the Internet. The problem I'm running into is the first screenshot comes through fine, but subsequent screenshots do not come through (that is, they are not displayed in the server-side GUI). Here's part of my code:

Server side:

while(true) {
            BufferedImage bi = ImageIO.read(in); //in == the socket's input stream
            if(bi != null) {
                label.setIcon(new ImageIcon(bi)); //label == a JLabel in a JFrame that displays the image
            }
        }

Client side:

final OutputStream o = s.getOutputStream(); //s == the socket
        Timer timer = new Timer();
        TimerTask task = new TimerTask() {
            public void run() {
                try {
                    ImageIO.write(rob.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(800, 600)), "jpg", o); //rob == java.awt.Robot
                }
                catch(Exception ex) {
                    ex.printStackTrace();
                    System.exit(-1);
                }
            }
        };
        timer.schedule(task, 0, 1000);

I started without the Timer, and that didn't work. The Timer doesn't help, but obviously I only need it to update every 500-1000 ms or so. It still has some work (specifically changing the capture size for all displays). I think my problem is with the stream, which I don't really understand completely. Removing the "if != null" block results in a NullPointerException. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:36, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

First of all, I hope this little program of yours isn't anything nefarious. It's not nice to spy on people's desktops, you know! I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume everything is kosher, but don't you try anything naughty, young man!

I was curious to what your problem was, so I created a similar program myself. I think the issue here is indeed the stream, and sending multiple images over the same stream. I noticed that while my client said it had sent something like five or six images, my server only reported having recieved one or two. This tells me that ImageIO can't properly tell when one image ends and another one starts, with the result that the formats gets all screwed up and nothing works. I fixed this by simply shutting down the socket after sending one image, and then starting a new one up to send the next one, and that fixed it good and proper.

By the way, why is the client sending stuff to the server? Usually it's the other way around, no? Or is it that you want to set up a server at home, and then you can put the client on temporary pcs to document what you're doing? Anyway, here's my source-code for the server (very, very quickly hacked together, don't expect a masterpiece of code):

ServerTest.java

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ServerTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(4242); //Starting the server
            System.out.println("Listening");
            while(true) {
                Socket socket = server.accept();
                System.out.println("Found connection");
                new Thread(new Talker(socket)).run(); //Sending the the socket to a thread (this is a very primitive server)
            }
        } catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

class Talker implements Runnable {
    
    Socket socket;
    static int n = 0;
    
    public Talker(Socket socket) {
        this.socket = socket;
    }
    
    public void run() {
        try {
            InputStream in = socket.getInputStream();
            BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(in);
                
            if(image!=null) {
                System.out.println("Got image " + n);
                ImageIO.write(image, "jpg", new File("screenshot_" + n++ + ".jpg")); //Writing image to a file instead of GUI
            }
        } catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    
}

And here's the client (same caveats apply):

ClientTest.java

import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ClientTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
     
            while(true) {
                //notice how new sockets are created and closed for each image
                //didn't have to computers in front of me, so I just did it using "localhost", but it shouldn't make a difference
                Socket socket = new Socket("localhost", 4242); 
                OutputStream out = socket.getOutputStream();
                Robot r = new Robot();
            
                System.out.println("Sending image");
                ImageIO.write(r.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(800,600)), "jpg", out);
                socket.close();
                Thread.sleep(5000); //for apps this simple, I just use Thread.sleep() instead of Timer, no reason to get fancy
            }
        } catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Creating and shutting down sockets all the time creates a little bit more overhead, but not much. Nothing today's fine modern machines and internet can't handle. Belisarius (talk) 22:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

BTW, just to emphasize that I made this very quickly, obviously you shouldn't put the "Robot r = new Robot()" inside the loop in the client. That's just stupid, and I realize that, but I couldn't be bothered to care all that much. Belisarius (talk) 22:12, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Belisarius! Don't worry; I was creating this program as a way to give help to my computer-challenged parents when they need it. I was getting tired of "well, there's this window over here..." conversations, and Microsoft Remote Assistance wasn't working. My computer's the server (and I view the images) because I don't want to bother them with the port-opening/looking-up-their-IP stuff.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Aha, ok then :) If the built-in windows stuff isn't working, you may want to check out either some of the open souce VNC servers (which can a pain to set up) or something like GoToMyPC, which I hear is excellent. Good luck! Belisarius (talk) 23:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Small problem Looks like I've run into another problem. If I create a new socket for every image, the socket is bound to a different local port, and I can't force the new socket to use the same port again or I get a BindException since the TCP port is in a TIME_WAIT state. I tried enabling the SO_REUSEADDR option, but that didn't help. The TCP ports stay in TIME_WAIT too long to just reuse a group or ten ports or so (maybe if I used 1000, but that's too many ports to have waiting to timeout). Is there anyway I can remedy this?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 00:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

TIME_WAIT is an inevitable consequence of closing a TCP socket, and creating (and destroying) a new socket once every second is a very bad idea - doing so is a common denial-of-service attack (making a server run out of socket slots, because they're all sitting in TIME_WAIT). You should certainly open the socket once at the beginning, send all your comms over it until it's done, and then kill it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, then how do I stream the BufferedImages of the screenshots from the client to the server reliably?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 01:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Java websites

I'm looking for some examples of websites developed using Java (the source codes etc). A google search brings up a lot of Javascript stuff, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'd be very grateful if someone could provide a link to a website with examples/tutorials. 202.124.190.197 (talk) 05:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Apache Tomcat is a Java Servlet container (basically, a web server) which executes Java classes that extend on the Servlet base class definitions. Tomcat websites are written in Java, but they show up as HTML in the browser naturally. There is an extensive list of PoweredBy websites available at Tomcat's website. Some of those might even provide access to the site's Java source code. You can also try searching Google for terms like "tomcat tutorial", "tomcat java example", "tomcat example" for an idea of what is going on inside a Tomcat Java servlet. --hydrox (talk) 06:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Java with MYSQL or ORACLE

Hi, I am in need to access databases through Java.... Please tell me whether SQL will be best to be integrated with Java or else MySQL will be best to be integrated with Java.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 05:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Definitely Oracle. It supports JDBC. You can also execute Java statements directly inside the DBMS along with PL/SQL. Oracle databases have their own Java virtual machine (the Oracle JVM). Oracle also makes a Java IDE (JDeveloper) that is free to download and that you can use to integrate Java with the database.--Drknkn (talk) 12:29, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

All the major databases support JDBC - MySQL [13], PostgreSQL [14], DB2 [15], Microsoft SQL Server [16], and even Cloudscape (or Derby) [17].... I can't think of any reason why Oracle would be "best" for somebody who is still learning basics of database programming; it is complicated and expensive. After the OP has great familiarity with database technologies, they can evaluate whether Oracle's commercial tools are worth their cost. I think the OP might want to read about SQL and database programming before going very far forward. SQL is the language for interacting and requesting data transactions from any database. MySQL is a specific database - it happens to be a common, free, open-source program that is fairly straightforward to set up. JDBC is a specific technology, including an API and a driver to connect to the database. It is not the only way that Java programs can access data out of a database. The official JDBC Database Access trail is a great tutorial for the novice Java database programmer. Nimur (talk) 14:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

He didn't ask what would be easiest. He asked what would work the best with Java. Read his question again. Oracle works better with Java than any of the other DBMSs for the reasons I gave. There are developer and trial versions of Oracle he can try, as well. He's a Java database developer, so I'd imagine that he doesn't mind actually learning something instead of using some childish, buggy DBMS like MySQL. Have you ever used either Oracle or MySQL, or did you look it up just now?--Drknkn (talk) 10:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have. I would never recommend Oracle to anybody, let alone a novice. Nimur (talk) 14:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

This tutorial using netbeans might help the OP if they are a novice with Java and MySQL. BigDunc 17:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

USB device

I recently plugged in a 2 GB Kingston pendrive and a Seagate FreeAgent Go 320 GB portable hard disk (which belong to a friend) into my laptop's USB port. My laptop works on Windows Vista Home. The problem is that whenever I insert any of these two portable devices, the computer searches for the preconfigured driver folders for the driver software and then gives me a prompt that I do not have the driver software in my computer and that I have to use the installation cd that came along with the device to install the driver. I don't have any such installation cd and the same devices are working perfectly in my friend's laptop i.e. his laptop automatically installs the driver when I plug in the devices. The strange part is MY LAPTOP SUCCESSFULLY DETECTS A 40 GB PORTABLE DISK THAT I HAVE AND ALSO A KINGSTON 1 GB PENDRIVE THAT ALSO BELONGS TO ME. I have 1 GB RAM (I don't think this problem is realted to RAM since my 40GB and 1GB portable devices are working perfectly on it). Why is my laptop not installing the driver automatically for the 320 GB and the 2GB? What is the solution? Please help me with this problem...... Should I download the driver and install it? That may not be possible since I have only a dialup connection whose download speed does not go more than 2kbps and it's very frustrating to download anything more than 5 MB..... If it is small in size, please send me the link..... Should I be downloading USB 2.0 device driver? Please suggest me a solution...... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.246.57.2 (talk) 06:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you should download the drivers when prompted and install them. While logged into an account that has admin rights. The two hard disks and the two pendrives may have different manufacturers (even though both pendrives are from Kingston), by the way, hence the differing reactions of your computer. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're using Vista, it should already have the USB 2.0 drivers. One suggestion is to make sure your laptop's chipset drivers are up to date. If you check the laptop manufacturer's support website, they should have those available. But to me it sounds like you might be having an issue with your USB driver stack. Try rebooting into Safe mode, open the Device manager, make sure "Show hidden devices" is checked, and right-click on every "USB Root Hub" and uninstall it. You can also delete anything that looks like it might be the driver for your pendrive and portable hard disk. When you reboot, Windows should automatically detect and reinstall these drivers, along with any other USB devices it finds. Indeterminate (talk) 08:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

WP Essay about not calling wikipedia "wiki"

I read a great essay regarding the use of the word "wiki" to mean "wikipedia" that someone here wrote. I can't seem to find it though, can you help? Thanks! Chris M. (talk) 13:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure why you're asking here, but it's at WP:NOTWIKI. Algebraist 13:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure why asking here is a problem, this is a reference desk after all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it didn't really fit in at the help desk, and I figured this would get more responses then the Misc. desk. Thanks a lot though! Chris M. (talk) 14:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If it's about Wikipedia, it goes on the Help desk - what makes you think it wouldn't? (just curious.) Vimescarrot (talk) 14:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Xubuntu 9.10 hosed - can't get past login screen

Afternoon, folks.

I've been having a lot of trouble with my Xubuntu partition after I upgraded to 9.10 a couple of weeks ago. First, my touchpad stopped working (fixed with some odd command). Second, X soiled itself and died after I tried to install the nvidia drivers via the official Hardware Drivers wizard (fixed by sudo apt-get purging the nvidia packages, then deleting xorg.conf so it'd be replaced), but in the last couple of days, just when I thought I'd got it stable, it developed a new problem where I can't get past the login screen.

It was a bit temperamental after the nvidia drivers fix, but this suddenly started a couple of days ago for no apparent reason (I haven't changed anything anything for over a week). When I start my Xubuntu partition, it goes through the pretty sparkly lights effect, then gives me the user select box. I choose my name, then enter my password. It goes back to the sparkly lights for a second, but then Xfce seems to crash - I see a black screen with garbled text for a quarter second before Xfce restarts and puts me back at the user select screen. The cycle repeats until I give up and boot Windows (which is a pain in lectures since it takes about a thousand years to start up). I've googled around, and I found a forum thread or two and an Xfce bugzilla report about a similar issue, but no surefire solutions. One person suggested deleting ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/displays.xml. I don't have this exact file, but I do have one that seems to have the same content, but temporarily renaming it (by Ctrl+Alt+Fx-ing into another terminal screen) didn't make any difference.

Does anyone know how I might fix this?

Cheers, CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 14:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen similar trouble when using the Nvidia proprietary binary driver. The only solution I know of is to put up with periodic crashes, or to remove the proprietary driver (and use the less powerful, more stable open-source driver for Nvidia cards); and accept a performance/stability tradeoff. Nvidia has better support for CentOS, so if you're willing to switch out of Ubuntu/Debian, you might get better stability. The official line from Nvidia is: "Note that many Linux distributions provide their own packages of the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver in the distribution's native package management format. This may interact better with the rest of your distribution's framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA's official package." Unfortunate. Nimur (talk) 14:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess when CaptainVindaloo says "the official Hardware Drivers wizard" he means the Canonical packaged versions, and you're right that these should be the most stable available (personally I've had no instability using their nvidia-nonfree on the last four or five iterations of Ubuntu). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Looking at /var/log/* is a good start. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 16:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

CaptainVindaloo, it seems from your question that at some point you installed the nvidia-nonfree driver from some other source (I guess direct from nvidia) then purged it, and then installed the canonical packaging of nvidia-nonfree instead. If that's the case I'd guess that somehow you may still have fragments of the old thing that apt/dpgk should have removed but hasn't. Clearly your system is mostly servicable, as clearly the X server is starting and running okay to run gdm, but the X server you run for your session is dying (perhaps when the it starts to use the desktop effects features). First I'd check /var/log/Xorg.*.log and /var/log/gdm/*.log If all else fails, login at the (text) console, kill the root gdm, and then manually start X (either as "X" or with "startx") and then xfce; if nothing else you'll see error messages in real time, and you'll be some way to knowing which stage of startup is triggering the barf. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What is wrong with this mIRC script please?

What is wrong with my script?

http://pastebin.com/m18cdc629

I type "!ID 9515" and it attempts the socket open, but the "on sockopen" never gets executed. why?!?

Thanks! 137.81.112.176 (talk) 16:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to be rude, but maybe whatever you're doing, mIRC isn't the right tool for the job. You're essentially making a primitive implementation of the HTTP protocol in there, and that's something that should be relegated to the experts. If it isn't directly chat-related, maybe you should go with another language that has built-in implementations of HTTP to make stuff like this a little easier. Belisarius (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Noisy monitor

I have a Proview EM-170TFT all very nice except... every few (5, 10?) minutes it makes a sort of hissing sound - the sound is not connected and the volume is on zero. Kinda unimportant but also kinda driving me up the wall. Any solutions? Apart from taking it apart and de-soldering the speakers. Rich Farmbrough, 16:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC).

I assume this is a monitor with built-in speakers. Are you sure the noise comes from the speakers ? I can imagine a build-up of static electricity making a little hiss every so often, even in a monitor with no speakers. I had a TV with a different problem, the speakers would go to full volume all on their own. In that case, I did exactly what you said, I took it apart and disconnected the speaker wires, then used external speakers instead. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes it's a definate "turn on turn off". Happens in screen saver mode too. Rich Farmbrough, 21:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC).

An electronics expert could tell us whether TFT monitors have a flyback transformer, which used to be a frequent culprit of whining and other extraneous noise, back in the CRT days. (The flyback transformer article just talks about CRTs and not TFTs & LCDs, so that's probably the answer right there.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) CRTs used to make all kinds of clicking noises (from high voltage relays closing) and buzzing from the transformer; especially if they were aging or if there was a borderline hardware failure. But, I have not ever seen any of that hardware on an LCD monitor; usually, the transformers and relays are not needed for anything except CRT tubes. It's possible that a power-save mode is using something similar to this. Alternatively, the backlight may be on its way out - those can sometimes hum (like a fluorescent bulb), due to introduced capacitances that can create resonances at audible frequencies. Nimur (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's like it does something which un-mutes teh speakers and plays this buzz-click over it. Always the same sound, about 1 1/2 seconds I estimate. Rich Farmbrough 12:51 14 November 2009 (UTC).

Is there a mobile phone near your monitor? Mobile phones periodically transmit powerful signals to re-synchronize with the base towers; these are often strong enough to couple in to speaker pre-amplifiers, which mix down the noise to audible frequencies and amplify them over the speaker. Nimur (talk) 14:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple ways of *measuring* the CPU frequency in ASM

I am interested in different ways of measuring the CPU frequency using only a very simple assembly routine. A few months ago I tryed the following code:

  push 100
  rdtsc
  mov ebx, eax
  call sleep
  rdtsc
  sub eax, ebx
  mov @Result, eax

It returns 1/10 (because we measure the number of cycles in 100 ms = 1/10 s) of the CPU frequency in Hz. However, it only works on some of my computers (all with Intel CPUs). Are there any better ways? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The Time Stamp Counter, the instruction you're using, notes the significant limitations and increasing uselessness of that feature given the implementation of modern x86 microprocessors. Worse, depending on what that sleep function does, you're affecting the results while measuring them - because many modern CPUs will put themselves onto low-power (low clock frequency) rates when they think there's nothing going on. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have read that. What other methods are there? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

This Intel app-note contains an example "frequency detection procedure" which uses the MPERF register (which is available on some machines). A use of this is also discussed at this Stack Overflow topic. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:29, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there no more naïve way that works on "all" CPUs? How did you do this ten-twenty (?) years ago, when these instructions were not available? Would it not be possible to write a simple loop that you know use a certain amount of clock cycles, and then use, e.g., Win32 API's GetTickCount before and after the loop? (Yes, I realize that you do need to loop for quite a while, perhaps a second, to get a good value.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that if there is any operating system present (even a trivial scheduler), your counter loop can be pre-empted without warning. You can't really know what results a preemptive scheduler will have on your naive algorithm - so your results can be orders of magnitude off from the true value. With today's linuxes and windowses and so forth, your naive algorithm will categorically fail. You might want to consider a different operating system such as QNX or eCOS, if you need real-time information. Nimur (talk) 15:02, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I see. Thank you very much for your replies! I will investigate the MPERF approach further. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Viewing old Outlook Express files on new computer

My previous computer broke down and I have its HD as an external HD on my new computeer. There are some Outlook Express email files on the old HD that I want to look at. When I start Outlook Express (which I no longer use) on my new computer, there seems to be no obvious way to view the email files on the old HD. How can I view the email files on the old HD? I only want to view them, it does not matter about importing them etc. Thanks 78.147.22.100 (talk) 20:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you send yourself an e-mail and make the old Outlook Express e-mails an attachment ? I believe you can do that with Gmail. StuRat (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

What format are the files you're trying to read? And what email client/system are you using now? Between them Outlook and (its abjectly incompatible little brother) Outlook Express deal with DBX, OST, MSG, ELM, MBX, and PST file formats. Some of these can be read by other mail programs, some by converter programs, and some seemingly not even by the same program that allegedly created them. In the past, when all else has failed, I've used aid4mail - it's pretty cheap if you need it a lot, but rather expensive if you've just got this one job for it. I've had poor results using free/OS tools on several of these formats (PST being the worst). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Importing the old mail files is the way to go. If you used Outlook Express on the old computer, the HD should have some files on it with the .dbx extention (somewhere like <drive-letter>:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Identities\{<several-strings-of-hex>}\ with filenames inbox.dbx, drafts.dbx, outbox.dbx, etc.) Your new email client should be able to import these files. One exception I am aware of is that you cannot import directly into Microsoft Outlook - I had to go through Windows Mail first and then import into Outlook when I started using Vista. Astronaut (talk) 02:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

By default e-mails are stored in "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{random_uuid}\Microsoft\Outlook Express". This folder can be changed via Tools, Option, Maintenance, Store Folder to something under My Documents, for easier backup. After changing, the original folder can be deleted. See also: Microsoft knowledge base article 270670: How to back up and to restore Outlook Express data. One way to transfer the files to a new computer is to start Outlook Express on the new computer, which will cause it to create the directories etc, then copy all the files from the old computer to the above-mentioned location on the new computer. (I've recently transferred my data across to a new computer (in both cases using XP and Outlook Express so I know it is possible.) Mitch Ames (talk) 02:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Quite right Mitch. I now remember there there are two "identities" folders for each user. Only one of them has the .dbx files (the one under "Local Settings", IIRC). Astronaut (talk) 02:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

external hard drive enclosure failure

How often do the enclosures fail? The hard drive itself is perfectly fine, and works like a dream in a new enclosure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 21:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You're gone, and I shed no tears.

I don't have a reference for you, but anecdotally, I've probably seen 20 hard disk crashes at work and home over the years, but never an enclosure failure; the closest to a failure I have seen was an old SCSI external hard disk enclosure where one of the two 50-pin connectors (remember those?) got shoved inward to one side, so it was difficult to secure to the big SCSI cable. There's not a lot going on with an enclosure; no spinning parts or really moving parts at all. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

hmmm, that's really odd. I've had my second external hard drive fail today, and just like the one before the actual hard drive works fine in a new enclosure. Perhaps I'm somehow doing something to break them, although I can't think of what. Anyway, thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 22:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be they just weren't connected properly ? Some of those cables are damned near impossible to get connected properly. StuRat (talk) 22:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

When I am about to load the very last mission in Modern Warfare 2, when the progress bar has reached some 80 %, the program crashes and displays the following message:

create2DTexture(seal_soccom_lower_body_a_nml, 1024, 512, 0, 894720068) failed: 8007000e = Ran out of memory

Google tells me that this is a very common problem. But is there any known solution? --81.227.64.180 (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I may be going out on a limb here, but, um, maybe get more memory ? StuRat (talk) 22:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Another option is to free up all the memory you can. I first reboot, then use the task manager and kill every other process (except the critical ones). I do that all the time. StuRat (talk) 22:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The system requirements, on the box of the game, says that you should have at least 1 GB of RAM on Vista, which is my OS. I have 3 GB of RAM, so that should not be a problem. --81.227.64.180 (talk) 22:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You really should contact Activision technical support. I don't know anything about the error here, but when it's talking about running out of memory, it may be talking about the memory on the video card. Is the video card to spec? Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is. In fact, I am able to run the game in the (big) LCD screen's native resolution with the best (i.e., most demanding) graphics settings, with no lag at all. --81.227.64.180 (talk) 00:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Nice. Try running the game again but change your settings to some lower resolution and lower texture quality settings, and then load the problematic mission again and see if it'll play. Also, what did Activision tech support suggest? Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Smacks of a memory leak issue. If tech support is beating about the bush, the best you can hope for is a patch. Running it in safe mode could help until you get past the bug, then load the game in normal mode again. Sandman30s (talk) 11:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

November 14

Diagnosing Inverter vs. Backlight Lamp

The backlight on my laptop monitor isn't working. From what I've been able to find, this is a fairly common problem that can be caused either by the power inverter or the actual florescent lamp. Both parts are pretty cheap on ebay, but I'm not sure I'm up to the task of replacing the lamp myself if that turns out to be the problem (apparently it's a difficult fix), so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to tell from the symptoms which part is to blame before I start ordering things or taking things apart, instead of just bringing it in somewhere.

The problem started out gradually. Once in a while the backlight would suddenly quit while the computer was on. After a while it started going out more frequently, especially when the monitor had just been turned on after being off for a while. The screen would start out flickery, and then often go out. It got worse over a month or two until now when it gets turned on it stays lit for only a second or so before quitting. I've been using the computer with an external monitor since it became unusable. If anyone has any tips on making this diagnosis I would appreciate it. Rckrone (talk) 04:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Redundancy in volume knobs

So I've got a usual of three volume knobs my computer is using. There's Windows volume, speaker volume, and then the volume of the application in use. Is there a real functional difference between them all? Or is it just a meaningless redundancy? 69.77.250.210 (talk) 04:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Obviously one affects the volume for every application including the system volume, one affects the Windows or system volume only and the other affects the volume of the application only. Incidentally the main/speaker/whatever volume sets the limit, if you try to increase the volume of an individual component past this it will move the main volume panel. There are obvious reasons why you might want to adjust each volume individually (or even mute them) as well as the overall volume. For example earlier I was watching a recording from a satellite receiver which had a very low volume because the connection had come lose. I turned up the players volume to max and my speakers. However occasionally when I received messages on my Live Messenger it was very loud as was my system volume when I was doing something on my computer for a while. I could have turned down the Live Messenger and system volume to stop this (I wasn't watching for long and forgot about this so didn't do it). Incidentally if you have multiple applications runnign with sound, you will see multiple applications in the volume panel. (I presume we're talking Vista or Windows 7 here since Windows XP and earlier had different things.) You're welcome to test the various volume bars if you want to see how they work any more. Nil Einne (talk) 06:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

web site hosting

Just asking those of you out there who have your own personal website which provider you use. I'm interested in starting one myself and would like to get a few tips. Thanks! -- penubag  (talk) 06:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using a Polish service related to onet.pl, however would love to finally set up my own server at home in 2010. Productwise I get 150 MB of web space, for which I pay about EUR 16 once every two years. They have a bandwidth limit, which I do not know, however, and have never exceeded. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I have seven web sites. I've tried using free hosting services, but they were unreliable and slow. Now, I only use paid hosting. GoDaddy is the cheapest I've used at $4.99 a month, but the GoDaddy servers seem to go down a lot. They're also slow and there isn't a toll-free support number. My favorite hosting company is Network Solutions, but they're expensive at $9.29 a month. I've never seen their servers go down and their technical support is excellent. I've also heard good things about Host Gator. They're cheaper than Network Solutions, but they're more expensive than GoDaddy. (They say that hosting is $4.95 a month, but that's only if you get it for three years or something like that.) They only offer Linux hosting. Linux hosting would work if you use PHP or Perl for your server-side scripting, but I use ASP.NET, so I always get a Windows package. If it has to be free, consider asking your ISP if they offer free hosting. If you're a student, ask your school, too. Those two options tend to be reliable, but they usually don't offer any server-side scripting (e.g., PHP, ASP.NET, etc.)--Drknkn (talk) 10:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Second that. About £30 a year is the cheapest you'll get good reliable hosting with facilities like databases. Plus a couple of extra quid for each web address you want to use. It isn't a lot of money and and if you have problems you can move it somewhere else and keep the name. How much do you value your own time? How much do you spend on a computer? How much do you even spend on electricity for your computer? Dmcq (talk) 12:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What about nearlyfreespeech.net? (I've never used it.) -- BenRG (talk) 13:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Depending on the service you want, you might look at Storm (http://www.storminternet.co.uk/). I run 3 sites with them and I'm generally pretty happy. --Phil Holmes (talk) 13:39, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

bluehost.com and dreamhost.com are pretty popular for cheap hosting. I have used bluehost extensively and found them reliable, with very generous quotas (I never come close to hitting them), and good technical back-end (scripting, databases, decent tech support, easy creation of virtual domains, etc.). $10/mo. or so for hosting you don't have to worry about. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Visual problem ATI card

When I play e.g. Crysis and Modern Warfare 2, visual problems appear. There are different problems with both games. After 1 h gameplay Modern warfare 2 my computer renders some textures blue, and the weapon in the hand gets invisible...With my old nVidia GeForce 8500 GT card everything worked fine, but when I put my new ATI Radeon HD4870 card in my computer, visual problems appear(texture problems). Here are my computer specs. ATI Radeon HD4870 512 MB, 3 GB RAM, 600 GB SATA, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+. I have installed the latest driver and I have SP1, I have reinstalled Windows from scratch...I have tryed everything!!! What is the problem? --81.227.64.180 (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Many graphics cards do not support ECC memory. When they get warm (e.g. after an hour of gameplay), spurious thermal-related errors can cause single-bit-flips and similar data errors. These are usually non-permanent hardware malfunctions due to overheating, but they can also indicate more permanent damage. One option is to improve your cooling situation (running the computer in a colder environment, or improving its airflow into the case by adding fans). Alternately, you can investigate whether the spurious errors are caused by some other software effect. Nimur (talk) 14:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A software called 'ASUS Smart Doctor' is included with my ATI card. In Smart Doctor it is possible to check the temperature of the GPU. And it always says 50/55 Celsius, even after 1 h Crysis, wich is really demanding for the GPU. And I do not think that this is more than the GPU can handle. Before I had another computer case, in which the graphics card barely could fit. Then I hade a lot more severe problems. After 1 h Crysis on that computer, the entire system crashed. When I shut down Crysis, miscoloured pixels appeard as a layer above the entire screen, and eventually I got the blue screen of death. I couldn't use the computer for days! --81.227.64.180 (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC) Sometimes it looks like a dead window, every object repeated. --81.227.64.180 (talk) 15:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Updating drivers in Ubuntu - difficult?

A comment a while ago from SteveBaker said that updating drivers in Ubuntu was very difficult. This is the only thing making me hesitate before adopting Ubuntu instead of Windows. But I've since read that SB uses a very old version of Linux. Is it difficult to update drivers in recent versions Ubuntu? If it is, could not an expert write a program to make it easier? 89.240.203.81 (talk) 14:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Any grammar checkers available for free?

The only thing that makes me cling to MS Word is its grammar checking. Is any available in a free wordprocessor or stand alone program please? Since detailed sets of AI grammar rules exist, then why hasnt anyone written a grammar checker? 89.240.203.81 (talk) 14:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A grammar component for OpenOffice has been in development, but is not ready for release. Some plug-in extensions also exist, like LanguageTool, which has pre-set and extensibile rulesets. Nimur (talk) 14:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)