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November 22

Merge Sort Question

One of my homework questions reads as follows: "Consider the following alternate implementation of Merge Sort that recursively sorts the array table from index a to b, where a ≤ b:

public static <T extends Comparable<T>> void sort(T[] table, int a, int b) {
     if (b - a > 0) {
         sort(table, a, (a+b)/2);
          sort(table, (a+b)/2 + 1, b);
         merge(table, a, b);
     }
}

The merge method copies the elements of table from indices a to b (inclusive) into a new array and then merges the two halves of the new array back into table.

Modify the method above so that it calls the merge method only if the array is not sorted after the two recursive calls. You should be able to determine this in constant time."

I've got no clue how to check if a list is sorted... in constant time. The best way I can think of would take linear time.

Thanks for the help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.2.100.212 (talk) 02:43, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

After each recursive sort call, you have the array sorted in two halves. Lets make m=(a+b)/2 to make this easy to explain. The left half from a to m is sorted. The right half from m+1 to b is sorted. So, index m is the highest value in the left half. Index m+1 is the lowest value in the right half. What can you figure out about the two halves by comparing index m to index m+1? -- kainaw™ 02:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Regions?

When I try to change the region of my DVD drive, it tells me there is only a limited number of times I can change it. Why is it? THX in advance ---Jake —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.228.196.191 (talk) 03:35, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The short story is that it's because the movie companies are real meanies. Big bullies, is what they are!

The slightly longer story is this: DVDs are encrypted using something called the Content Scramble System, which means that in order for a manufacturer to be able to produce a DVD, he has to license decryption keys from the DVD Copy Control Association, an organization made up of big Hollywood studios. If they don't license the keys to you, you can't make a DVD-player, which means that the movie studios can completely dictate how the DVD player should be working, and they've told your DVD-player manufacturer that you can only change the region coding so many times, and that's it. There's no technical reason why you couldn't just change them how many times you want, or even remove the region-coding requirement all together, it's just that Hollywood won't let you.

Now, you can in fact play a DVD even if you haven't licensed the keys for it, because CSS was broken by an enterprising 16-year-old Norwegian kid named DVD Jon in 1999 (that's not his birth name, but it is how he will be forever known), so now pretty much anybody that wants to can make a DVD-player or DVD-playing software. However, that is not legal in the United States because of a law called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (yes, also backed by Hollywood), which has a provision that states that it is illegal to circumvent copy protection of any kind. So it's not like Panasonic is going to go do that.

Bottom line: movie studios are mean! Belisarius (talk) 08:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

In a number of countries (e.g. New Zealand and parts of Asia), region free players are the norm because of consumers demands and the like, region free stand alone players are the norm. In a few like Australia (although I'm pretty sure it was like NZ before the authorities pointed out they were likely illegal anyway), region limited players may even be illegal. This is mentioned somewhat in regional lockout and DVD region code. However nearly all computer DVD drives are still region limited specifically RPC-2. However there are various sites you can find hacked firmware for drives to make them RPC-1 or appear RPC-2 but auto-resetting (if a drive is RPC-1, Windows will limit region changes internally although it's fairly easy to break this). These could be illegal in some countries like the US. Nil Einne (talk) 10:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

So why don't computer DVD manufacturers make region locked players for the US market, where the DMCA is enforcable, and make region free equipment for the rest or the world? Astronaut (talk) 15:28, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of computer hardware companies are based in the US, so they would still be subject to US law regardless of where the computers are being sold. Also, there is less demand for unlocked drives for computers because they are much easier to bypass the locking on. --Tango (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, imagine if (say) Panasonic were to make a region-free DVD player to be sold in some non-US country without the permission of the DVD Copy Control Association, the studios would be so royally pissed off that they'd never again license the keys again for use in the US market (that's the very least they'd do, they'd probably do far worse). It's basically unthinkable for a manufacturer to do that.

And it's absolutely true, if there is enough consumer pressure (like in New Zealand), the studios might relent and allow region-free players, because while the studio's don't like region-free players, they're absolutely terrified of piracy, which many would turn to as an alternative. They're assholes, but they're not complete morons. Belisarius (talk) 16:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Your history isn't very accurate. The original cracking of CSS, i.e. the cryptanalysis and discovery of attacks, was done by Frank Stevenson. He based his analysis on C code posted to the Livid mailing list. This code appeared to have been hand-decompiled from machine code in a software player by someone with no understanding of the algorithm it implemented, making it most likely a copyright violation (since it included implementation details). This source code only included cryptographic functions; it was not a runnable program. Separately from this, two Windows executables for DVD ripping were released, one by DoD and the other by MoRE. Not only were these not open source, they were packed with executable packers to discourage disassembly. This is typical in the pirate community; they're no friends of open source. The DoD and MoRE decrypters most likely contained code copied verbatim from a software player in violation of copyright. Jon Johansen was just a co-author of the MoRE ripper. The media made a mess of the story, as they always do, conflating the MoRE ripper (decss.exe) with the source code posted to the mailing list, wrongly identifying Johansen as the sole author of decss.exe and/or as the one who had found the decryption code, and largely ignoring the DoD ripper for some reason. There's some more information here. Johansen didn't do anything to deserve anyone's praise. Frank Stevenson is the one who opened the CSS algorithm. -- BenRG (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Bash alias

I want to construct the command

wikipedia [STRING]

as an alias of the command

firefox en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[STRING]

Furthermore, I want a lack of [STRING] to be interpreted as Main_page. I.e., I want

wikipedia

to be an alias of

firefox en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_page

How should I construct this alias? --Lucas Brown 03:57, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, instead of making an alias, how about we make it a teeny-tiny little script. I think that's better, because if there any funny characters in the url, it will convert them to a url-friendly format. For instance, if you look at the article for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? you'll see that there isn't a question mark at the end of the URL, only %3F, which is url-speak for question-mark. This little thing I cooked up in Python (wow, I'm doing a lot python logrolling lately...) will take care of that:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, subprocess, urllib

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) == 1:
        p = subprocess.Popen(['firefox', 'http://en.wikipedia.org/'])
    else:
        url = 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/' + urllib.quote("_".join(sys.argv[1:]))
        p = subprocess.Popen(['firefox', url])

Save that as "wikipedia" in your path and make it executable, and it should go like gangbusters. Two things to note: this is actually a rather unorthodox little script, since it will join all your arguments into one string, without you needing to use quotes (I personally think it's kind-of a bad idea, but I think that's what you wanted). Also, I'm on a Windows-machine right now, so I haven't been able to test it except on Cygwin (where it works great), so caveat emptor. But I see no reason why it shouldn't work Belisarius (talk) 07:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, it's saved and executable... now how do I put it in my path? --Lucas Brown 18:35, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Place the script in a directory (for example, you might use /home/your_username/bin/ or some other convenient location; or /usr/bin/ to make it accessible to everybody). Then, edit your .bashrc file and add

PATH=${PATH}:/home/your_username/bin/
export PATH

This will add that directory to your path. You might want to read Path (computing) or the GNU Bash Reference to learn more about what all this means. Nimur (talk) 19:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Lucas Brown 04:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucas Brown 42 (talk • contribs)

Use a bash function rather than a bash alias, like this:

function wikipedia { firefox "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$@"; }

This doesn't escape the "?" to "%3a", but it's not really needed (firefox copes with this ok). Who's afaid of Virginia Woolf? is a difficult one because you'd need to escape the apostrophe when running from a bash shell. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

That's no problem: just use double-quotes:

wikipedia "Who's afraid of Virginia's Wolf?"

I don't have my list of Wikipedia articles handy, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple with both types of quotes, but this will work most of the time. --Sean 21:43, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems there are a couple hundred such articles, including:

1. "Paul is Dead" clues from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Ain't Nothin' But a "G" Thang
3. Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Mass.
4. She said, "Don't make others suffer for your personal hatred."
5. William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

--Sean 14:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Shell quoting is smart enough that quotes in something expanded from a variable don't confuse it. These characters just won't be a problem. --Anonymous, 23:26 UTC, November 24, 2009.

Mousepad Opens Start Menu

When I touch the mousepad on my laptop on its left-hand side, the start menu comes up. While this may be useful in times of emergency or when one cannot remember how to do it normally it is actually annoying to have the start menu suddenly appear when I've touched it by accident, plus it very often crashes full-screen applications. Is there some way of switching this feature off? Another reason it's annoying is because in one game I have I need the left hand side of the mousepad to toggle the camera and whenever I try it's basically a toss up between what's going to happen - the camera getting toggled or the start menu appearing and crashing the game. I can change the in-game controls, but I won't need to if I can switch off this helpful mousepad feature. Can anyone help? I'm using Vista Home Premium on a HP G60 laptop. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you almost certainly can turn it off. You'll have some touchpad settings somewhere, try Control Panel (there might also be an icon in the system tray (next to the clock)). Every one is different, but somewhere in there will be the options for what different sides and corners of the touchpad do. You need to find the left-hand side option and set it to "None" or similar. --Tango (talk) 15:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent, Tango, thanks! Sorted! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Net access

I'm asking this again because for some reason my previous question disappeared.

How can I prevent a single application from gaining internet access, without actually unplugging the computer from the internet and disrupting everything else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.114 (talk) 13:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Several firewall programs allow you to do this. I remember Symantec used to do allow this, but I think all firewalls do so. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:16, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Your question was inadvertedly removed by another respondend [1]. I added it back and the first reply may be helpful Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 18#Net access. Cheers Nil Einne (talk) 13:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah that's where it went! Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.114 (talk) 19:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Two XP computers, one product key

I would like to run a spare XP computer in addition to the one I'm currently using, in case of a breakdown. Is it permissable to use the same product key for XP on these two computers, and would this cause any problems with Windows Update? 92.29.150.5 (talk) 19:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you can have a read here might fill you in with a bit more info on activation. BigDunc 19:35, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but legally each computer would need it's own licence/key and the one you have is for one computer only. The only keys that are valid for multiple computers are volume licence keys which are only issued to businesses. Because you can't buy a copy of XP anymore, you would need to purchase a copy of either Vista Ultimate or Windows 7 Ultimate as these versions allow downgrade rights to use Windows XP Professional (you would need to contact Microsoft to get a product key/media kit). The Home and Home Premium versions of Vista/Windows 7 *don't* allow any downgrade rights. Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 20:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

You can still buy XP OEM...RxS (talk) 20:07, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake, you are correct and XP OEM is indeed still available. ZX81 ^talk 17:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey ho, hey ho, it's off to Ubuntu I go. Rather mean of Bill not to allow users with two computers to use one licence. 92.29.150.5 (talk) 20:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It isn't mean, it's just business. Nimur (talk) 17:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I remember mention that a Windows 7 or perhaps Vista installation pack comes with three licences - is that the case, and is it different with XP? 84.13.162.136 (talk) 10:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

You can buy the Windows 7 family pack which upgrades 3 computers to Windows 7 (although it goes in the face of what I said earlier, you get the same product key, but you get 3 different activations from it), but each of these would need to have their own copy of Windows already otherwise it's not valid for an upgrade (it would probably still work without having Windows already and from Microsofts point of view wouldn't look any different, but "legally" it wouldn't be a valid copy). ZX81 ^talk 17:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using an old second-hand computer, and as far as I remember, when I downloaded the XP service pack, during the verification part I got told that the product licence number I had (which I had discovered from the HD using some software rather than a COA label) had too many users, and I had to ring up somewhere and automatically got given a very long number to type into my computer. No payment involved. What was that all about? Just out of curiousity, if you got a second-hand computer that had someone elses product license number on it, would both of you get blacklisted? 84.13.162.136 (talk) 21:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

USB mouse for laptop

I have a USB mouse that works fine on one Vista Gateway laptop, but does not work on two others (Acer XP, Lenovo XP) that have functional rubber dot and touchpad cursors. The mouse came with no driver software and worked fine on two other laptops without installing anything special. I tried to find a generic mouse driver on the internet with no success. I tried to change the Control Panel settings under Mouse. I suspect the answer is simple but I am baffled. Any suggestions appreciated. alteripse (talk) 20:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Does the computer see the mouse when you plug it into the USB port? The usual behavior under Vista is that a little text box appears in the lower right of the screen, telling you that a new device has been found. Alternatively, take a look in Device Manager, a minute after you plug it in. (In Vista, right-click "Computer", choose "Properties", then click "Device Manager", then unroll "Mice and other pointing devices".) This will at least tell you whether the computer even sees the mouse. Try other USB ports on the computer, too, if it's unseen and you haven't tried this already. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Stop software from reinstalling

Resolved

Hello, I am trying to uninstall a VPN client I downloaded and installed from my college's website, but now every time I turn on my computer, the software tries to reinstall. How can I fix this? Is there a simple solution using Windows Registry (Vista 64-bit)? Thanks!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Revo Uninstaller conducts a more thorough uninstall than to the uninstallers created by many installer/uninstaller packages. You may also want to check your start menu, and maybe purge Autoruns with the Microsoft / Sysinternals Autoruns program, as somehow the installer may have been accidentally tagged as an autorun program. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, Finlay McWalter. All fixed!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 23:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Correct adaptor for old printer to new computer; totally stumped

I just got a new computer, a HP Pavilion Slimline, and the connection from my old printer (which still works great) doesn't fit into the back of the computer at all. The printer is an HP Laserjet 3200 and the connector it has is a double row of pins; one row has 12 pins and the other has 13 and I believe this was the standard printer connection thingamagig for many years. The new computer doesn't have any even similar place for a pronged connection. The only open connections are

• 4 small holes for TV in; Ant In; S video in; Audio
• HDMI (??)--This is next to where I plugged the pronged outlet for my monitor (it came with the adaptor) which is marked LCD
• Six audio plug ins (I think) marked c/sub, in, rear, out side and mic
• An ethernet where I plug my DSL in and next to that two smaller unmarked rectangular holes, and above those, two more holes identical to those below, marked with this weird symbol where a pocket drive will hook up.
• At the very top are two plastic protectors over places I'm guessing you can install further ?ports? which are marked on the plastic "DO NOT REMOVE" (what are these?) and finally above that there is a hole for "digital audio out" which looks just like the connector my cable box hooks into in my wall.

So, can anyone tell me what I need to buy to hook up my printer and which hole it goes into? This description may have been overkill, but I didn't want to leave anything out that would make it impossible to answer for lack of information on my end.--70.19.21.16 (talk) 22:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

For many years printers were usually connected to the LPT parallel port, but today such ports are very uncommon. Instead, printers use USB to connect to computers. Probably there are interfaces (adaptors, converters) that can solve your problem. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

12 + 13 =25 pins— is this on the printer or the PC side? If it was on the PC side, then the printer has IEEE 1284 parallel; see the link for photos. You can find USB to parallel adapters online or at most big box stores. The parallel interface is disappearing, but it is going to hang on for a while. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's a link to example USB/parallel adapters. You should be able to get one for less than US$10. The covered-up ports on the back of your PC, BTW, are probably for an onboard sound card. OEMs do this when the computer has both an onboard sound card and a physical expansion sound card (eg, SoundBlaster), to make sure the end-user only uses the ports from the higher-quality add-on card. Indeterminate (talk) 06:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Your printer might be usable with a "usual" USB cable as well - check the printer thoroughly to see if there is an USB port on it (marked with the "weird symbol" you mention). If so, you can just buy a regular USB cable. Jørgen (talk) 08:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The only way to tell is if the OP gives us the printer model. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Um the OP did say they have a HP Laserjet 3200. From [2] & (the manuals there appear to be for the 3200m but I presume they're similar enough & that's why the manual is the same) it does have a USB port. Note that a 'usual' USB cable in this case will be a USB B male to USB A male cable and alook at the manual confirms this is likely to be the case. Nil Einne (talk) 13:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows ReadyBoost

When I plug in my Flashdrive it gives me as one of the options: Speed up my system using Windows ReadyBoost. Is this something desirable and will I notice any difference? What is that basically about? 64.138.237.101 (talk) 23:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

See the ReadyBoost article. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 01:18, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

November 23

Regarding Sortware testing standards...

Is there any standard for software testing? If yes what are they? Can any software testing professional suggest?

Well, there are professional standards (so standards for testers, rather than testing), administered in the UK by the British Computer Society/Information Systems Examination Board - details here. I'd imagine similar bodies in other countries will have comparable qualifications. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

This is going to be very domain-specific. It depends on your software purpose, market/audience, language/implementation details, and budget. If you have some more specifics, we can point you toward particular methodologies or tools. You can also read software testing. Nimur (talk) 17:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Bot for adding category to Settlements listed in Domesday.

There are 13,418 English places listed in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Not all of these are still settlements today, but a very large number of them have Wikipedia articles, which highlight the fact of their inclusion in the Domesday Book, and have a link back to the Domesday Book article.

The category Places listed in the Domesday Book is an attempt to link and organise these pages - but the task of manually adding this category to every appropriate article is daunting.

My question is, is there an existing bot which could be adapted to automate this task?

Josephus (talk) 10:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

user:Rambot created a vast number of US articles from US Census information (and added basic info for them, again from the census). But really lots of the bots that use the pywikibot framework should be able to do this; they all require a bit of reprogramming for each task, but your task doesn't sound like it'd be hard. I'd ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

String vs. Pattern for Scanner Delimiter in Java

I can't figure why I'd use one over the other for setting the delimiter. Is there any advantage to using a pattern instead of a string? As far as I can see they'd come out the same. I want my delimiter to be a string "TOSS-UP" so I can't figure that using a pattern would help in my case. Thanks! 76.95.117.123 (talk) 12:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The documentation for the String one says, "an invocation of this method of the form useDelimiter(pattern) behaves in exactly the same way as the invocation useDelimiter(Pattern.compile(pattern))". In other words, it's just a convenience method for you to be able to pass in a String when you don't need the Pattern for anything else. If you have to create the Pattern yourself (for example, to use its two-argument constructor), then they let you pass that Pattern in, too. Short answer: String when you can, Pattern when you must. --Sean 14:40, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If you have a complicated reg-exp, then Pattern.compile may take a long time to execute. So, you would want to store the resulting Pattern object for re-use, instead of recomputing the pattern each time. If this is inside a loop with many iterations, consider benchmarking the two methods against each other, to see which has a faster run-time. Nimur (talk) 17:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Perl Projects

Hello, I am relatively new to the programming world but I've written some simple VBA programs and would like to start learning Perl. However I'm not really sure where to start. When I learned VBA I found books to be rather useless except as a reference. Project based learning, however, was very effective.

Therefore, I was wondering if anyone could suggest some simple programming projects or tasks which would be useful in learning Perl? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 15:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Project euler if you are obsessed with primes, otherwise you could just search "programming contest" and do some of the tasks. Picking a tutorial for some library eg this gtk tutorial and working through it is a choice. http://perldoc.perl.org/ and perldoc are off-topic but relevant. -194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The best task to learn on is by writing a program you need (that way it's not an academic exercise and you get something valuable at the end). However, since one major use of Perl is in web programming (Common Gateway Interface), producing a web page or web site might be a good project, perhaps integrating with a database (assuming you have some way of hosting a web page - otherwise it might be less interesting as a project). Since Perl is also commonly used for text processing, there might be something in that area you could look at - do you need any files converted to different formats, or text analysed or formatted, or maybe even an interpreter or compiler? --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 13:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I should also note that "Learning Perl" is possibly the only language tutorial textbook I've ever used that was actually helpful. It introduces techniques in a logical order, with useful exercises. Since it doesn't go into the object oriented elements in great detail (which are largely horrible additions in any event) older editions remain surprisingly useful. I'd recommend finding a used copy of 3rd edition and trying it out. I think I learned off a copy of 2nd edition (which covered up through something like Perl 5.01), and 99% of what I learned was directly transferable. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't recommend you learn Perl. Please take a look at python and ruby, which are superior in my mind. Cheers, ContinueWithCaution (talk) 14:48, 27 November 2009 (UTC).

I do recommend you learn Perl. I had lots of people tell me to learn python (what's with the tabs) over perl at one point, and knowing a little of both, you'll do just fine to learn perl. In any case, we're not here to answer your question by telling you to ask a different question (although I'm sure I've violated this rule too).

I found this series very helpful, and so is O'Reily (although the Learning Perl book is a little too beginner; opt for one of the other ones if you know a little bit). I would also recommend doing some basic text processing style apps before jumping into the CGI things, which are going to involve a lot of OO and module stuff. Shadowjams (talk) 09:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Replacing grub

I can't fix this over the phone. Anyone know of an idiot-safe method to completely replace grub? Situation: User wanted to install Windows 7 to VMWare. He was in Fedora 11, ran VMWare, popped in the Windows 7 disk, and started the install. It said it wanted to the root drive. He said no, took out the disk, and decided to try the next day. Turned on his computer and it just said "GRUB_". I walked him through making a USB live disk (because his computer doesn't have a CD/DVD drive or floppy). He can boot into Fedora 12 live. If he runs Anaconda (to try and upgrade), he gets two choices: Replace existing Linux install or Install to free space. I got him to rescue mode where the local media is under /mnt/sysimage, but /mnt/sysimage/boot is completely empty. From there, I can't help anymore. -- kainaw™ 16:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

testdisk is worth a try, though I'm not %100 sure it can fix your specific problem. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

By booting into a Ubuntu LiveCD, it is possible to access a GUI grub configuration - StartUp-Manager. This is not "idiot-safe" - I don't think anything that mucks with the bootloader could be. But, it may be easier than other alternatives. Be sure to instruct the user to boot Ubuntu as a "try-without-modifying-your-computer" mode (or else it will begin installing over the other partitions). Once booted into the live-CD mode, you can actually modify the grub configuration file (either conventionally with a text-editor, or with the Startup Manager GUI). Nimur (talk) 16:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

You want to reinstall grub, right, not replace it with something else? Is so, here's what I have done a couple of times (using knoppix, but it should be the same when booting from a usb stick):

1. Create a mount point for the linux partition which countains the grub directory

(Assuming /dev/hda1 is the "lost" linux partition, replace if necessary)

• Boot knoppix
• open Konsole

# su
# cd /mnt
# mkdir root

2. Mount it

# mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1  /mnt/root

3. Make /proc and /dev accessible

# mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev

4. Do chroot

# chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash

5. Reinstall grub

# cd /boot/grub

You might want to examine menu.lst at this point:

# vi ./menu.lst
# grub-install /dev/hda

WARNING: please observe that there is no number after hda!

If you get the error message "/dev/hda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive", try

# grub-install --recheck /dev/hda

• Sorry if I've misunderstood and am answering a different question than the one you've asked. I don't understand every step of the process, I found this howto somewhere on the net a long time ago, and I've used it a couple of times, successfully.

• Possibly the super grub disk has an easier way of dealing with this (it has a usb version, apparently). Hope this helps.

edit: Thinking a bit more about the super grub disk: it should allow you to boot into the os you've lost touch with. Then you can skip all the chroot stuff, and go straight to step 5. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all. It isn't an issue anymore. I finally asked why he didn't just burn the install disk to a CD and do an "upgrade system" from there. He didn't have a DVD burner and (in the past) the Fedora team had the attitude that if you didn't have a DVD burner, you were a loser that didn't deserve Fedora. In version 12, they finally pulled their heads out of their asses and realized that not everyone has a DVD burner. So, they have the CD install iso as well. He downloaded and created the install CDs and did an upgrade. However, anaconda apparently pulled a trick. He selected upgrade. It said that the boot sector was messed up (no kidding - that's the problem) and asked if it should be fixed. I don't know the exact message since I wasn't there. But, apparently, selecting "yes" meant "please erase my entire hard drive". So, all files have been lost and he just installed Fedora 12 from scratch. -- kainaw™ 04:45, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Strange codes in text, e.g. +ADs- or +ACoAKg-

i got a dataset that uses a strange encoding for non-printables / diacritics. i'm getting hte impression that it's an artifact of some mail system. or maybe it's excel or something? anyway, the stuff i get looks like this:

+ADs-, +AGA-, or +ACoAKg- and +ACEAIQ-

there's more.... any idea what that this and where it comes from? google shows me stuff from mailing lists etc - but theys just look like mangeled mail, nothing discussing the codes themselve.

Interestingly, Excel seems to know what to do with them. Might be something like quoted printable... just different :) any idea? -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 16:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be a Base64 encoding; it could be a lot of things. If it is Base64, we can decode it into binary values (with a tool like this one), but interpreting those numeric values will be context-specific. If it is attached to mails, is it part of a GNU Privacy Guard key? If it's only the special-characters, your process flow will be a bit complicated - you will need to get the binary-value and then determine which character encoding it belongs to, and then put that into a text editor or application which can use that character-coding. Nimur (talk) 16:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not Base64. Bryan found it for me: it's UTF-7. Thanks all :) -- Duesentrieb-formerly-Gearloose (?!) 17:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, UTF-7 is a particular markup and interpretation of Base64 data. Our article explains this. Nimur (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Detecting photoshopping/cloning in images

Hi all,

I've heard of programs that can detect photoshopping, most typically programs that detect the use of the clone tool, but I can't seem to find any online. I also heard that Adobe might be developing plugins for this, but that news was back for CS3 and I've got CS4 and see no plugin.

Anyone know of any such programs?

Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.155 (talk) 19:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, JPEG snoop is out there - it mostly talks about examining the 'exif' data (basically file headers and such) - which isn't really a good indication that the image has really be falsified - maybe someone just tweaked the brightness or cropped it or something. Detecting use of the clone tool is something that seems simple enough to do - but surprisingly, the blurb for JPEG snoop doesn't really push that aspect of it's supposed capabilities. SteveBaker (talk) 03:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Detecting Photoshopped pics is the type of thing computers wouldn't do particularly well. Consider some of the techniques used:

1) Check for missing body parts. In one pic of a row of Russian leaders, one head was deleted, but the feet still showed where he had been.

2) Look for disproportional body part sizes. If the head is too big or small for the body, for instance.

3) Look for shadows pointing in different directions.

4) Look for different light source reflections on shiny objects, like people's eyes.

Most of these tasks would be difficult for a program to do alone. Some, though, like the last one, might work once a person identified the locations to check. StuRat (talk) 04:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Is upgrading a CPU easy?

My motherboard is an ASRock P4VM8, socket 478. It currently has only a 1.8GHZ CPU, but according to the ASRRock website, it can take a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with a 1MB cache.

1. Is changing a CPU difficult?
2. Would it make a noticible difference in performance?
3. Is the 1MB cache built in to the CPU?
4. Is a change like this going to cause any problems with the WinXP verification?

Thanks 84.13.162.136 (talk) 21:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I've refactored your question to number the individual parts of it; I hope you won't mind Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

1. Changing a CPU generally isn't difficult. Sometimes unhooking the heatsink from the motherboard can be a pain, and you'll need to clean off and reapply fresh thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink
2. Noticeable: probably, but I wonder if it'd be cost effective. Generally I recommend people wait and then upgrade the whole of the core system (CPU/motherboard/RAM, and for gamers the graphics adapter too) in one go, which means you can use the old system for a backup PC, a gift, or a media server. Changing components incrementally tends to leave you permanently with one component faster than the others, which means it doesn't get utilised to its full potential.
3. Yes
4. If you're just changing the CPU (and not lots of other things at the same time) then you'll should be fine.

-- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not too difficult to change the CPU - but you do need to take care. Make sure you're not going to zap the chip with a static discharge - grab the frame of the PC so you're at the same voltage as the case - and sit the plastic box that the CPU comes in on top of the PC case as you open it - so it too is at the same voltage. Try not to touch the pins on the chip. You'll need to take care with re-inserting it - apply some silver paste to get good thermal conductivity between the chip and the heat-sink/fan. It's not that hard...but you do need to take care and pay attention.

Will you see a marked performance improvement? Well, it depends on what kinds of applications you run. You aren't going to see much difference in things that are bottle-necked by disk speed - or heavily memory performance limited. You'll probably see significant improvement in graphics/games - but it's not going to be double the performance because the graphics system isn't going any faster. But if you're doing things that are heavily CPU-dependent - then you'll see a stunning improvement. It all depends what you're doing - and how much spare horsepower there is elsewhere in the system that's just stuck waiting around for the 1.8 GHz CPU.

You may find that your power consumption goes up a bit - if your power supply is near the limit - that might be a problem - but I really doubt it. It's also possible that whatever cooling solution you have with the existing CPU won't be enough - again, it's hard to predict. Modern CPU's often throttle their speed down if they start to overheat - that would mean that your fancy new CPU would simply be throttling itself back down to the speed of the old one! There are software tools out there that let you see if that's happening - and it's definitely worth checking what the deal is when the CPU is working hard. So make sure you don't have stuff like cables draped over the CPU's fan - if there are expansion boards that you can relocate down the far end of the rack from the CPU - so much the better. Sadly, the one card that would help would be the graphics card - but you probably can't relocate that. But generally - if you can keep cables away from the fans and electronics - that'll help the most.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:49, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I was adding changes to the website for a Client and now my page has been deleted.

As this question is about a specific Wikipedia article, I've moved it to the appropriate place, Wikipedia:Help_desk#I was adding changes to the website for a Client and now my page has been deleted. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)'

my e-mail had to be changed -after the change my page has been deleted. I received it on Thursday but it does not come. My new e-mail is *(cmont1234@gmail.com) my old mail was (montg1234@hotmail.com)Can this be corrected?

Charles Montgomery

5413Pebble Court McKinney, TX cmont1234@gmail.com

November 24

Formatting Text in Java

I asked about String vs. Pattern delimiters earlier. Anyway, I have a really basic program that will read in the file using the scanner and break it up into pieces and can assemble them the way I want. Just one question --- it reads only from .txt as far as I know (a Scanner with a File) so I put all my file from a .doc into a .txt, losing all the formatting (i.e bold, centered text). Is there any way that I could redo that formatting using my program. The delimiter breaks my file into chunks and I'm trying to format a piece of that chunk, not the whole chunk. I just need to make text bold and centered. Is there any way possible?

I don't think I explained it very clearly so: What I mean to say for a chunk is that my delimiter is TEST. So I have a set of text that goes TESTTOSS-UP Math Short Answer Question. Answer. TOSS-UP. All I'm trying to do is make the TOSS-UP bold and centered.

---

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.133.196.152 (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You should read our article on plain text. A document that is saved by Word (for example), as a .doc, includes significantly more data beyond just the text that appears on screen. There is formatting data, and significant amounts of other metadata. Unless you have the file format documentation, or if you are using a pre-written library to access .doc file formats, you will have trouble with plain text operations. Nimur (talk) 01:40, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: I'm dumb nm 66.133.196.152 (talk) 02:04, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

An alternative option would be to save the text as HTML which can then be relatively simply parsed and changed. --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Getting only part of an integer with Mathematica

In Mathematica, I am trying to make a function that inputs an integer and outputs the integer mod squares. Hopefully that makes sense, but an example would be if I plug in any square integer, I get 1. If I plug in a square free integer, I get itself back. If I plug in 32, I get 2 because it removes an even number of powers of 2. If I input 2^5 * 3^4 * 5^9 * 11^13, I get back 2 * 5 * 11. I have tried factoring the integer with FactorInteger and then using the Cases command to take only the prime factors which have odd exponent, but I am not getting it. Any help would be much appreciated! StatisticsMan (talk) 02:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't get an answer here, you might want to move this Q to the Math Desk. StuRat (talk) 04:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

You may have to break this into several steps to see where it went wrong. Are you actually getting the list of factors in the form you have with ^ and * ?. Can you actually spot the odd exponent,rather than and odd factor? If the factors come out OK, can it multiplyt them out again? sed could probably do this: substitute the even exponent factors to nothing and get rid of the odd exponents. I think your algorithm sounds OK but I don't know mathematica.

Phew, I finally worked something out! You've started right with FactorInteger, and I think Cases would work too - but I thought of using Mod to take the powers mod 2. I think this code ought to work (when surrounded by the usual Module stuff):

numberout=1;
flist=FactorInteger[n];
listlength=Length[flist];  (* ie the number of pairs *)
Do[  (* repeat the steps below for each pair - fno is the number of the pair we're on *)
  pair=flist[[fno]];  (* take the fno'th pair of numbers *)
  pfactor=pair[[1]];  (* pfactor is the first number in pair, ie the prime factor *)
  pwr=pair[[2]];  (* pwr is the second number in pair, ie the power *)
  pwr=Mod[pwr,2];  (* now take pwr mod 2, ie 0 if it's even or 1 if it's odd *)
  numberout=numberout*(pfactor^pwr)
,{fno,listlength}]
numberout

(the (* ... *) are comments)

This is the compressed version, without all those variables:

numberout=1;
flist=FactorInteger[n];
Do[
  numberout=numberout*(flist[[fno,1]]^Mod[flist[[fno,2]],2])
,{fno,Length[flist]}]
numberout

Warning: I haven't used Mathematica for years, and I can't test this code - so there may be mistakes in it!

(Incidentally, there's a useful guide to Mathematica at http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/Mathematica.html - that's how I refreshed my very patchy knowledge!) AJHW (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, drat, I forgot to say: n is the integer input. AJHW (talk) 11:59, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

mv command with three arguments

I'm trying to install an application called Drupal and one of the instructions is to "Move the contents of that directory into a directory within your web server's document root or your public HTML directory" with the command

mv drupal-x.x/* drupal-x.x/.htaccess /var/www/html

I'm a little confused as to why there appear to be three arguments after the mv command, which mv doesn't seem to support. Can someone please clear up my confusion? Thanks! — Sam 76.24.222.22 (talk) 04:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You have a bad reference. (Or a weird mv but that's unlikely.) See 'man mv', 'mv --help' and possibly 'info "(coreutils) mv invocation"' for proper info. The leading arguments will go to the last argument and the last argument should be a directory. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 07:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

In other words, if you supply mv with more arguments - like mv a1 a2 a3 b, then it moves a1, a2 and a3 to directory b. Better description of mv on the web is for example here. Lukipuk (talk) 10:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 9x

Why haven't there been any DOS/9x Windows versions since ME? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 09:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

As those versions ran on MS-DOS which is 16-bit they had all manner of limitations (the total amount of usable memory being the main one) and the way forward was to move to a true 32-bit platform and now becoming more common is the 64-bit platform. ZX81 ^talk 12:56, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The Windows 9x family of operating systems was very unstable. If one program crached, the entire OS was likely to crash. Also, there were no such thing as "security". The entire platform was very obsolete. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

What 'mainstream' applications use .NET?

Most .NET development is (generally speaking) focused on creating web applications or in-house business applications. What 'mainstream' applications also use .NET? By 'mainstream' I mean, non-business apps and something that a non-programmer might use. I can think of Paint.NET, Windows PowerShell and SyncToy. Are there any others? 12.165.250.13 (talk) 16:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Many modern PC games use .NET as you learn with the inevitable DirectX and .NET updates with so many games you install. I can't think of any examples outside the ones you provided when it comes to productivity applications. I'm not sure what level .NET is used in most games either. Someone who is more familiar with the framework may be able to provide a more complete answer. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 17:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

QuickBooks, PowerQuest Backup, the ATI control panel, Microsoft Expression, and Hallmark Card Studio are some of the apps I know of.--Drknkn (talk) 20:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

MediaPortal, Beyond TV and other stuff I can't remember (I usually just install .NET and then don't have to care if an app requires it). Many specialised simple apps that you find in forums and in user websites also use .NET. You also need the .NET framework for the DirectX Video Acceleration on Windows XP I believe (you definitely need it for the EVR renderer). An interesting this is to try searching wikipedia for ".NET framework" [3]. While some of these are discussing other stuff, some of them are applications that require the .net framework. For example I found out that the Nokia Map Loader uses it. Obviously this only finds a small percentage of applications using it. A Bing or Google search for 'requires .net framework' [4] [5] is also likely to find some interesting stuff. For example I was reminded Nero 9.0 requires .NET Framework [6]. Precisely what component needs it I don't know (possibly the media portion) but it won't install without it no matter what you choose... This is of course all on Windows. Somewhat controversial I believe a number of Linux apps use Mono (software)#Software developed with Mono, Tomboy (software) probably being the most prominent, and there may be more in the future [7] Nil Einne (talk) 22:39, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Symbols, colors, fonts won't copy into email

Referring back to this question:[8]

I now find myself unable to copy and paste this information into emails. Is this something new in Internet Explorer 8?

I do recall warnings that I was telling the computer to do something unsafe and that was stopped, but I hardly see where just the symbols would cause a problem. I do remember video or something else moving and I was told don't use Explorer. I stay away from Firefox and use plain text when possible, but copying the symbols manually is such a pain. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No. The problem is not IE8. Probably, your email client is set to using just plain text. If you switch to using html, it should work (at least sort-of-work). See E-mail#Plain_text_and_HTML. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what that means. I just go to the web site of the email service and sign in (#Webmail in the above article). It doesn't seem to matter what computer or what address, but there is a problem with this now.

I'd rather do plain text but sometimes don't because copying the symbols is a pain.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Update: while I couldn't see the text with the symbols and fonts, it did go through.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

To get a more specific answer, it would be helpful if you stated which email client you use, or, if you use a webmail service, which service you use (gmail, yahoo etc). It would also be helpful if you provided a link to a web page with contents that you want to copy and paste into your email. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I've never used an email client. When I looked at the Wikipedia article I was referred to for a related question (the link is at the top) I realized what I use is webmail. I could provide further information the next time I have the problem.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Need another printer suitible for cartridge refilling, or renovate the old one

My HP Deskjet 930C has got blinking error lights which prevent printing (I do already know what the manual says about them thanks), and despite several times in the past being able to fix the same pattern of blinking lights and get it working, this time I have not been able to. It has been a robust printer in the past, pity I cannot get it to work this time. a) I refill my own black-ink cartridges to save money. What robust reliable model of printer would suit this please? I have an old computer with WinXP, and thus cannot run some modern printers. I am happy to buy a 2nd hand printer. b) Are there any unofficial instructions about how to renovate this model of computer? HP says nothing about removing the cover etc. The printer is too old for paying for maintenance to be worthwhile - buying new would be cheaper. c) Is there any way to find out more specifically what the problem is? None of the HP software can do this, it would have to be some diagostic program an independant programmer has done, if anything exists at all. Thanks 92.24.170.160 (talk) 21:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Check eBay! There is a used HP Deskjet 930C for sale (with about 13 hours left to run at time of writing) with no bids on it so far, another with a "Buy it now" price of $16 and yet a third with "Buy it now" at $10. Beware the $25 shipping...but maybe you can get a good deal. I've been getting HP OfficeJet K80's from eBay (I have three of them now) - they are easy to fix when you have spares, and I agree profoundly about refilling ink cartridges. Sadly, modern printers have fancy electronic ink carts that won't work even if you do re-fill them...manufacturers sell printers at a steep loss and make their money back from ripping you off on ink to an insane degree. So if you have one you can reliably re-fill, stick with it! SteveBaker (talk) 00:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I wish it were possible to buy or unofficially modify a printer so that instead of having to play around with injecting ink into cartridges, you just poured ink into it like filling a car. If it were not for the business model used, that would be how they would be designed. Roll on the days when we have fabrication machines and can make freeware designs of objects. 78.146.176.198 (talk) 23:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes - I agree. I really wouldn't mind paying $200 or $300 on a printer if the ink cartridges cost a more realistic $10 or so - or if you could just fill the thing up when it gets empty. But if you stand around in the printer aisle at Fry's - you'll see that nobody ever asks "How much are the print cartridges and how many pages can they print?" - they do look carefully at the printer prices - but they totally fall for the scam. Fabrication machines are coming...RepRap is a working fabricator - and if you are handy enough to assemble one, they cost under $1000. I actually own a CNC milling machine that I built myself for $200...I can't make a printer with it - but we're well on the way to being able to do this. Things like printers are tough to fabricate though - those teeny-tiny thermal print heads are not the kinds of thing that you can make with these kinds of generalized robotic bulding systems. SteveBaker (talk) 05:57, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

We do already have fabrication tools at least, if not a fabrication machine, for woodwork and so on. I suppose it would be possible with a drill and the right glue to fit either a small screw-top to an ink cartridge (or just a hole with a small bung), or a flexible plastic tube leading from the cartidge to an ink reservoir. In the later case it could be difficult to stop too much ink flowing into the cartidge, and some of the cover of the printer would have to be removed so that the cartridge could move to its non-working position. 78.147.183.186 (talk) 00:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

November 25

Google Books results

What accounts for the variability in Google Books results? I was able to find two sources the other day that now, will simply not come up no matter what I do. They are fairly old books, so I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. Viriditas (talk) 10:13, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Google's search algorithms are proprietary - they are not explained, and they can change any time Google wants. The variability could stem from a variety of technical issues (e.g. database server temporarily unavailable) or algorithm changes (new server software version doesn't recognize your keywords) to malicious censorship (Google noticed a search trend with that search result, and decided to censor it in order to promote commercial competitors). In fairness, it is also plausible that you aren't searching with the same exact query (or you were logged in last time, etc.) Google is known for location-based, login-based, and other context-sensitive results. Because Google's search algorithm(s) are proprietary, there isn't any way to know for certain which is the case. Nimur (talk) 13:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's the same query and I wasn't logged in, but my location did change, approximately three times. And I did get three different responses for a few days. However, after repeatedly searching and receiving the same results for almost a week, the two books disappeared from view and can no longer be retrieved, as if they never existed. I have managed to track one down in my area, so that's a hit in RL, but the other one is gone. I've been using Google Books for a while, and this has never happened before, but I did notice that the one that disappeared is a foreign-language edition. Viriditas (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Why did my CD/DVD Drive Disappear from My Computer and Device Manager?

Please forgive me if this has already been naddressed elsewhere. If so, I'd be grateful for the link. I searched and didn't see anything resembling this, though.
I have a HP Pavilion DV6646US laptop computer-- 160gb HD, 2gb RAM, running Vista (64). I have owned it for around two years. I still have a little over a year left on an extended warranty. (Phew.) Here's the story:
On three different occasions in these past two years, my CD/DVD optical drive (E:, on my system) has simply disappeared from My Computer and Device Manager. Nowhere to be found. The first time it happened, a little over a year ago, I presented my problem to the extended warranty people, and they had me send it in for service. I think they replaced the motherboard and the hard drive. They returned it in almost brand-new condition. I reloaded all my programs and data and everything seemed to be OK. Then, about four months ago, it happened again. I called the extended warranty people again, and the representative was convinced that it was a driver conflict with a Windows Update,and basically chewed me out (!) for installing all suggested updates (setting my computer to "automatically update"). He recommended either doing system restores, stepping backwards, until my CD-DVD drive reappeared, or uninstalling Microsoft Updates individually until I found the "culprit," or if neither of those worked, doing a complete system restore. I tried what he suggested, and it didn't work, so I did a system restore from a partitioned "D: Drive" used exclusively for recoveries. To my relief, the CD/DVD drive was back, and working-- but a week or so later, it disappeared again. I called the warranty people back, and they had me send it in again. When I got it back, the invoice said that the motherboard and the hard drive were replaced (again). I was smooth sailing, doing automatic updates from Microsoft and HP, until a few days ago when I noticed that once again, the CD/DVD drive was missing.
I would certainly prefer not to send it in a third time if I don't have to. It's not a question of cost, as it's covered under warranty-- I'm just not convinced that it's a permanent fix, AND, it's a round trip of about 2-3 weeks. I checked the HP website for a fix, and they seem to mention it here, but neither clicking on the "fix it" link, or following the provided instructions, will fix the problem (in my case). This is because it's not even FOUND in the device manager, and choosing "scan for hardware changes" doesn't find the missing drive, either. I would say that it's a dead or dying CD/DVD drive, and I could support that theory, but it IS getting power-- the light blinks when I'm booting up, and it opens/closes OK. (I realize that there's more to it than that....)
So here's my question: Has anyone else out there had this same problem, with a different result? And what did you do? Or what should I do? Could it be something with the BIOS? I'll check it when I get home from work tonight, and update accordingly (but I'm not too confident in that....)<br.> Sorry this is so long. Thanks a million-- Kingsfold (talk) 14:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried the steps here? Looks like the likely source is a conflict with bad DVD burning software. The KB includes instructions to fix the problem. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 14:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I tried the "fix it" link there a few days ago when I first noticed it, but I didn't try to fix the registry myself. (Not afraid to, per se, I just figured that the "fix it" thing would do the exact same thing.) I will check my registry when I get home tonight and see if it does any good. Thanks for the link. Any other suggestions? Kingsfold (talk) 15:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if the software fixes found online don't work, you might take a stab at replacing the DVD drive and related cables. A new DVD drive runs about $20 last I checked. The tech support morons apparently made no attempt to replace your DVD drive, they just replaced the motherboard and hard drive. Try getting a new DVD drive (from a different manufacturer just to be certain) and installing it (borrow a neighborhood geek to help if needed). This way, if the problem is either the specific hardware, or the manufacturer's drivers, you've replaced both, and should have a decent test bed for comparison. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be a wobbly cable/connector? Most of the time it's connected, but it gradully works itself loose with temperature changes and transporting the laptop. Sending it away for a new motherboard fixes it for a while because they have to reseat the connector when putting your laptop back together. I've no idea what you would do about it if that was the problem ... ask HP for a new DVD drive, perhaps? Astronaut (talk) 19:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's connected, at least to the power, because it blinks and opens/shuts. But yes-- perhaps the connector itself has worked itself loose. Hmmm. Interesting thought. Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, damn. Didn't notice it was a laptop. With frequent movement, a bad connector, or even a bad case (a little warped, so the drive isn't fixed in position properly) could easily be the problem. And it also means a replacement drive will cost a bit more than $20 (and may not be possible if the computer isn't built for swapping). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk)

Right. And thankfully, it's under warranty still, so I'd rather not get too deep into the nuts and bolts. Literally. Good thought, though. Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I had a similar problem at a customer's house a while ago. I fixed it by doing a system restore (Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> System Restore). You should also look in the Device Manager to see if the drive has an exclamation mark next to it (right-click on My Computer and choose Manage). If it does, then try uninstalling the device from there and rebooting. Windows will automatically re-install it.--Drknkn (talk) 19:38, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Appreciate the idea and the input, but the system restore has been tried, with no luck. The drive isn't showing up at all, exclamation mark or not, in Device Manager.  :-(

I mentioned to the warranty guy that next time I buy a laptop, it might be one of those mini ones, and I may just get a USB CD/DVD drive along with it. He said, "Yeah, you could do that." Kingsfold (talk) 22:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Illegal content uploaded to website

I'm looking for links to relevant articles for the following scenario. Note that I'm not asking for legal advice, only links to articles.

Hypothetically, someone in the UK hosted a small website on their home computer which allowed anyone in the world to post text and images, like a forum. An illegal image was uploaded to that site, and the site owner deleted the offending image as soon as he / she noticed it, and banned the ip address of the poster. What consequences could the host face? Would they be jailed, fined etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.114 (talk) 16:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A similar question was asked on November 18. As before, it's virtually impossible to answer your question without giving legal advice. But, as before, you might be interested in the following academic review of prior cases: Liability of System Administrators. This paper points to a lot of related articles of both academic and legal interest. Nimur (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

You might find The Pirate Bay trial of relevance.

Are you talking about copyrighted material or illegal material such as child porn? Most sites I've encountered say in their terms & conditions that copyrighted material will be removed on sight or on request from the copyright holder; and uploading of illegal material will be reported to the police. As to how binding the T&Cs are or whether a website owner can use their published T&Cs as protection from the law, you will need to ask a specialised lawyer. Astronaut (talk) 18:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A shame that you're living in the UK; in the US, system administrators are explicitly not liable per law for the content posted by internet users if they make a good faith attempt to avoid the posting of the content and remove it on sight. Too bad I can't remember the name of the congressional act. Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Best computer?

Short list of laptops from Newegg

Hello, I am in need of a new laptop computer and I was wondering if you could help me out. I will give you guys a short list of laptops and then if you have the time could you suggest which computer is the best bang for the buck out of the provided list? Thanks, I REALLY appreciate it!! --96.230.224.100 (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The 2.8 GHz 15" MacBook Pro with 8GB main memory, 256GB SSD and antiglare screen. The extra 300,- for the 3.06 GHz processor are not worth it. ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A more serious reply is that it depends greatly on what you are using it for. If you plan to play games or do serious video editing, you'll want dedicated graphics (which rules out all the Intel GMA machines). Every one of the machines listed has 4GB of RAM; more than that is unnecessary for 99.99% of tasks, so you're fine on that score. CPU speed rarely matters anymore, and every one of them is at least dual-core (the extra core is handy for when a process goes haywire, but more than that isn't usually needed). Hard disk space is up to personal need; I've got 1.7 TB on my home machine, but most people don't even use a tenth of that. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If I were buying a new laptop, this is what I'd buy: [9]. I'd choose the RAID-0 option with a quad-core CPU.--Drknkn (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If you intend on carrying it anywhere, get something small and light. You will soon get sick of carrying a 15lb, 17" monster around. You can always get a large desktop monitor and external keyboard for use at your desk. And check how big the power pack is - it's no good having a 4lb laptop with a 6lb power brick! If you are using it at school and don't have access to a power supply, you might need to consider battery life. For gaming, forget it and get a desktop machine optimised for that purpose. Astronaut (talk) 18:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed on weight and battery life. If this is a desktop-replacement laptop it doesn't matter, but if you're toting it everywhere, every ounce counts. Ignore the people lusting after over-powerful machines. Alienware and Mac Pro laptops are *massive* overkill for anyone not using them for gaming, video editing or similar CPU/GPU intensive tasks. Heck, for most people, even the laptops you indicate are excessive. A light, quasi-netbookish machine (it's a little large to be netbook, but smaller and lighter than most laptops) like the the Asus UL30 series will do virtually everything you need, while weighing only 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb) with a 6 hour battery life (advertised, probably an hour less), or for slightly more weight, a 12 hour battery life (again, probably a little less in practice). The UL30A and UL30Vt differ only in the presence of a dedicated graphics card, so my earlier notes on the intended usage remain relevant. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I have a 15" MacBook Pro (the tongue-in-cheek suggestion above is what I hope will become affordable by next spring, when it's due for renewal - but I won't hold my breath ;-), and use it as my sole computer. I'm very happy with it. It's great in a hotel or on the train. But it's too big for flying (coach class) or longer cycling trips, and while sufficient for most tasks, I would very much like a bigger and more ergonomically placed screen when stationary. And while it's quite reasonable value for money, it's hard to rationally justify the value when I can get a EUR 400 Acer laptop with Linux that is sufficient for 95% of all my tasks - web surfing, programming, email, photos, music, movies, writing. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for your suggestions and advice so far, I appreciate it! I wasn't really taking into consideration the weight but I will definitely factor that in now. The laptop would be used primarily for standard applications like web surfing, word processing, etc. but occasionally would need it to play games (maybe) and video/photo editing. --96.230.227.148 (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Javascript: Resetting a Form

Hi All,

I have a search-form with some <select> elements which are filled using ajax (drill-down search?). It's working fine for the most part but I want it to reset (ie as if the reset button has been pushed) whenever the user navigates back (using the browser buttons/shortcuts) from the search-results-page. I tried putting "document.getElementById('myFormsId').reset()" but it doesnt work. The site im developing is here.

To replicate what I'm trying to do, just select a manufacturer,make,model, hit submit, then from the search results use your 'back' button (or alt+left,etc). I wanted to make it that if the user goes back the whole form is set to its initial state.

Side question, why doesn't disabled="true" for the <select> work on firefox? PrinzPH (talk) 18:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

My screwed up SVG file

Hi there, I recently wrote a python script to colour in maps with specific colours. The code for it is here. Unfortunately, while it seems to create state maps correctly (see here), the county maps it creates can be rendered by firefox, but not Inkscape or GIMP and apparently not whatever Wikipedia uses to display it in articles. Gimp says it has an "XML parsing error". The map is File:US Poverty Rates.svg and can be viewed here. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem? Thanks a lot, TastyCakes (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If you can tell me where I'd get the CSV file you used to generate it, I'll have a look see. In the meantime, I note that it is a very big SVG source (it's nearly 40 times bigger than the blank map) and renderers will likely allocate a fair amount of memory during rendering. The problem may simply be that the SVG renderers in libsvg (which I think MediaWiki runs) and the others are just running out of memory (or another resource), either due to design limitations or to a hard limit to avoid denial-of-service attacks. If that's the case, the first thing to to is to run it on just a subset of the CSV file, and see if size, rather than content, is the factor that kills it (if I'm wrong then it should fail even with a handful of counties). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:28, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I also notice that the SVG contains non-ASCII characters, and doesn't declare a character encoding. Viewed in emacs you see "C:\Users\Emil\Desktop\Matt<E9>'s Work\Pix\svg" - that E9 character should probably be escaped, or a compatible encoding specified. The W3C validator barfs for what I think is this reason here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm sorry I wasn't entirely clear, I made the screwed up map using this blank map, which is actually bigger than the screwed up output map. If you go and look at the blank map, I think you see the same non-ASCII characters... TastyCakes (talk) 22:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm the validator seems to have some problems with the blank map as well... TastyCakes (talk) 22:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

But the blank state map does validate... TastyCakes (talk) 22:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, the "40x" thing was a snafu at my end. The character literals in Matté aren't the same in the two: in the blank one that é is encoded as c3 a9, but in your one it's just a naked e9. So I think you need to get the thing emitting the XML tree to force utf-8 encoding (and emit an svg header to that effect). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah you're totally right, that seems to be the problem, and now it works! Thanks a lot, I was at a total loss on what to do. TastyCakes (talk) 23:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to help; it's an interesting problem. I hope you'll keep (and ideally augment a bit) the process and script for producing the diagram; there are all too many machine-generated pictures in Wikipedia that we don't have the scripts for, making anyone who wants to fix or improve them rewrite the script again. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:09, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ideally I'd like to make the svg code it produces prettier, but my attempts at doing that were a disaster. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully the same script will work to colour in blank world maps as well. Do you have any suggestions on improving it? And is there a central repository somewhere that I could link my script to? Hopefully one where I won't find a script that does the same thing already there? ;) TastyCakes (talk) 23:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I just put the source on the commons description page (like commons:File:Wfm_floodfill_animation_queue.gif). The base one has a decent-looking SVG header (doctypes and stuff) whereas yours doesn't (again, I think that's probably a setting for the XML generator). On looking at both, the massive size is partly due to the (probably excessive) precision given for each vertex, and the (probably excessive) number of line segments used to represent the areas (most of which are, after all, just squares). Given the resolution we'll reasonably be rendering them, almost all the zones could stand to be 6 or 8 sided. But to do that properly would need some Douglas-Peucker polygon simplification, and I'm not volunteering for that ;( -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, well thanks a lot. Maybe the easiest way to get the size down would be to just make it in inkscape and then convert it into a PNG? I guess it's not quite as elegant ;) TastyCakes (talk) 23:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

adobe digital editions

I'm trying to install adobe digital editions on my computer, in english. My computer happens to be in the Netherlands, but I don't speak dutch. Somehow adobe seems to know I'm in the Netherlands and the installation program comes to me automatically in dutch. I can't figure out how to install in english instead of dutch, or to change the language to english once the app is installed in dutch. The adobe site assures me that the app is available in many language now, including dutch...but how do I download and install it in english? Thanks for your advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 23:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Try changing the countries/language settings in control panel?F (talk) 05:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

November 26

How to burn .flv files to DVDs

Hello! How do you take a .flv file and burn it to a DVD so that it will play on a standard DVD player in the US, without downloading any dodgy software? I tried searching on Google, but most solutions recommended I download some strange freeware. Is it really that hard that you need a special program to do it? I have VLC media player and an ISO-Image-to-CD/DVD writer. I figured I could convert the video to the right format and burn it. I found this website, but I'm not sure I fully understand the directions; when I tested converting the video with the NTSC-format requirements, the resulting video was very choppy (don't know if that's VLC's fault or my possible typing in the specification incorrectly). Thanks for any help or advice on this topic.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 01:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

There are 2 things you need to do to be able to view .flv video on a DVD player. The first is to convert it to a format that DVD players understand (which is called MPEG video) and the second is to add the information that the DVD player expects about the video that is there - menus and the like. This ends up with a number of file types - .vob, .ifo and .bup. This is often done in two stages - convert the format and then create the DVD. However, you can find programs that appear to do both - for example, the DVD author at AVS4YOU appears to do both (http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-DVD-Authoring.aspx). --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Convertxtodvd is a stellar program that works really well, I highly reccommend it. The only thing is that it's commercial software that you have to pay for, although I think they offer a free trial (but it leaves a watermark on the video). --96.230.227.148 (talk) 17:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Computer troubles and open source questions

Basically, I'm breaking point with windows based computers. My computer isn't up to the speed as to what it used to be. Of course it still works, but somehow its not what it used to be. The computer is a Dell Desktop from 3 1/2 yrs ago (January, 2010). Just used for emailing, internet, and etc along those lines then advance stuff. At the same time have no income in able to afford a new computer and have no help from my parents or sibling. Since somehow in the past had a tendency of breaking of computers and getting new ones short while after that. Rather do it right this time around

Think thats it for now.

Thank you, in advance.

Jessica A —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 03:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your question is, exactly. Do you need help speeding up your computer (very likely possible). Do you need recommendations for a new computer? Chris M. (talk) 04:17, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The standard way to fix a slow computer is a format and reinstall.F (talk) 04:58, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

You say "...and open source questions" - are you looking to switch to Linux or something? Linux is really good for old computers for several reasons - but mostly because each new revision doesn't require vastly more computing resources than the previous one, so you can keep your OS software up to date without needing continual hardware updates to stay current. If that's what you're looking for then probably you should start off by downloading and burning a Linux "Live CD" - you can boot Linux from that and experience 90% of the joys of Linux without having to risk screwing up your PC. If you like what you see then you can install a full Linux distro - and one nice way to ease the pain & risk is to install it as a "dual boot" system where the hard drive is split between a Linux "partition" and your existing Windows software. Now you can reboot your PC and you'll be presented with a little menu that lets you boot into either the wonderful world of Linux - or into your original Windows system. This is handy because you can still boot into Windows to play games or do other Windows-only stuff. When you realise that it's been six months since you last booted into Windows - you can wipe the Windows partition and reformat it into Linux to get back some disk space. But until you're ready to commit, Linux can read files from the Windows partition so you can get to all of your data from within Linux. There are a gazillion Linux distro's to choose from - I happen to use OpenSuSE - but probably the most popular/well-supported version right now is Ubuntu...so I guess that's probably where you should start. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this would be seen as good advice, but I have a fairly old laptop (a Thinkpad X30, bought second-hand in 2007; 512 megs RAM and 1.2 GHz processor) and it used to take an age after switch on/wake from hibernate/sleep. The disk thrashed and it was pretty much unusable. I thought I'd experiment by getting rid of the anti-virus (AVG). It now boots almost instantly from sleep/hibernate and is a completely usable machine once more. I am careful about what I open/view and have never had any machine I use detect a virus, so I feel comfortable with doing this. It may be worth trying getting rid of the AV, to see whether this has a noticeable effect. However, unless you are always extremely careful, I would not leave a PC without any AV protection. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree - antivirus software is some of the most troublesome software I have to deal with. It can be a huge performance boost to run without any antivirus software at all. The caveat is that if the user doesn't know what they are doing (and sometimes, even if they do), a virus infection can be a serious problem. In general, good security practices are more valuable than good antivirus software; but your usage pattern may change factors in the risk evaluation. Nimur (talk) 22:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The newest Windows edition -Windows 7 - is rumored to require less RAM than Windows Vista and run faster. Anyway, a 3 1/2 years old computer should completely be able to deal with things like email, internet surfing and the like without any noticeable problem.--Mr.K. (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanx for all of the info that you guys give me on this. Basically, was asking more about linux then computer troubles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 23:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanx and tried it again. Having a much easier time this time around as suppose the other time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 21:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Toolbar disappeared

I'm using explorer 8 and my toolbar has disappeared. I tried all the F keys with and without Alt and Ctrl to no avail. see here Note to Astronaut: The reason I was concerned about Besser was not malwear but identity theft because of all the places on the planet he could have been he is actually about a mile from me. I thought he was somehow picking up my zip code. WOW!

Is this any use: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962963 ? --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This problem was discussed at some length last week. See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 20#Toolbar disappeared. I'll be interested if the advice from Microsoft helps. Astronaut (talk) 14:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The advice from Microsoft didn't work. Yesterday I asked a knowledgable friend for help with this and he had done all the things which the advice from Microsoft said already (Delete ITBarLayout from the registry)The Microsoft page had the option of "Do it for me" and "I'll do it myself". I clicked the former several times and waited but nothing happened. When I went to do it myself I found that all the ITBarLayout's were already deleted, (Find didn't find any also)The Microsoft page also has a "Did this work? option which I'll go to now and say "no" and see what happens. Next I'll call Besser. I e-mailed him to no avail. Maybe, if he's still alive, he'll walk over here and help me. I just had an idea - my delete key isn't working, maybe my F10 key isn't working too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.195.206 (talk) 16:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

60,000+ jpgs

I have a lot of images completely unorganized, with lots of the same images under different filenames. I need a simple, hopefully free software program that can browse and help organize them, search them via their metadata, and to detect duplicate images and remove them. Any suggestions of good programs which would be good for this? Many thanks for your help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.114 (talk) 14:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

f-spot or digikam? --194.197.235.240 (talk) 14:36, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I should mention I need this for windows not linx

Sorry, I thought f-spot would run on windows too but google seems to think not. But digikam will run on windows (search 'kde for windows'). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 19:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Not specific to pictures, but I've found Duplicate Cleaner works well at finding duplicates. TastyCakes (talk) 15:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Visipics and DupDetector are two freeware programs for finding duplicate images. They can find similar pictures of different sizes. 78.146.191.42 (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Picasa won't help you with finding duplicates (there were other suggestions above), but it's excellent at helping you to organise your images, as well as perform simple fixes. — QuantumEleven 22:55, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Picasa has a fatal flaw in that it assumes that the file creation date is the date of the photo and stubbornly refuses to let you change it. So, if you have 60,000 pics that you took over, say, 10 years and you put them on a server to sort them with Picasa, it will claim they were all taken on the day you put the server. A very big headache for attempting to organize and sort photos. -- kainaw™ 23:03, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I've found that using a Wiki (a private one) is very handy for organizing photos. The automatic creation of thumbnails - things like categories and galleries are a snap to create. If you use MediaWiki (the same software that runs Wikipedia - and, significantly the vast WikiCommons image farm) - there are extensions to let you do bulk "uploads". Categories can contain categories. Images can belong to multiple categories. You can create galleries from categories. You can add text to images - make pages that mix media. You can also store movies and sounds. When you're happy with your setup - you can easily put the entire shebang onto the web. The revision control mechanism (like the 'history' tab, above) lets you store the original photo from the camera - as well as subsequently cropped, color-adjusted versions - so you can always go back to the original pristine image if you ever need to. This doesn't solve the issue of duplicate images - but you can fix that with one of the other tools before you start. SteveBaker (talk) 01:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Excel List Problem

Hello, a juicy Excel problem for you here.

I have two lists, each with a word and a number, for instance HAPPY 234. This indicates how many times the word HAPPY has appeared in a document. This list is in columns A and B of a sheet.

In columns C and D of the sheet I have a similar list - and you guessed it, I want to combine the lists so if HAPPY 234 appears in cells A1 and B1, and I have HAPPY 50 in cells C34 and D34 I will get a merged result of HAPPY 284 somewhere else.

I have found a guide [[10]] but this only works if the list is one column wide, mine is two.

Hope this makes sense, any ideas?

Thanks 195.60.13.52 (talk) 16:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Pivot tables are your friend here. Move the data in your C and D columns underneath the data in A and B columns, so you have one list in two columns; add header to each column - say "Word" and "Count", for example; select the whole data area including headers; create a pivot table with "Word" down the left hand side and "Sum of Count" in its body. Pivot table will find all rows with a given word in column A and will add up their word counts from column B. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that, that's damn nearly got it. Only problem, the list tops out at 9500 ish - my original combined list is 13000 or so rows. Is there a limit for a pivot table? Thanks 195.60.13.52 (talk) 11:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This page says there are no built-in limit for pivot table rows in Excel 2003, but you may be limited by available memory. This page suggests a limit of 8000 items, but that may be for an earlier version of Excel. You could sort your list into alpha order, then split in two to analyse, say, A-M and N-Z separately. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Looking for the Ithkuil font available for download somewhere on the Internet

Searching through all the references on its article and many google search results has been to this point fruitless. 71.161.45.144 (talk) 17:05, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Ithkuil is a synthetic language with few users. As such, it was not included in any of the important unicode or other character encoding standards. It seems probable that there is no standardized computer representation of the written form. Further, because its written form grammar is very complicated and position-based, a simple "font swap" inserting symbols in place of other unicode characters would be unsuitable for a full representation. This means you probably won't be able to find fonts, and will have to synthesize them yourself (or write out the language by hand, e.g. with a tablet computer), and save the writing as a raster image. Nimur (talk) 22:15, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

rsync and non-regular files

To be able to keep a backup of my entire Fedora Linux system, I copied most of the system directories (such as /etc, /lib, /usr and so on) into a subdirectory under my own home directory and then both chowned and chgrped the copies under my personal account instead of root. But when I tried to run rsync it still skipped them as "non-regular files". What makes them so non-regular? JIP | Talk 19:44, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Block devices, character devices, named pipes, sockets, doors on Solaris, and network sockets on Neutrino. Essentially all the things that hang around in a unified unix filesystem tree that aren't files, directories, or symlinks. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:09, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

But the thing is, it happens even with files that aren't block devices, character devices, named pipes, sockets, doors, network sockets or such, just plain files. JIP | Talk 04:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want to find out where such objects are (and the rsync log isn't helping you) use find: find -type b to find block devices, etc. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:12, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I don't backup /lib /usr /var /opt /boot or things like that; I don't really think such a backup will turn out to be useful. I backup /home and /etc (with rsync, among other things). For cases where I want to say "the system is working nicely now; I want to be able to come back to this" then I dd the physical volumes off to another physical disk. Keeping any kind of backup on the same physical disk doesn't seem like a productive idea. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not to keep a backup on the same physical disk. I use rsync to back my entire home directory to an external disk. This way it would automatically back up the copies of the system directories too, if I could get it to work. JIP | Talk 04:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

November 27

GPS-based alarm

I would like to know if there's a program that could alarm you when it reached certain point on the map. Suppose I am sleeping while taking a train to a point B and I would be awoken in point B-1km. Have anyone heard of such a program? Thanks... roscoe_x (talk) 01:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

On what sort of system are you asking this for? It is a mobile phone, an iTouch, a computer with an attached GPS device? Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:24, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Difference/s with Suse, Ubuntu, etc along those lines

Basically, it was in one of the answers to my previous question on here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 04:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you asking what the difference between Linux distributions is? If so, it is primarily the package managers. Choose a package manager you like. Pick the popular distribution for that manager. For example, APT and YUM are two very popular package managers. If you like APT, you will likely choose a Debian-type Linux like Ubuntu. If you like YUM, you will likely choose a RedHat-type Linux like Fedora. -- kainaw™ 05:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Distributions also seriously vary the license terms, so pay close attention to those if you have special commercial or legal needs. Most home users and many commercial uses are fine with "free", and need no further detail. Nimur (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

SUSE uses .rpm files to install programs and uses Zypper (not YUM) to install them via the command line. It uses YAST to install them graphically. It has traditionally used KDE as its interface, but you can also choose GNOME during installation. SUSE has been around since 1992.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it uses Aptitude as the package manager and .deb files to install programs. It uses Synaptic to install them graphically. It uses GNOME as the GUI, but you can also use KDE by installing Kubuntu. But Ubuntu works the best with GNOME. Ubuntu has been around since 2004.

Kainaw: I wouldn't recommend Fedora as it is used by Red Hat to test technologies before they're included in Red Hat, so I don't consider it stable enough for use by a newcomer. Likewise, I would recommend Debian over Ubuntu as Ubuntu is based on the unstable version of Debian. I've also used SUSE and it's very stable and easy to use.--Drknkn (talk) 06:15, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Which technologies are tested in Fedora before inclusion in "Red Hat" (presumably Red Hat Enterprise Linux)? Nimur (talk) 15:37, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a rather widespread, but completely false, belief that Fedora is the testing version of RedHat. The real deal is that RedHat is supported. So, every package officially included in RedHat is supported. You have to pay for that support. Fedora is not supported. You take it or leave it. So, it is not necessary that every package be supported (since none of them are). The end-result is that packages are quickly added and updated in Fedora. They are slowly added and updated (with the exception of security fixes) in RedHat. Because RedHat lags behind Fedora, most people believe that the packages are tested in Fedora for the purpose of including them in RedHat. So, you get comments such as "technologies are tested in Fedora before inclusion in RedHat." -- kainaw™ 21:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

OP: I wrote a very long response to a similar question back in May. For your convenience, I will repost it here. In brief summary, Kainaw's description pretty much hit it on the head - most people know their Linux distribution for their package manager. Most linux and unix users would have a hard time actually knowing which distribution they were actually on, if you took away the logos. Only a few esoteric details, and some nitpicky details of configuration, separate the major linux distributions today; in fact, even most Linux/Unix/POSIX-like operating systems are pretty similar in 2009. So with this being said, I re-post my May 2009 response:

I spent a good portion of my undergraduate time working between different unixes and linuxes and qnixes and things you've never heard of. Boy, is it confusing! First of all, you've made the important first step in comprehending that the front-end user interface (GNOME or KDE or fvwm or whatever) is not the operating system distribution. (In fact I've run all of the above environments on all of the above *nixes and sometimes as a result I can't tell which machine I'm currently on!). And, your csh and bash and tcsh and zsh will probably run on all of the above as well. So... what's it all about? What's the difference between the distributions? (Linux distribution might help out here, but seriously... what exactly is a "distro" anyway? Why is Debian different than Ubuntu, if they both use the same package manager, same shell, same GUI, same libraries, ...)

Well, first of all, the Linuxes are all running the linux kernel, while the Solarises and BSDs and Mac OSXes are not. (And QNX? Well, just suffice to say that although it presents you with a POSIX-like shell and a lot of the standard system-calls, it's... not very much of a linux at all!) But all of them are POSIX compliant, and support networking and multithreading and encryption and so forth. But if you are going to remap your memory system for a custom coprocessor and need to recompile your kernel memory-module to handle variable page sizes based on current coprocessor instruction, you're going to need to choose your kernel carefully (I've heard, from people who would know, that CENTOS and Solaris make this task "easier"). And if you were planning to do something more benign, like maybe mixed shared memory programming with OpenMP and a little pthread code in the same program, you might actually find that there's a difference in the dynamic scheduler capability for different incarnations of the kernel. Or maybe you've got some files mounted on an AFS drive and you want to ensure that the network traffic stays encrypted, all the way through the machine, past the network, up to the shell, through the user-space, and decoded at the point-of-use in some kind of protected memory. Then you better have a kernel with libPAM module support! Are you doing these things? If not, you may never really notice your distribution.

Backing up a notch or two, at the "intermediate" level, you are going to want to install or compile some program some day which is going to have some dependencies. A lot of libraries are pre-packaged and precompiled for the common distributions (in the form of a DPKG or an RPM or sometimes even straight-up .so files). Pick a distribution that's going to be used by people who work with things that you work with... that way, you'll have a community which has already prepared the sort of tools you are going to need. It's not often worth anybody's time to trace back seven levels of library-dependency when you just want to get a standard tool to run.

Compiler support may be an issue between vendors. Some of the more esoteric optimization flags and the less standard extensions (like some c99 complex-math support) turns out to be not very platform-portable - this usually means that it's getting linked in with some system library (like libm.so).

So, what's the moral here? Distributions make a big difference if you're doing non-standard things; but if you follow "best practice" and write code that doesn't link with weird libraries, and doesn't jump from high-level logic to operating-system calls in the same module, you'll be better off and spend less time tracking down portability problems. I would stick with Ubuntu if I could, but some of my tools are only available on other linux platforms (and aren't worth the hassle of porting).

Hopefully this will give you some perspective - use "whatever distribution is easier." If you actually get to a point in your professional or academic development when you can decisively state that "the Solaris cilk scheduler gave me a 20% speed improvement" or "the network stack on QNX was insufficient to handle packet buffers for gigabyte-sized files using https" or some other distribution-specific issue, you're probably going to care what distribution you are using. Until then, pick a good shell, pick a good user-interface, and use as much standard unmodified software as you possibly can.

Nimur (talk) 15:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanx for all the info. Sorry, for all the confusion that I caused with this and etc. To me all of your answers were confusing. Went with Ubuntu because it seems more stable then Suse or etc along those lines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 21:03, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Home server and net security

Hi, if I set up a computer at home to run as a Web server with Apache and Mediawiki and such, and I only aim to access this at home (all the computers will connect to the same router), am I safe from random people from the Internet accessing this server as well? In particular, is it sufficient to run one of these "port scanners" on the Web (I think Symantec or someone has one, at least), and if I'm all "stealth", I'm good? I haven't opened any ports on the router. As an add-on question, is there any easy and safe way to then open the computer to access from outside with a reliable password (or other identification) system? Thanks! Question inspired by SteveBakers MediaWiki marketing above Jørgen (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

"Safe" is relative. But if your router is not forwarding the ports, there is little additional risk. The easiest way to allow access from the outside is to forward just the ssh port, and to have strong passwords on the machine - or, even better, only allow the use of sufficiently strong public key exchange for ssh. Again, this is not absolutely safe, but likely to be safe enough for most people. If you need absolute safety, write on wax tablets and burn them before reading. ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course you could provide an extra layer of security by setting apache to only allow people from your network in. E.g., place in your .conf file:

allow from 196.128.100
deny from all

Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks both! Opening only SSH sounds like a good idea to start with. Now, would you consider apache or MediaWiki user control combined with an open HTTP port inadequate? No-one's after me, I'm just seeking protection from random hackers. Jørgen (talk) 20:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Only open port 80 if it is only a web server and you aren't doing HTTPS stuff. Then, hackers can only get in on port 80. There is still the issue of scripts running on the server. Keep up on what you are running. Many scripts have vulnerabilities that come up over time and need to be updated. While the user can't alter your router through one of these vulnerabilities, they can alter the server itself and turn it into a spam-bot rather easily. A good log file manager will help you keep up on what vulnerabilities the hackers are looking for. For me, they are about 90% Windows vulnerabilities, but at least 10% are aimed at popular PHP, Python, and Ruby scripts. -- kainaw™ 20:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

What have I done to Firefox?

Everything I type into FF now comes out like ூபகே. By everything I mean Wikipedia (ஐகககஜா்கோ), the address bar and Google (உததுதா) searches. I have to type this into Notepad then copy and paste it here. I can't see anything obvious that I did to change anything but I really need to change it back. Thanks. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 13:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like you have somehow changed your keyboard language. What's your operating system? --Mr.98 (talk) 13:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you're typing in Tamil. Algebraist 13:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using XP and it appears to be confined to FF as I'm now using IE. I thought it looked like Tamil but I wasn't sure. Wouldn't have been so bad if this was mine but it's the work computer. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 13:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It's OK. I should have thought and rebooted the computer. Still have no idea what I did to cause that but rebooting made the problem go away. Thanks. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 14:08, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Has a Tamil spealker at your work, used your PC and inadvertantly (or as a joke) changed the input language to Tamil? Astronaut (talk) 14:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it had to have been me. I've been the only person here for several hours and there was no problem until then. In fact the only reason that any other languages are on this computer is so I don't have to put up with ? or ? in articles. I don't suppose that anyone else even knows there are other languages installed. I checked and the computer doesn't have an hotkey setup to change to any language. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 14:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

If you have multiple keyboards/languages defined, there is a hot-key sequence to switch between languages - on my PC Alt-LeftShift will switch between English and Japanese input. First check to see if you can make the language bar appear: right-click on the taskbar and see if "language bar" is one of the toolbars you can activate. if not, you will have to look for it the Control Panel. When activated, there should be an option for the language bar settings which include ket settings. Unfortunately, I cannot guide you more accurately because I know that is one of the things that was changed in the move from XP to Vista. Astronaut (talk) 16:52, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Difference between Intel i7 CPUs

What is the (practical) difference in performance between Core i7-860 and Core i7-930? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:37, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The i9xx series uses QuickPath Interconnect, which will yield higher performance to main memory and to peripheral devices. You can compare other specs at our Core i7 comparison article. I don't believe our article's un-sourced price estimate for the i930 - it is a higher performance CPU and will probably be more expensive than the i870. I also recall reading some rumors online that there will be serious reorganization of the i7 brand to re-label the i9xx series as high-end server processors "because they are too cheap" for their performance. (I can't find this forum post now). But you can look at the Xeon Harpertown E5xxx series (almost the same silicon, ~$1000 and up) and compare for yourself. Anyway, here's some more detail on the i920 for comparison. Nimur (talk) 15:24, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Google mail SMS account verification

I tried to make a google mail account and it wants to activate via mobile phone or something. I do not have a mobile phone, and I cannot borrow someone elses phone because I live alone, don't work and have no friends. So what are the alternatives? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 16:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Memory on the computer

Where do I look to find out how much memory I have and used on the computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.0.157.163 (talk) 22:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

What operating system? --LarryMac | Talk 22:50, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

If it's windows, task manager and process explorer will tell you. In task manager it's under the Performance tab, and in Process Explorer go View -> System Information