Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

August 1

backup software and external hard drives

At work I have an Iomega external hard drive on my computer and I really like it because it came with some simple software so that everytime I modify a document file, it automatically saves a copy on the external drive as a backup. Now I want an external drive for backing up at home. Do many of these external drives come with software like what I have described above? If not, what are popular methods for automatic backing up of documents (not necessarily whole system). ike9898 01:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be unusual to get some kind of software unless you are building your own external drive, i.e. buying a drive case and putting a hard disk in it. If you don't get software, and assuming you are running windows since you have not specified, "My Briefcase" is quite simple and basically does what you describe synchronising documents between more then one location. If you don't know how to get "My Briefcase" just google the term along with your version of windows and you'll find how to enable it. Vespine 01:46, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The short answer: most external drives don't come with any software, but there are many, many backup software packages out there which can easily use whatever type of external drive you would be buying. Windows XP even comes with its own backup software, if that is what you are using. See this article for information on how to use it. --24.147.86.187 01:54, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys, ike9898 02:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I just recently bought a new Maxtor external hard drive (one of the mini 'One Touch' units, I think it was AU$129, so probably about US$100). I wasn't specifically seeking this out, but it came with some simple to use backup software that does exactly what you're suggesting. I've used a few Maxtor external hard drives over the last few years, and never had a problem with them, but this is the first time I've got one with this software. All seems good (and no, I have absolutely no association with Maxtor). --jjron 09:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Mozilla Thunderbird Signature Question

In Mozilla Thunderbird when a signature is attached, it automatically ads a '--' above. Is there any way to disable this feature?

--Grey1618 02:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question, but note that the dash-dash-space-newline marker for signatures is an email and Usenet standard that's recognized by lots of software. It's used, for example, to avoid quoting the parent message's signature in the reply. So you will annoy some people if you leave it out, unless your signature is very simple. -- BenRG 03:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well we're a little past worrying about Usenet standards, I think. --24.147.86.187 09:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I suggest consulting the support options listed at http://www.mozilla.com/support/. --Jeremyb 10:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Honor your interwebs history boy or you'll find that suddenly the internet doesn't work. Protocols and exacting standards are what make things work --froth^t 15:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Amen! TINLC! Fnord! Etc... --Mdwyer 21:56, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Imminent death of the net predicted! -- BenRG 13:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

For everybody needs and Thunderbird glory: https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/templateloader-en.html

ViaVoice v.10.

I have installed viavoice v.10 so it comes up when I start my computer. How do I persuade it NOT to come up? - Pharrar 10:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the best approach is to see if it has anything on this in its preferences screen (because this will keep it from trying to re-insert itself into your startup sequence). Other than that, it depends on your operating system. Assuming you are using Windows XP, look for a link to the program in your Start Menu -> Programs -> Startup folder. If you don't see one, it is probably in the registry; if you aren't comfortable editing the registry, Spybot Search & Destroy, an anti-spyware program, includes a section that easily allows you to monitor what programs are set to launch upon booting your computer, and makes it easy to disable them. --24.147.86.187 12:02, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Saving Yahoo Emails to a Folder

I run a small business and currently store all my sent and received emails in various inboxes. There is now unlimited memory so potentially I could store a huge amount of emails, but the more I store, the slower the system and it's now almost impossible to search thru them properly. Is there any way (and a very easy way as I'm a total luddite) that I can save emails to my desktop? This means I can keep my inbox and online folders pretty clear but at the same time store all the relevant information I need. (I use a standard pc and windows)

Thanks

Mooji 217.34.49.3 11:37, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

You need POP access to your email so that you can use a desktop client such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook Express to retrieve your mail. You can either pay Yahoo for "premium" email service, which allows POP access, or you can look into YPOPs!, which purports to do the same, for free. I would also look into getting your own domain for email, but that's just an opinion. --LarryMac | Talk 13:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe Yahoo Premium has a free trial period, so you could sign up, grab all your mail, and then cancel it. --TotoBaggins 15:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Firewall Help

I am working with a Fortigate F60, I was browsing manual that came with the hardware and it does not seem to state anywhere on how I can use both WAN connection side by side...to increase speed?

anyone have a vague idea at least on how to set this up properly..I already modified the policies to allow access to the WAN 2 the same way access to the WAN 1, but it doesn´t increase speed, I even brought the WAN 1 down and the WAN 2 does not kick in

Anyone know about Load Balancing or Fail Over?

This firewall is capable of both I´ve read

plz help thx in advance Roger @ IntraRed 16:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

What's the operating system? We have windows 2000 servers which require a 3rd party virtual LAN connection manager to do this, I'm not aware of a windows tool that does this. Vespine 05:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Using both lines together is very difficult to do. Load balancing is simply deciding which line the connection should be on based on the loads on both lines, and the request is still transmitted on one line only. You can increase the throughput with load balancing, but increasing speed by sending requests through both lines at the same time is very difficult to do. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Using SATA II drive on SATA I bus

The SATA entry isn't very clear on this matter. But can I use a newer SATA II (300) on a SATA I (150) bus? I of course realize it would be at SATA I speed. But I didn't know there were cabling or other issues that would make SATA II drives incompatible with SATA I connections. (I also assume that SATA I drives can be uses on SATA II buses at SATA I speeds.)

SATA drives often have a jumper that will throttle the speed of SATA II speed drives to be SATA I compatible.

SATA drives are designed to be backward and forward compatible, so you shouldn't have any problem either way. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

What is the best computer in the world called?

Want to know.

Define 'best'. TOP500 lists the most powerful computers, if that's what you mean. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:37, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I've always liked the Amiga... --Oskar 23:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Most definitely the Sony UX UMPC series. Except make them not sony and run linux. --Longing.... 23:41, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Depends which world. Readers of a certain "trilogy" of five books might say Deep Thought - and not the one made by IBM.

-=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 23:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the Googleplexstarthinker. --24.249.108.133 00:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Any real fan would know that Earth is the most powerful computer. Really... --Longing.... 01:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I overheard this guy getting interviewed in a coffee shop once, and he seemed to be arguing that he felt the universe itself could be regarded as a quantum computer. Personally I felt it was another case of metaphors-gone-wild (drinkin' too much, showin' their tops), but that's just me. --24.147.86.187 16:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Well the main part of a computer is that it actually computes something. So yes, it's technically possible the entire universe is a computer, but it's far more likely the entire universe is a simulated reality inside a computer. --L-- 16:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, before quantum mechanics, everyone thought that the universe was just one big hunkin' Turing machine, even if they hadn't invented the terminology. Such metaphors are very useful for understanding reality. --Oskar 08:50, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Useful for what? I don't really see how these metaphors have been terribly useful for understanding the universe; I think they've been as misleading as they have been useful. --24.147.86.187 17:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The NeXT machines, of course.

God! In the role of computer, God is the best and most powerful of all. Clem 23:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess we are talking about fictional hypotheticals, after all. --24.249.108.133 21:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

August 2

trying to recall...

I seem to remember reading a very old (10+ years probably) proposed change to the linux kernel code.. it was an ingenius 1 or 2 character change that would allow an attacker to easily escalate priviliges to root. I think it was inside a conditional. Anyone know what I'm talking about / have a link? --froth^t 05:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

It was in 2003. The nature of the patch was that some code like:

  if (current_process->uid == 0)

was changed to:

  if (current_process->uid = 0)

, so that rather than testing to see if the user ID was zero (i.e., root), it was actually setting it to zero, thus giving that process full privileges. Here is a thread about it.

This is a weakness of the C language, as that's a very easy thing to miss, and programmers will routinely do the same thing by accident. Some programmers adopt the practice of putting the constant first in the comparison so that the compiler will flag any assignment attempts. --TotoBaggins 15:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Thats a weakness of the programmers, not in C. = is for assignment and == for comparison. How is that a weakness?--Dacium 06:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh 2003 really? Well I'm pretty sure that's what I was looking for, thanks. Doesn't seem so ingenious anymore to be honest. You know what, I think the actual code invoved a lot of heavily nested parentheses and bitwise operators or something so the = sign was lost in all the symbols. --froth^t 17:38, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was obscured and easily missed. There was a CVS to BitKeeper gateway machine that was broken into, and the change was made there, so I think the hope was that it would only get a cursory review. --TotoBaggins 18:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Printing Problems

I have a Dell inkjet printer, and despite a full cartridge fails to print blue. I ran the auto nozzle cleaning process a few times, and it still won't work. How can I fix it? Thanks a lot. -- Sturgeonman 13:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The cartridge may happen to be broken.. Considering the fact you'll eventually need to buy another cartridge someday, I would recommend to buy a new one and see if that fix the problem. Other than that I would need more info to help you out like. Is it a new printer ? did the problem appear just after changing the cartridge ? When did the problem appear ? --PhoenixQc 18:38, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

If the cartridge is okay then probably the print head is defective. The last time I priced a print head for both my old Canon inkjet and my dad's HP the cost of the head was almost as much as a new printer. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Ghosts

Are the ghost files remaining from the copying of my hard-drive necessary, or can I delete them without repercussions? Crisco 1492 17:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

If you are talking about Symantec Ghost .gho files, thoses are backup of hard drives or partitions used to restore content at the point of their creation, they are not needed for your system to work. Consider em as a save point of your data. If you dont need those anymore you can delete em safely. --PhoenixQc 18:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. You just cleared up 50 gb of useless memory LOL. I had never run into that file type before. Crisco 1492 23:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that this limits the usability of Ghost somewhat :) You should really have a backup, in case your HD konks out. --Oskar 08:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

source to jar and losing path

the icons for my program are stored in images folder in source folder. the code is in source folder. when i build out of eclipse it works, but when i build a jar the icons cant be found by the progam, probably because the paths arent saved. how do i fix this; how do i make the images included in the jar?--65.222.152.28 17:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean this jar? If so, go to the "Archiving subdirectories" section. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 22:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

I see an awful lot of sources claiming it will come out Q2 2007, but the official page seems ambiguous. Has it been released? And how do they claim it comes with Office 2007 Enterprise if that was released last fall? --froth^t 19:00, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

August 3

Programming

I want to learn how to program. I already got some (very basic) basics down, but I really don't know much in effect. What language should I start with? How should I learn? I don't plan on taking classes too soon (well, why would I be asking then?). --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 00:43, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

A lot depends on what your goals are. Some might recommend Lisp, for example as the best language to start with. I think I might lean towards Ruby as a starting language, or perhaps Java. But really, it all depends on where you'd like to go with your programming. 65.91.98.102 00:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Python (programming language) Is also a widely recommended first language and my personal favourite. It is very easy to start with IDLE (Python). Vespine 02:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally (and this just from my own experience teaching myself and others) I think that you should start with a language that is designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, while still being somewhat powerful. Your programs wont be very useful perhaps, but they will be fun as hell to do (if you're in to that kind of thing). Luckily, such a language exists, and it's called BASIC! I heartily recommend downloading the qBASIC environment if you can find it (I have fond memories of drawing mandelbrot sets in tiny resolutions in a DOS environment). After that, a c-style language would be good. Java is nice, because it gives you a solid introduction to object-orientation. But you really need something simpler so you can learn all about loops, if/then/elses, sub-routines and functions. --Oskar 08:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I would argue that, given the clear movement towards object orientation as the programming model of choice, it makes more sense to start with an OO language for most people who want to learn programming. 65.91.98.102 18:50, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

True, but there are OO ways to do BASIC. VB.NET is OO, as is RealBasic, and both are pretty striaghtforward. Personally I would go with PHP over QBASIC, since it isn't really any harder, the syntax is more standardized, and you can actually make something recognizeably impressive with PHP (QBASIC isn't going to impress anyone, these days). --24.147.86.187 17:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Command Prompt

Hi! The schools in my state have recently tightened controls on their network and so now the trusty command prompt has been disabled. When it is opened up in the text display area it states that 'The Command Prompt has been disabled by your administrator'. Does anyone know of how I could gain use of it? ThanksMix Lord 01:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Why do you want to use it? Unless you want to run command prompt apps or some network tasks, you can pretty much do everything else through the GUI (some tasks are far more difficult, but at least you get it done). Besides, it's blocked for a reason. Anyways, try copying cmd.exe from your home PC and try transferring it to the school PC, or simply try running it from 'Run'. (Very) low chance these will work, but trying always helps. Really, you're best off either trying to login as admin or not attempting to use it at all. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 02:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

If it is disabled by network policy you won't be able to run it, unless you get elevated rights on your user ID. Vespine 02:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone seems to have also disabled the run function on the computers as well, so I guess I'll just have to give up. Thanks anyway.  :(

Mix Lord 06:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Try a shortcut to cmd.

Cool. How do you do that?

My technique is to launch command.com via Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word web bar. Splintercellguy 07:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Create a shortcut to somewhere you can write (like your documents, if you're permitted to save to the machine), and have the target as cmd.exe. The above suggestion has also worked for me in the past.

It wouldn't work. If the command prompt is disabled using network policies then no matter how you run it (it is apperent that the OP has access to cmd.exe in order for him to run it and see the message anyway). command.com might work, but there's not definite answer since we don't know the policies. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I have tried this on a system that barred the execution of cmd.exe in the same manner as the OP, though his system might differ. Splintercellguy 16:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to the shortcut method. command.com worked for me is well for some, but some others doesn't even have command.com in system32 so that's a no-no. Haven't tried using an external copy though... --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if the command prompt is disabled using network policies. But that may not have been the case!

Does anyone know of a valid security-related reason for taking this approach? I'm no expert on Windows, but its command prompt is and has always been pretty wimpy, and I don't know of much you can do with it that you can't do via the GUI, and certainly nothing dangerous or security-impairing. (What disabling the command prompt is impairing to, of course, is productivity, because as User:Member correctly notes, some operations are terribly cumbersome via a GUI. To a power user, being without a CLI isn't merely inconvenient, it's devastating.) —Steve Summit (talk) 00:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

As long as the user doesn't have admin they can't really do anything damaging with DOS. It just soothes the savage admin's ego. --froth^t 02:51, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Dude, you can access the registry through commands. Having a command shell is hella useful for getting around blocked GUI items. In my experience, the thing to do was limit yourself to the DOS emulation through command.com, but you might be able to use bash out of Cygwin or import Powershell on a thumbdrive.--Alph Tech STUART 17:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Dude, if the registry needs to be protected, a real operating system would protect it by... protecting it, not by trying to hide or disable all the commands that might let you alter it. (Unless I'm mistaken, you can access the registry through GUI tools, too.)

If there are are graphical programs that need to be "blocked", the right way to keep them from being invoked is to remove them from the system entirely, not to "disable" them from graphical invocation, leaving them still invokable if someone can sneaky find his way to a command line. (But actually, neither disabling nor removing them is the right approach, because someone could always install their own copy, or run them off of removeable media.)

If your approach to security is to try to limit which programs users can run (and remember, command.com is just another program), your security is always going to have all the attributes of a rusty sieve. Real operating systems implement security by arranging that critical resources and tasks require permissions, and then carefully control the doling out of those permissions. Controlling security by controlling access to "magic programs" is like securing vaults with magic words -- once someone learns the magic word, you're sunk. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Dude, you're preaching to the choir. There are better ways to secure a system, but most high schools aren't trying to do more then keep the kids off of porn and out of their grades. --Alph Tech STUART 00:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah the registry, control panel, task manager and C drive have all been disabled, I was hoping to still have some control over it, and nowhere in my school's computer use policy does it say anything about trying to get past restrictions like that. It's not like I'm trying to hack it or anything. Mix Lord 23:23, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Uhh, the C drive is disabled? How so? --Alph Tech STUART 00:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Probably just not in "My Computer", that's not uncommon in a windows user network, "My Documents" is the user space in such a system. Vespine 02:17, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Bittorrent trackers

I have some material which I would like to make available using bittorrent. There are no copyright problems, and I would like to place the tracker on a server which has a high likelihood of remaining online for a while, and whose reputation is not too badly tainted. I read the article Bittorrent tracker, but it is not clear to me which of the sites listed that is best suited. I would be grateful for reccomendations. --Divulgación de ciencia 09:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that there is such a thing. It would be impossible a tracker to ensure that all the content shared is be legal if they are open to the public. If you don't want to host the tracker yourself, I'm afraid that the regular open trackers are what you are stuck with. I would just go with the pirate bay tracker ( http://open.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce ), it will certainly remain online for quite some time. Remember that you are not doing anything illegal, so don't feel guilty :) --Oskar 09:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. How do I go about to host my tracker myself? Is this a functionality which is included in bittorrent clients, or do I need a web-server or what? --Divulgación de ciencia 12:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

What does it matter if its "reputation is tainted?" Those are the ones that people use, and if you don't want to be seeding for the rest of your life you need other people around to seed. To get other people to download your torrent you'll have to list in on an index or search engine... the most popular ones are ones operated by a bittorrent tracker! So you might as well just let your torrent be tracked by the same site you submit it to be indexed. I'd recommend using thepiratebay and demonoid (if you have an accout there) and setting up your torrent file to use multiple trackers. That way you get maximum exposure and maximum reliability in the unlikely event that either of them goes down permanently. Also you can try making a trackerless torrent with utorrent or the original client (NOT azureus) but the bittorrent dht network isn't exactly the most efficient way of finding peers and most bittorrent searches don't accept decentralized torrents. You can track it yourself too if you want but for a single torrent file that's definitely overkill, it's provided as a free service by the big trackers (and their servers are much better than anything you could afford) --froth^t 13:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Also keep in mind that there are tons of legitimate torrents on sites like thepiratebay, don't feel uncomfortable about using a "warez site" to distribute your legitimate wares. --froth^t 13:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

utorrent has a builtin tracker. Tracker can be enabled at options/preferences/advanced/bt.enable_tracker. (this must be set to true) If enabled, it has announce url of http://client_ip:port/announce, where client_ip is ip address of computer running utorrent, and port is incoming connections port (usually random assigned during startup, but can (and in this case must) be set constant). IP adress must be static (or tracker will not be available) (can use dynamic dns). utorrent computer does not requires .torrent file, it is tracking. This method is fairly unpopular, partially because of requirement of static ip and port. Using this method, there will be necessary seperate mechanism of .torrent files distribution. -Yyy 14:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

you may be able to get it indexed by certain trackers that allow "external" torrents. Also remember to check if your computer is reachable from the outside- forward the proper ports on your router. And like yyy said, use dyndns --froth^t 16:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your advice! --Divulgación de ciencia 20:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Pentium D and Pentium Dual Core Difference

What's the difference between pentium D and Pentium Dual-core processor???

This is an encyclopedia. You could check the article Pentium D and quickly see that the Pentium D is one type of Pentium dual-core processor. -- Kainaw^(what?) 12:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

802.11, wi-fi, etc. Data link layer

Is here any article, which would contain data about 802.11 data link layer? It differs from ethernet data link layer. There are multiple articles about physical layer. -Yyy 14:43, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Try 802.11 or Wi-Fi_Technical_Information

IEEE 802.11 and Wi-Fi Technical Information contains only data about physical layer (frequency band and modulation schemes are part of physical layer)(data link layer would be framing structure and collision avoidance, (WPA and WEP, probably also)). Article wi-fi contains very smal amount of any technical information. -Yyy 08:47, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Archos 604

According to our article on Archos, the Archos 604 and 704 video players come complete with Wifi. What exactly does a portable video player do with wifi?--172.146.223.125 14:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

According to previously mentioned article, it uses it for: web browser; access to local network, to transfer and files (media files)(or play directly from network) . -Yyy 15:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

iTunes video syncing problem

I just recently got a new iPod, and as I started syncing my videos, I came across some videos that were in the correct format (proof), would play in iTunes, but were not allowed to be copied to the iPod (proof). What is wrong and what can I do to fix it? —Akrabbim^talk 15:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe Apple has a fix for this on their website for vista users.

Their fix is for iPod hard drive corruption. The problem here is in the file I believe. Anybody else know what to do? —Akrabbim^talk 21:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

What are the file types? iPod cannot play Quicktime .mov, but iTunes can. Same with AVIs. --72.202.150.92 03:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The files are .mov, which shouldn't be a problem, because I have other .mov files on my iPod with no problem. Even then, when I try to convert them using iTunes, it says it is in the correct format, even though it won't sync. —Akrabbim^talk 12:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Norton AntiVirus 2007 Addition Error

Hello. When my Full System Scan finishes, I click on the plus sign beside "Total items scanned", giving me information on how many files were scanned of each type. Today, Norton AntiVirus shows me the following:

  Total items scanned: 301823
  - Files & Directories: 298903
  - Registry Entries: 157
  - Processes & Start-up Items: 2547
  - Network & Browser Items: 206
  - Other: 5

If you do the math, the sum of the files scanned (Files & Directories, Registry Entries, Processes & Start-up Items, Network & Browser Items, and Other) is five less than what Norton AntiVirus claims. So I export the results. I open the notepad file that has my exported results, finding that the "Total items scanned" is correct. Here is what the Notepad says:

  Total items scanned: 301818
  - Files & Directories: 298903
  - Registry Entries: 157
  - Processes & Start-up Items: 2547
  - Network & Browser Items: 206
  - Other: 5

How can I fix this problem? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 16:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Stop using money-expensive, memory-expensive, badly-designed bloatware that can't even compute its results properly after being in active development for more than a decade. Why do you care about a 5 result discrepancy anyway? --froth^t 16:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering if the 5 result discrepancy would harm my computer. --Mayfare 16:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that there is actually 5 category, If you ever programmed, you'll know that difference of +1 and -1 are frequent when you write code because of indexes, maybe there was some error in the program interface that count one more item per category. The count in the text file is probably the good one as it was created using the variables and not what was displayed. --PhoenixQc 17:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I suspect it may be quite simple: that in the first case the program is mistakenly adding the "Other" category twice. --Tardis 21:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Can there be another file category other than Files & Directories, Registry Entries, Processes & Start-up Items, Network & Browser Items, and Other that I am unaware of? --Mayfare 15:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

vista start menu

Anyone know of any way to automatically go to All Programs when I hit the "start orb"? My frequently used programs and pins are all there in All Programs and I always hit it whether the program I'm looking for is frequently used / pinned or not. --froth^t 16:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Stop using money-expensive, memory-expensive, badly-designed OS that can't even work properly after being in active development for more than a decade. Why do you care about 1 more click anyway? --PhoenixQc 17:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

PS. I hope you like those helpful answer.

I for one like vista. It's memory expensive, money expensive and I'll even concede that it's badly designed, but it's much more functional than any other OS I've used (os x, xp, a dozen linux distros) as far as day to day work goes. For programming I wouldn't dream of working in anything but linux but for day to day operations KDE is ugly, sloppy, inconsistent, and provides an incomplete interface to the OS- far too many system-critical settings still rely upon configuration files scattered about the filesystem. Exact same for gnome, but it's paralyzed by minimalism so for even the most basic tasks it's more efficient to use the command line. OS X is just annoying in every way- you can't tell which programs are open, the graphical API is maddeningly inconsistent, there's virtually no program support compared to the staggering amount of code written for windows and linux. Windows (especially vista) is pretty and painstakingly consistent with its graphical API. It has its endless idiosyncrocies but after using it as my main OS for my whole life it's been mastered, and with my knowledge I'm more efficient with most tasks than anything but the most hardened bash jockey. Command line switches and file type handlers can perform spectacular stunts, and basically every stupid DRM or licensing restriction on vista has been cracked, so it's functionally (not legally I suppose) similar to free software. And I care about 1 more click because I have to click with no purpose an additional time every time I want to open a program, it's inefficient! --froth^t 00:45, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Here.. someone could like Norton AV for all of the same reason you exposed... You noticed my answer was related to one of your answer and that I was sarcastic didnt you ? --PhoenixQc 14:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One of my clients had a problem in Windows XP that may be what you want. She had a weird icon in her quick-launch bar. When she clicked on it, it opened up the "All Programs" dialog. I deleted it because she thought it was weird. I believe she clicked on "Start" then drug the "All Programs" entry to the quick start bar. This made a shortcut icon on the quick start bar to launch the "All Programs" window. If that works in Vista, you'll have two buttons (Start and the new icon). Clicking the new icon will take you right to the programs menu you want. Of course, I can't test it. I haven't had Windows on any of my computers since 1998. -- Kainaw^(what?) 17:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Nope, it doesn't work in vista. --froth^t 00:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You might consider using a keyboard macro program like AutoHotkey to make various unused Win+letter combinations launch your most commonly used applications. It's much faster than opening the Start menu, even if it did go straight to All Programs. -- BenRG 21:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Moving to object-orientated languages from GWBASIC

Yes, I know its old, but the only computer language I am fluent in is GWBASIC. I dont know anything about object orientation, its a rather alien concept to me. So what would be the easiest way to learn it? Are there for example any toy educational languages I could play with for a while? (There is a page listing these somewhere in Wikipedia). People keep recommending Python - although this may not be entirely OO - , that would be the next language I would like to learn. However I can only snatch ten minutes every day or two to spend on learning it. Thanks 80.2.221.69 19:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I learnt OO using Smalltalk - and found it very easy to pick up the concepts. --Worm 22:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you learn some OO concepts from a book or some online texts first? OO is not solely about programming, but how you structure your code and how you model relationships.

I have already tried reading an introduction to OO but did not have enough time to concentrate on it. Want something that breaks it down into 5-minute chunks. Plus reading about it is not very effective compared with doing something. 80.2.194.185 14:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Just pick up any book on C++ and especially if it was written in the early days of the language it'll go out of its way to contrast with C.. which is basically the object oriented portion. But my personal summary is that if you're going from top-down to OO, you're losing a ton of neat hacks and a lot of the fun of programming, as well as any semblance whatsoever of efficiency. With OO you have clearer code for others to read, and certain problems are easier to model in OO. Also it's a bit easier to jump into an object-oriented languange since chances are a lot of the common routines have pre made objects --froth^t 15:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally if you are comfortable with BASIC, I would recommend you jump to a BASIC-based language with OO-like functionality, as it will be a lot easier than jumping into a totally different language (C++ is going to be totally alien to someone who learned programming with BASIC, it is a totally different approach). RealBasic uses BASIC syntax but is OO in its handling of controls and things of that nature; it might be a nice way in. --24.147.86.187 17:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The concepts I learned from ZZT, although I never got around to (re)learning them in an official language. 68.39.174.238 14:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You could try Visual basic. I found it very easy to learn. Lmc169 14:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

CDDL / GPL license question

Hi, I am developing a software under the GPL, and I wish to use a library that is licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License.

1. Can I do this?
2. Can I distribute the CDDL library with my software?

I am confused by a statement here that says "a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together."

Thank you very much. --131.215.159.28 20:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the GPL is "viral": Anything linked to GPL'd software is required to be GPL'd. Since the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL, you can't use the CDDL library. A lot of people mindlessly apply the GPL to their software, not considering the consequences of doing so. If this is your own program, and you wish to use the CDDL library, your options are to have it in a separate executable and use inter-process communication of some sort to access the functions of that library, or release your software under a less restrictive license than the GPL. Donald Hosek 22:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's simpler than that; since it's you who have the copyright to the GPL part, just add a variant of the OpenSSL exception. --cesarb 13:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

August 4

Passing variables to a Flash movie at runtime

Hi, for my Javascript-based (not AJAX) webapp, I need to pass parameters to a Flash movie after the movie has loaded. I tried flashVars, but the variables can not be changed, as they are read as the movie is loading, and never afterwards. I do not have access to PHP/ASP/other server side language, as this webapp is not exactly webapp(does not access the web, deployed on CD).

Thanks... --125.238.81.215 01:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the answer will depend on whether you are using Actionscript 2 or 3, but in any case, I think this might do the trick for you. --24.147.86.187 17:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into it :) --125.238.81.215 05:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

PC buy guide

Hey guys, I would like to buy a good end computer without graphics card currently..Budget is not a deal.Can anyone put me the bottomline and the configurations for that?..I would play more games, so kindly can you get me the current configuration...?.Thanks in advance

Uh, any good computer is going to have a graphics card, especially if you want to play games. It depends on what types of games you want to play. If you want to play Tetris and Chess, anything will do, if you want to play a brand new game off the shelf you're going to need more. Using something like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux even older computers can do pretty well, if you want to run Windows Vista you're going to be spending hundreds of dollars on hardware to get similar speeds. It also depends on what type of PC you want- A full tower? UMPC? desktop replacement? PDA? Mini desktop? Depending on what you want, the bare minimum for brand new computers is about $400 from quality brands, I know a website that sells bare minimum PCs for 140$ (need your own monitor, keyboard, and CDROM, and when I say bare minimum I mean it)- or I can show you computers that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. Name specific tasks you want to do, how fast you want to do them, and how pretty you want them to look, and we can start talking prices. --L-- 18:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

perhaps they already has a graphics card from there last pc, in which case look for good ram and cpu but make sure your graphic card will fit properly (eg AGP, PCI, PCI-express etc etc)might be worth looking at building your own pc, you might not be able to save much money but you'll be able to buy exactly what you want plus you wont get burdened with either trying to buy a good pc without graphics card or ending up with a spare graphics card--Colsmeghead 15:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Shell?

I've heard the program Windowblinds being referred to as a shell. Is this correct? BeefJeaunt 12:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If it is able to replace Windows Explorer (which is Windows' shell), it is. If it is just a skin, it's not. --cesarb 12:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The article makes it clear that it is a skinning facility (albeit a pretty elaborate one!). But I wouldn't call it a shell. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not. It just takes over (or patches into, I don't know) explorer's job of rendering the environment. Shell (computing) specifically states that WB is not a shell replacement --froth^t 15:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The DOS DIR command

How do I force DIR to display a file's time to the seconds? Instead of:

06/11/2007  10:38         3,595,275 IMG_2193.JPG
06/11/2007  10:39         3,600,951 IMG_2194.JPG

I want:

06/11/2007  10:38:33       3,595,275 IMG_2193.JPG
06/11/2007  10:39:25       3,600,951 IMG_2194.JPG

-- Toytoy 12:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this information is ever recorded. WinRAR uncompressed archives are a useful format to keep track of precise file modification times. --froth^t 15:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh? Of course it's recorded -- where do you think WinRAR (or any other archiver) gets the information from?

In the original MS-DOS filesystem, modtimes were recorded with only 2-second precision (that is, the seconds were always even), but I presume Microsoft has managed to fix that by now in newer filesystem implementations.

(None of this answers the original poster's question. Me, I suspect there's no way to get the DIR command to do this, but I'm no DOS/Windows expert, so I could be wrong.) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Come to think of it, not even the Unix/Linux ls command, with all its bazillions of options, has a standard way to do this. Me, when I need to see a file's times down to the second, I always use a command-line callable ("chapter 1") stat utility (though of course that's not a standard thing, either...). —Steve Summit (talk) 16:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

GNU ls has --full-time which gets you the seconds. And the nanoseconds, but those are likely to be all 0. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If you right click a file and select "Properties," you can easily see a file's creation, modification and access dates are all registered to the second. E.g., Today, August 04, 2007, 12:43:37. Is there a tool to create a file list that's accurate to the seconds? -- Toytoy 16:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be hard to make one if there is. In php the fileatime() function allows all sorts of detailed formatting of the timestamp. --24.147.86.187 17:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Not hard at all. Here's a simple C program I just whipped together:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <time.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	int i;
	struct stat stbuf;
	int errs = 0;

	for(i = 1; i < argc; i++)
		{
		if(stat(argv[i], &stbuf) == 0)
			printf("%.24s\t%s\n", ctime(&stbuf.st_mtime), argv[i]);
		else    {
			perror(argv[i]);
			errs++;
			}
		}

	return errs == 0 ? EXIT_SUCCESS : EXIT_FAILURE;
}

—Steve Summit (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Ready to do some reverse engineering!

I have had the bad fortune of acquiring a piece of US Robotics Winmodem (agh!) that adamantly refuse to work with my Slackware box. (It came with my new PC, so I guess the manufacturers just forced it on me.) However, I see that it works perfectly in the three versions of Windows I have on my computer (98, 2000 and XP). And in 2000 and XP there is even a generic modem driver that comes with Windows that will automatically make the USR winmodem work (the driver installation CD that came with the modem was necessary only for 98). So I think that my winmodem has been around for a very long time.

Strangely, despite all the fantastic advances in so many areas of Linux in recent years, surprisingly little work has been done on the subject of winmodems. The linmodems.org site hasn't been updated since 2001! I checked the drivers tab of my winmodem in the device manager and saw that it just consisted of a few files (vxd's for 98 and one or two sys files for 2000/XP). And the size of them are all in the 10-100K range. So I think it shouldn't be that hard to disassemble it for more information

I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting ready to make some contributions to the open source community. But I need some tools first. Does anyone know of a good PCI hardware monitoring software that runs in Windows that will allow me to monitor, in real time, the data (signals, commands, other data structures) sent by Windows to the winmodem that allows it to do its magic? I figure that if I can capture the binary "open sesame" magic words for getting the winmodem on-hook, off-hook and emit dialtones in Linux it would be a great start!

Thanks.

129.97.225.195 15:51, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried using ndiswrapper? -- Kainaw^(what?) 15:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kainaw, I will give it a try. 129.97.225.195 16:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Reading this again, my mind just made the connection that you need a modem driver, not a network driver. The ndiswrapper is for network cards. I do not know if there is a similar wrapper for modems. -- Kainaw^(what?) 18:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

You should know that the essential feature of a "winmodem" was that (to save cost) it was missing most of the guts of a normal modem; all the "hard stuff" was offloaded to the host CPU. (See our winmodem article.) So the "driver" for a winmodem is not just some code to pass characters and control signals back and forth between a modem (leaving it up to the modem to encode and decode all the on-the-wire protocols); rather, the code on the host CPU that "drives" a winmodem has to know abut, and implement, most of the details of all those on-the-wire protocols. And the protocols are not simple; in fact the point of moving the implementation of those protocols out of the modem and onto the host CPU was that (it was felt) they were becoming too complex to implement on the modem hardware of the day.

When winmodems came out, they were widely derided by some as being a hack and a cop-out, burdening the host machine with a bunch of CPU-intensive processing which arguably isn't its job. Also, it was obvious that there could never be an open-source reimplementation of a winmodem driver -- the host portion of the winmodem would be ridiculously tightly integrated with the hardware portion, writing it would require intense collaboration with the winmodem manufacturer, and the code would obviously only ever get written for Windows (thus the name, "winmodem").

Now, of course, those who believe a thing to be impossible should not stand in the way of those who are doing it, and there were indeed some heroic efforts made by a few overly-dedicated hackers to "port" some winmodem drivers to Linux. But it's a hopeless effort, and I'm not surprised that the projects lost momentum and haven't been kept up-to-date.

I won't try to discourage you from your quest (that would be unseemly), but I will say that I have never and will never use a winmodem, and I would never think any less of Linux (or any open source OS, or indeed any non-Microsoft OS) for not supporting them. They were a spectacularly bad idea, an exceedingly wrong engineering tradeoff, and they have (as near as I can tell) died the ignominious death they quite richly deserved. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

In addition to Steve 2's comment, the main reason this probably isn't a big focus is because pretty much nobody uses dial up anymore-- especially not the people that use linux. To be blunt, I'd really recommend looking for at least DSL, if not cable or fiber optic. AT&T offers DSL for only $15 to start, it might be worth looking into. You might also consider using a tethered (cell phone) modem, which generally have higher speeds than dial up, not to mention being more portable --L-- 18:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

mp3 playback stuttering and skipping in Winamp when hard drive is in heavy use...

What the subject says. :) When my HD is grinding away on another task (for example when Winamp is rescanning my music folder or something else is loading), the mp3 that's currently playing starts to stutter and jump. This has only started happening in the past couple of weeks. Sometimes the mp3 file is permanently damaged afterwards, unless I pause it until the HD activity has stopped. Any ideas on what might be causing this/how to fix? --Kurt Shaped Box 15:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It could be a sign that UDMA has been disabled, or that the disk is fragmented, but neither would damage the MP3 file. Try enabling SMART on the BIOS, or getting a SMART utility for Windows, to see if it displays any warnings. --cesarb 16:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm. My HD has damaged blocks, is running hot (56 degrees C) and is showing 'failed' for 'Reallocated Sectors Count'. Anything I can do, or is a backup before FUBAR and a new HD in order? --Kurt Shaped Box 16:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a backup and replacement, or perhaps replacement and copy (i.e. from the dying drive, mounted as a read-only slave once you've booted onto the new drive) is definitely in order, PDQ. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:01, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

PlayStation 2 international compatibility

I couldn't find the answer to this in the PlayStation 2 article so it's probably a stupid question, but would games released only in Japan work on American systems? 66.231.129.250 16:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• Directly from the article:

"Software for all PlayStation consoles implements regional lockout by containing one of four region codes: NTSC/J for Japan and Asia, NTSC-U/C for North America, PAL for Europe and Oceania, and NTSC/C for China.[8]"

In other words, no. --Alph Tech STUART 17:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

That sucks. Thanks for the answer. 66.231.129.250 17:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You can get the playstation chipped to play other regions I think. Though not sure how legal it is/what it does to the machine. ny156uk 23:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Picture effect in Pinnacle Studio 10

in Pinnacle Studio 10 , how can i make effect on the picture , (not on video) (picture inside the video) how can i make picture disapeare gradually , picture fly.....etc.

Firefox, Photos, Facebook, and Java

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to get facebook's photo uploader to work in firefox, but I'm having a huge amount of difficulty as the java just doesn't seem to kick in. I've tried uninstalling all the java versions and reinstalling anew from the website... I've tried emptying the mozilla plugin folder of all java-related dll files. No luck!

I'm running firefox 2.006, and according to the java website I'm running java 1.4.2_02. Any ideas? --Cacofonie 16:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Free virtual breadboard

Has anybody out there developed a free virtual breadboard Win32 application akin to WinBreadboard? --Alph Tech STUART 17:50, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

mutliple users at the same time?

Ok, it's my understanding that linux and other unix-likes are designed to be able to be used by multiple users at the same time, right? Does this still work? Is it possible for, say, me to plug in two monitors, two keyboards, two mice, and run them as effectively two users logged in simultaneously? Using Xserver? Is it possible to run different window managers at the same time- say GDM on one and KDM on the other? What would the performance impacts be- especially for gaming? Would it be possible to have the graphics card process two 3D games (Say, Nexuiz) running at the same time? And of course the required "if so, how?" --L-- 23:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

HOWTO. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I was about to say "Yes, absolutely, Unix is designed for multi-user support", but then you mentioned multiple monitors and multiple window managers, which starts getting dicey.

If you don't care about multiple monitors and multiple X servers (yes, I know you do care, but bear with me) it's no problem at all. You can use ALT-Fn to switch among Linux's six virtual consoles, and log in as different users on all of them, no problem. (I do this all the time.) You can telnet or ssh into the machine and log in as different users. (I do this all the time, too.) For virtually all of the user programs and system tasks on Linux (or any Unix-like) system, they're all set up to run properly even if there are multiple users logged in.

But where it starts getting tricky is the user interface. Unix was originally designed to run on a minicomputer or small mainframe, and the assumption was that there were distinct physical terminals for each of the logged-in users. When you've got exactly one monitor, keyboard, and mouse attached to the box running the OS, this assumption can start to break down. If you've hacked the hardware in your box so that you can attach multiple monitors, keyboards, and mice, you're obviously moving back towards the "multiple distinct terminal" bailiwick, but there may be some tweaking to do in order to get it to work the way you want.

In particular, stock Linux assumes that there is exactly one X server running on the local machine, and it's always running (as I understand it) on behalf of one user. Since you do care about your multiple users all using graphical environments, you obviously care about this limitation. It looks like the HOWTO that Finlay McWalter mentioned is all about that particular problem. I'm surprised it talks about kernel mods, because that sounds like it contradicts the assertion I would have made that Linux supports multiple users out of the box, but I guess the explanation is that Linux supports multiple users out of the box as long as at most one of them is using the local X server. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Photoshopping - Style

I know this is an odd question but...Do you know how in some shots people look like they have photoshopped the subjects skin into being almost plastic looking. Is there a reason beyond just an inability to know how to use photoshop/when enough is enough or is this a particular style? Every time I see shots manipulated like this they look freaky and awful but they are appearing everywhere. Now i'm a fan of the idea of using photoshop, it can help people look their best for a shoot, but these style photos appear in magazines that surely would have professionals producing them/editing photos - so it must be a style/on purpose? ny156uk 23:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I am interested to see how do you selectively blur the low frequency data (blotches, pimples etc.) and leave the high frequency data (spores, skin texture) alone in Photoshop. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It is classic air brushing, just made easier in the digital age. As for how you can get rid of blotches without smoothing the skin as a whole, it is not hard to do, it just takes a little more time (you remove each blotch one-by-one, usually by cloning some skin near it and replacing it. The "healing" brush does a pretty good job of this automatically). I think the goal of those who did the shots in question was to have un-real looking skin — not just blotch free, but impossibly smooth. I think it looks awful too, but I'm not the target audience (most of those glamour shots of women in women's magazines are aimed at... women. Not to sexually arouse them, but to make them think, "Oh, my skin looks like crap." I find it really amazing how much women fret over things that most guys likely don't even notice. I think guys often do the same — from most women I've talked to, receding hair/baldness is not regarded by most women as anywhere near the blemish that most men think it is.) --24.147.86.187 00:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes that's the current way I'm doing it but it doesn't work well in many cases when the lighting is not flat (eg anything that's not shot with direct flash). --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It just takes practice, I think. My former boss did photo retouching and she just uses mostly cloning tools. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

August 5

Macbook pro (core duo)

What is the highest output (resolution) that a macbook pro with a radeon x1600 card can do?

All Mac Book Pros support Dual-Link DVI, which can support an Apple 30" Cinema Display (2560 x 1600) -- which is the maximum dual-link DVI can handle.

Thank you. And holy crap, too bad those cost so much...

You can buy the Dell 30" which has the same LCD component as the Apple 30" and you'll save hundreds. But then you aren't getting the cool brushed aluminum case and you'll be forced to stare at a Dell logo all day long! --24.249.108.133 17:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Lightest and Thinnest Laptop

What is the Lightest and Thinnest Laptop? 68.193.147.179 01:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

What screen size are you interested in? Sony claims the Vaio is the lightest and thinnest. Acer claims they have the lightest and thinnest 15" model. Toshiba claims they have the lightest and thinnest full featured laptop. Are you going to include the plug-ins? Most of the super-thin laptops have external plugin drives, speakers, etc... -- Kainaw^(what?) 01:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "laptop". There's a tradeoff between size and computing power (and features and price and all that). How small a "laptop" can be totally depends on how much computing power it takes to earn the label "laptop". My Sharp Zaurus is quite light and thin. Would you call it a laptop? What about this model with a hinge? —Keenan Pepper 01:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Inspiron 8100 Help

Hi I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 and almost a year ago it completely crashed. Today I put the recovery disc in and sort of got it to work. I would like to know how to completely wipe out everything(not just remove programs, but nuke everything possible) on my hard drive so I can reinstall everything. Thanks

Just by reinstalling widows (or some linux distro), things will be automatically reformatted over.

Sound Card

Hi,
I've currently got on board sound (ALC 850 7.1) and 5.1 surround sound speakers (MegaWorks THX 5.1 550). Oh and I'm using a desktop (reasonably good one). They're nice and play music well enough, but I was wondering if there would be much of an improvement in audio quality from a dedicated soundcard such as this or even an external one. Does anyone here have any experience with this? I'm particularly looking for an improvement in DVD playback - before I get decent sound levels for most DVD's I have to crank it up to four LEDs (sorry for the unscientific term :) out of the five on the control thingy. And that's OK but in quiet spots in the movie you get a lot of distracting hiss because the speakers are up so much. Anyway thanks, --121.219.227.153 12:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

If your issue is volume you should look into your software settings. --Alph Tech STUART 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Something that works well for me is to set the media player's volume to about 50%, then crank up the speakers. That tends to work pretty well --L-- 19:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

delete recent

In windows XP home edition is there a way to delete/clear the list of most recently view files that appears from the 'taskbar'{start} under {documents}?83.100.183.144 17:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• I've got that turned off, but I'm pretty sure you just right click. --Alph Tech STUART 18:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got Windows in an other language, so I can't give you the exact details, but here's a knowledge base article on it --Oskar 18:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I get as far as step 3, but there is no "recent documents" tab, clicking the advanced tab brings up a whole directory listing - odd!83.100.183.144 19:10, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

You can use Tweak UI to not keep records of it too. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 20:21, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

thanks, I found 'the button' - didn't match microsoft's help page though, odly enough..

If your reading this 'generic microsoft employee' the button appears in the window after step 3 - step 4 is not needed - should read "step 4 - press the clear button" on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307875 - if that message doesn't reach MS HQ nothing will.83.100.183.144 21:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Right click on taskbar, click on Properties. Select Start Menu tab, then Customise. Go to Advaced tab, click on Clear List button.

Questions on Kubuntu and KDE

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, and since I'm trying to get my PC looking pretty, I have some questions.

1. as you can see here, some parts of applications accept the KDE theme, and others don't. Typically, things like the menubar are fine, but other things like the actual menus themselves or other things like you can see the tab bar in firefox will stay with their initial gray theme. Is there a KDE setting I'm missing somewhere, or is this just a part of the GUI you can't change? (For reference, I HAVE changed Use GTK/QT to Use KDE settings)
2. In addition, awhile ago I changed my boot screen to show all the different things it does, instead of just the splash screen. I also changed the shutdown screen. Despite googling and asking on IRC, I can't find an answer to this, even though it should be fairly simple.
3. Also, something I haven't searched nearly as much for, but might as well ask, how do I use themes like from kde-look, and how do I modify my log in screen? I just can't figure out how to use the tar.bz2 and tar.gz files from theme sites, I figure there's somewhere you just drag and drop them.. and I also figure there's some settings screen for log in stuff I'm not seeing.

Thanks in advance --L-- 19:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I can't help directly, but I'm pretty sure you'll find the answers you need at ubuntuforums.org. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 20:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I won't. Does anyone actually have a helpful answer? L-- 22:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming Kubuntu is a normal KDE install, everything you are asking about (from what I can make of it) is in the Control Center. Click the KDE "start" button and then select Control Center. Look under Appearance and Themes. As for those themes, look at the Theme Manager - you'll see an Install New Theme button that loads the themes you download. -- Kainaw^(what?) 22:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It has a system settings menu, with "Appearance", but I don't see anything in there for the stuff I'm talking about. I'll look for Control Center, thanks --L-- 23:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Run the command kcontrol from the command prompt if you can't find the program in any menu. If you don't have it, then Kubuntu must have removed it. Do you have yum for installing programs? -- Kainaw^(what?) 02:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I figured that out, but kcontrol still doesn't have any settings that seem to fix this. Halp? --L-- 02:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If yoru kcontrol screen doesn't have "Appearance and Themes" on the left menu, Kubuntu is using a very weird version of KDE. That has been there since KDE version 2. I know that Kubuntu wants to make the user experience "easier" by removing anything that seems "complicated" - but removing functionality has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me. -- Kainaw^(what?) 03:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm saying that none of the settings fix the problems. --L-- 04:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Control Centre > Appearance and Themes > Splash Screen affects only the last stage of the booting process (see also splash screen), not the screen that obstructs the view of the boot process, which is a bootsplash. Splashy is mentioned there, don't know if that has a setting for 'no bootsplash', but I assume it does. DirkvdM 07:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

DVD to PC?

Is there an easy way to copy a DVD I own to my PC so that I can watch it without having to carry around a bulky disk + case?--172.131.214.124 19:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes - you just need a DVD ripper. If you use Windows, I don't know of a free one. On Linux, I use dvdrip. -- Kainaw^(what?) 19:41, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Try DVD Decrypter. It's free and it always works for me. --Waldsen 20:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Ditto HandBrake. --24.147.86.187 21:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

DVD ripper is a rather messy article. Is that a generic term or indeed an msWindows program? Or did Microsoft steal yet another name? DirkvdM 07:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is a bad article. DVD ripper should go to a page about DVD rippers in general (like CD ripper does); if there is a specific program called DVD Ripper then its page should be DVD Ripper (capitalized). --24.147.86.187 14:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I have made it so. And I've also moved the details of HandBrake to its own article. A s a result, DVD ripper is a stub now, though, and I'd like to see it expanded because I want to learn more about it but haven't the time to delve into it too much (sufficiently to expand the article, anyway). DirkvdM 17:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

MAC (Apple) Computers.

Does user need to buy seperate firewall and virus protection software when a user buys MAC / Apple notbook pro?128.107.248.220 20:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No. Using firewalls and antivirus software on non-windows computers is only good for wasting your money. Well, unless you're trying to protect Windows users from themselves --L-- 20:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Tosh :) OSX has a firewall built in; sure it's debatable if you need to buy on, but tell someone not to use it is frankly insane. There have been numerous remote exploits on OSX (for example problems with Samba). Depending on what 3rd party software you install, or default software you enable you are of course more exposed. So a firewall *is* a good idea. --Blowdart 18:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Macs come with their own firewalls. As for viruses, there aren't any active threats to OS X that I know of, so at this point don't worry about it unless you are planning to run Windows on it (with Bootcamp or Parallels or whatever). --24.147.86.187 21:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Whether you need it is a matter of opinion. But companies certainly do sell such products. (e.g. Symantec) --131.215.167.225 02:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Apple / MAC machines

Dose Apple / MAC bookpro machine need "Disk Defragmenter" like windows machine?128.107.248.220 21:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

(http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial55.html) - seems to suggest that Apple advise against doing it, but there are third-party products out there that do it. ny156uk 22:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Faster PDF reader?

I have a lot of PDFs which are made from scans of pages. They open VERY slowly in Adobe Reader and Preview.app. I need to just flip through them very quickly looking for specific pages (based on how they look, not on any OCRed text or anything like that). Is there a better application for this? A faster PDF reader? I need something with a lot more speed than either of these two. --24.147.86.187 22:07, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Silly question but if you are closing (fully) Adobe PDF between documents it takes a dogs age. If however you leave it open (just closing the document not the application) iit runs a lot faster. Other than this this discussion (http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware4/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=118804) may help. ny156uk 22:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

That's not the issue; I don't close the whole program between documents. --24.147.86.187 14:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is common for scans to take longer to load. A PDF created by a person at a keyboard will use actual text for the text in the PDF. I scan that does not have OCR will consider every letter one (or a combination of many) little graphic. It takes longer to draw graphics than text, so it takes substantially longer to "draw" all the letters in the scanned document than it does to throw real text on the screen. Therefore, I strongly suggest scanning the original documents with an OCR capable scanner. -- Kainaw^(what?) 23:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't apply here. OCR isn't really an option with these documents, as they are very "dirty" (they are government documents that were photocopied a million times in the course of their life). What I need is a PDF reader that can read such things quicker than however Reader or the other programs do. I guess I'm looking for something which either takes shortcuts in rendering them, or caches the entire document ahead of time, because the 1-2 second delay that can occur between pages is frustratingly long (and I'm only a pretty fast machine at that!). --24.147.86.187 14:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Try foxit reader, it is free unless you want advanced features.[1]--64.40.88.131 16:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

DRM and Napster

OK, so if you subscribe to Napster for $10 a month, the files you download only work if you are still a subscriber, thanks to DRM.

But what happens if you get the Napster-to-Go package for $15 a month an then copy the songs onto your mp3 player? The mp3 player isn't connected to the Internet, so presumably the files have no way of knowing whether you're still subscribed or not. So couldn't you subscribe to Napster for a month, download a thousand songs, put them on your mp3 player and keep them forever? And if they lose the DRM when put on the mp3 player, could you copy them back to your computer from the mp3 player and use them forever? -- Mwalcoff 23:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

They probably check your system clock to see if the DRM is expired or not, otherwise what's to keep you from doing the same thing with multi-terabyte storage PC? --L-- 23:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The DRM doesn't go away when you transfer them onto a player. The files need to be refreshed after a certain interval (I think it's something like 3 weeks). If you haven't hooked your player up to your computer since then, the files will stop playing altogether.--Alph Tech STUART 23:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh. That's no good. Is there a better deal out there? -- Mwalcoff 23:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Steal? There's no free access music store out there that charges only by month, mostly because there's nobody stupid enough to think people wouldn't just subscribe for one month and download all they wanted.--Alph Tech STUART 23:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

wrong! -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 20:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Can't you just burn your DRM MP3's to a CD, then re-rip them to your computer with MP3 ripping software and remove any DRM that way? Or do they charge to burn to a CD? Otherwise, you can make use of the Line-Out plug on your PC.--GTPoompt(talk) 12:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Pseudocode

I'm going to write both of my questions here to save space, if that's allowed. 1. For a school assignment, I need to create a game in Delphi, and I've chosen to make a Patience-type game. For this I plan to have 20 Image Objects, each of which will load a random picture from a group of 10, with the goal being to make each picture only appear twice on the page, in two random spots. Does anyone know how I could achieve this without making it incredibly tedious?

Read the rules: we will not do your homework for you.

2. I've recently discovered the Standby function on my computer and am really glad I don't have to boot it up every time I want to use it. But it makes the power light on the front flash when it is on standby and my recent climate change converted parents are concerned about the power this uses. Is there a way to disable the flashing standby light in the BIOS or something? Thanks Mix Lord 23:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Not in the BIOS (I'm pretty sure it's hardwired into the mobo), but you could probably cut one of the wires to your power switch to disable the light. I'm not an expert, so I can't tell you which one, but you can find the information for it somewhere.

That's really not going to do crap for the environment though. --Alph Tech STUART 23:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No need to cut any wires, just unplug the power LED (it's plugged together with several other wires on the motherboard; check the motherboard's manual to find the correct wire to unplug). --cesarb 23:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

For your patience game, I suggest using a shuffle algorithm. Preload each pic twice into an array (or list, or set, or whatever data structure you are using). Then, randomly pick two of the pics in the array. Swap them. Do that a bunch of times and you'll still have all pics in your array twice, but in a random order. -- Kainaw^(what?) 23:54, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

For an array of size 20, a correctly-implemented shuffle algorithm will pick exactly 19 pairs of elements to swap, not "a bunch" of them. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC) (I've taken the liberty of wikifying to your comment. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC))

Tell your parents that the light on your PC is a LED, which are known for low power consumption. That flashing LED probably uses as much power in a day as a 60Watt lightbulb does in a couple of seconds. Vespine 04:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I strongly suspect the LED is lit by a cable from the motherboard (as most PCs are). Unplug the cable. If you don't know which one it is, look for a bunch of plugs coming from the front of the case. They are usually all huddled together in a rectangle on the motherboard. One will be for the power switch, one for the reset switch, one for the HDD light, one for the power light, and so on. They normally have some sort of marking on them so you can tell which is which. However, I do not support leaving computers on 24/7. I keep mine on a power strip. When I leave, I turn off the strip and it turns off everything at my desk. When I return, I tap the power strip and everything turns on (the BIOS is set to boot when power comes on). It takes 47-52 seconds for my computer to get to the login prompt. I know that seems like an eternity for most people, but I use the time to look around my desk and see if there is anything I'm forgetting to do. -- Kainaw^(what?) 04:35, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Take a small square of black electrical tape.... Gzuckier 14:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Think about what you have to show as a pool of images where you take and remove from, and the positions also as a pool of positions where you can allocate and remove from the pool.

• As in most cases there is more than one way at achieving your shuffling problem. For one thing you should probably start with an TImageList component, and load in 10 images (jpegs?), and your TImageList will assign each one a number (0, 1, 2, etc) - you will later refer to these numbers using the TImageList's itemindex/imageindex/index paremeter (I forget which). Then with the 20 TImage components on your form, you can select all of them and say "use Imagelist1" in the Object Inspector - and then place a button, when the button is clicked it would say
  

var i: integerl

begin

For i = 0 to 19 do //For each image

begin

MyTImageComponent[i].image :=

(etc - not going to go further than this. You may have to use a randomize function to come up with the itemindex, and, like I say, this is only one possible method)

Hope this helps Rfwoolf 12:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

August 6

File and Print Sharing

I am working on my girlfriends computer, ME unfortunately, and I am trying to set up File and Print Sharing with her other computer, XP, running Norton 360. I have put the IP range into allow, and it still doesnt work. Any Ideas?

Omnipotence407 00:21, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

What exactly doesn't work? And don't run Norton :). Splintercellguy 01:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming both are Windows, do not worry about IP addresses. Turn off all firewalls/anti-virus/computer protection programs for the moment (feel free to disconnect the Internet while doing this part). Right-click on the My Computer icon on each computer and set them so they have the same workgroup name but different computer names. They will need to reboot. Now, right-click on a folder and select Sharing and share it. If sharing isn't available, you must enable it in your network settings. Once you share a folder (and/or a printer) on each computer, they should see each other. If they don't, you probably have a networking problem. If you can see each computer in Network Neighborhood, you got it working. Now, turn back on all the firewalls/anti-virus/computer protection programs one at a time. One or more of them will block this sharing. You'll have to figure out how to get the program to stop blocking it. -- Kainaw^(what?) 01:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's exactly what wont work, the ME cannot find the printer that I have set up for sharing on XP, and each computer wont find the file on the other computer that is shared. I cant stop Norton bc/ its on her parents computer and they are paranoid.

as for Kainaw, I've done everything up to the turning off of individual programs.

Thanks for the help, if anyone has anymore ideas, id love to hear them, i cant try them out for another couple of days, but id love to go in with multiple strategies. Omnipotence407 11:17, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

what are those things called?

- is there a name for those twisted letters and numbers that come up when you're registering for an online mailing list or whatever, and you have to read them and enter them into a field in order to prove you're not a bot?

Thanks in advance Adambrowne666 04:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

They're called CAPTCHAs --Oskar 05:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The name of these always make me laugh. When they recognise a user as not being a human, do we call them GOPTCHAs? Capuchin 08:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. If I can't read the letters, does that mean I'm an AI? ;) Adambrowne666 23:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

File search in explorer in XP

When I do a file search in explorer in XP, it insists on looking inside zip files. Is there anyway to tell search not to do this? -- SGBailey 08:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Unregister the zip file handlers: regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll --soum ^talk 09:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Worked a treat. -- SGBailey 09:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

oo confusion

Is an object orientated programming language in essence a procedural language with built in support for a non-uniform data structure?

Or have I totally misunderstood, or missed addition features?87.102.34.140 10:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

OO is more than that. It attempts to repackage functionality into logical components. A very simple example is that a car has a dashboard, an engine, and wheels. The dashboard controls the engine, and the engine controls the wheels. The driver doesn't have to think about manipulating the engine, or turning the wheels, the driver simply manipulates the dashboard. Each component does it's own job. There's more to it of course, RTFA for more.

(doesn't the engine analogy apply to a well set out pascal program for example?)

ok so 'message passing' between proceedures/sub programs is included/supported - that's a sensible way to program complex systems. But was my summary too simple or what?87.102.34.140 11:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you read the article on OO? Give it a try. You can't model inheritance in Pascal; using the same analogy, you could specify common functionality across all Dashboards and make the Dashboard for a car more specific -- add a gearshift lever for a Car, but you might not need this for an Aircraft dashboard. It's not so easy to model private and public variables/fields in non-OO languages either, nor can you create well-defined interfaces that are attached to data types in non-OO languages.

ok that's more specific - obviously inheritances is modelable in pascal (or any other language) but tediously difficult to do. Having support for a tree like data structure (or other) helps reduce the brain-ache.

I far as I can think the "repackage functionality into logical components" is not far off using discrete proceedures with set input and output fields for any 'operation' or function. Clearly most simple non 'oo' languages don't have support for a non-uniform databases, and so definately won't have any functions ('methods' in oo parlance) for getting info from such a database..

I just wanted to know if my simple summary was right or not - a yes or a no.87.102.34.140 11:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You can have make-believe inheritance in non-OO languages but you cannot simply state that your new object inherits everything from a superclass and then go away and work; I believe you would have to copy everything by hand yourself.

You can have functions that operate on structures, but they are in no way tightly associated to the structure like an actual method is. Say for example in C I have a Vehicle struct and some functions start(struct Vehicle), stop(struct Vehicle), and steer(struct Vehicle). But a struct Car is a kind of Vehicle, but you can't start a struct Car because you've only defined start for Vehicles. Inheritance takes care of this typing problem.

Clearly for 'oo' inheritance is a bog standard feature nowadays. But if a programming lacks this feature/function but has the others is it still 'oo'?87.102.34.140 12:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by nonuniform data structure, but I think your summary only vaguely describes what an OO language can do. It's like saying a computer is in essence can compute sums when in fact there is much more to what a computer can do.

I meant data structures other than simple arrays (eg 10x10 array of integers) - including trees (of varying length arms, containing any data type), and also nets (with if necessary pointers between nodes giving relationships between data (eg son/daughter,mother/father,brother/sister to give a simple example)

By the way, if you mean non-uniform database/data structure as a structure that contains objects of different types; then this is a matter of typing. It can be argued that statically typed OO programming languages have a much more cumbersome time dealing with classes of objects that have different types but are somehow related. Dynamically typed OO programming languages are much more flexible and can handle heterogeneity in data types much more flexibly.

I was thinking 'dynamically' eg like LISP. also see above - effectively extending to a random network of connected nodes were each node contains any sort of data. (thanks for your help by the way)87.102.34.140 12:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You can do that with any programming language; it doesn't need to be an OO programming language. You can do this with C, for example. Anything which supports a "struct"-type or composite datatype can do this.

question 2 - slightly more focused

What would be the absolute minimum for a language to be called 'object orientated' - I have suggested a "(proceedural?) language with built in support for a non-uniform data structure" ?

By non-uniform data structure I mean upto and including a random network of nodes, each node containing any type or number of data elements, as well as obviously simpler structures (tree, array etc).

Is there another name for such a language similar to the above that does not necessarily support concepts such as inheritance 'out of the box'

(Question not high priority - I think I've got the hang of this now) Still would appreciate any answers.87.102.34.140 12:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

First, it's "object oriented", not "orientated".

The absolute bare minimum, as the name suggests, is support for objects. An "object" in this context is a data structure that includes the functions or "methods" needed to manipulate it. In C++ parlance, the essential feature of a class is that you can declare functions inside it.

Running a close second in importance is inheritance.

Those two are the biggies. Everything else (overloading, polymorphism, etc.) is window dressing. :-)

—Steve Summit (talk) 13:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

OK I've got enough now for my dictionary definition, thanks everyone.87.102.34.140 18:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

speed restrictions

After doing a few speed tests at speedtest.net, I realized that my connection speed had dropped considerably, from about 11 mbps to only 1 mbps or so. I repeated my test 10 or so times, waiting for the latency each time. Of course, my download speeds are much slower than usual from around 500 KB/s down to around 90 KB/s. Last month I downloaded a record amount (I can't always be sure, though). Is it possible that my ISP (Cox) may be restricting my speed because of the high bandwidth volume? If so, when should the speed be back up? Should I be concerned that they are spying on me? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 11:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

To my knowledge the term for such a thing is called "shaping" and this depends on the type of account you have - I believe the best advice is to phone your technical support and ask them a) if you've been shaped b) if they're aware of any service disruptions that could affect your download speed, c) why is your download speed so low? Rfwoolf 14:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

This may be the case. My upload speed is still largely unchanged and streaming seems to unaffected. When will my speed be restored? I've heard that some 'shaped' customers have their speed (or more correctly, bandwidth) restricted for less than a day, while others more than a year. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 17:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

bees in my head

Sitting here with the headphones on and plugged into the jack on the PC; if there's nothing playing to mask it, every now and then there's an angry buzzing flying around in the headphone space for a fraction of a second. It's not 60 hz noise or anything like that, it's some kind of digital crap that for some reason is leaking into the audio. From reading here and there I know that it's a pretty common complaint by people who listen in similar circumstances, so it's not just my PC. Anybody have any reliable ideas re what it is and what can be done about it if one wishes to actually make the PC the hub of an audio system? Gzuckier 14:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I got a milder version of this when my headphone volume was at 100%, even dialing it down fractionally caused this to disappear. I also got huge feedback when I boosted my microphone volume when using TS or Ventrilo and you might want to knock any boosting effects your soundcard might have enabled off. (How did I solve my problems? My Jack Russell was a pup at the time and handily bit through leads for me. My new headphones are fine except for a light fuzz at top volume). Lanfear's Bane

You can shield and isolate all you like and you still may not nail it, trust me. Save youself a lot of trouble and go external, the only reliable way to get computer noise out of your audio is to take the audio out of your computer, i.e. get an external soundcard, or at least a half decent PCI one, you can get them cheap these days. Vespine 01:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

website design

2 questions here really,

first, i've made a webpage and its currently sitting on my pc but when i view it its stuck on the left hand side of the screen. i've realised this is something to do with the screen resolution that i view it at. as when i view it at 800*600 res its fine everything is centered and its spans the whole of the screen but when i go to higher resolutions it doesnt span the right side of my screen, is there a piece of code i could put in to get it to span the whole of the screen regardless of the screen resolution? i've tried using the center command but that doesnt make it span the whole page.

second question, what tips could you people give me to help my page look professional? i know its subjective but any ideas or things to avoid would be helpful, thank you very much--Colsmeghead 15:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Easiest solution for the first one is to put width="100%" wherever you set the width.

And for the second question, nothing to me sticks out as more unprofessional than color scheme. Blue #0000FF background and yellow text? Red background with green text? Stuff like that makes me want to close that page as soon as humanly possible. In general, stick with color schemes that have a light background (very light blue is a-ok) and use black text (unless you have a specific artistic reason, like black background with light grey text), but do those sparingly. And don't use too much javascript mouseover stuff. I personally prefer CSS style text-based mouseovers, because they are fast and don't require images to be loaded, nor javascript enabled. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The most important thing to do to make it look professional is to make the looks serve the purpose. If you make sure people will find whatever they want as quickly as possible then they will care little how it looks. But of course some make-up that doesn't get in the way of functionality (always make sure of that) won't hurt. But how much make up is needed depends entirely on the people you target. For example, look at the clean style of Wikipedia. It's totally info-oriented and therefore uses little colour. Computer geeks would probably even prefer plain text without any make-up at all. But for a site that deals with, say, children's computer games, lots of colours might be better. Maybe even animations. But a word of warning on that. The one single thing that I find most irritating on websites (and I'm certainly not the only one) is flash animations. It's horribly annoying to want to read something while something is flashing right next to it. Animations unavoidably draw the attention, that's how the human mind works. Advertisers know that and therefore use them a lot. Another irritation is PDFs, but animations are way at the top of the list of irritations.

Also resist the temptation to use various tricks just because you know them, another common mistake. Even professional designers do that to impress their employers, alas often successfully. DirkvdM 18:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

computing

just bought a comp.am trying to pimp it.anyone knows a nice software they can recommend i want to change my boot screen when my comp reboots and also i want to change the sound scheme when i do functions like minmize the window.maximize blah blah.i have tried a few but none is so impressive.advise am on xp recently i was extracting a file.it was a large file anyways halfway the extraction when i placed my hand near the power supply unit it was as hot as an iron.then midway the extraction my comp shut itself down.the cpu was still running but the screen went blank for like 3 minutes then it turned itself back on.is my processer weak or something.it does that anytime it does a large function

1- Read KDE, and go from there. 2- It's an overheating problem. Make sure your fans are on and working, you might also have to put more fans in to cool it --L-- 17:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

How can we use data management and storage to get timely information ( Darkuah 17:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC))

Can you figure out what book this came from?

I found a pdf of a book chapter posted on the website of an Indian university. I'd really like to find out what book this chapter is from. I tried my best searching for it, but I'm sure I don't know all the tricks. I wasn't able to find any good clues from pdf file or the website that links to it. My gratitude if you can figure this out! ike9898 17:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

here's the pdf file -- slow server, it takes a minute to load

The root directory has more chapters from the book in it (Ch. 7 is LightScat.pdf, Ch. 6 is Viscosity.pdf). My bet is that it is not a published book, but something made in-house by one of the professors at the university. My reasoning on this is that the entire thing was typeset in LaTeX, the images look home-made (esp. in the Viscosity chapter), and because, as you noted, they are devoid of any bibliographic information typically found in published books. That's just a guess, though, but they look like the kinds of mini-textbooks that science professors often develop for their courses. --24.147.86.187 20:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Note that after writing that, I found this notation the page linking to that file: "document obtained from MSE 5473 course of University of Utah)". So it is indeed a professor's in-house textbook, but not from that university. (How'd I find that, you ask? I went to the root directory and from there found a few HTML pages which linked to the files in said directory.) --24.147.86.187 20:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

page disappeared

Hi,

Last couple of days I found an interesting page at the address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cooling. However, if I search again on Wikipedia for this page (I enter in the search field words such as "computer" or "cooling"), I got the answer as if this page is still online. If I click on the link to enter the page, I get in Mozilla the following message:

"File not found

Firefox can't find the file at /wiki/Computer_cooling.

• Check the file name for capitalization or other typing errors.
• Check to see if the file was moved, renamed or deleted."

I wonder if this page is still available and how can I reach it. Any info is apreciated.

Thanks,

Iulian

The links works for me. Looks to me like you're telling Mozilla to look for a file on your computer at /wiki/Computer cooling. Is that perchance what it says in the address bar, in stead of the full internet address? What happens if you click the link you yourself provided? DirkvdM 18:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Geforce 8800 and Core 2 Quad

How powerful of a power supply would i need for this combination?

600W is cutting it. I'd go for 650 if you were on a budget (lol) and 700W normally. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 20:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Does this include fans and all? Thank you.

Yes. Vespine 00:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. It's within my budget then. Blender, here I come ;)

traffic shaping

I'm afraid that my traffic is being shaped. My download speeds have been slow every since I dl'd 40 GB or so last month. When does Cox (My ISP) usually restore a customer's 'speed' after shaping? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 19:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Most likely it is at the start of your next billing cycle. Your ISP's home page should have a facility to log in and check your account and when your billing cycle starts, it's either based on the 1st of the month or the date you signed up, so you won't be able to work it out without checking it with your ISP. Vespine 00:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Can i save my computer?

The power plug going to one of my hard drives came out while i was using the computer. that instantly turned off the computer. i unplugged the computer from the wall then plugged it back in, reattached the power cable to the HDD. and turned the computer back on. an error appeared during the BIOS saying "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" I checked the bios and everything was configured correctly, and it was. After that i switched out the ide cable and used another free power cord to attach the HDD. Then i tried booting from a CD and then another HDD, but none worked. is there any way that i can fix this. i think it might be that i ruined the motherboard, if so will i have to replace it.

Yeah, you're hopeless. Most everything should be fine, so get a new motherboard and CPU. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 21:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that you fried your IDE port. You could try using another, if your motherboard has more than one IDE port. --cesarb 23:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

PHP user management

Can anyone recommend a good, easy, and customizable library for user management on a website? Simple stuff like registration, sending a verification email, and editing a profile? I can find lots of examples of these sorts of things, but is there one that stands out? --70.161.254.52 20:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

August 7

Password protected sites

some sites are password protected espcially the site of cambridge www.cie.org.uk, the teachers section . this web contains past papers for IGCSE which is important to students .......watever... how can i hack into this site just for good reasons please ......

If there really is something that students are supposed to see, ask someone part of the faculty. Otherwise, this would be a criminal act, and we're not going to help you with that. --Oskar 06:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

That said, the easiest way to "hack" any password protection would be to try some common passwords (including any obvious site-specific ones, such as maybe "cambridge" or "teacher" in this case). Presumably, if you did manage to guess the password that way, you'd do the responsible thing and report it so that the password can be changed to something stronger; if you can guess it, so can others. Still, it's better — much better — to get permission before conducting such intrusion testing; a lot of institutions can be touchy about unauthorized access even if you did nothing to abuse it, and the fact that a lock could be picked by a three-year-old child doesn't necessarily make picking it any more legal. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Greasemonkey script

How would a Greasemonkey script that just searches a document and replaces all instances of some phrase with another look like? --Oskar 06:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, untested:

var node = document.firstChild;
while (node) {
    if (node.nodeType == 3) {
        node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.replace(/phrase/g, "something else");
    }
    // Walk the DOM tree:
    if (node.firstChild) {
        node = node.firstChild;
    } else {
        while (!node.nextSibling && node.parentNode)
            node = node.parentNode;
        node = node.nextSibling;
    }
}

Of course, there are probably other ways of doing it. Note that this approach has a major shortcoming: if the phrase is split between multiple text nodes (like if only part of it is in italic or bold) then it won't get replaced. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Software for simple animated game

I want to create a simple game from the scratch, with a bit of animation, some game logic, some audio effects and some kind of scoring. The player should be able to select some characters froma pool of characters depending on some situations. Then these characters will complete some tasks (the computer should do this). For each task completed, there should be some score. If the player selects a wrong character to for a task, there should be some penalty points. Each of the tasks should have some animation, with some audio effects etc etc. Is there any free software that I can use for this? I have no experience in animation. -- WikiCheng | Talk 08:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

How to insert combo box/combo list box in a cell in MS Excel Sheet

How can I insert combo box/combo list box in a cell in MS Excel Sheet?

Depends what you want to do. You can use a form combo-box object, but that doesn't strictly sit in the cell, it sits on top of it. Or you could use Data Validation on the cell to restrict the values to a list - this makes drop-down list of the values. I usually do this by creating a named range of the list values. Like I say - it depends on what you want the combo box to achieve. --Worm 11:54, 7 August 2007 (UTC)