Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

October 8

Python

I have a question about python. I'm trying to write a program to do matrix operations. If I give the program inputs of n rows by m columns, how would I tell it to ask for (m x n) inputs? 68.231.151.161 01:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• Your question is unclear to me, but here's the general idea:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

def read_array(rows, columns):
    print "Enter a %d row x %d column array of integers," % (rows, columns)
    print "separated by spaces, one row per line:"
    print
    got_rows = 0
    array = []
    while got_rows < rows:
        try:
            print "Row %d: " % got_rows,
            line = sys.stdin.readline()
            row = [int(x) for x in line.split()]
            if len(row) != columns:
                raise Exception, "I need %d columns per row" % columns
            array.append(row)
            got_rows += 1
        except Exception, e:
            print e
    return array

def array_add(a1, a2):
    if len(a1) != len(a2):
        raise Exception, "mismatched array sizes"
    out_array = []
    for row in range(len(a1)):
        if len(a1[row]) != len(a2[row]):
            raise Exception, "mismatched array sizes"
        out_row = []
        for col in range(len(a1[row])):
            out_row.append(a1[row][col] + a2[row][col])
        out_array.append(out_row)
    return out_array

def pretty_print_array(a):
    for row in a:
        for col in row:
            print '%6d' % col,
        print

array1 = read_array(2, 3)
array2 = read_array(2, 3)

asum = array_add(array1, array2)

pretty_print_array(array1)
print
pretty_print_array(array2)
print
pretty_print_array(asum)

--Sean 21:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Like Sean, I am unclear on the exact question being asked. However, here is a small, idiomatic Python function which can initialize matrices from your "standard input" (which means that it can be used with normal UNIX/Linux I/O redirection, for example).

#!/usr/bin/env python
def read_array(columns, rows):
    """Read rows lines of columns numbers for initializing matrices
    """
    matrix = []
    for i in range(rows):
       this_column = [ float(x) for x in raw_input().split() ]
       if len(this_column) != columns:
          raise ValueError
       matrix.append(this_column)
    return matrix

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys, pprint
    if len(sys.argv[1:]):
        for each in sys.argv[1:]:
           c,r = [ int(x) for x in each.split('x') ]
           try:
               m = read_array(c,r)
           except ValueError, e:
               print >> sys.stderr, "Error parsing %s array" % each 
               continue
           pprint.pprint(m)

This does almost no error checking. However, the "read_array()" function is only eight lines long. It assumes that you want to fill your matrix with floating point (real number) values and that each line will consist solely of numbers separated by white space. The only error checking I'm doing is that the number of values that I can parse out of each line matches the number of columns supplied in our invocation arguments. In any event this function returns a matrix of the specified dimensions or it raises the "ValueError" exception.

Obviously additional error checking could be done inside our function (for example to ignore invalid/unparseable lines) and/or pinpoint any erroneous inputs.

The test engine code at the bottom of this is also pretty crude but is sufficient for demonstrating the calling conventions and a simple test suite can be built around it. For example the following shell script can drive a simple test of reading two 4x4 matrices (where one happens to be an inverted copy of the other, and they just happen to consist only of single digit integers):

#!/bin/sh
./matrix_ops.py 4x4 4x4 <<-EOF
1 2 3 4
2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3
3 2 1 0
9 8 7 6
5 4 3 2
4 3 2 1
EOF

(Here I'm just using a shell "here" doc as the the source of our data, which allows me to keep both the command (with the requisite arguments) and the data in the same file).

When I say that this is "idiomatic" Python code I'm referring to the use of "list comprehensions" in the following line:

this_column = [ float(x) for x in raw_input().split() ]

... which returns a list of the results from calling float() (converting text strings into floating point number objects) on each of the strings which results from calling the .split() string method (which by default splits a string on whitespace, returning a list of substrings). I'm calling that method on the results of my call to the Python raw_input() built-in function.

In other words this line is doing most of the work that you were asking about. It's equivalent to the following:

this_column = []
line = raw_input()
words = line.split()
for each in words:
    num = float(each)
    this.column.append(num)

Of course, when we expand the code in this way we can add some additional error checking, such as a try:...except: block around the conversion, and a test for too many values on any given line of input. (My idiomatic code attempts to convert a whole line, which fails on the first non-parseable value on a line --- but could work on converting thousands of values on one long line of input when our improved code could test on the first extraneous value. Alternatively we could ignore all input after the desired number of "words" on each line.

In my test engine code I'm requiring that we be called with a list of command line arguments and that each of those be of the form: MxN (where M and N are the numbers of columns and rows respectively). There I'm splitting each argument on the "x" between them.

Obviously this code could be improved quite a bit. I could, for example add a usage message (if called with no arguments) ... and wrap the argument parsing in its own exception handling code (which, again, could just call my usage function).

More complicated input formats would, naturally, require more sophisticated parsing --- usually best accomplished using regular expressions (included with Python's standard libraries) and possibly (as the requirements rise to new levels of complexity) using any of the lexical parser generators that are freely available for Python).

midi files

I have collection of midi files from the late '80's. Some will not play using Windows Media Player with the problem being timing or rhythm. At first I thought it might be due to an outdated copy of WMP or the motherboard being configured for use spread spectrum, but no, it happens with all WMPlayers not what else is changed. Most of the midi files that WMP cannot play Quicktime can play so I'm able to listen to almost every file I have. What is the reason for this problem? Is there a difference in midi file format or what? Clem 06:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

If you'd like to email me one (you can do that from my user page) - I'll try to play it with some other MIDIfile players I have...including one I wrote myself(!). Maybe I can figure out what's wrong with these files (or, conversely, what's wrong with WMP). The MIDIfile standard has hardly changed at all - but most players out there are incomplete in one way or another - and the tempo stuff is the hardest to get right. SteveBaker 15:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Timing and rhythm are no problem for Quicktime with these files. It may also be how WMP runs under Windows XP x64, what thing either uses for the clock. The question I am really trying to answer is whether it may have something to do with the copyright protection mania that WMP has, if midi files have any provision for copyright enforcement. Clem 20:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I really like winamp.--Sonjaaa 02:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

To answer your questions, User:kadiddlehopper, yes, there are different MIDI file formats (or alternatively, different "variants" of the MIDI spec). There are various reasons why your MIDI files may not read properly in any given player, none of which necessarily have to do with copyright protection schemes. For example, certain MIDI controller messages or track information may be corrupt. You can find out more by opening your files in a MIDI sequencer, which are designed to handle multiple file formats and fully support view/edit/delete of all controller and track events. If there's corrupt data, you can usually remove it by editing in a sequencer. You can find more information here. dr.ef.tymac 13:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

EMail ID - 2nd post

Earlier Iasked for the email id of Tiffany Taylor and someone gave it to me as dgi.business@aol.com.As planned I sent her a mail but I got a mail from MAILER-DAEMON@n2.bullet.mud.yahoo.com that the mail could not be delivered to that address.The remote host said that 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND [RCPT_TO].What does this mean?218.248.2.51 08:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)Hedonister

Exactly what it says, you were given an invalid email address. JIP | Talk 08:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

See bounce message and RFC 3463. --Kjoonlee 17:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Ripping DVDs

With libdvdcss installed, MPlayer on Linux will rip the actual movies on DVDs just fine and store them on my hard disk, where I can play them without the DVD. But is it possible to also rip the menus where I choose the movie to play, and have them work in the DVD player?

(Legal disclaimer: libdvdcss is perfectly legal in Finland. These DVDs are commercial, copyrighted content. I have bought them legally and paid for them full price. It is not against any law for me to copy them for my own personal use. I will not redistribute the content in any way.) JIP | Talk 11:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is a common misconception. You only need deCSS to play the movie - you can copy the entire content of your DVD onto another DVD without decrypting it. So deCSS has essentially nothing to do with copy protection. What it mostly does is try to ensure that only licensed players can play DVD's - and that's an entirely different matter. The thing that makes it (maybe) illegal in the USA is the DMCA which makes it illegal to break the DVD encryption mechanism. However, it's a dumb law because you can break the copyright laws without decrypting the disk - and you need to decrypt the data in order to do something (like playing your legally purchased DVD on a Linux machine) that isn't illegal otherwise. I suspect that the main reason for encrypting the content in the first place was to prohibit un-licensed DVD players - because those can let you do things like skipping all of the intro-crap and circumventing the region-encoding (for example to play legally purchased Japanese or European DVD's in the USA). The law in the US is a total mess right now. SteveBaker 15:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, but it did not address my actual question at all. I do know that CSS does not prevent copying, and is only intended to prevent playback by unlicensed players. I merely added the disclaimer to prevent people from freaking out when they saw I am ripping DVDs. My question is, how can I rip the menus as well as the actual movies? JIP | Talk 15:34, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

You need to use something other than mplayer, I imagine. There are DVD rippers that can rip menus—MacTheRipper, for example, does this readily. My bet is that the easiest way to do this would be to get something that would just create a disk image of the DVD, which would reproduce the menus just the same way. --24.147.86.187 20:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Neither MacTheRipper or DVD Shrink are available for Linux. I tried making a raw disk image with dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.img but it stopped at a read error after only a few megabytes. JIP | Talk 20:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The deal is that if you rip the DVD into an unencrypted MPEG or AVI or something - then you've lost all hope of having the menus work. It's got to remain as a copy of the original DVD for that to work. I wonder though - do you actually need a bit-for-bit rip of the DVD? Can't you just copy the files off of it? I believe that DVD's have a proper directory structure - you can mount them and look around the files that are there. SteveBaker 20:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I can mount the DVD and look at the files. But Xine (the only player I have found to play CSS-encrypted content) can't play the files directly, it has to go through a DVD driver. Xine can either play the DVD directly from the drive, or the VOB files MPlayer creates from individual titles. I have found k9copy, which claims to copy DVDs with menus. So far I have been successful in creating a copy of an encrypted DVD but I haven't yet tried to play it. JIP | Talk 21:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it works. Reading the DVD takes only about ten minutes but writing it to the ISO image takes well over an hour. Xine can't play the resulting ISO file directly, but if I tell it that the DVD device is in fact in that ISO file and not in /dev/dvd, then it will play the DVD just nicely from dvd://. Now I just need to find a way to tell Xine the driver location from the command line. JIP | Talk 22:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I've found dvdbackup to do a great job of copying DVDs. It produces a simple decrypted copy of the files on the DVD which can be played by xine or burnt with standard dvd+rw-tools. Both should be available as packages on Debian-based distros at least (apt-get install dvdbackup dvd+rw-tools). I've never experienced the kind of slowdown you describe either; the only explanation for it that I can think of is that k9copy is actually recompressing the video streams rather than just copying them verbatim. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It is recompressing them. One of the DVDs I tried (World Bodypainting Festival 2007 official DVD) has over 6 GiB of material, according to the size of the raw title files that MPlayer writes. However, k9copy wrote it all to a 4 GiB ISO file. JIP | Talk 15:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Solitaire

This is something I've wondered for years, but when playing Solitaire, are all of the cards given a deck and a value from the beginning of each game, or is the identity of each card only decided once it has been turned over. In other words, is a whole virtual set of cards dealt everytime you click "Deal", or does the computer only assign to each card a value (from the remaining possible values, i.e. those not already face-forward) once it has been turned over? I.e. will two players playing an identical game of Solitaire encounter the same cards at the bottom of each of the piles?

This is something I've wondered since the first time I played Solitaire... which is a long time indeed, and I figured that this would be the best place to ask as I figure one must know what the Solitaire codes and what-have-you contain before being able to correctly answer.

Thanks in advance, Ninebucks 13:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but I do know that Minesweeper "deals" out a whole field of mines but if you end up clicking on a mine for the first click, it will quickly re-deal things so that you don't just end the game. (You can test this by using the XYZZY code to detect where mines are without having them revealed.) That being said, I find it unlikely that Solitaire doesn't deal the entire deck into an array and just use that as a reference to the cards—it would be easier to just do that all at once than do re-calculate it for each card. --24.147.86.187 13:33, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It probably depends on the game's implementation, I can't be sure since I don't have access to the source code. But I would assume it'd be like a shuffled and dealt deck of real cards, which, obviously, are pre-defined. For snappier gameplay and the ability to pre-cache images, I bet it'd make sense to define the order of dealt cards. -- JSBillings 14:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It's hard to know how someone else's program works without seeing the source code - but it wouldn't be a lot more difficult to maintain a list of cards that are 'in play' and a list that are available to be played and to just pick a random card from the 'available' list each time you turned over a card rather than shuffling the deck at the outset. On balance, I suspect they shuffle the deck just once - but it's really impossible to know without reverse-engineering the code or obtaining a copy of the sources. SteveBaker 15:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

To the player, there is no difference. The probabilities are the same. --131.215.166.100 18:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes - certainly. Although quite a few people would be nervous that the computer was somehow 'cheating' by not shuffling the cards first! SteveBaker 20:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• In 2004, parts of the Windows source code were leaked. I'm sure you could find a copy kicking around and see for yourself how they do it. --Sean 21:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It would have to be pre-determined at least partially, because you can tell windows solitare to let you go through the deck multiple times and it retains its order (so the top card turned over will always be the top one turned over until you re-deal). Kuronue | Talk 04:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

hot swap able hard disk

can we load operating system from hot swap able hard disk? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.209.115.137 (talk) 15:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It really depends on the hardware. All the disks in my servers are hot-swappable, in a RAID1 configuration. -- JSBillings 15:40, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Windows Aero Problems

I purchased a new computer around 2 months ago and it has Windows Vista Home Premium. At the same time, my brother purchased an identical computer. For the first few weeks all the features of Windows Aero worked perfectly. However, now the window translucency and the "window select" thing still work, but the "live thumbnails" on the taskbar steadfastly refuse to work no matter what I do. My brother's computer works fine. What is going on? 69.205.180.123 16:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you turned them off in the taskbar properties. Leave them off, they're a drain on performance --froth^t 17:03, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

My comp can easily handle it, (it has a 2.0GHz AMD dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM) That was the problem i.e. I had it turned off in the taskbar menu. Stupid me. (bangs head on desk)69.205.180.123 00:01, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Posting not showing up???

I posted a new article and it doesn't come up in the search function??? It is listed and accessable in "my contributions", so I'm confused!

The title is: Human Capital Integrated

Thank you,

--Mwoodward 16:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 17:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The article is there - but I'm going to nominate it for a speedy deletion. Mr. Woodward - it is *NOT* OK to write articles about yourself or promote your own business on Wikipedia. SteveBaker 17:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Kinda irrelevant, but for future reference, this question would have been more suited for the Help desk. Algebraist 19:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It takes some time after a change for it to be reflected in the search. Graeme Bartlett 22:03, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Plasma TV break in period?

I just bought a snazzy new Plasma TV from one of the big electronics stores in the US. The salesperson recommended that I run the set for two months (!) at reduced brightness in order to 'break in' the plasma elements. (In fact, this particular set has a 'low power' mode that reduces the screen brightness dramatically) I've never heard of anything like this. Does this break-in period really prolong the life of the TV screen and reduce burn-in later on? Or he feeding me some crazy pro-LCD propaganda? Do I really need to watch a dim screen for 8 weeks? --24.249.108.133 21:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

When we bought our plasma, the guy said to play it at low brightness for 16-24 working hours, which we took to mean that when we had watched tv for a total of 24 hours since making the purchase, it was safe to turn it up to maximum brightness.69.205.180.123 00:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Go to www.google.com and type in plasma break in. There are discussions and manufacturers' recommendations[1] out there. I hadn't heard of this either... Weregerbil 11:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Read about this a while ago (I think it was on these very pages..). Essentially, plasma TVs often have the problem of some phosphors becoming less bright before others - with the ones that usually do not fade being the ones corresponding to black bars on movies, as they are lit up much less often. So essentially they have you dim the entire set so that there's an even burnout pattern - otherwise, the areas usually black will appear brighter than the duller phosphors in the middle when watching TV or properly sized movies. This might be incorrect, but it's what I remember. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 05:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

ancestor to photocopier

when i was a kid in grades 1 to 3, the school had a machine that you'd turn a hand crank and it would apply special blue paper onto many many copies, each copy would be sligthly fainter than the previous one. They used that for making many copies of tests, etc. (i was born in 1978, so i was ages 5 to 8 at that time). what exactly is this called?--Sonjaaa 00:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

A mimeograph, or it could be a Spirit duplicator. DuncanHill 00:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Reading through the articles, if the prints were purpley/blueish, and had an interesting smell, then it was a spirit duplicator. I think that when I was a lad, the name "mimeograph" was used rather generically for both types of machine. DuncanHill 00:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It was definitely purply blue, but i don't remember if there was a smell or not.--Sonjaaa 02:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Duncan. The process that Wikipedia calls a spirit duplicator was commonly used in the schools I attended in the 1960s and 1970s. Not only do I remember the alcohol smell on freshly made copies -- I would definitely describe the ink color as purple, not blue -- but I prepared some masters myself to be reproduced that way. (As I recall, you had to write fairly heavily, either using a typewriter or pressing hard with a ballpoint pen.) But what we always called them was ditto or mimeograph copies, even though Wikipedia says a mimeograph is something else.

It is not really correct to describe the process as an "ancestor to the photocopier", since the point of a photocopier is that it can copy any original image. Since the process uses a specially prepared master, it's more like a cheap alternative to printing. But of course it was used in some situations where people would use a photocopier today.

Incidentally, this seems more like a Science or Miscellaneous question than a Computing question. --Anonymous, edited 04:00 UTC, October 9, 2007.

I use Computing section for Computing and Technology.--Sonjaaa 08:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

You might also want to check Cyanotype - that's another ancient duplicating process, and the origin of the term "Blueprint". SteveBaker —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 13:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

CAS programming on PC

Hi,
Does anyone know a program I can use to create/edit Ti-89 files (.89p) on my computer? Massive thanks for anyone that can tell me!!! --Fir0002 07:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• See TI-89#Programming and TIGCC. --Sean 16:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Who pays for Internet backbone? How much websites pay?

We all know consumers pay for bandwidth. But do companies like Google pay for any bandwidth? I assume that the $20 which a Internet subscriber/ user pays to an ISP is for both getting connection in to my house and at the same time, it also pays for my usage for the ISP to laying cables across oceans and deserts. I think that the whole Internet consisting of cables across the world is paid by subscribers of ISPs. How about Google? Do they pay only for uploading data to Internet backbones or do they also share cost of laying backbones across the earth? What is the situation? The Internet consists of both websites and web surfers. Do they contribute equally to the underlying capacity or do consumers pay more? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.23.251 (talk) 09:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Generally, you pay your ISP and the ISP pays the telecom companies that own the backbone. Google is too big to use an ISP - so they'll be paying for their bandwidth to the telecom companies directly. Not all companies work like that - the smaller ones typically use an ISP just like you and I do - but everyone pays according to the bandwidth of their connection to the backbone. Indirectly, both you and Google are paying for the bandwidth for the up and downstream data that you exchange with them. Whether that is a 'fair' split is tricky and gets you into the issues of network neutrality. Google (specifically) are starting to buy networking resources - so gradually, they are becoming another telecom company and they'll (presumably) get revenue from selling that bandwidth to ISP's and other companies who need it and cut their own connection costs in the process. Also, many, many websites out there (like mine for example) are paid for by individuals who use a web hosting service (mine costs ~$100 per year[2]). Web hosting services also pay the telecom companies for access. So it costs me $100 per year to give you access to the stuff on my website, my son's website and my car club's website. SteveBaker 13:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

This certainly counts as original research, but I do not believe Google is intending to sell its networking resources to outside parties. In my estimate, they are solely seeking to mitigate their internal networking needs (with such a massive infrastructure and web-crawling, they are using a lot of long-haul bandwidth!) From the rate at which they purchase longhauls, and their marketing strategy, it seems highly unlikely that they will provide network service to end-users (and almost certainly not to residential networks). However, you may get a good laugh from their last April Fool's Joke, [3]. Nimur 22:46, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For the love of God, I don't think that original research is an issue on the reference desk. Donald Hosek 00:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It's more tongue-in-cheek I think --froth^t 02:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Hah, steve's web host looks like the april fool's joke- a fat kid sleeping is their company image :) Nice offer though. (isn't 5TB overkill for a static personal website?) --froth^t 02:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Unix question: Getting file name if one exists

In Unix, how can I get the name of the first file to match a given pattern, or an empty string (0 bytes) if there is no such file? The following sort of works:

ls *.iso | awk "{print \$1}" >filename

The file filename ends up containing the name of the first .iso file found or as empty if no such files were found. But if there are no such files, I also get the error message:

*.iso: no such file or directory

How to do this more cleanly? JIP | Talk 09:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

How about

ls -d *.iso 2>/dev/null | head -1

or if you want it in a variable

X=`ls -d *.iso 2>/dev/null | head -1`

The "2>" makes stderr go somewhere (in Bourne shell; C shell has different syntax). "ls -d" in case there is a directory that matches. Weregerbil 09:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• In a program I would do:

find  -maxdepth 1 -name '*.iso' -type f | head -1 > filename

--Sean 16:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I managed to make this shell script:

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" != "" ]
    then filename=$1
    else ls 2>/dev/null *.iso | awk "{print \$1}" >/tmp/iso_file_name
    filename=`cat /tmp/iso_file_name`
fi
if [ "$filename" != "" ]
    then xine dvd://`readlink -f $filename`
    else xine dvd://
fi

This will make Xine play an ISO image of a DVD if one is in the current directory or is given as a commandline parameter, otherwise it will make Xine play a real DVD. JIP | Talk 18:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Careful with the awk bit there. In all versions of ls that I'm familiar with, if the output is directed to a pipe then you get one filename per line, so if there are multiple *.iso files, /tmp/iso_file_name will contain all of them. With the ls behavior I'm familiar with, I'd use this for the key bit:

ls *.iso 2>/dev/null | sed q

(sed q is a way to select just the first line; use head -1 if you prefer.)

This also avoids the problem that if any of the filenames could contain spaces, $1 in the awk code would print only the first word of the name. The final $filename will still go wrong if there are spaces; you should put double quotes around it. --Anon, 22:46 UTC, October 10, 2007.

rename

Resolved

Can someone logged in rename Viking: Battle of Asgard to Viking: Battle for Asgard. Thanks87.102.87.171 13:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks87.102.18.10 14:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It's done, but in future, note that this is not what the refdesk is for: the help desk might be more appropriate. Algebraist 14:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Using a VPN for only SOME applications

I have a direct tcp/ip connection, and then VPN which also has TCP/IP. The VPN is required for work-related stuff, but it's (of course) slower than my home connection. The downside of this is that when I use the VPN, ALL my tcp/ip traffic is slower-- not just the few connections to the work intranet. If I connect to the work server over the vpn, it works. But if I try to watch Youtube in a different window, for example, it doesn't work, because it's trying to send the traffic THROUGH the VPN, instead of just sending it to me directly.

Is there a way I could specify only SOME applications access the internet through VPN? Like maybe have Opera be for the VPN, but Firefox be for the direct connection?

There must be some way-- it's a mega pain having to completely close my VPN connection every time I want to do anything that requires high bandwidth. --Wouldbewebmaster 15:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Would split tunneling work? That would enable you to access your intranet via the VPN and the internet through your home connection. Instructions for Windows are here. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 15:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Skimming the articles, it looks like those solutions decide whether to pass through VPN or not based on destination IP. Unfortunately that won't work, because I will need to connect to SOME websites through the VPN. So, for example, let's say we have site license that allows everyone at work to connect to a database like JSTOR. That traffic needs to go through the VPN, but traffic to Google does not. Since it's impossible to predict ahead of time which IPs are going to need to go through which connection, routing by ip won't work.

However, I could do some port translation, so if there was a way to "Route by port" or "Route by application"-- those would work if possible. --Wouldbewebmaster 16:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• How about just setting up a web proxy that always uses the VPN for connectivity? Then you could point one browser session at the proxy, and just use that browser for your VPN sites. --Sean 20:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

That's be awesome if it's possible. Is there a way to set up a windows proxy so that it will send all it's traffic to the VPN? --Wouldbewebmaster 22:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

UK Television Graphics - Produced How?

I'm not sure if this should be in the computing or entertainments section but here goes! Does anyone know what software / computer systems are used for producing television graphics in the UK (Channel four / BBC etc, I know ITV stuff is farmed out)? The sort that you find on the news / documetaries and daytime television shows where the graphics have to be produced quickly but still at a very high quality. Somehow, I can't see someone fiddling around in Adobe After Effects for hours! Any information would be very gratefully received. I think Zaxwerks Invigorator is used extensively in the US but UK stuff has a much less sparkly and low key appearance. Weather reports change from hour to hour, again it has to be a pretty fast and easy to use system. Custom software maybe? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.176.45 (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Chyron is a generic trademark for broadcast CG systems in general. Apparently, in the UK, they're called an Aston. --Mdwyer 19:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't got a clue about titles for news reports and stuff, but the BBC use Weatherscape XT for their weather reports. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 19:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Back in the 90's, Quantel products had a huge presence in UK televisions. Today, I'm not so sure. Desktop computing speed has increased dramatically. I worked in TV news graphics in a major top 10 market for almost a decade. We did everything in Photoshop, After Effects, and ElectricImage. Many of the daily promos were edited with Avids and Final Cut Pro. Most on-air station graphics are reusable background elements with only the text being changed daily. The design company who made the original backgrounds, TVdb, used Lightwave for 3D elements, but everything was run through After Effects after that. --24.249.108.133 16:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

October 9

Nvidia GeForce 8300GS

Hi,

I've just ordered my parents a new pc with a video card "256mb NVIDIA GeForce 8300GS Turbocache graphics card". Question...Does this card have its own memory or is that 256mb coming from my RAM/PC somwhere else? Also is it a decent card? Basically i'd be happy if it can play new games like Half Life 2 Episode 2 at a reasonable level, but have no idea if it will (though i'll probably just buy it and find out what kinda level I can play it at). Also do video-cards get used when using programs like Adobe Lightroom? ny156uk 21:05, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It has it's own memory. And it's a pretty good card. :) --76.213.142.41 21:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Your card is probably the lowest in the GeForce 8 Series. Get an GeForce 8500GT, for me it was around $110 AUD. Overclocking it to a 600MHz core, Half-Life 2 runs with no lag at 1680x1050, all effects high, 16xAF and 4xAA. Of course, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 demands more than Half-Life 2. According to some simple (and possibly incorrect) calculations, your card should be 4 to 8 times slower than mine. I would guess that Episode 2 would play alright at 1024x768, all effects high, 4xAF and possibly 4xAA. That's only my guess though. BTW, TurboCache means the card (mostly) uses system RAM. So, I'm guessing your card only has maybe 64MB of onboard RAM. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 23:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I would imagine this card is equivalent to a 128mb 6600GT or so. Don't be expecting to play on anything other than low. I am amazed at how many people buy budget graphics cards around $70 when they could pay $20-$30 more for a vastly superior one like the 8600 or even a 7 series. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 02:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey, don't insult the 6600GT; my 3 year old system (Sempron 3100+, Nforce3 MB, 1.5GiB ram, 6600GT AGP 128MiB) can play Team Fortress with everything on high, can't try episode 2 right now though since it's still decrypting... --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not insulting the 6600GT, it was one of the most underrated cards for quite a few years, easily the best buy for a while. However, I had a 6600GT 256MB with a P4 @ 2.4ghz and 2GB of the best damn DDR RAM you could buy and barely squeaked by (20-30fps) on "Medium" in Battlefield II. I also dislike when people automatically assume the 8xxx series is going to be faster than previous generations, as was assumed by the OP, because often a 7xxx card at a similar or lower price, while lacking DX10 functionality, is vastly superior in benchmarks and everyday usage than anything the budget 8xxx cards throw down. Since the G92's going to feature in a new 8xxx series card at or slightly below the 8800GTS 320MB's performance (which I own, and am very happy with!), somewhere in the middle of November, prices may fall drastically in a few months on 8800GTS and 8600GTS/GT cards as well. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

On this topic, how long do you think a 7900 GS (AGP) will last in terms of playing games at around 1024 or 1280 resolution? I've currently got it overclocked to 600 mhz gpu core and 700 mhz memory and it works fine (most settings turned on) in 1280 resolution for almost all games (currently playing Test Drive Unlimited and Bioshock) Sandman30s 14:06, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The 7900's a good card. I'd say you'll have DX10 games becoming the norm (and therefore the card just won't work period) before the 7900 has trouble playing most games. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 01:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Might as well ask another question - are these 8-series cards being touted for DX10 compatibility? Even though they are not superior in benchmarking, they can at least run DX10 games. When will DX9 be fully de-supported in games? Sandman30s 14:06, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd give it about a year. Most of the mid-range 8xxx cards probably won't be able to run DX10 games at anything other than "low", sadly. I didn't buy my 8800GTS for DX10, I bought it for performance. Until the 89xx or 9xxx series, you won't be seeing "run everything at max settings" in a DX10 game. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 01:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Well the card above (in my original question) is the 'standard' one with a Dell they're getting. Unfortunately they're not into games but obviously I would be pleased if it is capable of playing new ones, even if it is just at an average standard. I've totally got no idea about what's good/bad so thanks for the input everyone. Also does anybody know whether it does or doesn't help improve running of programs like the affore mentioned Lightroom? I know RAM/Processor come into it, but does a better card boost performance on programs such as this or is it purely 3d work? ny156uk 16:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why you'd buy from an OEM, even if it's your non-gamer parents, you can get a much better deal just by putting it together yourself. I recently put together a "wish list" on newegg for a budget computer with a 8600GT, Pentium D (these are overclockable to around 3.2ghz, allowing it to actually be superior to the Core 2 Duo), and two gigs of ram for under $600. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 01:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, my Core 2 Duo (2.00GHz) is estimated to be equivalent to a 4.94GHz single core, so dual is significantly better. And I've read several benchmarks about the latest DX10 games, and the 8800GTX can run every one of them (so far) on maximum graphics and a resolution of 1600x1200 at over 25 FPS. Not bad, IMO (my integrated graphics can run Age of Empires III on minimum and a stunning 10 FPS!). · AndonicO ^Talk 13:19, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of the 8300, but I'm sure it can play HL2 on at least low-mid settings (HL2's graphics aren't as demanding as other recent games); you may want to upgrade/overclock if you want any higher visuals though. · AndonicO ^Talk 13:19, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

PS- Flattening a vector

In Adobe Photoshop CS, is there anyway I can flatten a series of vector shapes on different layers so that they still retain their vector properties, but does not allow anyone to edit each individual component? For example: If I constructed a vector silhouette of a person, I have the head on one layer, left arm on another, etc..., is there anyway I can combine all of them into one? At the moment, If i click "Flatten image", PS flattens all the layers, but turns it into a raster. Is there anyway I can flatten, but keep the infinitely scalable properties of a vector? Thanks. Acceptable 21:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't find a simple way to do it. The easiest way I've found is:

• Copy and paste each of the individual shapes onto one layer. They should retain their position on the canvas
• Select the combined shape with the Move Tool
• Go to Edit > Define Custom Shape... and name the shape
• Select the Custom Shape Tool and select your shape in the shape picker
• Draw the shape on the canvas

This was in CS2; apologies if it doesn't work in CS — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 22:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Why not put their layers into a folder and then link all objects in the folder? That way changing one of them changes them all, and you can just select the folder itself if you want to select all of them at once. --24.147.86.187 12:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I plan to send it to someone so that they can resize it to however large they want it for printing. But I don't want them to be able to change any of the parts easily. Acceptable 01:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

If you can export the vector to SVG format, you can import it in Inkscape and join all the like elements (those with the same colour and border properties) using the path->union command. [To make sure, I just checked the output of taking the union of a set of overlapping rectangles in Inkscape: it outputs a single complex polyline, which would be a royal pain to edit]. -- PrettyDirtyThing 11:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

October 10

NTLDR and Vista

Alright, so I built a giant professional computer rig and ordered Vista OEM 32-bit. The problem... when I first booted up vista after installing it I got the message "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart". I pressed a key and it loaded vista fine. The thing is that, I can't access the boot menu (like being able to boot with safe mode, which I REALLY need) and I can't add more than one OS. I plugged in my older HDD to transfer the data from it to the new computer and I got a message about an error loading the OS (when I removed the extra disk it went back to normal). How do I fix this? It happened from the get go although I have not seen "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart" since.

Stats: Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo, Intel D975XBX2 mobo, Nvidia 8800 Ultra, 4GB memory (2 sticks), ASUS Xonar D2 7.1. 2 Seagate Barracuda 500GB drives (one is being used, although the other is completely empty) I have a USB floppy drive but no floppy disks to use (except for RAID floppies, but I will not overwrite them). --76.213.142.41 19:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like your other hard drive or your DVD drive are in front of the main HDD in the boot order. Move your main hard drive to the first position in the BIOS setup utility and use the boot device menu (mine's F12) if you ever need to boot from a CD. I have no idea why NTLDR would be having problems.. you can try restoring it with this utility (use the /vista flag) or even the XP recovery console (boot an XP disk and hit R)- I'm pretty sure that fixboot and fixmbr work fine if you run them over a vista installation --froth^t 22:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

They don't. MBR in XP and Vista are completely different animals, but that doesn't matter in this case since it's obviously okay or else Vista wouldn't boot. NTLDR is Windows's bootloader. To get to safe mode, press F8 just before the point where the error message came up earlier to bring up the menu. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 02:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I went into the BIOS and put the HDDs in first in the boot order. After the intel splash screen it still just jumps straight to loading vista, however. I still wish for a boot screen to be present. I also need it because I need other options than just standard safe mode, and I need to recover this data of the other hard disk in question! --76.213.142.41 20:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh is that your problem? Vista never displays a menu unless you have multiple NT operating systems set up in the Boot Configuration Data --froth^t 23:01, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

No, when I tried to load more than 1 operating system on it said "Error loading operating system" or something like that! Maybe it's boot managers conflicting? The vista harddisk probably has the Vista bootloader process on it. The other disk I'm trying to recover data from is XP and has the older NTLDR loader. Is that the problem...? --69.152.207.86 03:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Recovering older versions of photos?

I had a family photo, and i may have accidently saved it down in photoshop as a compressed file, like, the original photo i took 5mp and was 2.5mb, and i still have a copy of the photo, but its only 1024x768 now, its still quite printable but i wouldnt mind the original back, but i may have either saved that over the top of the original or just deleted it. This happened about 3 years ago and since then i have formatted and reinstalled windows many times, i have no idea what the original was called ect. Should i just give up hope, or is it possible to get it back? i mean the photo wasnt priceless or anything, i took about 5 photos of that same shot so i wouldnt bother paying heaps for a pro to get it back but this one was the best i took. Thanks... USRM000107 04:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

No there's almost no chance that you can recover that photo. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean you still have the original photo, but can't remember where you put and what it's called? In that case image search might help. I've never tried that sort of thing, but you might look into it. DirkvdM 06:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Intel Turbo Memory

I've been a little bit out of the computer-scene for a while, and I was suprised to see 1 gig of Intel Turbo Memory listed on the specs for a laptop that I'm planning on buying this week. I've just read up the article on it, and I just want to clarify something.

Am I correct in assuming that there must be a dedicated chip to the memory, i.e. that it can't be combined with any other cache memory/memory chip, and that the "1 gig" of turbo memory won't be subtracted from any other memory source on the system? The system itself has 2gb DD2 memory, and I'm wondering if the second gig isn't just "pretending" to be turbo memory, or something like that. I just don't want to be tricked into thinking that I'm going to get more for my money than I really am! Hah. Thanks always. 210.138.109.72 06:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Turbo Memory is a pseudo-cache blob of NAND memory. It's completely separate from RAM, and simply offloads some data from the hard disk so that it can be accessed quicker and without spinning up the HD. However, it's been shown to be completely useless in testing. The 2GB DDR2 RAM is completely separate, in both form and function, and you're not going to get cheated out of a gig. You should be more concerned about the graphics chipset and whether it's stealing memory. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:38, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It's got a gforce card for the video so I don't think there are any problems there, though that sucks about the turbo memory : (. Thanks for the help! 210.138.109.72 07:43, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Nested RAID

What is the difference between RAID 5+1 and RAID 5 plus one more desk ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.241.128.189 (talk) 12:19, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

According to the RAID article, "RAID 5+1: mirror striped set with distributed parity (some manufacturers label this as RAID 53)". If I recall correctly, that means that you have two separate RAID5 arrays mirrored in a RAID1 configuration. That means you have to have at least 6 disks in a RAID5+1 array. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsbillings (talk • contribs) 22:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Faking a unix tape drive

I'm tweaking my linux tape backup script, and I'd like to test changes (stuff about handing "tape is full" issues) out on a small tape device (rather than the gargantual actual DLT tape, where filling the tape takes several hours). I'd hoped I could make a fake tape device (much like one can make a loopback filesystem with /dev/loop/..), but I can't figure out how. The /dev/loop mechanism provides a block special device, not a character one. Is it possible to make a similar loopback character special device, such that one can tar stuff in and out of it, and that mt is happy to treat it as if it were a really tape? -- 84.45.132.96 14:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I *really* wish I had an answer for you. You should be able to use a file as a tape device, but it won't give you the end-of-tape messages, which is what you really want. You might check with the 'ftape' developers to see if they ever came up with a fake-tape device. --Mdwyer 21:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

How to increase the time of timeouts?

I am using Mozilla Firefox and I cannot seem to access the number of my edits on Wannabe Kate tool. After 2 minutes exactly, this message appears: The connection was reset. The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading. The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments. If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection. If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web. The values on my Mozilla Firefox is this: accessibility.typeaheadfind.enabletimeout -Value false. accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout - Value 5000 network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout - Value 600 network.http.keep-alive.timeout - Value 1800 network.proxy.failover_timeout - Value 1800. Moreover, remarkably, I can access the edit counts of this user as well whose maximum contributions for the month of May was around 9 000 edits (more than the 7000 edits made by me in the month of July). There is also a statement on top of the page which states Too many pages fetched. Terminating. Does anyone have any idea how can I change the length of my timeout? --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 14:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• TCP's "Connection reset" means that there was an unrecoverable error in the network connection, not that your browser got bored and timed out. There's probably not a lot you can do to improve this situation, as it's likely to be a problem on the server side related to load. --Sean 22:39, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiMedia private pages

Is it possible using the Wikimedia software to have a group of privileged users in some fashion and then flag a page so that only that group of privileged users can see it?  — Timotab ^{Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!)} 18:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be against the spirit of Wiki. Still, check the mediawiki developer sites to see what options you have. --Mdwyer 21:06, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It's contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia - but not to Wiki's in general. After all, many companies have Wiki sites that are locked away from the general public behind firewalls (the company I work for certainly does - and so did the company before that). Locking up your Wiki behind a firewall is equivalent to giving access only to privilaged users - so there would be no logical difference in having some kind of a privilage lock in the software. However, I don't think MediaWiki has this feature (or at least if it does, there isn't any obvious way to turn it on). I have godlike powers on the Wiki that I run at home and on the Mini Owners of Texas Wiki - and I don't see any way to do what the OP is asking on either of those setups. SteveBaker 14:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Though it is contrary to the spirit of Wiki, there are several extensions available which provide the facility in different ways. At my work we use something resembling http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NamespacePermissions (it's not quite the same, so I'm guessing that we have an older version of it, but I haven't looked in detail). We try hard to persuade our users they don't need private pages, but sometimes they manage to convince us they do, and we set up a namespace for them. --ColinFine 21:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the boot sector in WinXP.

I did a bad thing.

My home is generally a Windows-free area - we run Linux everywhere...except on my Wife's laptop which has to run some god-awful business software or other.

Last week, I borrowed my wife's WinXP laptop - and, needing to run Linux, I plugged a 300Gb USB drive into the beast and installed SuSE Linux on the USB drive. Changing the BIOS to try to boot from USB before the internal hard drive should have allowed me to run Linux with the USB drive plugged in - and to leave the laptop COMPLETELY working.

This would have worked out just fine...except the I didn't notice that the stoopid SuSE Linux installer wrote the GRUB boot loader onto the internal hard drive instead of the USB hard drive. So now the machine won't boot into Windows anymore...which means I'm in deep trouble with my wife (NOT GOOD).

OK - so I grab the WinXP (Home edition) CD's and presume that I can just re-install the boot loader somehow...but (just my luck) the CD is scratched to hell - and (of course) my wife never made a backup. I went to Microsoft's web site and they want $35 to replace the CD set. (Ack!)

So - is there anything I can download or create from Linux (or at a pinch) another WinXP machine that will enable me to restore the boot stuff? Remember I can run Linux, download from the web and write CD's, I can even mount the WinXP drive under Linux and look at the contents - and I have access to a WinXP machine at work (but not the original CD's for it). I also have the product ID thingy to install Windows with if I can get an ISO of the CD or something.

Help!! SteveBaker 18:47, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

This could be illegal and highly unsafe, but have you considered bittorrenting the windows iso? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 20:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Go to [[4]], grab a boot disk with fdisk on it, and once you have it, run the command "fdisk /mbr". That should fix you right up! You might also consider uninstalling grub. I might be on crack, but I seem to recall that some boot loaders will backup your original boot sector when they install. Good luck, Steve! You help out a lot on the ref desks, and I hope it can return the favor. --Mdwyer 21:04, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The site I linked wants money. You can probably steal a boot sector from another machine. All you need is "dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/bootsector bs=512 count=1" to steal it, then reverse the steps to write the boot sector back to another hard drive. --Mdwyer 21:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• How about you make a Windows boot disk on another Windows machine, boot into that, and do an "fdisk /mbr"? If that doesn't work, you could resort to this. --Sean 22:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

How about the Super GRUB CD? Has a very easy option to repair the MBR for Windows. Splintercellguy 00:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

1. Acquire an XP disk. Burn from ISO or get it from a friend or from work.. XP disks are everywhere nowadays, just reach under your butt and chances are there's one right there!
2. Boot from it
3. Hit R to enter recovery mode
4. run fixmbr and fixboot

By the way IIRC there's something weird you have to do to instal grub to a USB drive.. I don't know, possibly not --froth^t 04:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks! I'll make a boot disk on another WinXP machine here at work. I wasn't sure that would work between computers with different license ID's - but if it does, that's the simplest solution. Thanks! SteveBaker 13:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

From Cygwin on WinXP Pro, I ran this: dd if=/dev/sda of=foo bs=512 count=1

That got me a file with an MD5Sum of aafa19e1a45900c1f0d5c9f3009e3674 --Mdwyer 17:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

A nobrainer would be to install a small Linux somewhere, just to install GRUB or whichever bootoader (unless you know how to do that without the complete Linux-install). After that, you can remove Linux again, if you don't need it. (Might be a good time to install the latest version Suse 10.3 is out now.) Btw, may I advise you to install some windows in your house so you can look outside once in a while to clear your head, which may help to solve problems like this. :) DirkvdM 06:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried that but there were some pretty hefty dependencies.. turns out you have to bash big holes in your wall! --froth^t 02:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a design pattern for taking a joined query result and getting it into a hierarchical data structure?

The simplest version table A and table B with a 1-to-many relationship between the two. I want to do a query SELECT a.c1, a.c2, b.d1, b.d2 FROM a INNER JOIN b ON a.id=b.aid and store the result in a data structure along the lines of

<code>
[
 {c1=>val, c2=>val, [d1=>val, d2=>val]}
]
</code>

where the square brackets indicate arrays and the curly braces structures. Worse still is the case where b is joined to yet another table so that we get nested arrays. I'm doing too much cut and paste coding on this. (As an aside, the language is PHP using MDB2 to talk to the database.) Donald Hosek 18:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, your result set is always 2-dimensional using any ANSI-compliant Relational DB. I assume you want to create a tree structure where for certain combinations of [c1, c2], you want to "drill down" into subsets of [d1, d2], or even further if joining to another table. I'm not familiar with PHP but I know in a typical windows development tool, you can make use of a "Tree-view" or similar tree (hierarchy) component. You would have to populate this from your flat result set using some typically recursive code. It all depends how you want to manipulate and present your data. Sandman30s 11:31, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

how virgin mobile sugarmama works

I heard that there are three types of advertising sugarmama has. 1) text messaging ads, 2) video ads, 3) filling forms. Can you explain a bit of the procedure of these three types of ads. If you know only one or two types, please explain. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.123.57 (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Visual Basic 6

Hi, i was wondering if anybody here had knowledge about the audio aspects of VB6, I have the following code that lets me play one song

   Private Sub Form_Load
   mmcMP3.DeviceType = "MPEGVideo" '\\Change MCI device type to MPEG 
   mmcMP3.Filename = "C:\Myaudio.Mp3" '\\designate file to be played
   mmcMP3.Command = "Open" '\\Open file for playing
   mmcMP3.Command = "Play" '\\Play file
   End Sub

But the song only plays once, I was just wondering if you know how to get some other songs playing after the song that is playing has finished or/and how to get the song to loop so that it plays again and again

That would be much appricated, many thanks, POKEMON RULES 21:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't used MCI devices, and I don't use VB6 anymore (VB.NET appears to be the VB way of the future), but I believe you can create a Sub like this:

Private Sub mmcMP3_Done(NotifyCode As Integer)

End Sub

that will be called when the Play command has completed, or something like that. You would then use that sub to again tell it to play, if you wanted it to loop or play something else. --24.147.86.187 22:47, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried do that by entering the following code

   Private Sub mmcMP3_Done(NotifyCode As Integer)
   mmcMP3.Command = "Play"
   End Sub

But it didn't work, maybe I'm putting the code in the wrong place? What code would I need to get other songs playing? Try to be more specific please.

Once again many thanks, POKEMON RULES 23:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you try placing a notifying command like MsgBox("Hello!") in that _Done sub, just to see if it is called at all? If it is being called, then there's probably something else that needs to be done instead of just passing on a "Play" command; if it's not being called, then it probably uses a different callback function. --24.147.86.187 19:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I did what you said

  Private Sub mmcMP3_Done(NotifyCode As Integer)
  mmcMP3.Command = "Play"
  MsgBox ("Hello!")
  End Sub

And the Hello popped up, but the song didn't play again. What different callback function should I try?

Once again many thaks, POKEMON RULES 22:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

ls -l shows asterisks in filetype bit on Solaris 5.10

Does anyone know what these asterisks mean, how they came about, and how to remove them?

Also, when I try to print out a file with an asterisk in the filetype bit, it says file not found. Moreover, notice the asterisk at the end of the first 5 filenames.

e@n[350]cs_a> ls -l
total 12575
-rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt   1290529 Oct 10 17:33 og.3.1.fa.a.top*
-rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt    199609 Oct 10 17:33 og.3.2.fa.a.top*
-rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt    224228 Oct 10 17:33 og.3.3.fa.a.top*
-rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt    670732 Oct 10 17:33 oo.3.1.fa.a.top*
-rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt    332509 Oct 10 17:33 oo.3.3.fa.a.top*
*rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt   1276521 Oct 10 17:33 op.3.1.fa.a.top
*rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt    717249 Oct 10 17:33 op.3.2.fa.a.top
*rwxr-x---   1 iwtt   iwtt   1182111 Oct 10 17:33 op.3.3.fa.a.top

e@n[358]cs_a> head op.3.1.fa.a.top
op.3.1.fa.a.top: No such file or directory

Has anyone experienced this before?

Thanks, --Iwouldntthinkthat 22:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• The stars on the right just mean that the file is a regular file (not a directory or link), and executable. They're displayed because your "ls" command is aliased to something that passes in "-F" or "--classify" (do a "type ls" to see). I don't know about the stars on the left, but I'm guessing they're some nonstandard Unix feature like deleted files that can be undeleted or something like that. They don't get stars at the right because ls only puts stars on executable files, not undeleteable entities, or something like that. Post back here if you find out. --Sean 22:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• • I was able to reproduce your stars by touch "op.3.3.fa.a.top^v^M*" (that is control-V control-M in the file name). Your oo and og files may have a star on the end of the names too without an embedded carriage return. To delete, try typing rm -i op* and answer y to appropriate prompts. Graeme Bartlett 23:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Wow, good call! I didn't think of that. I should have known I was on the wrong track, though, as I went to opensolaris.org and looked at the source for ls, and didn't see a * type. --Sean 04:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

October 11

C Code: Sorting list of pointers

Hello, I am trying to use qsort to sort a list of pointers. My trouble is in the compare function. The compare function is passed pointers to items in the list, which are pointers to the structure. But when I run this data pb1 in the compare function seems to point to rubbish and causes the program to crash. Thanks for any help!

typedef struct
{
	int val;
} MyS;

int compare( const void *arg1, const void *arg2 );

void main2(void)
{
	int i;
	MyS **List;
	List = malloc(sizeof(MyS *) * 10);
	for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
	{
		List[i] = malloc(sizeof(MyS));
		List[i]->val = i;
	}
	
	qsort(List,10,sizeof(MyS *),compare);
}
		
int compare( const void *arg1, const void *arg2 )
{
	MyS **b1;
	MyS **b2;
	MyS *pb1;
	MyS *pb2;
	b1 = (MyS **) arg1;
	b2 = (MyS **) arg2;

	pb1 = *b1;
	pb2 = *b2;

	return ((pb2->val) - (pb1->val));
}

Never mind, I found the mistake, the compare function should be:

int compare( const void *arg1, const void *arg2 )
{
	MyS **b1;
	MyS **b2;

        b1 = (MyS **) arg1;
	b2 = (MyS **) arg2;

	return ((**b1).val - (**b2).val);
}

----Dacium 00:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

But that's the same. --Spoon! 02:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Which is why I still dont see where the mistake is!--Dacium 05:28, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

What mistake? The version you have now is correct. Add a <stdlib.h> include, change void main2 to int main, and it's a complete program that actually works. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 05:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference - the new version of the compare function says b1-b2, the old version had b2-b1 - so the order of the sorting has been reversed. It's nothing to do with all of that in-between assigning of pointers and such. Something really simple like this should work just fine:

int compare( const void *arg1, const void *arg2 )
{
	return (*(const MyS**)arg1)->val - (*(const MyS**)arg2)->val ;
}

(This should also get rid of a couple of compiler warnings about casting away 'const') SteveBaker 14:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you meant MyS *const *. The way you have it is still casting away const from the first layer pointer target (and adding const to the second layer). But if we're gonna critique style, I'd do it like this:

int compare( const void *arg1, const void *arg2 )
{
        MyS *const *p1=arg1;
        MyS *const *p2=arg2;
	return (*p1)->val - (*p2)->val ;
}

Taking advantage of the implicit conversion from void *, there is no need for casts at all. And beware of using a simple subtraction as comparison, when the numbers get big enough it'll overflow and give the wrong answer. It would be more future-proof to return (*p1)->val > (*p2)->val ? 1 : (*p1)->val < (*p2)->val ? -1 : 0 --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Why does Firefox take so bloody long to start downloading things?

I'll open up a few tabs with images, for example, right click, and hit save image as. Then I'll have to wait 7-10 seconds for the download window to pop up, because it's so slow. I don't have any spyware/adware on my machine, and I have 2GB RAM. Is this just more of the same "let's eat tons of memory!" from Firefox, or can this be fixed with some nifty gadget? -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 01:27, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Works perfectly for me. And firefox eats so much memory because it's caching things- not to mention the massively memory-expensive "instant back" feature that lets you hit back/forward and see the site already downloaded and rendered. This can be fully tweaked in about:config--froth^t 04:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I have seen bad save times when 1 - a network drive is broken, or 2 there are thousands of files in the directory to save to. Graeme Bartlett 05:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I use Firefox at home under Linux and at work under msWindows. Under msWindows it's much slower, but then everything is, because it does all sorts of downloads and installs. Once those are over, it works just as fast. Might that be it? DirkvdM 06:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I know what you mean. I have the same problem. I don't know why this is, but it can be partially remedied by by cleaning your download history (the 'clean up' button on the downloads window). That helps a little bit. I do hope they've managed to fix this for firefox 3.0. risk 12:50, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

phd topic

I am searching for a research topic for a phd program. and I prefer it to be in the domain of database and networking —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.78.64.100 (talk) 01:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

This is something you need to talk about with your dissertation advisor. There's no way for us to know what they would consider a good topic. --24.147.86.187 12:58, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at MonetDB. It's an open source research oriented database system. They're always trying to get students to combine development with a research program. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to offer suggestions.

risk 23:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Lance Fortnow has a piece of [good advice] on the topic of choosing a problem to work on. 84.239.133.38 11:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

MP3 to WMA

Could someone do me a favour and encode this, a short mp3 to wma. I don't want to get a program for a 2 second clip. TYVM!

If you don't want to download a program, you could use an online service like Zamzar which converts MP3s to WMA. You may wish to use a disposable email address for this site to avoid receiving unwanted email. --Kateshortforbob 12:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Bitrates when ripping from CD

If I have a track that is encoded at 128kbps, but my programme is instructed to rip at 320 - where does the extra information come from? I appreciate that the track isn't going to magically get any better, but is the extra space simply empty? Is there any difference in quality (bad or good)? Thanks. 195.60.20.81 08:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

The track will be the same quality if ripped at 320kbps, as you said. It may have less read errors than if it were ripped at 128, but there would be not noticeable difference. As for where the extra space comes from, it is probably repeats of the bits in the data stream; like having several CDs playing with the same song on them at the same time - you still hear the song but you've doubled the space requirements. Think outside the box 12:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Any conversion between lossy file formats will only degrade the quality, and any output cannot be better than its input. If you chose VBR for the encoder, I think it would be clever enough to only use enough bits to encode the already compressed music, and the resulting file will only be slightly bigger than the original. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

EMail ID - 3rd post

Please give me theEMial Id OF Tiffany Taylor.Dont make me more mad.Try to understand me.Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.This isthe third time I am asking.09:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)Hedonister —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.2.51 (talk • contribs) 09:51, 11 October 2007

We don't normally have any idea what the email address of an article subject is. Other editors have already responded to your question; please don't keep asking it. EdJohnston 10:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Hedonister- most famous people just don't want to receive emails (or other direct communications) from people they don't know. This is expecially true of female models, actresses, and porn-stars, who have every genuine reason to worry about weirdos and stalkers. So the contacts they publicise (mailing addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses) are for management companies who screen out the weird stuff, respond to most queries themselves (requests for photos etc.), and only forward on a very limited amount of stuff (if any). So the only legitimate way to contact Ms. Taylor is through either her modelling agent or through Playboy. If you did manage to, by some means, get hold of her personal email address she'd a) change it, b) she'd be frightened that her privacy had been violated, and c) she'd quite possibly call the cops. -- PrettyDirtyThing 12:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

And honestly I see no reason why she'd want to talk to you in particular. You love her? Right. Join the club of people who "love" celebrities that they know almost nothing about as people. Even people in prison get dozens of love letters. I'm not sure why you think she'd want your letters, or mine, or anyone else on here—I'm not trying to be particularly harsh here, but that's just how celebrity works. --24.147.86.187 13:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Forget it. Celebrities are putting on an image whenever you see them - they are totally different people when meet them for real. Besides she is NEVER going to reply to any message you send her - at best you'll get a canned reply from a publicist. Honestly, this is ridiculous - get to know some real people - they are much more interesting anyway. But either way, stop asking the reference desk. We already gave you the only answer we can - and (as predicted) it didn't work. You're done. Get over it. SteveBaker 13:52, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

"Creepiest Troll"

• Congratulations, 218.248.2.51/Hedonister! For your obsession with some random porn star, your inability to take the normal social cues that we don't know her email address even if that makes you "more mad", your questionable posting history, and your signing this post on the topic of "can i fuck you?" as "RAPIST", I hereby award you this barnstar for being among the creepiest trolls that Wikipedia has to offer. You've earned it! --Sean 14:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You have to contact Playboy. Tell them why you want to meet her and discuss everything through. If they agree they'll put you in touch with her modelling agent and you can schedule a meeting with her. It is going to cost you in the order of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, and will probably take a long time, because both Taylor and her agent are probably very busy people. If you are looking forward to a personal relationship with Taylor, forget it. Professional meetings are the only thing you can even hope for. JIP | Talk 16:31, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I know Tiffany! Her email address is email removed. She's a big Rage Against the Machine fan... Zach de la Rocha.. roach, get it... anyways, she's a really down to Earth chick, and she always does her best to respond to fan mail. Good luck! Beekone 20:27, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Moreover, even if we did know her email address, we wouldn't be able to divulge it, per Wikimedia's privacy policy. Sorry. --slakr^\ talk / 23:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Dweller's thread of the week. It's an 'out of the box' idea.

Congratulations to all contributing here. This trolltastic debate wins the eighth User:Dweller/Dweller's Ref Desk thread of the week award. Good job. --Dweller 13:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wireless connection: Offline even when online

My Wi-Fi connection is showing "offline" even now - when I'm online! Why is this, what can I do to sort it? It only started yesterday. In "available wireless networks", it shows mine and has the graph of how strong the signal is, but still says 'not connected', though the button at the bottoms does say 'disconnect'. There have been no new installations recently. Any advice? Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 12:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

We'll have a better idea of the problem if you tell us what OS you're using - from the sound of it it sounds like Windows though - i had all sorts of problems with Wireless networks on Windows, particularly before XP SP2. It could however be a router problem, specifically if it's an encrypted network - if you are using Windows you can check the wireless device -right click the wireless icon on the taskbar and click properties i think- and see if you're receiving packets from the router, if not it's likely a router authentication problem. -Benbread 18:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Win XP. Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 18:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that your computer/laptop has a wireless card that isn't connected, while another one is. This can frequently happen on laptops that have internal wireless antennae and someone attaches a wireless card to a PCMCIA slot. The user connects the latter while the former is still disconnected. If that's not the case, you might try rebooting to see if it goes away or simply try disabling and re-enabling the card in network connections. --slakr^\ talk / 23:05, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

RAM question.

I'm buying a new computer in the next few weeks from CyberpowerPC, but I'll be replacing the RAM and motherboard with better ones from Newegg. I was wondering if the 512MB of RAM that will come with the Cyber computer can be used to upgrade my old desktop (which currently only has 512MB as well), regardless of brand, speed, timings, etc., or if they have to be identical in specifications. Thanks. · AndonicO ^Talk 13:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

This really depends on the age of the old RAM modern computers use DDR RAM now while computers from a few years back used SDRAM, generally. You'll have to see if the new RAM is compatible with your old machine, generally a good way to find out is if the new RAM doesn't fit into the new socket :P The real question is what RAM will you be putting in your CyberpowerPC if it's in your old desktop? ;) -Benbread 18:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

My old desktop is a little over two years old; it's a Compaq SR1430NX, not sure about the motherboard/RAM specifications. I'll try to see if the new RAM fits. :) One question though, the new RAM will be DDR2, not DDR; can they both work in tandem? The answer to "the real question": 4GBs of gold. :) Thanks for helping. · AndonicO ^Talk 21:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see DDR2_SDRAM#Backwards_compatibility. Long story short, DDR2 is not designed to be backwards-compatible with DDR1. However, DDR1 that is of higher clock speed is usually backwards compatible with boards that don't support the full speed offered by the DDR1 module. --slakr^\ talk / 23:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note that buying 4GB of memory is useless unless you have a x64 version of Windows. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 02:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

For the old desktop, if it's only two years old, you might be better off just buying a full complement of the fastest memory it will support. My guess is that we are talking $90-120 to put in 2GB, assuming the machine will accept that much. This should give you a speed improvement on the old desktop and allow you do more work, if it will remain in actual service. The rules for mixing RAMs and motherboards are so elaborate that trying to move the surplus memory into it might actually reduce its performance. Your model of Compaq is listed at www.kingston.com, and that model is supposed to accept DDR2 memory. This link at hp.com tells how to check that system for how much memory it will accept. EdJohnston 03:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for helping, it is much appreciated. :) · AndonicO ^Talk 14:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Camcorder / Apple Mac

Does anyone know of a hard disc camcorder that will connect seamlessly to an Apple Mac computer. I have tried the Sony range and they do not recognise Mac's except for still photo's. Help will be appreciated please.--88.110.173.135 13:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the question. Almost all current digital video cameras have a Firewire/IEEE1394/iLink output, and most, if not all, Macintosh computers have a Firewire input. You connect the cable, put the camera in playback mode, fire up iMovie, and Bob's your uncle. There is a very good chance that trying to use USB instead of Firewire will not work at all for video. Here is a brief overview of the cables, ports, and software needed for digital video. --LarryMac | Talk 14:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You are, of course, quite right, but Sony hard disc camcorders, for example, don't have a firewire connection, but USB2 and I have not found any other with Firewire yet. Can you name names please? Thanks--88.110.173.135 16:09, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure they don't have a "1394" connection? Sony tends to call it iLink and use the miniature (4-pin) connector, but they're big fans of that standard.

Atlant 16:26, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

No, he or she is correct, no iLink on the Sony hard disk camcorders that I've researched (the hard disk being the operative thing here). Not on the Canon or Panasonic that I've looked at so far, either. I guess I'm living in the past (i.e. last year). --LarryMac | Talk 16:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You're still in today LaryMac, the situation is unchanged as far as I can tell!--88.110.173.135 08:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Heh, no my expectation that DV camcorders would have Firewire is what puts me in the past. Apparently that's no longer true. However, here is PDF about the JVC GZHD3 which mentions the Macintosh support and requirements. --LarryMac | Talk 12:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

All hard disk camcorders are absolute nightmares to edit with. As a media professional, I would avoid them at all costs. Like mini-DVD camcorders, you exchange compatibility and edit-ability for convenience. None of them record to DV, but rather use MPEG-2 or AVCHD. Only AVCHD has Quicktime compatibility with Final Cut Pro and iMovie 08. Even then, the computer will have to convert it to an intermediate format that's editable. You'd think (expect?) that hard drive camcorders would be the easiest to manage, just plug in and drag video files to your desktop. That's the way it *should* work, but it doesn't. --24.249.108.133 01:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for all that...I'll just buy a sketch pad instead !!--88.111.33.45 07:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Authentication through Flash webapps

How does one go about authenticating users of a site through an Adobe flash-based chat/videoconferencing web application, assuming that the login form is separate from the application itself? What security measures should one take to ensure that such a system is foolproof? I have heard many people say, several times, that flash webapps of this sort are notoriously insecure, is there any truth to this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.238.233.150 (talk • contribs) 23:46, 11 October 2007

Google up "XMLSocket." They're insecure unless client-to-server communications are encrypted. --slakr^\ talk / 00:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Oops, it appears we have XMLSocket. Check there first. :P --slakr^\ talk / 00:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

October 12

.hlp in windows vista

I saw on wikipedia that support for .hlp help files was removed on windows vista to encourage use of newer help formats. What is this new format?? If possible tell me some programs to create this type of help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.242.17.5 (talk) 01:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I found is its .maml but i didn`t found a program to create maml files. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.8.1.179 (talk) 22:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Computing power

I'm considering upgrading a resident PC here, to a current hardware setup, and looking for "indication statistics" or views how the two might compare, or the size of improvement. I'm terchnology-clueful, so I'm aware this is only going to be "rough" but I'd value either test stats, or a variety of personal impressions.

I can't find indication comparatives for my processor VS more modern ones though.

What I'm using and what I'm doing with it

I'm an old hand at "self-build, self install". I'm a heavy multitasker, and for personal preference reasons tend to leave a huge amount running to easier switch between them. Impressively, it pretty much handles it, and is stable, in most ways. But it's definitely under strain, hence I'm thinking time for an upgrade. I'm not a gamer, almost all my stuff is 2D -- browser, MS Office, and a variety of applications and utilities.

The hardware is high(ish) quality. P4 Northwood 2.8 HT, Asus P4C800, 2 GB of ram, and about 5 hard drives, including two 750 GB Seagate enterprise SATAs, a couple of 200 - 300 GB PATAs, a high speed blu-ray burner, and USB connected PATA portable HD. The network is onboard 1 Gbit, the graphics card an old 1999 ATI All-in-Wonder 32 MB AGP. The base system is XP Pro SP2.

The software is quite demanding -- I'm running both truecrypt and bestcrypt encryption drivers, InCD (nero's DVDRW drivers), kaspersky (heavyweight on resources but top notch AV), MS outlook and the rest of office 2007, and opera, plus a variety of side tasks from time to time - a movie or MP3 player, video encoding (virtualdub), P2P sometimes, and a few IM clients. Opera takes the brunt of the system strain - I think I have something like 400 tabs open, maybe 2/3 are Wikipedia pages, 1/3 are various sources and such I'm working from, or other pages of interest. he disk encryption drivers take another big chunk (stacked heavy duty algorithms). I'm not into heavy "rich content" (flash pages, myspace, facebook, etc) per se, but the Wikipedia pages and others will have some serious scripts attached. The antivirus system is running at its most aggressive -- full heuristics etc too -- and so on. Remarkably given the workload, it's 1/ fairly responsive, and 2/ stable - average uptime is weeks if need be, between reboots. But the broswer is slwoing it down to "problematic low responsiveness" levels, and I'd rather upgrade the system than change how I work that way. Personal choice.

The big processes -- Opera, Kaspersky, disk encryptions, etc -- are likely to still be single threaded (unconfirmed). Hopefully on a dual/quad core system (not the "extreme" versions), they can at least get a dedicated core each, or 2 between them, and each single core will be noticably more powerful than my existing CPU. Thats the thinking, anyhow.

So the question is, if I upgrade to a modern Core 2 or quad CPU, a new high quality stable motherboard (I've got on well with Asus), a PCI-E or whatever the current standard is, new graphics card, and new memory (probably 2 GB again?), ... any impressions how much of a speed increase (or reduction in noticable slowdown) one might notice?

(I know this is vague, but... lets see the answers and I'll try to reply with more.)

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You will see a massive increase in performance with a dual core processor. I upgraded from my old P4 and it's a huge difference. If you set separate affinities manually you'll also have quite an increase in system stability. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 02:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you unsatisfied with your current configuration? I don't know very much about it but my guess is that high grade encryption would take a lot of CPU power. I would agree with Wooty that a Core 2 duo could provide significant improvements. The antivirus, however hungry, should not use too much of the CPU. What do you think about a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo? It is not very expensive and is quite good. I am sorry that you might have to buy a new motherboard if you decide to buy a new processor (but you probably know that already). --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 04:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, upgrade your CPU. You simply can't expect modern performance out of a P4 --froth^t 04:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't upgrade unless I need to. But I think I'm simply asking more than is fair of that configuration, and it's underpowered for my use. So the question is, will I actually see a significant difference if I do upgrade? How significant? And impressions how a change of CPU to a core 2 duo or quad, plus obvious motherboard and memory change, would compare. I can't find indicators on that sort of thing. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 06:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Except for hard drive reads and network transfers, I rarely have to wait for anything. It's a world of difference. When I'm forced to use other computers I'm constantly amazed at how people can put up with the Windows boot process- you actually have to wait for things to finish loading to start using programs. The instant the taskbar appears (~2.5 seconds after first login after reboot) I can start outlook and firefox with no noticable slowdown whatsoever --froth^t 22:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

installing Adobe shockwave as a nonadministrator

Is it possible to install Adobe Shockwave player in Mozilla firefox fromright within the browser? I am on a Windows XP machine. I am not able to install the Shov\ckwave player executable downloaded from the Internet because of limited privileges. I would be really glad to be able to install the Shockwave player plugin from within the browser. Can it even be done? Why not? FF installed Flash player to itself automatically but why not Shockwave player?

Thanks, Kushal -Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 04:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure you want to change the file extension?

I am using Windows XP. Each time I change a file extension manually, Windows asks me "Are you sure you want to change the file extension?" I am not an idiot. I know what I am doing. How do I turn off this nagging message? -- Toytoy 05:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here's the obvious answer - switch to Linux. msWindows is full of those little annoyances. See my answer just now at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#inverted commas/quotation marks for another example. As you get used to Linux (does take some time), you'll become aware that it doesn't have to be that way. If only more people knew that, but then they'd have to try Linux first, which they won't when they don't know. Catch 22. DirkvdM 05:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The answer thats not obvious (and yes I would have given the "switch to GNU/Linux" message as well) is... you probably can't. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 07:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, that problem has an easy solution, but I don't know of any way to get rid of this dialog box. There are programs that will auto-click dialog box buttons for you, but I don't know a good free one. The message only appears when you rename from a recognized extension to an unrecognized one, so in certain limited cases you could work around the problem by adding or removing file type associations. -- BenRG 12:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

That information (about not yelling about "known" extensions) doesn't seem to be true for me. I routinely rename files to ".snd" (with good reason) and the OS yells at me every damned time, even though it knows .snd files as "sound" files and wants to launch their player if I foolishly double-click my "send" file.

Atlant 15:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• Maybe there's some Windows registry tweak you could make? Or you could write a small program that you could drag a file onto, and it would ask you the new file name, and do the rename for you, so skipping the nag message. --Sean 14:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, can't help this, but if you're going to bother to learn to do something in the registry, then it'd be quicker to learn to use Linux instead. DirkvdM 17:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I for one would love to switch my work computer to Linux. But Linux is useless when it comes to testing programs for compatibility with Windows Vista. --Carnildo 21:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

LOL sorry dirk but I'm calling BS on that one. The registry is a centralized repository for settings- it's low performance but very convenient to use. It's ludicrous to say that's more difficult to learn than Linux's insane helter-skelter conf files and .whatever config files in a completely different, non standard location for every single (non-OS) application! Granted windows also has group policy and that sort of thing, but that's also centralized. Stick with performance arguments, linux is not convenient (unless I guess you're a hardcore bash guru), but it's fast. And it makes sense. (though anyone with any sense can see it should move to a microkernel -_-) --froth^t 22:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe usability of the registry has improved, but last time I used it it was hell to get even the tiniest thing done. Don't know about Linux .conf files. Never felt a need for them. In the last few years, configurability of Linux (GUI, not command line, which I hardly ever use) has become incredibly much better than under nsWindows. That, plus the ease of installation (the OS + all the drivers + loads of software - all the latest versions) all in one go, are the major reasons I prefer Linux. Oh, yeah, and it doesn't crash all the time. DirkvdM 09:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It's just an Explorer interface that lets you browse registry keys instead of files.. how is that hard to use? I've basically never actually used a linux GUI as my main OS but I've worked with Ubuntu Server (no GUI) a lot so I know a lot about configuration file hell.. it's a real place that androids go when they're disobedient. Also, while linux has never come close to crashing for me, I've been using Vista since 2 days after it was released in January and it's only crashed once. It was a few weeks ago when I had just reformatted, and I was running my OEM (thinkpad) driver update tool and Windows Update at the same time, and they conflicted. That's the only time.. so that argument is pretty much obsolete. Come on, I can come up with tons of good arguments against windows, try harder :[ --froth^t 17:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Browsing the registry keys is no problem. Finding the right key (there can be several for the same thing, which override one another!) and finding the right value to fill in is an entirely different matter. Linux generally has GUI solutions to this - infinitely easier. About the terminally crashing of WinXP (non0recoverable), that has already happened to me twice, over a total of about three months. Maybe that's because I install loads of software. With Linux, I don't have to do that, because it's mostly already there when I've installed it. As for other arguments, like I said, Linux also instantly installs all the drivers. And all the latest versions ( it has to, because there is usually no Linux-driver-cd supplied with the hardware). DirkvdM 10:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

You can do your renames from the command line. --LarryMac | Talk 14:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear ... if you're going to bother to learn to use that ... DirkvdM 17:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

those two last remarks assuming he doesn't already know how to use those as is the case with most msWindows users. DirkvdM 17:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, please leave your OS advocacy at the door. --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Why? Are we afraid the Mac Zealots will show up and tell him "If you had a Mac, it would rename your files for you just by thinking about it - and then it will make you a nice cup of coffee"? -- kainaw™ 02:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

No no, mac zealots don't even have to know they want to rename the file. The OS knows what the user wants better than the user himself does --froth^t 17:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

But doesn't OS advocacy count as an answer to the question?Mix Lord 07:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. If a problem is OS-specific, then suggesting another OS counts as a valid answer. DirkvdM 09:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. In this case, suggesting that a user switch operating systems, in fact suggesting that that switch is easier than a small registry change, is completely disproportionate to the issue. The question is very clear and unambiguous. "Is there a way to disable the dialog box?" "Switch to Linux" is not an answer, not good advice and a little annoying. Not good advice, because a switch to Linux needs to be properly motivated, like any OS switch.You're going to run in to problems down the road and it'll be months before you get used to the new environment. Certain hardware might give you problems forcing you to the command line early on, certain software might not run on linux. What if he's a Photoshop user? would you seriously suggest that he switch to the GIMP, just to avoid a minor nuisance? It's great if people switch. But it's bad for everybody, all round, if they do so when they're not ready, or if they do so for the wrong reasons.

Finally I said it's a little annoying, because this says something about linux people. It says that even in a place like wikipedia, which is supposed to be the epicenter of objectivity, you can't just ask a simple straightforward question about windows, without running into insane amounts of linux fundamentalism. It's annoying, because it decreases the chances of getting a straightforward answer to the question (which I'm personnally interested in as well), and because it paints a picture of the linux community that is less than flattering. I like linux, so I'd like it to be associated with the sort of people that know when linux advocacy is appropriate and usefull. risk 12:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

How are a bunch of fanatics unflattering? The windows person would see them and think "wow here are a ton of people who love their OSes to death yet aren't total d-bags (mac), and they don't seem to have any problems with their OS. I'm tired of all these windows problems I may just switch" --froth^t 17:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Because it's inappropriate if it doesn't fit the conversation. If I'm having a conversation about not being able to find something in Encyclopedia Brittanica, someone might point out to my that I could try Wikipedia. That's appropriate. On the other hand, if I ask them say, if Brittanica has an index-volume, so I can find what I'm looking for and they tell me to ditch Brittanica because it sucks and to use Wikipedia, because it's free and has a search function, even when they know I'm probably already aware of Wikipedia, then that's not helpful. The same goes for the choice of OS. I use windows, and I have some bloody good reasons for it. If somebody gives me this kind of unsolicited advise, they are basically assuming that I cannot have good reasons for using windows, and I should just learn Linux and all my problems will be over. In short, they know better than me. This kind of fanaticism doesn't reflect well on Linux as an operating system, because it doesn't suggest a balanced, thought out point of view. This doesn't suggest to me that people have formed their opinion of Linux objectively, and the community is Linux, so that says something about Linux.

I'm sorry if I'm beginning to sound personal here, but I just wish that the fanatic Linux users would begin to see this. If you push Linux this way, especially on non-technical people, and promise them that all their problems will disappear if they just switch, you are responsible for their experience after that. And if their wifi stops working and they have to figure out the command line and ndiswrapper and whatnot, you're responsible for that. And the impression all this creates is not that Linux is so great that people spontaneously start treating it as a religion. The impression is that Linux is an operating system for the sort of people that treat their operating system as a religion, and not for anybody else. And out of the people that do treat their OS as a religion, I'll pick the mac user to have drink with any day of the week. (I think I've broken the rule about not starting diatribes. Sorry) risk 19:14, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Who wants a balanced, thought out point of view? You have the wrong attitude- read this timeless classic. The gurus can say whatever they want and frankly the questioner is lucky if anyone gives them a useful answer at all. We're a little nicer at wikipedia because of that darned rule WP:BITE but don't expect miracles --froth^t 20:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I do, especially when it's someone else's and they're making a suggestion. Yes, you're at the mercy of the crowd when you ask a question. No, the guru's have no obligation to do anything. In fact nobody does, we're all fundamentally free after all. There is however always room for discussion on what's efficient. Don't we all want the ref. desk to be as useful, interesting and helpful a place as it can be? Thanks for the link to the document, but I wasn't the one asking the question. risk 20:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I do too, but don't just expect it.. it's not a "given" --froth^t 23:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure, people know about the existence of Linux. But they obviously don't know about all the advantages of it over msWindows, because else they'd all be using it (especially new users, who are at the beginning of the learning curve). You're right about Photoshop, though - that's the only reason I still occasionally use msWindows (if I have a working version - like I said, they terminally crash on me all the time). However, there are now several ways to make msWindows software run under Linux. I haven't tried them yet, because I'd have to do that just for that one program. DirkvdM 10:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Flash Memory

I have a computer at home and one at work, as well as (3) flash memory drives that connect to the USB ports. One works only on my home computer, another works only on my office computer, and the third works on both computers. What's going on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.88.203 (talk) 07:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I suspect there is a formatting issue that means they are struggling to read across. For some strange reason my iPod Shuffle only works on my laptop - it fails on my window's PC and this is due to some sort of formatting problem (it renders it useless as a data-transportation device). I guess if you have a windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 98 machine each may format it in a certain manner, thus causing your problem. ny156uk 23:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Algorithm needed for depth of breath first traversal

I've got a tree structure where to top node has zero, one or two child nodes, each of which has again zero, one or two child nodes. I'm walking through the tree using breadth-first traversal since the nodes need to be printed out in that order, just using the while(queue not empty) in breadth first traversal.

What I'm stumped on is how to keep track of the generation number. If I'm at a specific node, I need to know what level it is at. I'm thinking of maybe a counter that is incremented when going to a child node and decremented when going "back", but it's rather complex. Someone must have developed a specific algorthm for this method. Does anyone know it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tubnspa (talk • contribs) 10:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Make the queue store depths as well as node numbers. When you push a child node onto the queue, set its depth to one more than the depth of the node you're currently visiting.

Or maintain two queues, one of nodes at the current level and one of nodes at the next level. Pop nodes from the first queue and push nodes onto the second. When the first one is empty, swap the queues and increment an internal level counter. -- BenRG 10:42, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

See also our article Breadth-first search, which has some code examples. EdJohnston 20:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Suse 10.3 doesn't see IDE disks

I just wanted to install Suse 10.3 (from DVD (download - openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-x86_64-iso)) on one of my two IDE disks, but it only sees the partitions on the two SATA disks. What might cause this? The only cause I can think of is that I have 20 partitions in total (not counting swap partitions). Might that be too much to detect? It wasn't a problem for the Suse 10.2 installation, though, and I can access them all from there. The only error message was that /dev/sdd is not readable by parted. But that's a SATA disk, right? And it does see both of those, so I wonder what that was about. For the sake of completeness, the system is an Athlon 64 3200+ on an MSI K8M800 mb with 2 GB memory. DirkvdM 10:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Update: the second time it went ok, and I installed Suse, but now it doesn't see my fifth hd, another IDE disk. Irritatingly, this is the one on which I have my previous Suse installation, so now I can't copy settings. DirkvdM 08:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Automatic Call ending

I have Sony Ericsson W700i. Call gets disconnected when it continues over 1 hour. Please help how to deactivate this feature.Slmking 10:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow, what an undesirable sounding "feature"! The manual doesn't mention anything like this at all -- are you sure it is intentional? I would probably call customer support, personally. --24.147.86.187 17:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

This is possibly something implemented by the phone or your provider to limit the charge caused/free credit lost due to an accidental phone activation if you forget to lock the keypad or something. Exxolon 19:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

My own Website

How do I go about getting a website on the Internet? I don't wish to pay for it, can I use my own PC? What would I need to do to my computer to make it a Website machine? Its a small site built with Microsoft Front Page Express with only a couple of pages and images. Thank you very much for any help :) Hyper Girl 12:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You'd need to install a server on your computer, such as Apache HTTP Server and have an always active internet connection (such as broadband). It would take some setting up, lots of time etc. Why not use a free web host like freewebs? You could do it all online and they'd be no need for all that setting up of software etc. If you really want to host your own site, a simple web server would do fine, especally for a small site. Check out tiny server and atomic web server. Good luck! Think outside the box 12:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If you decide to host it on your own PC you will want to sign up with a dynamic DNS provider, there are lots but I know that dyndns.com does it for free. That will allow you to have a URL like http://whatever.dyndns.com/, even if your IP changes when you reconnect to the internet. -- Diletante —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 02:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

If you made it with something like msFront Page (or msWord or other word processors) then there will be an enormous amount of bullshit in the source, making downloads for your visitors unnecessarily slow. SeaMonkey makes much slimmer files (and therefore a faster site). Just type in the same thing in both, save it (as html of course) and look at the resulting filesizes. The difference will probably be quite impressive. DirkvdM 17:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Watch your potty mouth, DirkvdM Picture of a cloud 17:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Potty? The foul language I learn here. Thank you for that one :) DirkvdM 08:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh get a life Picture of a cloud, "bullshit" is hardly going to bring about The Collapse of Western Civilisation as we know it. Remember Wikipedia is not censored. Exxolon 19:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It isn't just FrontPage and Word that add bullshit to web pages. The users add plenty themselves... I know - it needs an animated dog and an animated little sun and a flashing star and some music and... -- kainaw™ 02:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, for those people it won't make much of a difference. But if you don't want that and want a fast site instead it is a problem. Btw, are there any other 'wysiwyg' editors that keep the code as clean as SeaMonkey? I'd like to have more options. DirkvdM 08:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

If you are using Linux, htmlsane will make the HTML at least sane. I don't know if htmlsane is available for Windows. It wouldn't be difficult to make your pages in any WYSIWYG editor you like and then batch htmlsane over all the resulting code - making the need for a clean WYSIWYG editor a bit mute. -- kainaw™ 15:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Never heard of that.. are you sure it exists? the google query only has 2 results (with safesearch on at least, my school forces it) --froth^t 04:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

With a non-filtered search, I get only three sites - one I can't access, one in Thai (I think) and one in Chinese (I also think). If this really exists, please provide a useful link! DirkvdM 10:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

It is an "HTML Sanitizer". Searching for "HTML Sanitizer" will turn up many different versions of the same basic function - one of which will likely be in a language you prefer. -- kainaw™ 14:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Writing pages in HTML is much easier IMO. Simple pages can be cranked out by WYSIWIG editors but once they start getting more complex, the nuances of obscure CSS options and page flow start causing problems and they're no way to fix it but to dive into unfamiliar HTML and try to hack out a solution --froth^t 17:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Matlab quits automatically on startup

I just installed Matlab v.6 R12 on my computer. I went for the old edition mainly because I have only 256 MB RAM on this system (Win XP, Intel P4, 1.7GHz). But the program exits as soon as it starts up. I don't get any error messages at all. The matlab splash screen appears just for a second. When I checked the running processes, the program seems to be running for a brief period and then dies quietly. Can someone tell me why this is so, and how I can get my installation to work? It is important that I get this working ASAP. Thanks in advance!--Seraphiel 15:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Can you try running it from the command shell? There should be a bin/win32/matlab executable in the matlab installation area. -- JSBillings 18:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Gmail log in page

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a change in the login page? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 16:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

To be honest it looks completely the same as it's always been over here (UK) JoshHolloway 16:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes (but not always) the create new account button appears above the login for me. User:Kushal_one--Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 15:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I never see the login page, I just use remember me. It's nice to know someone remembers me :D --froth^t 17:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

IT (copied from Miscellaneous by User:Kushal one)

== IT ==

If some one gave me a laptop, with windows already on it, is it legal for me to use it, and if so, STOP, let me refraze, I was given a computer, with windows on it already, but it also has a virus, and I can therefore not open Internet Explorer. How can I delete everything and start again, I have a 9gb hard drive but only 1.5gb free, what it is filled with I dont know. please can someone help me. ps, it is obviously not the computer I am using now. :-)12.191.136.2 12:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Did the laptop come with it's original Windows CD-ROMS and the corresponding license code? If it is still running the copy of windows that was on it when it was bought - then probably the original owner didn't have CD's. In that case, the manufacturer probably placed a backup copy of the OS in a special partition of the hard drive with a program to let you re-install Windows from that backup copy. On the other hand, if the original owner had installed Windows him/herself - then perhaps that person has the original CD-ROM and license codes to give you. If they are using that CD-ROM/license set for some other computer now - then it would be illegal to also run it on your computer - so you should go out and buy a new copy of Windows to run on it. Of course you could also wipe the drive and install Linux on the beast...that's what I usually do with old laptops. SteveBaker 13:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The person that gave it to me knows almost as much as I do about computers which is nothing, so I doubt they installed it them selves, they may have the cds but theyre now in south africa and I am in England. so can you please tell me how to find the special partition to save windows and wipe the rest. thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 14:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If you are not "educated" in the Windows Explorer environment, you should just dump Windows[1] and move to a free (open-source) operating system such as Ubuntu Linux or Puppy Linux. Regards, Kushal

[1] The suggestion is based on the assumption that you do not have a compelling reason (such as internal dial-up modem). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kushal one (talk • contribs) 16:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Or need to run programs that are only available in Windows. Honestly, can we have a rule that says "dump it get *nix" is not an appropriate or useful answer to most Windows-related technical questions? I find Windows as much of a pain in the neck as most computer-savvy people but I recognize that some people are not comfortable with Linux and that Linux is not necessarily the easier solution for most people (all of the *nix users I know spend at least as much time trying to get drivers to work and programs to compile as they Windows users do on virus-scanning and the like) and in any case one is not at all answering the question by giving that as the only answer. --24.147.86.187 18:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• Speaking as someone who has used Linux since v1.0.0, I wholeheartedly agree. Saying "switch to Linux" isn't any more helpful than "switch to gardening"; they both "solve" the problem of having to deal with Windows' crappiness, but in a completely impractical way. --Sean 18:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both, I posted something about this earlier on the RD talk page. --LarryMac | Talk 19:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Note that Kushal stated that in the case of the original poster not being educated in Windows, in which case there shouldn't be a major difference. And don't most Windows programs have their open source equivalents anyway?Mix Lord 07:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories but I believe Microsoft is spending a lot of resources to retain the future market (the children and new users) from learning *nix. BTW, I am a Windows user myself. I agree with 24.147.86.187 in that if there is ever an application or protocol that demands a particular OS, one has to go with it. However, for new users hardware incompatibility and drivers issues should not be a barrier for trying new grounds. Furthermore, what could be wrong with choosing the free drink first, drinking it, looking if one has any allergies to it (rare), and them ordering a Sonic? OMG, I hope I did not start a flame war. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 13:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC) PS: Feel free to delete any of my comments if you find them unhelpful to the thread. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 13:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes they are spending lots of resources, namely providing schools and uni students MS software at almost no cost and then forcing them to buy them after having using them all their life. But then, we are getting awfully off topic. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Importance of clock speed on Intel Core 2 Duo processors

I'm thinking of buying a VAIO TZ and am contemplating whether to go for the 1.06 or 1.20 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (U7500 and U7600, repsectively) processors. A Google search brought me here to the Reference Desk where someone suggested that clock speed wasn't of great importance for the Core 2 Duo's. The price difference is 10.000 yen (about 85 dollars), so not that much, but still maybe just a waste of money chasing numbers...

Does anyone have any insight into the difference between the two? I'll be running Gentoo Linux on it, so plenty of compiling, but stuff that can easily sit in the background (though it's always nice to chop off time during install and world updates). I'm mostly using my old laptop for simple daily use these days, so I guess my main concern is latency. --Swift 17:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

At best there should be a more or less linear speed increase with clock speed. However in real life, raw processor power is most often not your bottleneck. These days they're generally trying to design more efficient processors rather than just taking the "brute strength" approach of ever-increasing clock speeds. Higher clock speed generally means more power and more heat. Friday (talk) 18:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Get the one with more cache and then overclock it. C2Ds run cool. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 19:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Overclocking a notebook CPU is a bad idea. --antilived^{T | C | G} 19:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

We probably don't need to get into a discussion of the merits of this. The questioner asked if people thought clock speed would make much difference. I see nothing to indicate he's interested in modifying the computer himself. People who are into that would ask different questions. Friday (talk) 19:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wooty said that (antilived should have put in an extra indent colon). But I agree with anti, if your laptop CPU runs at even 100% chances are it'll overheat in a few minutes.. no need to overclock it --froth^t 22:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Please consider an Intel (insert highest bid here) GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 2 MB Level 2 cache. And just for the sake of neutrality, AMD machines are pretty good too. (And I know we need AMD to keep Intel on its toes or it will slack off like a second grader who aced every exam in the first grade.)

To the Original Poster: It may sound like a cliche, but what you buy in a computer has a lot to do with what you plan to use it for. Depending on your needs, you might even be better off with a 2.2 GHz C2D processor. I try not to sound trite, but I don't think I can help it very much on this one. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 13:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Core 2 Duos have 4MB L2 :o And we also need AMD to make professional graphics cards with some sense to them rather than just throwing 10GB of video memory onto a card and calling it best (ahem nvidia) --froth^t 17:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Froth! --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 04:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

(Warning: the following might be entirely off-topic and/or trivial) PS: According to [5], Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache) does exist. What am I missing? Is it like 2MB cache per core, which gets up as 4 MB in total? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 05:16, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

MPEG to IPOD

I have an MPEG file that won't go on to my ipod via itunes. Probably because a) it's too big resolution and b) it's (probably) the wrong format. Can anyone help me with it? Don't know whether it's mpg1, 2 etc as I don't know how to find out.martianlostinspace ^{email me} 18:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Mac OS or Windows? On Windows, if you play the file with Windows Media Player and then select File/Properties, it should give you details on the codec(s) used. --LarryMac | Talk 19:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

mpeg is also a container format IIRC, it's not necessarily the MPEG-4 video codec --froth^t 22:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Can't iTunes convert video? Right-click the file and select "Convert for iPod" --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 03:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm on XP. Right. Gone into properties:

Video Codec: MPV Decoder Filter

Audio Codec: LeadTek Audio Decoder

Video Size: 1024 x 576

Does that tell anyone anything, eg. what converter to use?martianlostinspace ^{email me} 12:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

OK. Tried to drag and drop into itunes, without much success. No indication of it there, or a file transfer progress bar. Still no sign of it in itunes, having dragged directly to my docs/my music/itunes/itunes music/movies.martianlostinspace ^{email me} 12:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Those are some fairly obscure codec (I'm assuming the file is Chinese?) This is probably the easiest way to fix it: download the VLC media player and see if it can play your file. If it can, press "File" and then "Wizard" to help you through transcoding the file to a format that iTunes can support (choose MPEG-1 for video, for instance), and then start transcoding the file. Note however, that this can take some time (video transcoding is intensive computer work) if the file is very big. When it's done, open the file in iTunes and right-click and select "Convert for iPod", and iTunes will take it from there. This will only work on stuff that VLC can play, but chances are it can. --Oskar 15:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

If windows media player can play it then you have this "MPV Decoder Filter" installed as a directshow filter. Just open up the file in virtualdub and change the video compression to uncompressed AVI, then save it and let itunes import it from there. If you transcode to MPEG1 and then have itunes's crappy godawful transcoder further reduce the quality you'll end up with a giant smudge for video --froth^t 17:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

JSP tag library interfaces

Why do you encounter so many classes and different specifications and adapters and all that garbage when you try to write your own tag? I mean, you've got the TagSupport stuff, then you've got "SimpleTagSupport". The name itself is silly because IMHO it seems far more capable than dealing with the functional nature of the "old" (at least I think it's old) specification. But then I ended up writing a TLD that used one specification, but my classes extend/implement another specification (and what the heck are the differences between JSP/scriptless/empty keywords in the TLD???), I get class cast exceptions and all kinds of other garbage. Then there's the PageContext interface, which extends the JspContext interface, but I thought the former came before the latter, so how can an earlier interface came before a later one?

Is there any place I can go that will help untangle this mess, and maybe some reason behind it so I can validate my frustration? :). --Silvaran 23:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Linux even worse than Windows for an artist?!

Today I had a heated argument with a man who says Windows (XP and Server 2003) does everything he needs it to properly, and is stable and reliable where Linux (any recent version of any distro) is precarious, has poor hardware and application support and is easily broken by an update. He mostly uses his machine for art and programming. His issues were with, in particular:

• Backward- and forward-compatibility issues whenever a driver or the kernel is updated, or a program is compiled from source on a new version of the compiler. (He says the compatibility issues prevent him from using any distro that has a package manager, and that he cannot trust precompiled binary releases, so that now when he must use Linux he uses Slackware.)
• Dependency hell being much more of a problem on Linux than Windows ever since the .NET Framework came out.
• Incompatibility between KDE and GNOME.
• Poor support for sound cards and Wacom tablets.
• 3-D applications, both DirectX and OpenGL, running 15% to 50% slower on Linux than on Windows.
• No fully-functional, compatible equivalent to Maya.
• Blender being too hard to use.
• Amarok not working properly with his USB drive (which is connected permanently), and crashing too often.
• No Linux application that he has used runs as fast as its Windows counterpart.

He says he's had the same results with 7 different distros on 24 different machines over the course of several years. Does this point to actual weaknesses in Linux, or to a problem with the way he was using it (he seems to be a highly sophisticated user), or to his being an anomalous user who needs an uncommon distro, or to someone who's covertly working as a marketer for Microsoft? NeonMerlin 23:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Well it sounds like he is exagerating, but his arguments are not without some merit. Kernel and compiler changes should almost never cause problems unless you upgrade a major version number. Most of these arguments are not problems with linux itself, but with a lack of third party support (of course hardware support isn't as good as windows, most drivers are written by volunteers who sometimes have to reverse-engineer the driver, of course windows apps will run slower under the wine compatibility layer.) Some of the arguments are comparing apples and oranges, so what if KDE and GNOME are different? (they are actually quite compatible) are there different desktop environments in windows?

In a free-software environment at least you have a shot at fixing the problems yourself, I'll choose dependency hell over tech-support hell any day. Choice of distro is not nearly as important as people seem to think they all have the same software, and you can always compile what you need. With free software you have more freedom, but more responsibility, you can think of this as a weakness or a strength. With commercial software you are buying a black box that has presumably been certified to work, you can think of this as a weakness or strength. If windows works better for him I won't argue with that, that's great, I'm happy for him. -- Diletante 01:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree, he's making it sound worse than it is, and Windows has a lot of problems of its own. Dependency hell is not that bad if you have a decent package manager. It's not at all a problem with windows, but that's not because of .NET (few programs use it). For 3D performance does he even have the proper drivers installed or is he using the standard VESA drivers? As for "No Linux application that he has used runs as fast as its Windows counterpart" I laugh in his general direction. That's a ridiculous statement, though it's true a few (non-Windows) Microsoft products have gotten blindingly fast lately. 3rd-party software for windows is a joke for speed. A funny joke, which is why I laughed --froth^t 02:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue these points - most of them are wrong. My favorite is: No fully-functional, compatible equivalent to Maya. - that's pretty funny! I think Maya is a pretty good fully-compatible equivalent to Maya! (Maya runs on Linux too). SteveBaker 02:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

There's no chance of changing a first impression. This guy probably had trouble with something in Linux when he first tried to use it. So, everything now becomes a "Why isn't this like Windows?" argument. It is rare for someone to ignore first impressions. I do the same. I have a passionate distaste for Windows. Why? From my very first experience with it, it has never worked properly for me - mainly because I began with Unix-based mainframes, graduated to an Amiga for home use, then replaced that with Linux boxes when they were reasonably functional. So, every time I'm stuck trying to fix a Windows box, I get upset and complain because it isn't as easy, stable, and user-friendly as Unix/Linux. The truth is that I've always hated Windows, so I've never taken the time to figure out how it works. I don't think I ever will. -- kainaw™ 02:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• I've never had any problems with ANY drivers or kernel updates, and I've never had to compile anything from source. I'm using Ubuntu BTW.
• Huh? From what I can see the libraries have different packages for different versions. This point is complete rubbish for packaged libraries.
• In what way are they incompatible? I can run KDE programs fine when using GNOME. Are you trying to run both KDE and GNOME at the same time? :)
• Sound cards??? Windows has never had support for my sound card out-of-the-box. And I've installed Windows on PCs with many different sound cards. Ubuntu on the other hand has always had support for my sound card out-of-the-box. Wacom? I have no idea about that...
• DirectX? What, are you using Wine or something? As with the OpenGL, that is an issue. ATI is known for making extremely crap drivers for GNU/Linux.
• Maya: whatever SteveBaker said...
• Blender being hard to use... is Blender part of the core OS? I didn't know that...
• What doesn't work properly? Obviously you can't "sync" with your USB drive as it isn't a portable media player.
• I can't really say that's true... Are you running a 386 kernel on your quad core or something? --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 03:24, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Concerning any incompatibility between KDE and Gnome (which I don't know of) - at least you've got a choice. And then there are loads of different distros, one for every taste. And then you can fine-tune whichever distro you choose to precisely suit your desires. With msWindows, if you don't like the way it looks and handles, you're stuck. With Linux, hell, you can even give it the msWindows look and feel. You have to know how to do that, though, and there's a problem - the options are quite overwhelming, and that can scare some people off. It's sort of like the people who prefer small supermarkets that only have one brand of everything, so they don't have to make a decision. DirkvdM 09:41, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Everyone has a bias in these matters. But some of these complaints are downright unreasonable.

• Blender is quirky - this does indeed make it hard to use (although some people say the opposite) - but it's just as quirky if you run it on a Windows machine as it is on a Linux box.
• Maya looks pretty much identical on Windows and Linux.
• Complaining that Gnome and KDE are incompatible is ridiculous. Just pick one and don't use the other one - at least you have a choice - with Windows, you get what you get with no choices!
• Device driver problems - well, this is a fair complaint - there are lots of devices that Linux doesn't support at all - and lots that are a pain to set up. Windows isn't entirely without those problems - I know Vista users have been complaining about driver compatibility. I have a MIDI controller that I planned to use from my wife's Windows XP laptop - but she has the 'Media edition' and for some bizarre reason my MIDI controller doesn't work with that particular flavor of XP. It works great under Linux though...so there are at least SOME driver problems no matter what you use. But I'd accept that as a criticism of Linux. Generally, Linux users don't look at the problem as "the OS doesn't support such-and-such device" - instead we say "such-and-such device doesn't support Linux" - and we simply don't buy things that aren't Linux compatible. There are plenty of websites that tell you what is supported and how - just be sure you check those lists before buying hardware.
• I'm surprised he says that OpenGL is slower under Linux - I suspect he's just guessing. I've been in computer graphics for 25 years - I've been using OpenGL since before the specification was released to the public (I actually contributed to the specification) - I've written OpenGL applications containing millions of lines of code under both Linux and Windows (and BSD UNIX and Irix and Solaris - and on cellphones, PDA's, Nintendo DS, etc). I have never come across a Windows version that could run OpenGL faster than with identical hardware under Linux...Linux is ALWAYS faster.
• He claims DirectX is slower under Linux - but that shows his ignorance - Linux doesn't even support DirectX! It's a Windows-only graphics API. If you have a program that's using DirectX and it's running under Linux, then there must be an emulation layer (WINE probably) in there and that would certainly slow things down. Incidentally, OpenGL is run on Vista via an emulation layer - so it cuts both ways.
• No Linux application that he has used runs as fast as its Windows counterpart. - do you really believe this guy benchmarks every application under both OS's? Nah - he's talking utter crap.

SteveBaker 15:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• There was a time when Linux really was weak enough that strong grassroots advocacy made sense, but its strengths are so self-evident now that I don't think there's any reason to convince any one particular user to give it a shot. Places like Pixar and ILM are extremely Linux-heavy, so obviously some artists can manage with it. If this guy doesn't like it, so what? --Sean 20:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Linux can stand by itself and I don't usually do the advocacy thing - but our OP asked specifically whether this so-called "sophisticated user" was right - and he's not. I absolutely cannot believe he could have been a working artist over "7 different distros on 24 different machines over 2 years" (That's a new computer every MONTH?!? No wonder he gets frustrated with things changing all the time!). Yet this supposed expert still doesn't know that DirectX is Windows-only, or that Blender-is-not-Linux or that there is a version of Maya for Linux. This is FUD - pure and simple - and that needs to be stamped out in favor of actual facts. I would run to the support of Windows if similar untruths were said about that OS. (For example, a lot of Linux users point out that Linux has all of these great tools like blender, GIMP, OpenOffice, etc - without mentioning that all of those tools work just fine under Windows too). SteveBaker 13:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Wacom tablets run fine. I got one and except for the ExpressKeys it basically runs out of the box. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

October 13

Rebuilding a TOR circuit on Ubuntu

I want to get past a website that restricts from where you can access it (one of those "You don't appear to be in the US"-things), and on windows I always used TOR to do that, it just seemed like the easiest way. It had that nice little GUI with a button that said "rebuild identity" that rebuilt your TOR-circuit. However, I have no idea how to do that on Ubuntu. I installed the thing fine and it's working, but it's dead-slow and I can't find anything in the tor man-page that instructs me how to rebuild the path. How do you do it? 83.249.109.188 00:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You may want to look up command line options for tor. I'm sorry, I'd look it up myself but my school would have an aneurysm if it thought I was using tor.. they're big on censorship (I don't mind much, mostly it's just blocking porn, though it's annoying not to be able to access 4chan, ytmnd, uncyclopedia, encyclopedia dramatica, etc) --froth^t 17:48, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

ray node traversal image

I wonder if anyone could help me find an interesting image I'd like to see?

What I'm looking for is a comparison between a ray traced scene and an image (greyscale perhaps) representing the number of BSP-boundarys/triangles/bounding boxes/sum of all traversed per ray-pixel. Anyone got or seen anything like this? Cheers83.100.254.51 17:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

"shopping cart" for ecommerce

My client purchased a "virtual terminal" to process credit card payments, and has asked me to find a suitable shopping cart system to allow her to process online orders on her website. Unfortunatly, to date I've only set up informational websites, so I'm out of the loop as to what to look for in a shopping cart system. I'm familiar with HTML and Java and Javascript and Perl, not so much with PHP or Mywhatever thingie MySQL (thanks, Froth), but if I sit down and write something in Perl it'll take me quite a while and she's paying by the hour, so she'd prefer to purchase something readymade and have me install it. She's looking to spend maybe $150. What are my options and how do they work? She's rather particular about the design itself, since she's an artist, rather than caring about the technical details (which is why she hires me). Kuronue | Talk 17:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You mean MySQL. I really have no idea.. usually smallish sites will just use Google Checkout (or others)'s built in shopping cart functionality (which precludes the necessity to process your own card payments) and largish sites will make their own. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to do with non-expiring cookies so you wouldn't necessarily need mysql, but if you hope to let people log in to track their shipments, view past invoices, etc then you'll definately need it. Fully featured "shopping cart" applications that you'd buy would probably include this functionality so you'll need some sort of database server running. And I have no idea what a virtual terminal is but if it's not just an access code or something that you stick in a configuration file to make things work, then it may be difficult to get it to interact with prewritten code, or you may even have to find a particular piece of shopping cart software to fit your "virtual terminal". Whatever that is. >.> ermm --froth^t 17:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I found some possibilities: http://www.zen-cart.com and http://www.x-cart.com/. They both seem to require mysql/php and of course you need your webserver set up with SSL to process payments securely (this is stupidly difficult on apache, and whether you use IIS or apache you'll need to pay Thawte or Verisign some big bucks to issue you a root-issued ssl certificate). Zen-cart is open source and hosted on sourceforge but there are just a few too many asterisks all over everything for my comfort. --froth^t 18:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh and keep in mind that this kind of software usually acts without actually affecting your pages, to give you design flexibility. You'll likely have to make it look good yourself --froth^t 18:08, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Designing I can do. She replied to my request for more information: she's applied for "Linkpoint Central", one of about five billion services this company [6] offers, and I'm not too sure on the differences between them. Preliminary research indicates that she'll need Linkpoint Connect or Linpoint API, and that API seems better because it includes credit card payments and SSL, but I'm not entirely certain on that point or how they interface, if at all, with Linkpoint Central. Kuronue | Talk 18:21, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

oh, and she's got third-party hosting, so I'm not in charge of the server, just design and maintenance. So it's a matter of, does she need to upgrade her package or change hosts, rather than, can I implement technology on her server. It's a very small business. Kuronue | Talk 18:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

For a very small business, as this one seems to be, I believe you need a simpler solution. I suggest the online payment services that PayPal provides. Working as a volunteer, I set up online ticket sales for a small non-profit organization, but I know that the same interface provides shopping cart support. Buyers don't need to pay with a PayPal account, the service takes all the major credit cards. It is completely hosted on their site; your payment page just links to a PayPal URL. There is no startup cost at all (at least for the feature I used), they take a fee which is of the same order as normal credit-card processing fees. The $150 budget would not stretch to cover the type of programming mentioned by the other responders. With PayPal, the highest-tech operation is to generate a few hundred bytes of HTML, using their generator, and copy it into a web page. So you *do* need to know basic HTML. You don't need to know anything about SSL, because PayPal is doing all the security. You do, of course, have to trust PayPal, but for non-profit event tickets there was nothing to ship and not much chance of fraud. EdJohnston 19:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Paypal is evil, but they probably won't target a small business for its evilness. --froth^t 20:02, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

cURL Login?

Hi,

I am fully aware that it is quite easy to use the Wikipedia API to do a cURL login, and have had this working perfectly and so on. However, for some random reasons (non-Wikipedia related) I need to use cURL to log in to a Wiki without using the API. I can post fine, but it refuses to remember that I've logged on.

Basically, does someone know why this POST is failing?

Builder function:

$this->ch = curl_init();
$this->uid = dechex(rand(0,99999999));
curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE,'/tmp/testingphp.cookies.'.$this->uid.'.dat');
curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR,'/tmp/testingphp.cookies.'.$this->uid.'.dat');
curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_MAXCONNECTS,100);
curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_CLOSEPOLICY,CURLCLOSEPOLICY_LEAST_RECENTLY_USED);

Post function:

function post ($postto,$postwhat) {
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_URL,$postto);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION,1);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS,10);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_HEADER,1);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT,'Ale_jrb');
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_TIMEOUT,25);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,15);
                        curl_setopt($this->ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, substr($this->data_encode($postwhat), 0, -1) );
                        
                        return curl_exec($this->ch);
}

Login function:

function login ($username,$password) {
                       $login['wpName1'] = $username;
                       $login['wpPassword1'] = $password;
                       $login['wpRemember'] = 1;
                       $this->http->post('http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&action=submitlogin&type=login&returnto=User:Ale_jrb',$login);
                       print_r($this->http->get('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page'));
}

Login call:

login('Username','Password');

Thanks! Ale_Jrb^talk 21:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I've never tried to do this with cURL, but if it is receiving the POST but not "remembering" the login then it sounds like a problem with not setting its login cookie correctly (or something along those lines). --24.147.86.187 00:00, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought that, but using exactly the same post method but posting to the api.php login, it works fine (and remembers it etc.) so I don't see how that could be the problem... It makes me think that it probably isn't receiving post, but I don't know why. Ale_Jrb^talk 10:02, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Content-Type and XHTML 1.1

Whenever I send a Content-Type of "application/xhtml+xml", Firefox fails to render my background image. Why is that? --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 23:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I found a good answer here: [7] --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 00:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

October 14

Component Video to DVI or VGA

I have a high quality monitor for my computer that has DVI and VGA inputs. I'd like to buy an adapter so that I can use he monitor as a display for my xbox 360, using the standard high definition component cables. Any ideas? It really needs to have no lag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 04:18, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

There are xbox 360 to vga cables produced by microsoft and third parties - that would be an additional purchase though..

Alternatively the monitor might understand a RGB component signal through the vga input (this is by no means guaranteed) - you would need to wire the component cables to a vga plug (see VGA connector) and the monitor would need to support "sync on green", and be receptive to signals at the frequency that the component video is output on.

I don't recommend messing about with soldering though..

I'd really recommend buying a xbox vga cable - that will work perfectly (if you have an xbox 360 with hdmi you could use a hdmi cable to connect to the dvi port (if you have one and a hdmi-dvi adaptor))

Finally here's a link http://ww.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=xbox+360+vga+cable&meta= price in the uk is less than £20 new for one make... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.19.106 (talk) 04:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I will guarantee that the bought vga cables will be as 'good as perfect'87.102.19.106 04:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

GNU Scientific Library question

Dear Wikipedians:

While using the [GNU Scientific Library] I came upon the following interesting problem while using its Level 2 BLAS interface:

There is a function to compute Ax, where A is a matrix and x is a column vector (and the number of columns in A is equal to number of rows in x). However, the function to compute x^TA, where T denotes the transpose operator, x is a column vector and the number of rows in A is equal to the number of rows in x, is entirely missing from Level 2 BLAS. In fact, there seems to be no way of calculating this other than going to full-blown Level 3 BLAS with x modeled as an 1 by n matrix.

I really don't want to use Level 3 BLAS unless I have to due to performance penalties. And I can't believe that the designers of GSL had overlooked this issue when designing the level 2 BLAS routines. So I am wondering if I have missed anything or is there a specific reason why x^TA type of calculation is missing from level 2 BLAS, even though it's also vector-matrix multiplication.

Thanks.

74.12.197.100 05:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Is x^TA=(A^Tx)^T of use, or is easy transposing not available? Algebraist 08:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Soundclips not playing

So I have a new computer. And on this computer, when I click on a sound clip link on in particular (I don't know any other instances, but I'm sure they exist) allmusic.com, my browser a) follows the link to a blank page and b) doesn't play anything. What is going on, and how can I fix it? Windows XP. I have realplayer installed but undefaulted for everything, quicktime, vlc, and itunes. I didn't enable quicktime to automatically make certain MIME types or whatever playable when it asked. Because my favorite default player is VLC, which plays everything. I'm using firefox 2.0 because some of my addons don't work with 3.0. Hope some of that helps. This is getting annoying, and I'd love it if somebody could clear this up for me. Thanks, Sasha 140.247.236.59 06:19, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Laptop cameras

So I just got a laptop that I love (Thinkpad T60p)that doesn't have a camera built in. And I am beginning to regret it. And I was wondering if it's at all possible to have somebody install one at the top. There's even a little slit that makes no sense up where there might be a camera. And above this slit is an image etched in that might suggest that there's supposed to be some (nonexistant) light up there. Maybe a camera. Am I dreaming this? Does my computer actually have a camera? if not, what's the slit, and can I replace it with a video camera if I bring my computer to a shop one day? Thanks, 140.247.236.59 06:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you should have bought an AppleMac, the laptop has a built-in camera. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.33.45 (talk) 09:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

The mac laptops are called Macbooks, and no it probably will not be possible. I have one of the mentioned Macbooks, and it's really not that special, only useful n occasion.