Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

WP:RD/C C #eee #f5f5f5 #eee #aaa #aaa #aaa #00f #00f #000 #00f computing Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing Computing WP:RD/C

Welcome to the computing reference desk. Want a faster answer? Main page: Help searching Wikipedia     How can I get my question answered? Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right). Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question. Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when. Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here. Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context. Note: We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice. We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate. We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point. We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need. Ready? Ask a new question! After reading the above, you may ask a new question by clicking here. How do I answer a question? Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

Choose a topic: Computing desk Science desk Mathematics desk Humanities desk Language desk Entertainment desk Miscellaneous desk Archives   See also: Help desk Village pump Help Manual   skip to bottom

October 22

What does ftp://ftp mean?

I've found it very difficult to google this expression (for obvious reasons maybe) Do anyone know the background for its use? And the "exact" meaning? 80.203.100.53

FTP is File Transfer Protocol; if you're looking for "ftp://ftp" exactly I can't help you as I've never heard of that phrase. Kuronue | Talk 19:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

ftp://ftp is often found at the beginning of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that uses FTP protocol rather than the more common HTTP. The first 'ftp' is the name of the URI scheme (like http at the beginning of http://www.foobar.org/). The second 'ftp' because often a special machine is used to store files accessed by FTP and it is common for the hostname of this to begin 'ftp'. For example www.foobar.org may be the web server for the foobar corporation but ftp.foobar.org the hostname attached to the machine serving FTP files. A URI for the FTP server then would be something like ftp://ftp.foobar.org/some/file.name. -- Alan Dix 20:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

iDVD question: menu music

I am making a DVD menu in iDVD 6, and I have a little music clip to play while the menu is displayed. What I'd like to do is to have it play just once and NOT loop (I find looping DVD music pretty irritating and useless). I can't find an option that lets me not loop it; is this something about the DVD menu format in general or a limitation of iDVD in particular or can it be done in one way or another? --24.147.86.187 00:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

OK—poking around in the help file, the answer is apparently "iDVD just doesn't do this." Very sad, but I'll work around the limitation... --24.147.86.187 01:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit the sound file to have a huge space at the end? If the sound at the end is uniform, an mp3 should compress it to about no space at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 23:18, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

visual basic for applications

Is it possible to read the level of a sound card input at a point in time with visual basic for applications? If so how?

76.209.61.169 02:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Web/Tree building programs

Does anyone know of a free program which can be used to build complex webs or trees, perhaps like a very interconnected family tree? A software specific for family trees would not work for this - it's too complex for that. I heard about something once, but I don't remember the name - only that it might have been by one of the US phone companies and that it had it's own odd coding system.

Can anyone help? Thanks. 04:00, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a Bell Labs program from the early 90s you might be thinking of. See

Koutsofios, Eleftherios and Stephen C. North. "Drawing graphs with dot" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

For more recent programs of this kind, Google for 'Bell Labs graph drawing'. EdJohnston 04:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Ooh! Thank you both! That's great. 04:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.192.140.113 (talk)

Page Fault in nonpaged area- stop 0x50

    I built a computer from spare parts, being:
 
KT4V motherboard, AMI 3.1 bios
                 

geforce 6200 256 mb DDR2 onboard memory

1.5 gb DDR 3200 mem, 1 gb, 512 mb

seagate baracuda 40gb

athlon xp 2700+

600W PSU

DVD-ROM, Floppy

System runs cool ~109 degrees F CPU, 80F case

I have tested EVERYTHING twice, except the hard drive (doesnt need drivers, btw, I checked that). Half way through XP installation I get the aforementioned stop code.

Linux works fine, though

I have a suspicion that it's the hard drive, even though that doesnt make sense for the error, but only because I am running Linux (ubuntu) off live cd and it, not using the hard drive, works fine

switching video cards out for a very old one (TNT 32mb) doesnt help either, and to reiterate I checked everything (memory using memtestx86)

I plan on putting Ubuntu on hdd to make sure hdd works tomorrow

Thank you in advance72.161.209.51 05:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

sorry, I forgot to add please help, excuse me, I'm American72.161.209.51 05:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I very seriously doubt the hard drive is at fault. Have you tried installing the latest drivers for your peripherals? And what exactly does the STOP message mention? Splintercellguy 05:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

YEah, I know it doesnt make sense, although I whittled it down to that (I think). The stop message means the computer was looking for something in memory that wasn't there, which is odd I am getting this message because the memory tests good (disabling L2 cache doesn't make a difference, btw, so I think its good). I am trying to install with nothing I dont need, only card the video, nothing else.72.161.209.51 06:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

sorry about the double post, also72.161.209.51 06:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't "get" this error message. Can some guy correct me... but how exactly do you get a page fault in "a non-paged area"? Or does "paged" mean a page is swapped out to the disk? Does that mean Windows isn't unswapping a page from the disk? --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 10:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but I imagine it means that a driver followed a wild pointer to unmapped memory, which trapped to the page fault handler, which discovered there was no page to fault in and panicked. Unfortunately, like an access violation in user mode, this could be caused by almost anything. You need to look at the rest of the bluescreen information to narrow it down to a specific driver, which you might then be able to disable. -- BenRG 12:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

XP can be VERY fussy about hardware which other O/S's might cope with. I had a similiar problem and the culprit was the 'wrong' type of memory for the motherboard (for some reason the motherboard would only cope with 400MhZ DDR RAM, anything else, including older and slower RAM of the same type threw it. The comp worked OK until I tried to install XP. I reckon this is something to do with memory, check the motherboard manual or website to see if the RAM you are using is compatible, if not, get the right type. GaryReggae 14:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, not a hdd problem, Linux loaded fine. My motherboard is supposed to be able to take the memory I have fine,72.161.209.51 21:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC) though

PROBLEM FOUND- there must be a glitch where if the hard drive is not formated previously xp install wont either. XP installed fine after I put Linux on hdd to test it. Thanks for your input! Have a nice day72.161.209.51 22:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sub-dividing PDFs

I have a number of very large PDFs which were created by batch scanning a pile of documents (not by me). Hidden inside these batches are a few documents I am interested in. They cannot be reliable mechanically distinguished from the surrounding documents. What's the best method to find and isolate these documents from the rest? Ideally I would use a system that would let me quickly flip through the documents and tag the ones I want for removal and then later have the tagged ones extracted to separate files. But I don't know if any such program and PDFs are so unwieldly. Any thoughts? --140.247.41.66 14:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You don't say, but if you're on Linux or similar you can use libpoppler utilities to do things like "pdfimages input.pdf Images" to extract all the pages into individual image files for easy browsing, and then "pdftops -f FIRST-PAGE -l LAST-PAGE input.pdf output.ps; ps2pdf output.ps output.pdf" to select pages from the original document. --Sean 14:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You didn't say what tools you have at your disposal. If you have Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not just the reader), you can do it using the Document->Extract Pages... dialog. If you don't, but you have a PDF reader and a PostScript printer driver, you can "print" a desired portion of the file to a PostScript file, and use a utility called ps2pdf to convert it to PDF. This is similar to the solution suggested by Sean. Another tool that can do the job is pdftk[1]. --64.236.170.228 18:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Neither of those are efficient means—they require laboriously going through the PDF (as with Acrobat) or knowing ahead of time the page numbers to specifically extract. I don't think there's a program that can aid in such subdivision on the market. --24.147.86.187 23:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Saying that there's nothing on the market that can "aid" is overly pessimistic. If the OP knows something about the content of the documents he want extracted, he can OCR and index the document and try to locate the portions that he want by searching. Once an approximate location is found, determining the exact starting and ending pages won't be that difficult. The problem with this approach is that when the number of pages is large, say 100000, you probably need to use a vendor that provides this kind of service, which can be quite expensive. --64.236.170.244 01:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

If you use the libpoppler method described in the first reply, you can browse through the different files with an image viewer (like irfanview). You might have to batch convert the files first, but I know that irfanview can at least read ps files. Then you can define a macro or a shortcut (there should be an image viewer with this functionality) to copy the currentfile to some directory. This way, you can flip through the files quickly, and copy a single file out of the collection with a single key combination. risk 12:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Cangjie character generator

I'm curious about how Chinese character generators (such as the Cangjie) work, but I can't find any information on the algorithm besides a wad of uncommented (even if it were commented, I don't understand Chinese) assembly. (I'm not all that interested in Cangjie as an input method - that's pretty simple - but I'm really interested in the character generator). Any ideas? AFAIK, there isn't even a patent to examine. --196.210.103.191 15:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

There isn't a character generator, assuming I'm understanding what you're asking correctly. All the characters in a Han character set are designed independently. I had started a research project on this before the first time that I dropped out of college in the late 80s and the problem was that while you can (theoretically) compose Han from radicals, the individual radicals change their shapes a fair amount from one character to the next. Add in the additional complexity of mainland-Chinese Han simplification, assorted strokes which don't really belong to any radical and the task is a bit more complicated than it seems. Then there's the additional problem that you end up with a programatic system which is rather alien to what designers would like to work with and it seemed a dead end. I did have some hope that it could be accomplished for Hangul at least since the interactions of the phonetic components is a fair amount simpler, but I've never really had the time to go back to the project in the couple decades which intervened. Donald Hosek 18:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

From our article on the Cangjie method

In the beginning, the Cangjie input method was not a way to produce a character in any character set. It was, instead, an integrated system consisting of the Cangjie input rules and a Cangjie controller board. The controller board contains character generator firmware, which dynamically generates Chinese characters from Cangjie codes when characters are output, using the hi-res graphics mode of an Apple II computer... A particular interesting "feature" of this early system is that if you send random lowercase words to the character generator, it will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear. This unusual feature, "automatic generation of characters", is actually described in the manual and is responsible for producing more than 10,000 of the about 15,000 characters that the system can handle. The name Cangjie, evocative of creation of new characters, was actually very apt for this early version of Cangjie.

I do think it would be a difficult problem, but these quotes gave me some hope. I'm more confident it can be done with Hangul. BTW, In what was is it "alien to what designers would like to work with"? --196.210.103.191 20:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Backing up open files

I would like my backup program to automatically backup files once per week. The problem with that is, that files will invariably be open when backup time comes. With notepad files, this never posses a problem but with openoffice files, for some reason, the file cannot be copied (restricting editing, I can understand, but innocuous copying??) while it is open. This makes me wonder, what about industrial applications - how do they backup files that are in use? I don't want to have to close my programs before backup begins (otherwise, it's not "automatic"). I like to leave any work that I'm working on open, until I finish working on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seans Potato Business (talk • contribs) 16:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

On the PC (running Windows XP) I use a program called Drive Snapshot which does a backup of your entire drive, including any open files. It's often used with a separate hard disk, hooked up via FireWire (for example) because of the size. For details see drivesnapshot.de. I think it cost about $50; it works well and is fast. On the Mac there are a variety of cloning backup programs that work well, some of which may even be free. I use one called Super Duper. It also handles open files without complaint. EdJohnston 02:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

For Windows, see Volume Shadow Copy.

Blu-ray/HD DVD aspect ratios

Just wondering, do Blu-ray and HD DVD support aspect ratios other than 4:3 and 16:9 as was the case with DVD (i.e. on DVD a 2.35:1 is encoded as 16:9, with the remaining letterboxing hardcoded into the image). Thanks - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 18:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Letterboxes are rarely if ever hard coded into DVDs today. They use anamorphic format to retain maximum vertical resolution. --24.249.108.133 20:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Like I said, they do it on ones with non 4:3/16:9 (they're the only two which can be signaled on DVD). I know this for a fact (also see Anamorphic widescreen, for further evidence). It's whether they're forced to do it on Blu-ray/HD DVD that I'm interested in. - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 18:07, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

amr files

I need to edit an .amr file, is any free software out there that can do the job? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.225.214 (talk) 18:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

According to [2] this type of file is a cellphone multimedia file, so you'll probably need some kind of audio/video editing software. Exxolon 19:22, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Not to worry - sorted it out! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.225.214 (talk) 19:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Logout/Stop Script

I'm here to ask a question (yet again...) about an enforcitive measure to help stop him from making userspace edits. I think I would be able to do it, but I don't want to be accountable if I mess something up and screw up his account. I'm fairly certain it would have this in it, but the other parts I can think of are sketchy, though I'll try with the help of "An Intermediate Guide to JavaScript & AJAX".

if ( > ) {
      alert ("You may not edit this articlespace"). Bye!");
      window.location.href = ("http://"+document.location.host+"/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogout&returnto=Main_Page");
    }
}

YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 10-22-2007 • 19:41:52

Note: This has to do with a RfC for Angel David. YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 10-22-2007 • 19:45:36

I'm confused about what you're trying to achieve - you want to stop someone from making userspace edits without their consent? You do know that you can't edit someone else's monobook.js and even if you could it would be trivial to disable? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, ignore the above - I've just read the talk page discussions — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't get it- what talk page? I gather that this is a self-accountability sort of thing.. my advice is that you'll need to use document.cookie to track things --ffroth 21:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It is almost always inadvisable to try to apply a technical solution to a non-technical problem. Friday (talk) 21:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't I just log him out whenever he edited his userspace? Why not just check his contribs? We're trying to prevent him from using his userspace for his own good. Check around with his contribs, the RfC may still be going on. Any ideas on how to stop him from clicking edit on his page w/js?YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 10-23-2007 • 01:39:24

LOL now that's creative. Use javascript to refuse to load the edit monobook.js page, heh. This is such a bad idea though, you'll never be able to come up with a solution he can't bypass, and why would he consent anyway? --ffroth 02:41, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

He could just disable javascript. You'd have to do a server-side lockout if anything. Even then he could just make a new account. Not a solution. The only sensible way that I can think of is to make the ban and then police it if he violates it (get him kicked off for good), or something like that. Even that is not a simple technical thing and never has been. Also, your alert() line is malformed—it ends the string and then continues it again. Gotta remove the extra quotation mark and parentheses. --24.147.86.187 23:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I want to defrag my computer the OLD FASHIONED WAY

Hello, I remember back in the day, defragmenting meant that there would be that awesome MS-DOS program where there were a bunch of rectangles and it would literally show the file pieces being read and written. WHERE IS THAT NOW??? Right now I am defragmenting my laptop and it is boring as hell just to watch a static screen. HOW DO I BRING THAT BACK???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.142.51 (talk) 19:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

HEY SORRY ABOUT THAT IT SAID WIKIPEDIA EXPERIENCING TECHINCAL DIFFICULTIES —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.142.51 (talk) 20:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It wouldn't work for NTFS.. --ffroth 21:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Windows' degragmenter has a mode that displays the clusters and such in a similar fashion. It was never as exciting as you seem to think... -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I do seem to remember last month blindly inputing lines of junk into MS-DOS the other month, and when I did it did that at startup every time, each time taking four hours. It has something to do with the chkdsk command (check disk) YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 10-23-2007 • 19:27:50

That's checking the disk for errors, though, not defragmenting it. Anyway, as Consumed Crustacean says, watching a disk being defragmented under Win95/98 feels a lot like watching the biggest and most boring game of solitaire ever, and only marginally more intellectually stimulating than watching paint dry. Besides, doesn't the defragmenter on WinXP at least still have a kind of "stripe" display showing what it's doing? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

What DID happen to the old-style degfrag? Even in windows, it used to show me a big box of rectangles - now it's a bar with bands similar to bittorrent's display. I coulda sworn it changed sometime in the middle of my WinXP use - a service pack? Or am I just mistakenly remembering my desktop which had 2000 well into the XP era? Kuronue | Talk 19:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Antivirus Software

Two questions:

1) If I buy Norton 360, do I have to pay an annual subscription fee on top of the cost of the software?

2) In your opinion, which offers better protection: Norton 360 or the free version of McAfee provided by AOL (which, as far as I know, is the complete version of McAfee)? Or are they just about equally effective?

Thank you!--El aprendelenguas 22:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally I recommend people go with AVG Free or Avast, both of which are free and are used by computer-savvy people all over the world. Norton 360 is really a bundle of products—anti-virus, anti-spyware (free alternative: SpyBot), and a firewall (Windows XP and I presume Vista already have their own built-in firewalls). In my experience Norton products often result in severe problems—major bugs, major slow-downs, even crashes and corrupt hard disks. I have no idea if Norton 360 does this but personally I stopped trusting the company with my data a long time ago. Anything provided free by AOL I would be pretty suspicious of, as they don't exactly have a great track record either. If you want my advice for avoiding viruses: use Firefox not IE; use Thunderbird not Outlook Express; make sure your firewall is enabled; make sure you have anti-virus (AVG) and anti-spyware (SpyBot) software installed; don't run anything you don't have a good reason to trust; don't run things that people send you unless you were already expecting them (if you have doubts, just ask the sender) even if you know who sent it; make sure your automatic updates are enabled. Two of those steps require you to be a responsible computer user and be careful about what type of code you let execute on your machine, the rest just require installing programs, checking settings, or avoiding programs with notorious security flaws. If you did these things, you would probably be fine even in the worst case scenarios. --24.147.86.187 23:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Mcaffee suxor. Use NOD32 or Kaspersky if you simply must pay, or AVG Free if not. Steer clear of clamwin --ffroth 01:22, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Mcafee is an improvement over Norton, though that's not saying much. Kaspersky (pirated, modified) is what trojan/worm writers use to secure systems they've infected, since they know it works. Practice common-computer-sense and you won't need to use Anti-virus at all. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: common-sense, yes and no. Yes in the sense that you won't purposefully execute malicious code. No in the sense that programs you use may contain vulnerabilities that you do not know about, which may allow malicious code to be executed remotely. Even non-Microsoft programs have their bugs and their possibility of buffer-overrides, they just haven't been exploited much since their marketshare is lower in most cases. I think anyone with a Windows box in particular should have anti-virus regardless of their common sense, because you never know when that thing's going to turn out to have a major door left open in the back. --24.147.86.187 23:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

October 23

Sleep Mode

I have a HP slimline desktop. Whenever i place the computer in sleep mode it will go into sleep mode, however after about a second after it has entered that mode it turns back on. i try again and the same issue happens. I am wondering if anyone has any tips. i know that nothing is moving like a mouse, keyboard etc.. that would turn it back on from sleep unless i wanted it on.--logger 04:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Assuming Windows (since others tend to specify their OS): Open the Device Manager, go into the properties for every USB device on the system, and turn off "Allow this device to wake the computer" in the Power Management tab. Might want to try that for some other devices as well, such as the network card. My ASUS motherboard suffers from this issue with USB devices. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Allright ill do that thanks for the help.--logger 04:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

It was the Network card that did the trick. thank you.--logger 04:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, you should try Hibernate instead of Sleep. I like it because the only thing that wakes it up is pressing the power button. Man It's So Loud In Here 22:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

One cause of this prob can be if you're online (and, if you have DSL, you always are). A packet of data comes over the Internet periodically, just to check that the connection is still there, and this can "wake up" the computer. StuRat 16:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Computer Security Cost/Benefit

A question not really sufficiently advanced for the Mathematics section, and I don't think there is a forum for economics. I saw a good graph once of the cost of a vulnerability vs. the cost of mitigating it - both were linear and one rising, one descending. I'm not sure what the axes represented to translate cost into lines. Then you divided one by the other so they got a hyperbole in between them. The tangent at the lowest point of the hyperbole would then represent the ideal total cost to spend with acceptable risk. Sort of a break even between known risks and paying for security. Has anyone seen this and perhaps a little more about estimating the numbers? This looks like a good model for communicating between techs and economists. --Wpks 08:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

The graph that you saw was most likely not a plot of real data. In general, the more measures taken to protect a system, the more it costs and the fewer modes there are to compromise the system. Given that vulnerabilities, when exploited, leads to loss (monetary or otherwise), and that fewer vulnerabilities leads to lower costs caused by their exploitation, you would expect that the optimal choice lies somewhere between the extremes. That's generally true and hardly surprising. In practice, there are difficulties with estimating those cost numbers. For one thing, some costs are not monetary and may not be quantifiable in a way that everyone would agree is correct. For another, reliable data may not be available for loss events that rarely or has never occurred. You may have some statistics, but there may be great uncertainty about how reliable a conclusion you can make. In computer security, the threat sources of greatest concern are not random — the adversary is adaptive and learning. Before a vulnerability is publicized, historical loss due to its exploitation is zero. After its publication, you suddenly have a wave of attack trying to exploit the vulnerability.

The point of the graph you described is that there's a point beyond which the net return on investment is negative, but that's something the economists already know. --64.236.170.228 13:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Why are you asking this on the Computing reference desk?

Economists are notorious for producing graphs like that with no numbers on the axes and vague definitions of what the parameters mean. All the graph conveys is the rather obvious fact that there is a trade-off between the size of your risk and the cost of mitigating it - so (of course) there is some point where spending more in mitigation doesn't cut your risk enough to be worthwhile (well, duh!). Nobody has numbers because it depends on too many other things. What is "vulnerability" anyway? A proper scientist would say it is some combination of the probability of a bad thing happening and the cost if that thing does in fact happen - it's not one number, it's two independent numbers - so you can't just give it a name and stick it on one axis of a graph. Economists love to use scientific-looking graphs - but they hate to be tied down to specifics because then it would become obvious that what they do isn't a science at all. Take a look at our article on Supply and demand for example...have you ever seen so many unlabelled axes in all your life?! They even had to come up with a new name ("Econometrics") for "Economics with actual numbers". Bah! SteveBaker 13:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Uhm... Okay. Thanks for sharing anyways. --Wpks 19:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Choosing a right video card!

Hi, My system config is 1) INTEL original 965 Ryd Motherboard of 833Mhz FSB. 2) DDR2 SDRAM (Transcend) 1GB of 667MHz FSB. 3) On Board video card, 256 MB shared(not needed) 4) Intel Pentium D(dual core) 3.00GHz (4 MB L2 Cache) of 833 MHz FSB. 5) Graphics card slots, PCe,PCe Express(1x,16X) 5) 160GB Seagate HDD of 7200 RPM

At present I can't play 3D games of current age.What type of (model,any brand) graphics card would I require if I want to play games like DOOM3, Half life,Oblivion, fear, etc with full\good resolution around (60 fps)?. To my playing style,I don't need higher fps say 125 or 150.A max of 60 fps seems more than fine for playing. So I put a limitation to fps of 60,not more than, so that I can play games at maximum graphics,resolution. My prob is, what type of video card is ok so that my config(CPU,motherboard) will utilize the card max.How much memory for video card maybe required?.My budget is around some US$ 250..I have seen many cards for this price,but don't know how it'll suit my config.

After upgrading with such card, will my pc outperform Playstaion2?..Becasue instead of investing 250$ in card, I could just buy PS2 for 140$.Any experts,anybody plz help me...Also if there exists any other site in which I can get more suggestions esp about buying graphics card, please do mention..Thanks in advance.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 08:37, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

$250 USD? Wow, that's heaps. A 8600GTS would cost around $150 (from some website), while a 8800GTS would cost around $300... So I really don't know. As for the PS2 question, I think my crap 8500GT (under $100) could beat that... See PS2 article. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

For $250, you should be able to get something pretty good. I would recommend finding a reasonable nVidia card for under $150 (look for an 8000 series card) - the 8800 card is better than the 8600 (especially at higher screen resolutions) - but I wouldn't pay twice as much to get it. I took a quick look on eBay - and I saw an 8600GTS (sadly, just sold) for $108 "Buy It Now" - so shop around! The resulting system would certainly easily outperform a PS-2, and with your 3GHz CPU, it would beat a PS-3 in some sorts of test. But it's hard to compare a general-purpose machine like a PC with something that's specialised for a particular role like a game console - it's just not an "apples and apples" comparison. The games you list should run fine on your system once you've upgraded the graphics. Make sure you put the card into the 16x PCIexpress slot - don't use the 1x PCIe slot for graphics! SteveBaker 13:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh thanks steve, hope I find a right card..I have a bet upon beating the power and graphics of PS2 by upgrading my PC,with my pal.I may look for 8600 GTS\8800 series under 200$ then, so you mean its a mere waste of money in spending 250$ for buying a graphics card while I can get the best throughput under 150$?.Anyhow my purpose is not to beat ps2\ps3, but I need a good gaming with resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels of 60fps.Thats all!, Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 04:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

This article (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/05/the_best_gaming_video_cards_for_the_money/) may be exactly what you need to help you decide.

MediaWiki config problem

Hi! Sorry if I posted it here (I should have asked the guys at MediaWiki for this...) I'm having some trouble with my wiki; I configured it in the same way as my other wiki, but the following error shows up:

Fatal error: Call to a member function selectRow() on a non-object in /www/110mb.com/s/t/r/a/enwiki/w/b/e/r/strawberrylandwiki/htdocs/wiki/includes/User.php on line 752

Can someone help me with this problem?

EDIT: OK, I already found the problem; it was some glitch with the SQL database... Blake Gripling 09:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

What was the glitch? can you tell us what you did to fix it please.

nvidia-settings: Auto Detect button disabled

In nvidia-settings (with Coolbits enabled), the Auto Detect button on the Clock Frequencies page is disabled even if I select the "3D Clock Frequencies" item from the list. How can I enable the button? I have a GeForce 8500GT. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Did you download ntune from nvidia? Installing that made all my overclocking options appear. Sandman30s 19:31, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not using Windows... --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Image Virus

Recently I got a virus through MSN Messenger ... there was a message frm one of my contacts which asked me to open a pic (it was a zipped file) ... i realized it was a virus but by then, it was too late and now its already uploaded on my laptop ... this is one of the many image virus ... can u tell me any way to get rid of it ... ???

Thanks a lot for ur help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.17.38.10 (talk) 10:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Try one of the many free Antivirus software programs, such as Avast or Antivir. I believe Trend Micro has a site that will do a basic scan from their website, using an ActiveX control. --LarryMac | Talk 12:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

The image is only the means that the virus got into your computer. The virus itself should be killable using whatever anti-virus solution you already have. Deleting the image and (definitely) not emailing it to anyone else would be a smart move - but it won't get rid of the virus. You should look for an update that patches this vulnerability because it's very easy to get caught out this way. SteveBaker 12:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

utorrent "Add Peer"

On utorrent, when you add a peer (right click in peer tab, "Add Peer"), what does this do? I've tried it but can see no difference in speed or look when I do. Thank you xxx Hyper Girl 10:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

See peer exchange. Lanfear's Bane | t 11:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that has nothing to do with it. The "peers" are the people that you are downloading from and uploading to. You get a list of peers from mainly three sources, the tracker, peer exchange (where you swap lists of peers with peers you already have) and decentralized tracking (which gets a list of peers from a decentralized network). However, if you know that some dude at a specific IP address has the file you want, you can also add that dude manually, using "add peer". However, there is virtually never any need to do this, so this is a feature you can safely ignore. --Oskar 15:19, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep oskar is right, this is to manually add a peer. I can think of how this could be useful (possibly a for-pay ultra seeder that dark-seeds every file on a private tracker?) but it's basically never used --ffroth 21:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Is my 'gamma' wrong?

The new ref desk colours look 'right' when I view on a LCD screen way off the optimum viewing angle - eg if I tilt the screen back about 60degrees.. Problem is that everything else under these conditions looks like it's 'been kept for the last 50 years in a wood fired tar factory staffed by heavy smokers' ..

Is this effect intentional.?87.102.17.104 12:50, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't look that way to me, if that is what you are asking. --24.147.86.187 13:02, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes - the colors are pale. So, you appear to be expecting bold colors for the title bars. If you expect to see "barely-noticeable-off-white-tint" colors in the title bars, they will be normal. -- kainaw™ 13:27, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Programming for Symbian

Hello to all wikipedians!i want some help on this. in which language i can write mobile software for symbian os.becoz dont know about programming.so which language will be suitable for beginer.also tell me there is a tool with the help of which i make mobile software by wazards.THANX.........USMAN —Preceding unsigned comment added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

added header --LarryMac | Talk 15:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• This page says you can use Java, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, and a few others. You will probably save yourself frustration by learning how to program in general before trying to program in this specialized environment. --Sean 16:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Our article on the Symbian OS says: All of this makes Symbian OS's flavor of C++ very specialised. However, many Symbian OS devices can also be programmed in OPL, Python, Visual Basic, Simkin, and Perl – together with the Java ME and PersonalJava flavors of Java.. For a beginner, probably Java would be the best choice...but it depends what you are trying to write. Personally, I think you should start to learn to program in Java on a regular PC before getting into the ikkyness that you're likely to encounter in programming a PDA. If you are asking whether there is a 'wizard' that would write the software for you - then no, that is most unlikely - you'll need to learn to program. Expect that to take you many months of study and LOTS of practice. SteveBaker 16:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with that. Some universities have their computer science students start on Java, and I think it's a good idea. Java is good for learning C, but at the same time, Java handles a lot of stuff automatically, so it's not as hard as C, imo. And once you learn Java, you'll be able to jump into C and other programming languages much more easily. Mobile devices often run Java software as well, so that's a plus. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 22:28, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Windows Vista question

Both my work computer and my father's new home computer run Windows Vista. My work computer has Vista Business, my father has Vista Home Premium. My work computer has a better processor and more memory than my father's computer. Everything is otherwise OK, but for some reason, I can't get my work computer to show all that Aero eye candy. It's stuck in XP look-alike mode. What is funny is that it doesn't seem to notice this itself - the Taskbar Properties window shows the taskbar image in all its Aero flashy goodness, but the actual taskbar still looks like XP. JIP | Talk 17:27, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I know a few common things that will do this. Pirated versions of Vista, bad/old graphics drivers, not having 'Vista Aero' selected in the appearance properties, or not having the effects enabled in the two 'performance' window thing (in System, I think). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't install the OS. It was a hand-me-down from a former employee who had recently quit his job. But the company takes great pride in its Microsoft partnership so I hardly think it's pirated. Where do I find this "appearance properties" you speak of? I did find the "performance" window thing in System, selected "optimise for best appearance" and ticked every single feature available, but nothing changed. JIP | Talk 17:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Another cause is old software which doesn't like Aero (can't think of any current triggers that I know of. during the Public Beta, iTunes used to trigger it). So if you've got any particularly old software (or pretty much anything not certified for Vista) constantly running, try closing it temporarily and see does it help. - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 18:16, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I only ever run Microsoft Outlook (the world's worst email program, but that's the company standard), Visual Studio 2005, two web browsers (MSIE and FireFox) and a task/issue management system called "Requeste" on it. The company's flagship product is a vastly complicated MS Windows application suite but so far I have managed to avoid even touching it, I work solely on the web-based projects for its support. Maybe it's this "Requeste" thing that's holding it back then? JIP | Talk 18:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I like outlook 2007. I'm a sucker for pretty programs :[ --ffroth 23:50, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Not me. I'm frequently told by my mentor "Make it look pretty." What do I know what's pretty? If he told me "Make it work" then I would be all set. JIP | Talk 19:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I love the command line, and I love pretty graphical programs- but I can't tolerate ugly graphical programs. It's really that important- I will not use the software if it's hideous and unintuitive. I refuse to use openoffice, and I refuse to use emacs. I put up with a lot of crap from windows to have the best-looking OS around and I won't have ugly progams messing it up :/ --ffroth 20:44, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe you only get the Aero stuff if you have a really good "DX10-capable" graphics card. It's not to do with CPU or RAM. SteveBaker 00:25, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh. Then I guess I'm out of luck. My work computer apparently has an Intel 3xx or something graphics card. I really don't know very much about graphics cards, but I'm guessing both my own and my father's home computers have better graphics cards. My father's home computer gets Aero in all its full flashy glory. My own home computer is 100% Linux only. JIP | Talk 19:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

No, AFAIK, you can always force Vista to show Aero even if it doesn't think you system can take it (at the expense of performance of course). The only exception is when there's software incompatibilities. - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 11:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

When you say the taskbar looks like XP, I assume you mean the grey 'classic' taskbar and not the big goofy blue and green XP taskbar? It sounds like you have either the Windows Classic or Windows Standard visual style selected. Go to Start > Control Panel > 'Change the color scheme' (under Appearance and Personalization) and select Windows Aero. (By the way, the Taskbar Properties window will always have a picture of the Aero taskbar whether you're using Aero or not - it's not just your machine being peculiar.) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's a boring grey taskbar, none of that black and blue and green stuff. So far I haven't been able to find such a setting as "Change the colour scheme" but I shall keep on trying. JIP | Talk 19:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

If your Control Panel is set to Classic View, double-click Personalization and select Window Color and Appearance — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 22:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried this, and found out that there is no "Windows Aero" setting in the Window Colour and Appearance settings. There is "Windows Standard", "Windows Classic", and four high contrast settings. JIP | Talk 15:11, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Badly damaged VGA connector

A friend of mine yanked off the monitor plug from its female connector on a desktop PC with Asrock motherboard leaving it in forgettable state. The connector is an integrated block consisting of two PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse. Is this block replaceable? If it is, need it be soldered on to the motherboard? Thanks for any advice. Woeisme 17:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes - you'll need to de-solder the remants of the old connector and solder a new one on there. If you are really unlucky, the 'yank' might have damaged the circuit board itself - in which case you may be in deeper trouble. It might actually be a lot easier (although less pretty) to leave the 'integrated block' in place and just solder wires to the handful of connections that go to the monitor connector to a new connector dangling outside of your case. It won't be as pretty - but it'll be a LOT easier to do and will avoid the risk of also wrecking the PS/2 ports. If you aren't good with a soldering iron - you're doomed. SteveBaker 15:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• • Thanks, Steve. This is the damaged board.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P4i45GV%20R3.0&s=478 It has an extra VGA port. Can this be used to connect the monitor? But there is no VGA card installed currently. More importantly, the broken connector has left 15 copper wire ends exposed which might contact one another or surrounding area. If I switch on the system with them exposed, will it create problems like short circuit etc? I don't know if I can find somebody with enough soldering skill to try to fix it. If you can clear my doubts asked above, I would be greatly thankful. Regards Woeisme 17:10, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

According to the spec sheet here, that motherboard only has one VGA port (it's exceedingly rare for on-board graphics chips to support multiple video outputs) - I think what you are looking at is the DB9 connector for the serial port (which looks kinda similar - but most certainly isn't!).

A nice close-up photo of the broken connector sure would help a lot in offering advice at this point! You should make sure that those loose wire ends are not touching each other - in which case there is probably no harm to be done by turning the computer on (not that this will help you if you don't have any video output). Personally, I'd say that the crappy Intel graphics chip on the motherboard is a piece of junk anyway. I'd go out on eBay and buy the cheapest used nVidia "GeForce" graphics board that money can buy. Even an ancient GeForce-4 or something would be better than the chip you have now (Intel graphics chips suck, suck, suckity-SUCK!) - and those things probably show up on eBay for less money than a replacement connector for your system will cost. Get your friend to pay half! Good luck! SteveBaker 18:14, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I rather like SteveBaker's idea. Unsoldering stuff on a modern, multi-layer PC board can be tricky, especially from those VGA pins that are connected to the inner ground planes (because they may sink a lot of heat from your soldering iron before reaching solder-melting temperature). Hot glue can then be used to stabilize the stub pins and wires so no shorts occur. If you *DO* try to desolder the existing connector, break it all apart first, leaving just the metal pins protruding from the circuit board and then use your iron to heat the pins, one at a time. Clearing the PC board hole afterwards will also be a problem; a vacuum desoldering tool may work but melting the solder and then forcing a wooden toothpick through the hole is another viable approach. here in the industry, we often use a hot plate to locally pre-heat the entire circuit board, inner power and ground planes and all, but it's still tough work.

Atlant 12:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep - I love the idea of using a hot-glue gun to stabilise those dangly connections - I was thinking of electrical tape - but your idea is much better! The CAPA plastic that glue guns uses is a good insulator. The reason not to break up the connector and trim the wires down to a couple of millimeters is that I'm pretty sure that's the same lump of plastic that contains the keyboard and mouse connectors - and our OP shouldn't make matters worse by hacking around at those if they still work. SteveBaker 15:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

October 24

"Data Point" ?

Hey

I recently got given an assignment for networking. For this assignment I have to design cabling (backbone and horizontal) and draw a cabling diagram, select routers switches etc and I also have to do addressing.

It uses the term data point:

"Classrooms 003 to 033 have 4 data points except for the 4 computer rooms which need 20 data points" "Graphics room 033 needs 10 computer connections" "For the Computer Workstations 10 data points are needed"

I was just wondering what exactly it means by data points? Like what they are, what they do etc

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers Ben —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.57.228.62 (talk) 01:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

This seems odd, but the data points seem just to represent a Ethernet drop. So, the reason that computer labs would require more data points would be that each computer requires a network connection. Freedomlinux 03:37, 24 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freedomlinux (talk • contribs) 03:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

This sounds good, it's a normal kind of specification. The data point, possible also could be called a data outlet, is likely to be an RJ 45 socket. You would then run a drop ethernet cord from the socket to your PC(s) ethernet socket. Of course you can vary this in your design! But this is most common type. Whether its catogory 5 or 5e or 6 will be part of your design too. Graeme Bartlett 01:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Picasa for Linux isn't symlink-aware

I recently downloaded and installed Picasa for Linux. However, when I told it to find every image file in my filesystem, it turns out it isn't symlink-aware. I have a separate hard disk for my digital photographs, and I keep a symlink to its mountpoint from my home directory for convenience. So this means that Picasa found all my digital photographs twice. Is there any way to fix this? JIP | Talk 05:27, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Not really a solution but why not directly mount the drive in ~/? That's what I'm doing right now. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:57, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

computer line pics thingys

hi,

what are the things, that are made from things like this: | _ - / \ etc, and are made into intricate pics that are found on websites like Bebo (the most basic eg is this (.Y.) for breasts, but there are allsorts like guitars, card, houses etc) also where can many be forund?

thanks, --90.242.188.10 10:09, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

ASCII art. Algebraist 10:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

see also emoticon. --140.247.43.151 16:49, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Adding Ram = No Video?!

I was trying to help out my buddy who has a VERY out of date computer (only 128 megs of RAM, ouch!) and I took a stick of 256megs to drop in his second RAM slot. Well, after booting the system back up there's no video. He's got onboard video (ugh). Any ideas or suggestions?

12.155.80.115 12:25, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Try taking out the 128 meg strip and using just the 256meg strip. SteveBaker 14:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that the motherboard can't support either the 256M module or 384M combined. The motherboard book and website would say if it could. Also, try updating the firmware on the motherboard (again check the website), although it can be a pain sometimes to find the maker of an old motherboard.

One more thing. Does the video not work, or everything not work? Does it make all the normal sounds of booting up into the OS (usually lots of hard drive noises)? Or does it beep a lot (POST code)? If it beeps, then it's likely something like I said above. --Bennybp 15:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep - that's mostly the reason I suggested using just the 256Mb strip - but it might also be some kind of incompatibility between the two different kinds of RAM or that there is a fault in the 256Mb strip. It's always a good idea to try to simplify the problem when diagnosing via email/talk pages. SteveBaker 15:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

to answer your questions- as far as I can tell everything boots up fine, we just can't get any video to the monitor. All else is well (POST check included). I don't know enough about the motherboard off hand to tell you any more specifics, but seeing as it's an HP computer I'm betting you fellas are right, it's probably not able to handle more then 256megs of ram (which would still keep him slightly bottlenecked as his processor is 1.1ghz). Thanks for the help so far, I'll try just the 256 stick tonight and report back! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.155.80.115 (talk) 18:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

yep, the motherboard can only hold 256 megs of RAM. HP for the win!

Thanks guys! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.155.80.115 (talk) 14:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

256MB ought to be enough for anybody. --LarryMac | Talk 20:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Calendar software (open source) for team work

My company needs an online calendar so all team members can know what others are doing or planning to do and make comments on each others calenders.

Is there a open source solution out there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.37 (talk) 12:47, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo and Google both offer online calendars. In Yahoo, you make a group and it has a calendar. In Google, you can make a group and use the online office tools to share and edit papers and such. Being a group means you can write messages to each other, share files, and do live online chat - as well as have a calendar. Of course, you'll want to make it a private group. -- kainaw™ 13:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

For open source, Mozilla has both Sunbird and Lightning, which fall under the umbrella Mozilla Calendar Project. There are some other programs listed in the List of open source software packages. --LarryMac | Talk 13:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

How to disassemble the HTC Touch smart phone?

this question has been moved from the "professional advice" talk subpage --LarryMac | Talk 14:09, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm really curious about the structure inside the HTC Touch.

Can somebody tell me how to disassemble it?

Giving me the pictures with step-by-step instructions will be the most appreciated.

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kkchiang (talk • contribs) 02:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Low Core Speed from T2080

I have a Toshiba Satellite U305 Notebook running Vista Home Premium. The processor is a Intel Pentium T2080 Dual-Core @ 1.73GHz, yet in CPU-Z my processor's core speed reads off around 798 MHz which seems extremely low. I've been very unsatisfied with this computers performance in comparison to my other desktops which I built myself. My others have an AMD X2 4600 & 3800 and both run drastically faster than this one even though they all have dual cores with the same amount of RAM (2GB of DDR2). On the notebook I've removed Aero and virtually all visual effects and still am getting poor performance. Is this a problem with the cpu or, what I believe, are there cooling issues that are forcing the cpu to reduce its throughput due to high temperatures? Maybe I'm missing something all together, but I've used older laptops with far less impressive hardware that outperform this computer and am just wondering if any of you guys have any idea what the problem may be.

Thanks in advance, Jon

Intel (and most other laptop) processors throttle speed when idling as to keep power usage down. If it ran at that clock speed all the time it'd have terrible performance. You could turn it off in the BIOS probably, but you'd get an hour of battery life. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 21:57, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

If that's true would plugging it into a mains adapter unthrottle it? Exxolon 22:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

No, because it's there for energy efficiency reasons. You can unthrottle it if both CPU are not idle, however. Also, before this internet was preventing me from posting, I had:

Looking at that specific notebook, I didn't see any reason that it wouldn't be performing as advertised. However, on the CPU-Z website, it does mention that if your cpu is idle, it will do half power mode and run at half speed, which is most likely what you're seeing. You can use the two cores while loading CPU-Z or you can try a benchmark that automatically does it. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 22:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, don't I look dumb. It was on a power saver mode even when it wasn't running on battery. In high performance mode its running at 1.73GHz now. Thanks for your help though guys. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.76.66.117 (talk) 02:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I've found that running Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool helps, as it has buttons for loading each core at a certain percentage. Not only is it good for temperature checking but load-testing as well. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Line breaks in markup

In MediaWiki markup, and HTML in general, what's the difference between <br> and <br />? When do I use which, and why? —Angr 20:12, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, <br /> is XHTML-compliant, and the other is not. It's a shortcut for <br></br> since it doesn't make sense to have an opening tag without a closing tag in the XML realm --ffroth 20:36, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I understand that <br /> is a shortcut for <br></br>, but is there ever a time when something would come between those tags? Is there any variable α that might occur in <br>α</br>? And Wikimedia projects need to be XHTML-compliant, right, so I should use <br /> here, at Wikisource, etc.? —Angr 20:48, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• http://xhtml.com/en/xhtml/reference/br/ says it's not legal to have anything at all inside a br tag. --Sean 21:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

LOL xhtml compliant. Well, that's what the doctype says though so I guess --ffroth 21:48, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The reason lies in the history of HTML/XML. HTML was originally based on SGML which allowed certain tags with no closing tag (like br and img). Then, when HTML became popular, the W3C decided to generalize HTML into XML, so anybody could define an HTML-like language, on the same basis. In this scenario it makes sense to have a clear way to distinguish between single tags and tags which have and opening and closing variant. Without this, the parser would encounter <askjfg> and not know whether to expect a closing tag. With HTML, the parser knew which tags where single tags, but with XML the parser doesn't necessarily know anything about the tags. So single tags had to end in a slash. When XML was finished, the W3C decided to bring HTML under XML (which became XHTML), so all of HTML's single tags need to end with a slash if you're using XHTML. risk 00:32, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Baby computer OS

My 10-month old son wants to play with my new laptop. I gave him my old one, but it isn't as interesting because it doesn't do anything. I'd like to put a crippled OS on it that just shows pictures instead of doing anything useful. Any suggestions for how to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.58.224.126 (talk) 21:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

You'd be better off getting something like "My First Laptop" - [3] - I wouldn't recommend giving a real laptop to a 10 month old baby to be honest. The screen is probably breakable glass, and I'd imagine the keys would present a choking hazard. Exxolon 21:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Add a cardboard box, and you're done toy shopping for life

• I agree; or better yet, some wooden blocks. --Sean 23:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - kids aren't ready for screens (be they computers, TV's or anything else) until they are a couple of years old. Trust me, you aren't doing the kid any favors. Nice big blocks - LOTS of them, stuff that makes noises - things parents can do as well. Start thinking in terms of reading bedtime stories. SteveBaker 00:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

October 25

MediaWiki admin.

I have a MediaWiki on my system at home for passing documents and photos around the family and such - but I'm suffering vandalism and (unlike Wikipedia) the number of vandals (hundreds) vastly exceeds the number of editors (four) - which means that the usual 'revert within short time' mechanism isn't working.

• Step one is to lock out all edits from not-logged in users,
• Step two is to control who gets user-id's.

Can anyone give me a 30 second HowTo on setting those two things? Thanks! SteveBaker 00:03, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

You can change the privileges of the anonymous user group to not be able to edit.. never done this myself but it should be straightforward? I don't know about controlling ids.. maybe just disable registration and register user names for people from the admin interface, and email them their passwords --ffroth 00:07, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

It is in the LocalSettings.php file. Just read the comments. You'll see one that says "This snippet prevents new registration from anonymous users" and another that says "This snippet prevents editing from anonymous users". Uncomment the snippet the comments are referring to. I'd also suggest turning off anonymous read ability so only registered users can read the site. -- kainaw™ 01:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Nope - it's not there. Perhaps I have a different version of MediaWiki - but there is no sign of anything like that in any of the .php files. I've read every line of the LocalSettings.php - for sure there is nothing like that in there. The versions I have are:

• MediaWiki: 1.11.0
• PHP: 5.2.3 (cgi-fcgi)
• MySQL: 5.0.24a-standard-log

Sadly, these are the versions provided by my hosting service - I can't easily upgrade.

FWIW, I can't find anything like that in the system we have at work either:

• MediaWiki: 1.6.7
• PHP: 4.3.10 (apache2handler)
• MySQL: 4.1.10a

SteveBaker 02:05, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

OK - nevermind! I found the settings for '$wgGroupPermissions' in 'wiki/include/DefaultSettings.php' - I think I have things nailed down the way I want! Thanks guys! SteveBaker 02:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Moving two IDE hdds in RAID 0 to external enclosures.

Alright, the long story is that I have two IDE drives in RAID 0 in a computer that now refuses to boot, I have replaced the PSU 2 times and...to be honest, I am not sure what is wrong and not keen on spending too much time figuring out how to get the machine running again. It is rather old now and I was going to scrap it in 2 months anyhow. But, I have a bunch of data on the RAID drives that I didn`t get to backup before it died.

Short: Is there any way I can get 2 USB(or whatever, really) HDD enclosures, put one disk in each, and then run them in RAID 0 like before, so I can access the data?

I know there are enclosures that allow you to do RAID, but what I am not sure of is if these allow you to continue, so to speak, a RAID set up initially as an internal one. Like, will the controller sense that "Oh, these were in a RAID before, let's continue that one"?

Alternatively, can I take the two drives out and run them in RAID on another computer without losing the data?

Thanks anyone.

123.100.136.74 00:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC) (mrkall)

Can you boot off something else like a floppy rescue disk or CD drive or USB? You will still need to load your raid controller software, then maybe you could access your disks. However if it is one of the disks that stuffed you will not be able to get much back! Graeme Bartlett 01:34, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Plug and play HDD safety measures!

Hi everybody,I have a doubt in plug and play features of HDD.Are all IDE\SATA HDD, plug&play devices?.I use to connect my SATA 160GB harddisk to my PC with WIN XP OS loaded onto an IDE 40GB HDD by plugging in the power card from SMPS and the SATA cable from main board,whilst the windows has loaded to desktop.Sometimes it detects itself and indicates in taskbar,or I go scanning for new devices in device manager,windows detects it and I am able to access data from my computer usually.Similarly I simply disconnect it by removing the power card when my pc is on with windows desktop loaded.My fear is,Will this approach of connecting SATA HDD device while windows has loaded,may damage my HDD physically? and\or corrupt my data?.My OS is loaded in another Master IDE HDD device.If this approach is unharmful, then can I follow the same plug&play approach for any IDE type HDDs too?.Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 05:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

SATA can be hotswapped. Dunno about IDE, would assume it's a bad idea. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, IDE devices cannot be hot swapped.GaryReggae 07:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

There are special external hard drive enclosures that you can install your IDE hard drive into and and plug in the USB/Firewire cable. The small ones use power provided by the USB port while the big ones come with a separate power supply. Use a high-quality casing and cable if possible; cheap ones might have all sorts of problems like the drive clicking but won't spin up (because of insufficient power due to cable/contact resistance), to reduced hard disk life due to unstable power to outright catastrophic failure (as the external SMPS malfunctions or the power gets cut off while the drive is writing to the FAT/MFT). --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess that too right..I yet didn't try out for IDE, but SATA seemed to adapt well for plug and play.Anyhow while copying some data to that HDD, what happens if I remove the HDD?.Will it corrupt the data or will it restart the system? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.51.192 (talk) 08:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't say for sure but unplugging any storage device while it's being written to is a bad idea, this goes back to the days of floppy disks "never take the disk out when the light is on!" I've known USB sticks to become corrupted by pulling them out while writing although formatting them usually fixes this. I doubt it would cause the system to restart. GaryReggae 12:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

It would just cause data corruption (and an "Unsafe Removal" notification for earlier versions of Windows) at the very least, with the effects most pronounced when you're defragmenting the drive. If it does happen, you'll have to recopy over the data if you were doing that or hope that the files affected aren't corrupted. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Free Website Hosting and Building (not Subdomain)

Could you pro's tell me any website or host that can help me create a website with the subdomain. I just want a clean "this-is-me.com" website. You see Im not very gopod good with html and haven;t got the money for $1 per month hosting.

So Im asking for any websites or hosts that can help me -create a domain for me, no subdomains!!! -help me build a website using that domain

This may not be possible, so just tell me if I am wrong

Thank you to Reference Desk PPL!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pro2GHz (talk • contribs) 10:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

You'll still have to pay for the DNS registration of your domain, regardless of the hosting costs. -- JSBillings 10:54, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

.co.nr may be the closest to a domain you can get. See our Wikipedia page on .co.nr . Guroadrunner 11:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Once you purchase your TLD, you can go to a number of free hosting sites. See here for some (ex. http://freehostia.com/free_hosting.html or http://www.awardspace.com/web_hosting.html). --Justanother 19:36, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Padding files in uTorrent

Hi everyone! I've another utorrent question: in the "files" tab, where the available downloads are listed in utorrent, the are about 30 files that say "_____Padding_file_x_if you see this file, please update to BitComet 0.85 or above_____". What does this mean? Is it advertising? Will downloading this torrent be corupted? Thanks again for all you wonderful help! xxx Hyper Girl 14:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean "available downloads"? Bittorrent is not like limewire or kazaa- it's not centralized --ffroth 17:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Hyper Girl means the files that are available to download inside the torrent. The short answer is, you don't need to download these files; you can safely deselect them, and if you do download them you can delete them because they're no use to you.

It seems to be to do with a new feature of BitComet. A quick google search turned up this little article on it: http://torrentfreak.com/bitcomet-pollutes-bittorrent-with-junk-data/

-- DatRoot 17:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Software Project Ideas

Hello,

I am currently taking a university course in Software Engineering. We are asked to make a software project in the form of a web application using ASP.NET and C# and linking the thing to some database (SQL)... My only problem is that i ran out of ideas for a software project

Can you plz propose ideas of what could i do (or refer me to a link?). Please, note that the project should showcase my knowledge in web forms and user interface...

I only need an idea....

Thanks in advance 213.175.169.250 14:47, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Does it have to be an original idea? Because doing something like creating a simple Wiki would be a pretty good project for that and would be sufficiently hip. Dealing with multiple simultaneous edits, versioning, etc. would be a nice web/database programming exercise. --24.147.86.187 15:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If it does have to be original, you could always do specialized wiki, like a wiki for music documents, or a wiki for images. risk 02:45, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

My web development course provided the following project options: An online calendar application, where the privileged users could add and edit events, and the general public would see the calendar (this could be used for something like an online concert agenda), a web shop (without the rather complicated payment system, just the product listing), a course management system for a university (possible features include subscription for students, adding/editing/removing courses by administrators, and a personal schedule based on the courses you're subscribed to) or a simple content management system for a website (with a host of extra features to choose from). We decided to implement our own idea of an online questionnaire system, where users could define their own questionnaire, and then people could fill it out. All projects were finished (more or less) within a month by groups of first year students with very little experience overall. I would suggest you start with a simple idea that's easy to implement, so you can spend some time adding features, making it look nice, and refining security. risk 02:45, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Help to create a table with MS Word

Hi!, I really need help to create a table with MS Word XP (2002) that is wider than 22" (or with Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0, but it has to be wider than 22"[and not with MS Excel]). It will not be for printing. I have searched for help on the web for hours, without being able to find anything useful. I feel very frustrated and am under a lot of stress. I will greatly appreciate any good help that I can receive. Thank you very, very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.70.65.132 (talk) 15:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If you're not using it for printing, why is it important that Word thinks the table is more than 22" wide? Can you just use the max. allowed custom paper size with tiny fonts? You can adjust the zoom level to make the small fonts comfortable to read on a computer screen. --64.236.170.228 18:48, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If you want even bigger tables you can go for Microsoft Excel or a web page. Graeme Bartlett 00:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Just tried on Word 2003 and max page width is 22" so you may be out of luck? --Justanother 19:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Google news

When I pull up the news at Google, it gives me a bunch of recommended stories. Somehow, the saga of Ellen DeGeneres' dog got into the rotation of articles that are recommended to me. I really don't care about E.D. or her dog but these articles are recommended for some reason. Probably because I read an entertainment article or two and this is a big story in the entertainment field (for whatever silly reason). So does anyone know how to say that I'm not interested in this story in a way that Google will understand me, cause cursing at the screen doesn't help.  :-) I think I can filter out stories by keyword but I don't want to miss something that might contain the words "Ellen DeGeneres" or "dog" which I might actually be interested in. Afterall, I like dogs and there is the possibility that E.D. may appear in something that I would be interested in (however remote). Dismas|^(talk) 19:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

But what is the action you want to happen ? Guroadrunner 22:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I want there to be an "Ignore" link next to stories that I don't care about. Or some similar mechanism. Dismas|^(talk) 23:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Please consider reporting your issues to Google. I am sure the honest, hard-working people at Google will appreciate your ideas and your effort. They might even pay you for it! --Kushal^t 03:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Registering a domain name & nameservers

If I were to register a domain name with an internet DNS registrar, what information do I need to provide them? Is it the IP address of my site's nameservers? What exactly is the point of a single site's name server- is it just to resolve subdomains or what? Is there free name server software? Since I'm not interested in subdomains, would it work if I just gave the registrar the IP address of my one web hosting box? --ffroth 20:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Wait, this page seems to suggest that I need 3 nameservers! Why on earth do I need 3 separate nameservers for a single DNS record?! Why should you have to have at least 3 external IP addresses to connect a single box into DNS? And LOL what good does it do to give them ns1.something.com? That's what you're registering! How are you supposed to set up a nameserver at ns1.something.com so that you can register, if your something.com doesn't even exist? --ffroth 21:03, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The reason for multiple nameservers is redundancy: If one box is down or under attack, others could still serve up your info. The idea is that the nameserver gives some place to go to get the actual IP of any named domain. And yes, you can run your own nameserver (usually using bind which is free). The definitive book on the subject is DNS and Bind from O'Reilly. Donald Hosek 21:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

For regular folks like us, your domain registry company generally sells a package that includes hosting the nameserver(s) entries for your domain. The reason there are multiple entries supported is for fallback in the event of one failing (so they can all be the same if you want). Typically your domain host (who needn't, obviously, be your web host) just stores a single lookup (which you set by means of their web interface); so when someone in the internet asks for www.something.com it just returns that IP you gave them. Depending on the domain hoster they can set their server up so that any subdomain request will all return your one IP address. Now things are different for a bigger concern; they have their own publicly visible nameservers, so the DNS entries point to those, and in turn those provide info for the subdomains that company implements. Now you could do this yourself; set the public nameservers to be your own actual box, and then you run your own nameserver. But that's one more service you have to install and maintain and keep up to date and secure, so a lot of people don't think it's worth the bother. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The advantage for the bigger company in having their own nameservers is that they can do clever stuff, and not just serve the same stuff all the time to everyone. So they can do loadbalancing at the DNS level, and failover, and they can give a different reply based on the network or (guestimated) physical location of the query (and thus supply you with content that's served from "nearer" to you, for example). If all you want to do is to server a single static address then that's irrelevant for you, and running bind might well be overkill. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

An also (sorry if this is telling you something that's really obvious) to host your own server (for anything) you need a real (or at least virtualised) server of your own, and not just a virtual web host. The latter resolves to an IP shared by many (unrelated) domains and are distinguished (generally by Apache) by means of the http "host" header. If you've got the latter (which is much cheaper) then you'll have to rely on someone else's name server. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I've finally figured all this stuff out --ffroth 04:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

you don't need more than 1 nameserver although most registrars make you specify two at least. DJB says that it is silly to replicate your dns servers more than the services they answer for, I use djbdns, more specifically, tinydns which is very simple. What Finlay McWalter says isn't necessarily true, there is no reason you couldn't run your own DNS to point to someone elses virtual web hosting. -- Diletante 16:45, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Internet DNS part 2

Is it possible to register an internet domain name (something.com) with an internal IP address? So when the client requests DNS information from something.com, it gets an internal IP address? What about registering it with an internal DNS name, so the client gets "not here, resolve something.inyournetwork.com and see if that gives you the IP address" and then the internal network DNS servers will be able to give the client the internal IP? It sounds like this should work fine, but the question above about what the heck a nameserver has to do with registering a domain name casts doubt --ffroth 20:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that's all possible. For example, it's not uncommon to discover that localhost.foo.com resolves to 127.0.0.1. DNS doesn't care what class IP you resolve to. There's also no reason why having a DNS alias from foo.com to foo.local or some other locally resolved IP address. I've used that for development purposes on occasion. Donald Hosek 21:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. There are a couple of ways to do this, though the specifics vary from operating system to operating system and the details of your internal network setup. On Linux, there is a file on each machine called /etc/hosts, which is the first port of call for the operating system to check when it wants to look up an IP address. It's been a while since I administered another operating system, but I'm sure that Windows and Mac OSX have similar abilities.

The second is to run a DNS server for your home network that is configured to point something.com to some internal IP address, and just looks up all other addresses from your ISP's DNS server and passes the results along. Many of the DSL modem/routers people use to connect to the internet have such a cacheing DNS server built-in and configure systems that connect to them to use it by default with DHCP; unfortunately, they often don't support configuring local addresses. However, there is alternate, free firmware for many of these routers which will let you do this and much, much more. OpenWRT is the best-known; it's very powerful, but it requires a bit of network administration savvy to configure. --Robert Merkel 21:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Locations of the hosts file on other OSes are detailed in Hosts file. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I've finally figured all this stuff out --ffroth 04:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

It is possible to override the address of any domain name through the hosts file. I was asked to write a program a long time ago (I refused). The program was to auto-install on everyone's computer (ie: virus). It would redirect any and all traffic to amazon.com to this company's server. Then they wanted their server to mangle the URL, forcing the user to be using their associate ID with Amazon so they would get a cut of every Amazon sale. This is very possible and it is likely that it is happening right now. I just didn't want any part of it. -- kainaw™ 17:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

transfering files to new pc

i recently brought a new pc which had a a 80 gig sata drive in and began transfering files accross from my old pc which had two hDD a 40 gig and a 250 gig IDE. the 40 gig had the windows files and other settings from my old pc and it transfered fine using windows files and settings transfer wizard. however when i plugged the 250gig one in the new pc recongises it but says it needs formatting and when i put it in my old pc it also says it needs formating. anyway round this? 250 gig of info is a lot to lose if i have to format the drive, i;m using windows xp sp2 home edition on both pcs--86.20.169.136 23:10, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. At this point I'd try booting your computer up with something like Knoppix and have a poke around to see what it says about what's on the 250 gig drive. Yoj might be able to use it to copy the data somewhere else (for instance, a USB hard drive). --Robert Merkel 00:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Try Testdisk and see if it finds anything useful. If Testdisk finds a lost partition, it is very good at restoring it, as your partition table could have been corrupted. Alternatively you can boot with XP, go into the repair console, and try things like fixmbr if all else fails. Do NOT allow XP to try and repair your drive data and indexes itself, it will only make it worse. Sandman30s 13:02, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You might want to try some data recovery software, but they don't come cheap plus the free ones need extensive knowledge to operate them and a mistake (such as forgetting to set your drive you want to recover on read-only) can ruin your already lost data on it. The best option if you don't know how to do it is to send your hard drive to data recovery companies like Ontrack. They're usually very expensive, but it's the only way to go if the data on your damaged drive is precious to you. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 14:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

sorry for the repated posts wikipedia kept telling me it was experincing an error at this time try again latter--86.20.169.136 16:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

yah knoppix works i've gotten all the files off thanks:P--86.20.169.136 23:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

October 26

Some YouTube stats

Hi, I'm writing a piece on international streaming video sites... I seem to be unable to find an approximate number of video clips and user accounts on YouTube.com. I realize that those numbers have to be increasing rapidly, but maybe someone knows something. Thanks anyway... --Saber^Excalibur! 18:02, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

If I search for "*" on youtube videos it says there are about 48,100,000 results. It deosn't seem to work for channels (users) though. I guess if you contact them they might give you the information. -- DatRoot 22:05, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Resetting a PC

I have a computer with Vista Home Premium and I would like to format it and start afresh (due to reduced performance, bugs, etc...) Unfortunately, it will not allow me to backup all operating system files onto a DVD-since it's not Vista Ultimate. How should I go about formatting my PC so that I can still install Vista on it without having to go out and buy it? Thanks. Acceptable 21:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

So you own a license to use the OS but not the install media itself? I believe this means, if you were to borrow an install CD from someone else, and use your own license key with it, you're all set and perfectly legal. Friday (talk) 21:44, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the Vista Home Premium OS came with the new computer I bought. But it didn't come with the CD's or DVD's of the OS. Acceptable 02:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

You might have got "system recovery disk" or perhaps there's a hidden partition with it all on, but I suggest you get onto your PC vendor and demand request they give you the OS installation disks. Surely it is unreasonable for a PC vendor not to supply the disks. Astronaut 05:25, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Really? All the new computers that I have bought, here in Canada, never came with OS installation disks. Acceptable 15:31, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

In my experience too, it's very common for the install media not to be included. Friday (talk) 15:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

If it does not have a restore CD then it should have a method to do a restore from the hard drive. On Dell, it is Ctrl-F11 during boot. --Justanother 19:25, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

chatting

I have not been online for a few years but now that I am bac on, I wish to do some chatting, However due to several IT issues, too complex to go into now, I have no email. What I wish to do is go to a free, informal web site and just have a chat with some people. I do notwant to become a member ect. Do such websites still exist? Or are all of them topic specific, register to use, email password verification required ect. please help me. Thancs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.149.242 (talk) 21:47, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Check out IRC. -- Diletante 21:57, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Or any forum system. If you have specific interests, do a google search on whatever that is with the word "forum" and you'll find online services that don't require email. SteveBaker 02:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Linux command line question

I'm a fairly new convert to linux and i'm still learning the ropes. I've been getting into the habit of having a terminal open most of the time and often i launch programs from there ("Oh, damn, I forgot to launch amarok. Oh, hey look at that nice terminal!"). This isn't the smartest thing in the world because it ties the terminal up the terminal and if you shut the terminal down the program you launched also dies. What i did to solve this was to make a little script called "forker" which I placed in my path that forks itself and executes the rest of the commandline and then quits (so you type "forker amarok", and you can continue to use the terminal and amarok wont die if you shut the terminal down). This works well enough, but it feels like there is a cleverer way to do this. In the interest of learning, can anyone educate this poor beginner on how to exactly do that? 83.249.100.242 22:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Don't know what dist you are on, but a simple "nohup" before the app has the same effect in Ubuntu. I.e. nohup amarok. --Saber^Excalibur! 22:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Linux! You can start programs in the background by putting an Ampersand (&) after the process, i.e.

   % amarok &

However, your bash shell (assuming you're using bash) might have set huponexit set, so it sends a HUP signal to all process when it exits. You can use the aforemented nohup to start processes, or turn off that option with:

   % shopt -u huponexit

-- JSBillings 22:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! I'll do that from now on (I'm going to miss you, forker, old pal). 83.249.100.242 22:47, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

If you forget to stick an '&' on the end of the command line - you can type a control-Z in the terminal window and you'll get your prompt back. At this point the application is paused - type 'bg' to put it into the background or 'fg' to bring it into the foreground (as it was before your typed ^Z). You can use 'fg' to bring a process that you backgrounded with '&' back into the foreground too. You can also use the 'jobs' command to get a list of the programs you have in background right now - they are numbered. You can use the numbers with a percent sign with the fg and bg commands - so 'fg %5' brings job number 5 back into the foreground. There are lots of other commands that work with these '%' thingies to give you more control of tasks running on your machine. "kill %5" kills off the 5th job. "stop %5" pauses it - so you can resume it with 'fg' and 'bg' (handy if some task is slowing down your computer and you want to stop it for a while, do a quick task and then let it carry on from where it left off). You can also use '%' with the first few characters of the program name. So if you do this:

gimp & -- Starts gimp as a background task

stop %1 -- Pauses gimp (because it's job number %1

...do some stuff...

bg %gi -- Places gimp into background (restarting it - because it's the only job that starts with "gi").

SteveBaker 02:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Mac Mini restore CD with a macbook pro?

I have a restore CD from my mac mini, will it work with my macbook pro? The hard drive is corrupted and I cant find my macbook pro restore cd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 23:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Why not call Apple's support line? It shouldn't be hard to get your restore CD replaced. They might even have advice on the best way to recover from hard drive corruption. If you wound up restoring the wrong disk image, you could be missing some drivers. EdJohnston 17:01, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It should work—the OS is the same, the HDD filesystem is the same. Does the Mac Mini have an Intel processor or is it PowerPC? If it is Intel-based then its CD is probably almost totally identical to the Macbook Pro one. You might as well give it a shot, in any case — it'll tell you if it won't work, no doubt. --24.147.86.187 18:05, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My not-insignificant experience with Mac restore CDs is that they will not work except on the model that they belong to. Just like many OEM Windows restore CDs. --Justanother 19:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you have AppleCare? --Kushal^t 03:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Nope. NO applecare.

October 27

If someone know about free science magzines and CDs ,please tell me .thanks in advance ............usman —Preceding unsigned comment added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs) 08:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

windows media virus?

Hi, I run xp and downloaded a video. However I cannot erase the vido now . I open the folder and it closes the window. I cannot erase the folder, it says the file is in use. I cannot erase using explorer.

can you help. I am running avast free edition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.105.70.6 (talk) 12:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

What you should try first is starting the computer in safe mode and then try to delete it (just when the computer is starting up, before the loading screen of windows xp comes up, press F8 repeatedly and then select to start the computer in safe mode). This will probably work for most things. If the file is really stubborn, use MoveFile from sysinternals (located here), that will pretty much remove anything. But try starting the computer in Safe Mode first, and report back if that works. 217.174.81.227 19:50, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like the folder created a thumbnail for the video that you had, the culprit is probably a file called thumbs.db, it stores thumbnails of images/videos. --VectorPotential^Talk 20:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Online chess frauds

How do the providers of online chess services discover that a user is using the help of a computer chess engine? 84.91.38.152 12:53, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

They.. don't? --ffroth 16:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes they do. At least the good ones, otherwise it would be too easy to become a master of online chess, don't you think? Internet Chess Club does that, I'm sure. 84.91.38.152 17:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well there you go, from the article on Internet Chess Club:

ICC provides the proprietary BlitzIn software, currently at version 2.6.2, and the Dasher program, released in 2006, currently at version 1.1.4. The software has functions to try to detect players using the assistance of chess programs. It does this, in part, by detecting changes in window input focus, and matching processes to known chess programs. It also detects if a non-FIDE titled player has a high percentage of its moves matching up with known computer programs. (The average player has great difficulty playing at a % greater than 60%.) Also, ICC have paid employees to detect computer cheating.

-- DatRoot 17:57, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Psh, I would never (ever) run some little game applet that's poking around in my memory.. I'll change my window focus whenever I want thank you very much --ffroth 21:14, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Then I guess you won't play on their sites, eh! I mean, you either play by the rules, or you don't play, simple as that. Nobody's forcing you. --24.147.86.187 22:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Can't people always use two physically separate computers? What is the point of this? "The good ones" sounds like sarcasm ... --Kushal^t 02:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

win xp sp2

The "index" box of "Help and Support" is empty. How can I retrieve its content? Omidinist 16:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Try going to this page: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/top10faqs.htm (only works in IE) and then clicking on "Why doesn't Help and Support work?" and following the instructions there. -- DatRoot 16:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Removing duplicates in MS Office

I have a very long Excel worksheet (200,000 rows!) with many duplicate entries in the same column. What's the quickest way to eliminate the duplicates? --12.47.208.50 16:54, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Google google --24.147.86.187 18:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Router speed

I`m trying to discover my router speed via an internet speed test but I keep getting a download speed of 1.9 Mbps. My internet is stabilised between 7.7 Mbps and 8.1 Mbps. So tell me this if I can download an 83MB file in 7 minutes am I getting my 7.7-8 Mbps speed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.246.211 (talk) 18:00, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

83MB in 7 minutes is about 1.6Mbps. Algebraist 18:53, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well i`m confused then. When I connect tiscali via a Modem it says connected at "7.7Mbps". What does this mean in terms of download speed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.246.211 (talk) 19:32, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd like a little clarification: do you mean how fast your router is able to transfer data or how fast your internet connection is? Because however fast your internet connection is, your router will be faster. Your router is not the bottleneck, that is almost for certain.

If you want to test how fast your internet speed is, I recommend finding a well-seeded legal torrent and see what the max speed of that transfer is. Many of those "bandwidth test" sites will under-report it because there is a bottleneck somewhere, but torrents can achieve spectacular speeds anyway. 217.174.81.227 20:01, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Basically I want a fast enough internet connection to be able to play games without any lag whatsoever. I`m not sure whether that constitutes download speed or just general internet speed. Can you link me to one of these torrent sites and direct me on how to use it, and what to look for to indicate that my speed is adequate for said online games.. e.g. Tiger Woods PS3. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.246.211 (talk) 20:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

For torrents you can go download one of the Linux CD's, like the new Ubuntu 7.10 LiveCD on here. Usually your speed and your ping is not really correlated unless your speed is ridiculously slow (like dial-up). If you live in a country like New Zealand which has the crappiest broadband in developed countries, you can request your ISP to switch off the interleaving on your line if you have a good phone line and that'll shave off around 20-50ms of ping for you, but otherwise I don't think there's much you can do about pings except finding a local server and the usual stuff. --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:34, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Sigh, all this "online" (mega scare quotes) console gaming is confusing people. Running a full server list in Counter-Strike gives me 200 or so servers with a ping of under 40ms (good) but thousands of servers in the 100s or even 1000s.. it all depends on where you are geographically in comparison with the server --ffroth 21:11, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Come again:D. I have no idea how downloading this will help. It says it`ll take an hour for gods sake. Sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.246.211 (talk) 20:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The point is not download the whole image, but to see the speed you can download it. If it looks like it can't get any faster you can cancel the download (or not if you want to ditch Windows). --antilived^{T | C | G} 21:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Right thanks very much. The fastest I got it was 279 Kb/ps which would have taken me 49 minutes to download the whole thing, is that a fast speed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.246.211 (talk) 22:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

What kind of monitor connector is this?

I have the following set-up on the back of a computer: http://i21.tinypic.com/zxkufa.jpg

The computer seems to boot fine but I get no image on the monitor. I'm guessing it's because the monitor jack is supposed to into the connector that's circled in the picture. Can anyone tell me what kind of connector that is? 72.189.138.226 19:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Try Turning on the computer screen!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eddymania7 (talk • contribs) 20:21, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a DMS-59 plug which contains 2 DVI-I links in 1 plug. You would have some trouble finding an adapter to DVI though, these things are quite rare. --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

RuneScape:Internet Game

Q:Is it true that if you play Runescape it adds mto your download limit?

--Eddymania7 20:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC) AKA Eddymania7

Yes everything you do on the internet uses your cap. --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Clearing my cache=frozen and another issue

Dell PC running Windows XP; Pentium 4; 2.40 ghz; 768 MB ram; I use IE6 most of the time. About three out of four times when I clear my cache (ctrl+F5), the screen freezes and I have to cntrl+alt+del out of IE. This happens often here when, for example, I am warning a user or IP and upon posting to their virgin talk page, it says "no messages have been posted yet...", so I attempt to clear my catch so the warning becomes visible. Same for when I'm checking a pages history I just edited, and my edit has not yet made it there. Any diagnosis/advice? A second issue: Sometimes a particular IE window seems "dominant"; other IE windows will not maximize from the bottom bar (the only way to access those other windows is to minimize the dominant window), and when I am in that dominant window, if I open up a new window, it opens minimized. This seems to happen randomly, without any correlation between the type of page opened, or the method of opening. Any thoughts?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:31, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

You know what's coming... -- DatRoot 23:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

That's right! --Kushal^t 02:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Opera gets no love. Pacific Coast Highway ^{{Trick • or treat!}} 03:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Have you scanned for viruses and spyware? 'Cause that's always a good first step if IE is acting up, given that it is a major disease vector. You might also want to make sure your video drivers are the latest versions offered by the manufacturer of your video card, since apparently that is often the cause of IE-related shakiness. (Though in my experience that's rarely the problem.) --24.147.86.187 03:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Partitioning and Booting

I have a 60GB hard disk partitioned as follows:

1. 1GB Linux Swap
2. 29GB ext3 with Kubuntu and GRUB
3. 30GB ntfs Windows XP Home

Currently, I am able to dual boot Kubuntu and Windows. I want to reformat partitions 1 and 2 into ntfs to hold data only, but I think doing so would erase GRUB, leaving my computer unable to start Windows.
How can I restore the MBR (if it even involves this) so that I can boot Windows again?
Will the fixMBR utility on my XP install CD work?
- WikiY ^Talk 01:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Ripping/Converting VCDs with 2 Audio Channels

Hi, how can I rip or convert VCDs that have two language tracks? I am currently using VCDGear to rip .DAT into .MPG then I convert it using Videora ipod Converter. I have VCDs (such as Karaoke VCDs) that have two language audio tracks, is there a softwarre that allows me to choose which audio track to rip or convert? thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.78.194.91 (talk) 02:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)