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.
What are some software programs/tools/packages that can be used for creating high quality information graphics, statistical graphics, etc? I consider myself to be an advanced Excel user (though not much into VBA yet) and a fairly competent MATLAB user. Are there other programs that can be used for data visualization? --Saket (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Check out R (programming language) along with this book, the book's website is here, with sample graphs and associated code. It's quite time-consuming, though, to get the graphs exactly like you want. To get you started, if you have an Excel table with variable names in the first row, the easiest way to copy it to R is via the clipboard. After you have copied it from Excel to the clipboard, switch to R and enter:
mydata=read.table(file="clipboard", header=TRUE)
If your country settings use a decimal comma, you'll need to type
I installed Ubuntu on my Vista machine and was very happy with it, so I decided to try other Linux variants and installed PCLinux. After this installation, I couldn't get Ubuntu to work (PCLinux works fine). Anyway, I have decided that I don't want PCLinux, so how is it possible to erase it and get my partition back into the Vista environment, as I seem to remember devoting 7GB to PCLinux?
Open vista, right-click Computer, manage, disk manager. Delete the pclinux partition and expand the vista partition into it (if it's not contiguous you'll have to use gparted from the ubuntu livecd and expand it into your linux paritions). Then boot from the ubuntu livecd and update-grub from the command line :D\=< (talk) 13:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In Linux (regardless of the version) type "cd /boot" and you should be in the boot partition. If you have multiple linux installs, they should be sharing this partition. Typing "ls" should show you a directory named grub. Type "cd grub" and then "ls" and you should see a file called menu.lst - which is the menu you see when grub is booting. As root, edit menu.lst (ie: "nano menu.lst"). Each menu item has a listing that looks like:
The title is just what you want to call it. It can be anything. Root is the drive containing the kernel and initrd image. Kernel is the kernel file and options to go along with it. Initrd is the initrd image.
What apparently happened is that installing PCLinux overwrote your menu.lst file, erasing or altering the entry for Ubuntu. That basically means that the PCLinux installer is junk. Since anyone with a computer and spare time can make their own Linux distro, you end up with many junk distros. I prefer to stick with either Debian-Ubuntu or Redhat-Fedora. They have a lot of developers to help keep the distros useful. -- kainaw™14:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Remove the partitions. Doesn't Vista have a partition manager? I don't use any Microsoft products, but I've heard people talk about adding/removing partitions with Vista. -- kainaw™16:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Size of email message
I received a short email (in Outlook) with a Word file attached. The file was 1MB but Outlook states that the size of the entire email (including attachment) is 3MB. Clearly the brief email can't be 2MB large (can it?!) so why is Outlook telling me that the whole thing is 3MB?
--Richardrjtalk email09:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Binary attachments are usually encoded in Base64, which takes 4/3 times the size of the file, not including line returns that are necessary in the Base64, which add more size. That alone should does not account for why it is 3MB. But is part of it. --Spoon! (talk) 10:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps that number is how much disk space Outlook uses to store that mail? Considering that this is the company that made an exit menu a 43-man project, this would not be too surprising. --Sean18:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I want to connect two PCs (a desktop and a laptop, both with Windows XP) using an extensible USB cable with adapters, connecting them directly by USB ports. It's possible? It'll work? Do I need a specific program to transfer files? Or it can damage the PCs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.255.9.38 (talk) 13:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You can't connect two PCs using only cables. You will need a USB bridge, but they don't seem to be very common. I'd go for using Ethernet (RJ-45) (8P8C) cross cables, or regular Ethernet cables hooked up to a common router/hub/switch. Or wireless. --Kjoonlee17:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to do this once but one of the computers didn't have a serial port. One other thing is which program to use; is there any freely available software for Windows which supports serial/parallel transfer? --Kjoonlee19:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds to me like a driver issue. Download the latest drivers for your graphics card. It is also possible that game only runs on a unix environment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arcoain (talk • contribs) 03:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Go to control panel / performance and maintenence / system through windows... (or type device manager or hardware into help and take it from there) .. select the harware option in the device manager screen. The click the 'device manager' button this brings up a lsit of stuff you have connected - from this list select 'display adaptors' this should tell you what sort of graphics chip you have.. (there may be more than one).. Then come back for more help if you think this chip should work with the games - but we need to know what type of chip it is..87.102.81.140 (talk) 15:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Its an Intel 82865G Graphics Controller. The game is Knights of the Old Republic. Heres the fun part though, if we click through the notifications, the game runs, but one part seems to not be working. -Omnipotence407 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.37.228.44 (talk) 01:12, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I am having a big problem with this program demo I downloaded.I would appreciate it if you reply soon cause I only have 4 more days of the demo.At the begining it ask me what "letter" psp I have , my first problem begins here I didnt know what that ment or how to find it out so I just choose "E" (note:I have a silver psp). Then I wanted to put my dvd into my psp. So then I connected the psp to the computer using usb then I put the movie in.And i clicked "import video". It told me that the movie was in 5 parts and it will convert and put in the videos one at a time. And then when it was finished it was shown on the computer as these pictures from the movie.When I clicked playback, it didnt when I checked my psp ,NO MOVIE!! note: my psp has a memory card. If possible can I have step by step instructions. I appreciate your help alot. Any advice given is needed. Thank you so much for your time, sorry it's so long.(Superawesomgoat (talk) 23:54, 11 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]
February 12
PSD to Vector
I made a vector logo in Photoshop for a friend to be printed on a t-shirt. I downloaded a font from DaFont that he does not have. I want to leave him the flexibility of scaling the vector as big as he wants, but Photoshop won't let him do that properly if he does not have the same font that I downloaded. Without him having to download that font, is there anyway I can compile all the layers in Photoshop into a vector and send it to him so that he can re-scale to however large he wants? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 02:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly: Keeping the font as a vector (essentially, a bunch of equations) requires the font, which contains that data, so, without out the font, he will need to use a static image. Fireworks may allow you to convert this into a vector anyway, although, I'm not positive. In short, no, he will need the font, because you can't just convert an image into a vector (to my knowledge). Arcoain (talk) 03:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Ouro. It only lists a "Data Sheet" "User Guide" and "GPL Code". I'm version 2. I've also found something called a firmware update, but its in .bin format. Am I supposed to compile these or something? xxx User:Hyper Girl14:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, maybe I'm being incredibly naive here. I've got this router a friend gave me. No cables, no disk, just the router. I've got a power adapter with the right volts and ampage (12v 850mA) and the lights come on. Next I connect the router to my PC (win xp sp2) via a network cable and Windows detects it as a "local area network". Now what? How can I use it to connect to other wireless devices? How do I alter the routers SSD and other settings? As far as I can tell I need the setup disk to install the right software to do these things, right? Or am I completely missing something? I really do appreciate your help Ouro. xxx User:Hyper Girl14:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the router will allow you to connect to other wireless devices, like wireless network cards, in order to construct a local area network. However, anything above what you ask - I do not know, it'd be best you downloaded the user guide (it's available at the link I posted above) and read it. Maybe, just maybe, the router doesn't require any further software for basic functionality (ask your friend whether he ever had any software with it). Most probably you do need appropriate software for it, I've tried Googling for it but didn't find what you were looking for. Do you have another PC with a wireless network card to check whether it's functioning properly? Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 15:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My friends' (this is a different friend, by the way) laptop detects it as an "unencrypted netword" and can connect to it, but I can't select and conect from the router myself. I'll ask him (the orignal friend) if he needed any extra software to run it. I'll let you know how I get on. xxx User:Hyper Girl15:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Since it's a Linksys router, the web based administration screens can almost certainly be accessed by using a browser and entering http://192.168.1.1. The factory default for logging in is no username, and password=admin. If those defaults have been changed, you should be able to restore the factory defaults by pressing and holding the reset button for 15 seconds or so. You really shouldn't need any additional software, the setup wizards just automate some of the configuration. --LarryMac | Talk16:03, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. I'm trying to do some revision of UNIX, and there's something i'm not sure about, if you had the following command: echo "My name is Jac" >> temp,
does the temp file have to already exist?, what happens if it doesn't? Thanks--Jac16888 (talk) 14:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well now i feel stupid, thats pretty obvious. I hate all this command line stuff. I do have another question, i created a directory in unix, but when i try and view the permissions, using ls -1 "filename", i get no response, or error message either. What am i doing wrong. Thanks--Jac16888 (talk) 14:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Try ls -l (a lowercase ell, not a one). And you shouldn't need the quotes - just enter the first couple of characters and hit tab to autocomplete. —BradV15:23, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Damn, you beat me too it, i just realised my idiotic mistake, l not 1, i knew about quotes thing, was just using them here, not in the command. I'm not always this stupid, honest. Thanks--Jac16888 (talk) 15:25, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Remember, when you ask for a listing and specifically mention "dirname", you'll get the contents of that directory rather than information about the directory itself. And if you just created the directory, then the contents of that directory is empty -- hence; "no response". You want "ls -ld" to show the status of the directory itself rather than the status of its contained files.
I came from an environment where this sort of thing wasn't true so I've always felt that the need for "-d" was misfeature of Unix. Instead, I'd have designed it so that without the final slash on the path (e.g., foo/bar), it would give you the status of the directory bar itself but with the final slash (e.g., foo/bar/), it would give you the lasting of the contents of the directory bar. But obviously, someone else felt differently for long enough that this misfeature became standard practice and they invented "-d" to cover this case.
Hi all, I think I might have some sort of virus/rootkit that is annoying me. I am running xp pro and Avast anti virus keeps identifying a file called ndt2.sys in my system32 folder as being a Trojan horse. It alerts me about once or twice a day and then promptly deletes it. I've tried running boot time scans which revealed some things, which were deleted, but this one still came back. As far as I can tell, avast manages to stop it before it does anything. I've googled it but can't find anything conclusive as to what it is or how to get rid of it. Any help you guys can give would be greatly appreciated. Z28boy (talk) 17:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a 32 bit processor, you might want to try [1]. Hope that helps. However, if you are privacy concerned, please be prepared to wipe your hard disk clean. (Hint: up to date back ups of documents and stuff) Kushalt18:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
AVG anti-rootkit just requires a 32-bit XP or Win2k installation, not a 32-bit CPU. There are also manyalternativescanners. At the latter point though, I also would not trust any Windows install that's been compromised by something like this. I'd definitely suggest cleaning the HDD; if you don't want to clear the whole thing out, just use a Linux or Windows LiveCD and wipe the Windows directory, and everything that's executable (.exe, .dll, .ocx, .sys, .scr). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was anticipating this to come. If it is not very inconvenient, the best way would be to back up original documents (and other irreplaceable data) and do a complete Hard Disk format. Do you still have your bootable Windows XP installation CD? Kushalt22:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I do still have the original disk, but I will have to buy an external hard drive to back my stuff up, which I've been meaning to do anyways. I'm going to give these cleaners a try and see how they work and then go from there. Thanks for the help. Z28boy (talk) 23:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Remember to install Service pack two and a good antivirus program as soon as possible after reinstalling, though. When I had Windows, I used AVG Free Antivirus. ClamWin does not have real-time scanning but it seems to be in the making. I recommend AVG because it was very easy for me to uninstall, as opposed to a very reputable antivirus package. Well, I guess I am rambling too much. I am sure you know better. Good luck.
Anyone have specific hands-on experience using a Drupal-based wiki? If so, do you have any comparision of that vs MediaWiki? I am very familiar with the way MediaWiki works (having used Wikipedia), but I do not know how Drupal stacks up, or whether there even is a robust wiki module for Drupal.
Also, if you have any links with detailed side-by-side comparisons of Wiki software, specifically including (but not limited to) the two mentioned above, that would rock.
Nope. That's why I asked for "specific hands-on experience" because those comparison lists don't give anything but a superficial overview that can be written by anyone whose just read the documentation without actually having tried the software. Also, you'll notice that the article you linked doesn't even mention Drupal. NoClutter (talk) 20:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You have a copy of Windows 3.1? I'm jealous. I have the install disks for DOS 6.1.1, though. I'm only running XP at 1024x768 and you want to run 3.1 at 1680x1050, I'm stunned. Useight (talk) 23:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
None of those look too useful: the SVGA drivers probably won't support anything larger than 640x480x256 (and maybe 800x600x16), and the other video drivers are specific to obsolete graphics cards. Your best bet is to search for generic VESA drivers. --Carnildo (talk) 21:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unix filesystem question
Is it somehow possible, in Unix, to share a directory across several physical filesystems, so that when a file is written into the directory, the OS would somehow automatically select which physical filesystem it is stored in? JIP | Talk20:36, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most modern implementations will let you create a single filesystem that uses more than one physical disk. But I can't tell whether this is what you're asking, exactly. Friday(talk)20:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is not quite what I mean. If I have already partitioned a physical disk into several partitions, each with its own filesystem, can I later add a directory that span several of them? For example, if the disk /dev/sda has partitions /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3, and /dev/sda4, can I create a directory /home that spans both /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3? Can this be done "hot", meaning that creating or deleting such directories does not damage any other data on the filesystems? JIP | Talk20:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You want to aggregate your physical devices together into one logical device? This is common these days, but now we're back to what I was originally trying to say. It's not going to let you re-mount a physical device that's already mounted. If /dev/sda1 is mounted on /usr, for example, you can't also do something else with it. I don't think what you're wanting is going to be doable. But, it's possible that some fancy volume management tool could do tricks like this. Altho.. you could always mount /dev/sda2 on /home/something and /dev/sda3 on /home/somethingelse, and now "/home" does span two devices.. But I don't think this is what you had in mind? Friday(talk)21:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What I want, is to be able to have a directory /home (not necessarily a mount point by itself) that somehow appears on two filesystems put together, say /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3. So when I write a file /home/foobar.txt, the system can put it into the /dev/sda2 filesystem or the /dev/sda3 one as it pleases, completely transparent from me. I don't even have to specify any subdirectory. The directory /home need not be a real directory, it can be some sort of symbolic link. I don't think this is possible, but I want to ask anyway if it somehow would be. JIP | Talk07:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In case that's not clear.. just remember, in unix you have a logically monolithic file system- you can just think in terms of directories and files, without ever having to care about physical disks. Contrast with Windows which wants a different drive letter for different devices. If you have a device mounted on /home, you can unmount it and stick on on /something/completely/different, and now all those same files are now there. Not sure if this helps.. Friday(talk)21:21, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Even though Flash solid-state storage devices have no moving parts and obviously no rotation, how do their retrieval and write speeds compare to traditional magnetic hard drives measured in RPM's? What would be a close approximation of their speed in RPM's? Acceptable (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You should take a look at reviews such as this. In particular, they are faster for some operations, but hopelessly slower for others (random writes). Thus the comparison depends on your application, but overall I'd say a typical SSD is a match for a 10k magnetic drive. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 23:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The RPM of a drive measures how long the drive must wait until the correct bits are under the head. The seek time of a drive measures how long the drive must wait until the head has moved to the correct track. For solid state storage, the comparable metrics might be the device's Wait state -- generally, the time it takes for the memory's bits to settle into a stable state and push a byte back. I've never seen wait states shown for flash devices -- only DRAM. In general, though, Meni has it right -- reading from flash is generally stupidly fast. Writing, though, is much more difficult, because you usually have to read in the whole block, make your changes, then write out the whole block. This is on top of the additional time it takes to 'burn' when you're writing to flash. --Mdwyer (talk) 23:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think sector writes work that way. Flash bits have to be erased (set to 1, say) in big chunks, but they can be flipped the other way (1 to 0) in much smaller chunks. Flash drives that mimic hard drives store a sector to a new location each time it's written (for wear-leveling purposes), so as long as there's some space left in a previously erased block, writing a sector only requires writing to the corresponding flash page (plus updating the sector mapping information). The only case where you'd have to do a read-modify-write would be when the sector remapping has become fragmented to the point where there are no empty blocks available for reuse. -- BenRG (talk) 14:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about common SSDs, but USB keys and flash memory cards are often slower in both reads and writes then the fastest hard disks (and not just because of interface limitations). They do however have much better random access times as has been mentioned several times already. However it would be easy to achieve better read and write times then HDs by using several flash memory chips in a internal RAID0 style array SSD, I just don't know if it's done. Finally bear in mind the RPM only has very limited meaning when it comes to measuring the speed of a hard disk. Seagate 7200.11 with its 250gb platters can achieve 100MB/s sequential read speeds and indeed rivals the 10k RPM WD Raptors I believe. A Seagate 7200.7 is a LOT slower. Both of these are 7200RPM disks. N.B. But don't assume sequential transfer speed is all that matters. Seek times do too, and WD Raptors win on those. So does caching, not just cache size but caching performance. In reality, measuring real world performance of a disk is notoriously difficult and it depends very, very greatly on the OS, application, fragmentation level etc of the disk. The only website which I have come across that does a resonably good job of it is Storagereview.com. Anyone who does some simple test and tells you disk 1 is better then disk 2 doesn't know what they're talking about and should probably be ignored. There is no simple metric to compare disk performance because there are so many things that can vary. Nil Einne (talk) 17:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On the one hand, everything you said is right. On the other hand, wtf are you talking about, SSD hard drives are much faster :D\=< (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's what they want you to think :). Seriously, that's just wrong. Somebody probably did some simple test and told you that SSDs are better than HDDs. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
February 13
PC Blackout
Hi, need some help with my PC(athlon64,1g ddr2 667,7600gt, Running WinXp Pro Sp2)
The computer suddenly switched off (happened twice in the last two weeks).. Normally, we had to unplug the system the reboot (doesnt seem to work if we tried to power on w/o unplugging). But this time, it refused to boot entirely... when I try to power on, the components try to startup (fans jolt, leds light up) then dies in less than a second...
Things I've tried:
- check plug , surge supressor, psu doesnt seem to be burnt
- check wiring to motherboard and other components (similar thing happnd about 2months and back then i traced it to the mouse cord getting shredded)
Sounds like PSU failure, I've seen this before. Get a new one from an electronics retailer of your choice. Try to get a good brand, with at least the same power rating as the dead one. My experience was an overheating issue; make sure to clean the dust out of your machine, especially the processor heatsink, fans and PSU, with a can of compressed air from time to time. On the plus side, your data should be fine. Hope this helps. CaptainVindalootce00:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Vista Business vs. Home Premium
Resolved
I've got a copy of Vista Home Premium installed on my desktop, and have recently acquired a Vista Business license. Microsoft's site shows that Business lack Windows Media Center; will this have any effect at all on my ability to stream media off this PC (through Windows Media Player's UPNP storage), or does it just effect Media Extenders? Are there any other features missing that aren't mentioned? And does the Anytime Upgrade just take a product key? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Careful careful about pirating, SP1 will break pre-SP1 cracks. It's naturally no barrier whatsoever but tweaking will be required :D\=< (talk) 21:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To what extent can an unlocked iPhone do? Suppose if I buy an iPhone in USA, unlock it, and bring it to Germany and China. Will I be able to use it? Will I be able to make calls, surf the web, listen to music and etc... in Germany and China? 99.240.177.206 (talk) 13:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you buy a Sim card which gives you access to a GSM network in Germany or China then sure. Bear in mind that as the iPhone doesn't have 3G and not all networks have EDGE, you may find your web service quite slow. Nil Einne (talk) 17:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note, I wonder how the monthly bills for new contracts will change if and when Google and others come up with free ad-supported WiFi in major cities throughout the world. Kushalt17:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "support"? Any unlocked GSM phone should work in any GSM network (as long as they uses the same frequencies)(according to iphone page, it supports all 4 GSM frequencies, so there should be no problems). You might choose contract, or you might choose prepaid (which does not requires contract). -213.175.91.220 (talk) 07:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean you want to create your own? That's nearly impossible without a multi-million dollar budget and a large team of programmers and graphic designers. You may be able to create an extremely simplified version of one if you have a background in programming and a few spare years to kill, but you're unlikely to reach the Massive part of the MMOG. Maybe I misunderstood your question, but its really not likely to be doable. Mad031683 (talk) 16:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
MMOG is a pretty broad term - it needn't be the next WoW or even an MMORPG at all. All those browser-based online strategy games are a kind of MMOG, and it shouldn't be that hard to make one (getting people to play it is a different matter...). If you do want to make the next WoW, Mad is right - if you have to ask here, you're probably not going to make one any time soon. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How would you make it massively multiplayer without either a. spending a lot and advertising or b. developing a great concept and hoping for a viral marketing? Either of the options requires a lot of money, I believe. Kushalt17:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The second option, natrally, does not require a lot of money, unless the suggestion is that good ideas can only be bought (or only rich people have good ideas...). Let's take Scrabulous, for example: A rip-off of an existing idea, probably only a few thousand lines of code (probably all done by one person) and a zillion people playing it on Facebook. That takes care of all elements of "MMOG." Naturally it helps to be able to piggy-back on Facebook's servers... --Ben. 19:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.138.152.238 (talk)
I'll emphasize that taking a mediocre concept and making it look as if it is great, which is what people usually do, does require resources. Coming up with a truly great concept is rarer, but can cost virtually nothing. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I now get the message. However, imagine you are a creator of "the next big thing" mmog. You would have to be zealous to not let yourself get bought up by a big company or a Venture Capital. Kushalt23:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most people seem to agree that you will need some help to go from great idea to real product - getting a publisher, or working with a computer game publishing house seems like a good idea.. eg THQ,EA,Microsoft game studios etc etc it also depends on whether you aim is to get the thing made OR maximise your share of the profits..
In response to the original question - supposing you start of with 'just the idea' you'll need
Advertising (at least at the beginning .. clearly succesful games start to advetise themselves)
You probably don't need millions of dollars/shiny glass beeds to make the thing .. Quite a small team can make a good game - however once popular such things do tend to become money sinks with ever increasing budjets andd teams producing ever diminishing benefits.. (last bit not neccessarily true)
Apache HTTP server won't execute PHP on "localhost"
I just installed Apache 2.2.8 and php 5.2.5 on my laptop (OS: Windows Vista Home Premium) so I can preview php code without actually uploading my pages to a server and I can't get Apache to execute any php code. I tried this:
Check your apache config file, and see if any error messages are put out on server startup. It is hard to advise without more information since the setup of PHP+Apache is a fairly complex business JPilborough (talk) 17:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would advise simply restarting the PHP setup process from scratch, adhering carefully to the instructions. I have never found WAMP configuration to be problematic provided I didn't start blazing my own trail through the process. — Lomn18:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What does the source of the "blank page" look like? If it is completely blank, it is most likely an error thrown by PHP and recorded in the error logs. If it is the PHP source code then PHP did not parse the page. This commonly happens when PHP is configured to ONLY parse filenames ending in "php" and the filename ends with "html". -- kainaw™18:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WAMP not problematic? ARE YOU FROM THE FUTURE O_O In what version does php actually ever recognize mysql without battling your way out of dll hell? :D\=< (talk) 21:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've installed Apache 1.x/2.x with PHP 4.x/5.x and MySQL 3.x/4.x/5.x plenty of times on plenty of Windows boxes. It's a common-enough process that the instructions are quite robust. — Lomn22:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've set up WAMP 5 or 6 times- apache never causes any problems, mysql sets up perfectly fine, but PHP has never played well with mysql (and yes I know I have to uncomment lines in php.ini). I always end up having to add the mysql bin directory to the PATH and manually adding entries in php.ini, and this is over the space of 5 or 6 reinstallations of Windows :D\=< (talk) 16:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flash drive and programs
as i move around a lot i've installed several programs onto my flash drive, and as i'm quite OCD about keeping files organized every things in folders, so to stop me going through lots of folders to find what i want i created shortcuts to the .exes on the root of the flash drive, but when i plug into different computers the flash drive gets assigned a different letter and the shortcuts no longer work. Is there someway i can change the path to shortcut to that then wont depend on having an actual drive letter typed in?--137.205.21.59 (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You need to use relative paths in your shortcuts. So if the program is in X:\Programs\Company\super.exe, and the shortcut is just in X:, the path in the shortcut should just be be Programs\Company\super.exe JPilborough-Leave Message19:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My little bother plays an internet game called pokemon crater and recently we tryed geting to it but it always say this page can not be found. We tryed doing searches for it on different search engines. Does any one know how i can get to it, if they just dont have it any more or if they upgraded it to pokemon crater version7 and changed the addres.
thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.169.189 (talk) 20:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recently I downloaded Xubuntu. I put it on a CD (when I did a window came up and said I would loose attachements but the contents of the file would not be altered). I tried to put it on my '98 Pentuim III Dell. I went to the boot menu and changed it to boot from CD. However, when I tried to boot it, it processed for a while then the screen came up and said "While initializing device VKD: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer. Press any key to continue." I pressed a key and it said "It is now safe to turn off your computer. I tried this a couple more times and the sentences "While initializing device VKD: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer. Press any key to continue." Came up with a varying degree of completion. For example, one time it just said "While init" and when I press a key it doesn't do anything. I changed it back to boot from IDE-0 , which is what it was set to boot from before. It did the exact same thing. Other than boot from CD, nothing else has been changed. By the way, I did download Xubuntu as a .iso file. If anyone has any idea how I can get it to boot Xubuntu please let me no. (I think one of the attachments lost when putting it on the CD may have something to do with this. I tried several different ways to put it on a CD though, and each time the box came up that said attachments would be lost.) If not, maybe how to get it to start booting Windows again. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 21:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about, what is an "attachment"? That error message means the keyboard isn't working, but if Windows is telling you that then you have bigger problems- such as your BIOS not booting from the CD like you told it to. Are you sure you actually burned the contents of the image onto the disk and not the image itself as a file? Keep in mind that Windows can't burn isos on its own, you have to use actual burning tools like Nero Burning ROM. :D\=< (talk) 21:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what an attachment is in this case. It just said I would lose them if I put the file on CD. However, where can I get a program to burn isos? (I was just using Windows so it probably just burned the image.) Furthermore, how can I get it to boot Windows again. Anyway, I don't think the error message is about the keyboard because I can choose to boot it in DOS mode and it does just fine. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 21:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ooo, that's not good. I removed the disk and set it to boot from IDE-0 (default), and it still does the exact same thing. Any ideas or has the computer just "kicked the bucket" so to speak? Zrs 12 (talk) 22:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the boot loader got screwed up (though I can't imagine why). That's beyond my level of expertise, so you may want to wait for someone more knowledgeable - but putting the Windows CD and using the repair option might fix everything. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alrighty, thanks. We got the computer from a guy though so we don't have the back-up CDs. Anyway, to burn isos, should I just download an iso recorder? Zrs 12 (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Basically yes. Burning a simple iso is something any one of them should be able to do, so just pick anyone. Of course, you will then have to install and use it. The exact procedure can vary, but generally you should stay away from any "Data CD" option which will just copy the file to the CD, and look for "Copy CD" or "Burn from image" or something. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Before I discovered how very very very good the stipped-down Nero Burning ROM is, I used this powertoy- for xp/vista, it lets you right-click an iso and select burn.. it uses windows's own burning libraries :D\=< (talk) 23:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. That's the one I got. Well, it looks like that Dell is just not going to work. I burned it correctly this time and it still won't boot from the CD. Oh well. Thanks you all, Zrs 12 (talk) 00:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, first up, I know the helpdesk doesn't do professional/legal/medical advice, but I'm just looking to get a rough idea of this, so any info would be much appreciated.
Also, I've chosen to put this in the computing reference desk page, as it relates to a job in a computing field, and I'm hoping there will be several people with relevant experience here.
All that being said.. Does anyone know what a typical hourly wage for a first line 'answer the phones/emails, do some minor troubleshooting, and direct the calls to the appropriate support team' kind of job would be in the Washington State area (or anywhere in the US for that matter), for someone with roughly 3 years of experience?
At my university I think the part-time student workers at the help desk get paid minimum wage, which is a dismal 5 something :D\=< (talk) 23:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dev-C++ is an IDE that uses the gcc compiler. By passing the -ansi parameter to the compiler, gcc will do that (according to the command line help, -ansi is a synonym for -std=c89 for C or -std=c++98 for C++. Edit the project files and add -ansi or -std=c++98 in the extra compiler options. That should do it. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 02:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
After I plug it in, it lights up and an E: drive shows up in "My Computer." When I try to click on the drive, I get a message to format it. I get the warning about deleting all my files, but agree anyways. However, it pops up a "Cannot Format" message. Also, when I run the error checking thing under the Properties>Tools menu, the box disappears, but nothing actually happens. Finally, I should note that on that same Properties menu, the disk size shows up as 0.
Think of a train with many cars; each one connected to the car before and after it. You are using a user-level program to get the operating system to get the computer's hardware to talk to the USB system to reach the controller chip in your jump drive in hopes of getting access to the memory chip and then maybe the data in the chip. Whew!
A little thought will tell you pretty much where this train is broken: between the controller chip and the memory chip. The controller chip is willing to talk to your computer, but it is unable to talk to the memory chip. You can double-check this by testing another jump drive; if it works then everything in your computer is good, it's a breakdown inside the jump drive itself. Unless you do microminiature circuit board repair, there aren't a lot of choices here. (Caveat emptor: fixing such devices long enough to get files back is what I do for a living, so my opinion may be biased) -SandyJax (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox bookmarks backup
Is there anyway I can back up the bookmarks in Firefox in plain links? When I open the bookmark file in notepad or Word it gives me a bunch of junk. I only have to make a copy of some of my bookmarks for a project at school, yet the rest of my folder is huge, and the project folder isn't small either, but I suppose I could copy/paste the addresses manually if I had enough time. 67.188.81.158 (talk) 03:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you select Bookmarks/Organise Bookmarks, then File/Export, you can save them as an HTML page, from which it would be easy to extract the ones you want. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Repair Office 2003
When I installed MS Office 2003 I had two hard drives - C: and G: and I have subsequently removed the G Drive. Office still works fine, except that updates fail to install (if I plug in the old G drive then they succeed). Problem is I have since wiped and reused the old G Drive, so I doubt this route will help in future. If I try and reinstall,repair or "detect and repair" I just get the error that G:\ cannot be found - unable to proceed. How can I stop it from looking for the old installation so that I can set up a clean installation just on C: ?--196.207.47.60 (talk) 04:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When you have become an established user (3 days IIRC), you will have an extra button on top of each page labeled "Move", and from there you can move articles, thus renaming them. In the mean time you can put the current title of the article and the title you want to change to, and someone from here will do it for you. --antilivedT | C | G06:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
nVidia are currently considered the standard graphics card for gaming... depends on what you want. But, yes, as noted by Meni, onboard graphics card are only for low stress applications etc. For gaming and other high demand programs you'd want a GeForce card :-) ScarianCall me Pat09:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Only recently- don't forget ATI, which has been sitting on the back burner lately but is just as good if you don't want the insane $1200 cards :D\=< (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, those articles are informative but hardly answer my question, I'd rather hear someone who has some experience with PDAs for this purpose. Thanks for your answer, anyway. --Taraborn (talk) 10:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I do apologise... I was just hoping that maybe you could run your own comparison and decide for yourself. Sometimes a PDA that suits someones needs might not be suitable for the next person... Sorry I couldn't be of any more assistance, friend. ScarianCall me Pat11:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the Sony CLIÉ PDAs were considered good for that purpose. Since they are no longer in production, you'd have to search for a used one (which should make one fairly inexpensive). --LarryMac | Talk17:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I use iPAQ hx2700. I read *a lot* of books on it, and only occasionally do I play any games. I chose this model because it had better battery and was cheaper than similar models. But this was 2 years ago. Dunno if this would still be the best choice. And if I understand electronic ink devices correctly, you cant read them in full dark, when I found my iPAQ excellent for reading in full dark. For example while riding bus or train during night. — Shinhan < talk > 17:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Answer plz
Which system is faster? Please explain in detail why.First A(Processor Celeron Dual Core 2 GHz, Ram 1024 MB,Monitor 17 inch,Printer 3 in 1 lexmark,Modem GPRS 384kbps, HD 120 GB and onboard graphics) or second B(Processor Celeron 3 Ghz,Ram 1024,monitor 21 inch,Printer laser Hewlett,PCI Modem 56kbps,HD 80 GB and Nimda GeForce graphics card —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sedai lunga (talk • contribs) 09:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This depends entirely on what you want to do with it. I'm not sure the correct question is which is "faster" since there are many measures to the quality of a system other than speed. It will also help if you specify which Nvidia Geforce card system B has. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mozilla password
Does anyone know how to get Mozilla Firefox to automatically fill in a password? I'm on a proxy server and whenever I go on to a new page I have to click OK to the password several times. Is there any way I can get Firefox to fill this in instantly without asking me?
I have searched the Internet but found nothing.
Thanks in advance,
WikiwikiJimBob. Wikiwikijimbob (talk) 11:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The "remember passwords for sites" button doesn't work in this instance. I can't see any option that would work. Using a master password requires me to put that in and then to OK the proxy server's username and password. I hope that there is a way of doing it because Firefox is so much of a better browser than Explorer (and it's safer too). If you know a way to make it work, please let me know. Thanks again, Wikiwikijimbob (talk) 14:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Novell Bordersomething captive portal does some magic to prevent standards-complaint browsers from auto-filling the input boxes. IE just breaks that behavior because it's broken.. but your proxy login might be doing the same thing :D\=< (talk) 17:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Where do I find the autocomplete="off" bit? That might help. Thanks for your help so far. By the way, when I use IE I have to put the password in once and then it doesn't require it again. I didn't know if that would help solve the problem at all. Thanks again, Wikiwikijimbob (talk) 09:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds more like you're not accepting cookies- check your browser settings. The autocomplete though, go to view -> source and hit forward slash to search, then type that in :D\=< (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try that. Thanks for your help, everyone. I'm not going to be on that server for a week or so, but when I am I'll give those techniques a go. I'll let you know if it works or not. Thanks again, you've all been a great help. Wikiwikijimbob (talk) 19:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hard drive noise, and performance with external case
Hi. I'm using a WD1500ADFD, but bothered by its noise. I am considering putting it in an external case and placing that case in a more remote location. Should I expect to see a decrease in performance if the case connects to the computer via USB 2.0? What about if it connects using eSata? Is there any other simple solution to the noise problem? Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ADVERT! I use exclusively flash based usb storage - which is fine if like me you think 8GB is a lot of memory. Ignoring any published numbers I've found much faster than any disc based storage and the silence is golden.. you just need a time machine set to +5 years to go buy your 128GB sd card (class 4) for a realistic price.87.102.115.36 (talk) 14:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I do think that 8GB is a lot of memory, but unfortunately, the people who make software and multimedia seem to disagree. I'm not really into sd cards myself, but I do plan to buy an SSD in a year or two, when hopefully they will be available in native 3.5" form, in a modest size (just for the most important stuff) at a reasonable price. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incredible that we can fit 8 GB on a chip small enough to accidently inhale. Eventually we can probably just store data on nano-sized ships and just pour some goo into our PCs to get more storage. SSD are not a good purchase as of yet, because you pay more per gigabyte than a normal drive. But soon they will be a dime a dozen. I also recommend you mount the hard drive with rubberbands, it works wonders with the noise if you do it right. However, do it wrong and bad things will happen. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"...mount the hard drive with rubberbands..." and "....o it wrong and bad things will happen..." Can you be a little more clear? What bad things? How do you do it right or wrong? -SandyJax (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Laptop network cables
This is what I'm talking about
Do laptops normally have network / ethernet jacks? Can you buy some sort of adapter for a laptop which doesn't have one? Would it connect via PCI cards or usb? Thanx xxx User:Hyper Girl12:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most laptops from the last few years probably have Ethernet jacks. Laptops do not usually have PCI slots. You would probably get either a USB adapter or a PC card adapter. --Spoon! (talk) 12:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Try search "usb ethernet adaptor" they are v. easy to get - I'd provide a link but I don't know what country your in.. Amazon sell them, everyone does.87.102.115.36 (talk) 13:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Belkin sells a USB-to-Ethernet adapter that works and is relatively inexpensive.
I'm going to toss out an arbitrary number and say that about 95% of modern laptops have a ethernet port. The Macbook Air is one the rare exceptions, but even tiny, inexpensive ones like the ASUS Eee PC have the port. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alright. Let's say I was editing a previously made HTML code for a background. Said background has a code on it that makes pictures seem somewhat faded. What exactly should I be looking for in order to delete this thread to make everything vivid and regular?
First, this page is asking questions about Wikipedia. You should ask computer (HTML) questions at WP:RD. Second, HTML does not have the ability to fade images. -- kainaw™14:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yeah, how is it doing it exactly? Is it using some odd Internet Explorer-only attribute to do it, or CSS, or something weird? It might be helpful to post what you're looking at. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's just CSS to get the transparency effect: for another example and CSS code see here. JavaScript is needed for fading in or out: it just gradually changes the opacity. Both IE and Firefox support it, with varied CSS parameters. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It should just be CSS, but I recall there being some weird IE-only HTML attribute that does this as well. Hence it may be helpful if the OP posts the section of code in question. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Microsoft Word question
Is there any character symbol for a check-mark? I can never seem to find it when I scroll through their 8 million other symbols. They have symbols for everything under the sun ... I can't imagine that they don't have such a common symbol as the check-mark. The best I can find is the square root symbol ... but that is not exactly a check-mark. Does anyone know? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]
There is one in the Wingdings font set. I was able to put it into a Word doc by using the charmap utility. I don't know how to type it directly. --LarryMac | Talk18:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any way to "hide" a value --- so that the spreadsheet uses the value in computations, but does not print it out? If so, how do you do that? And also, if so, how does the author know (later on) that there is a hidden value in the spreadsheet ... so that he does not accidentally erase it? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Perhaps you should explain in a little more detail what it is that you are after. It is possible that what you need is to use a name - you define a formula for the name in the name editor, and can then reference it in cells or other names. You can also hide an entire row or column; so you can put some formula in a cell, hide its row, and then reference it in other cells. Or you can just set the cell's foreground color to white so its value will not be visible. There are probably other tricks as well. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you can either change the font color to white or you could put the reference in a cell that would print on a different page and only print your main page. Useight (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Meni's first suggestion would probably be my preference for a single value, but if you have more than a couple it might be better to put them on a worksheet that you then hide(Format/Sheet/Hide). This guards against accidental changes but makes it easier to see the values and change them if necessary. If you want to make it more secure you could use a macro to make the worksheet "very hidden", which means it won't show up in the list if you do Format/Sheet/Unhide. However, it's pretty much impossible to guarantee total security in such situations. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you click on cell properties you can hide and lock cells. Fiddling around the with "Protection" options should allow you to make it so that everything is editable except for a select number of cells. --140.247.11.3 (talk) 00:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mac OS X kext
Hi all,
does anyone know an small and open-source kext for any wired network chip? I want to port the tigon3 network driver to mac os and need somethin' small to start...any ideas?
i was watching a video that my friend sent me [7] and i was wonder what that song is rite after the guy in the blue shirt breathes fire. when the song that i want to know what its called comes on there is a guy spining in circles and is say 360 vision on the screen.
thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.169.189 (talk) 20:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes: your choice among the various Linux distributions. (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu is easy to deal with.) You'll never experience a Windows trojan again, and I'm not aware of any written for Linux. -- Hoary (talk) 01:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am using AVG Anti-Spyware [8]. It is free, too. In a test I saw just recently, AVG Anti-Spyware was the best of the free malware scanners. I earlier used Ad-Aware, but it got the worst score in the test. -- PauliKL (talk) 16:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have a ton (maybe 3GB worth) of photos I took of documents in an archive with a digital camera. They are all grayscale. I'd like to improve the contrast on them so that they looked a bit more like they would if they were photocopied (both to reduce the file size, and to prepare for converting them all to PDFs and running OCR on them). I need something that can be done in a batched way, say through Photoshops Actions.
My problem is that running "autocontrast" doesn't really cut it (it just balances things out), while more drastic things like Posterize or Bitmap require a LOT of supervision as the gray tones are often a bit different from file to file and something that works on one might render the next one totally white or totally black.
Any suggestions? (Modern) photocopiers almost always seem to get it right. I know this is in part because they have a uniform light source and so that reduces a lot of the variation, but still, they seem to have a somewhat more clever way of reducing the total range considerably while still getting a good, very readable output (and readability is most important here). Any clue as to a good way to think about replicating this? (And no, the "Photocopy" filter in Photoshop doesn't do this, nor does it really try to. I'm not looking for "gritty", I'm looking for "readable.") --140.247.11.3 (talk) 00:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The "Threshold" function might work, I'm not sure how it will work with batch processing of differently shaded images though. --Canley (talk) 01:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think increasing contrast would reduce file size (unless large areas of the picture become totally white or black). Increasing contrast may be useful for scanned documents, but I wouldn't use it for photographs, at least not by using batch processing.
You are not likely to get good results with batch processing. You should interactively adjust each image. However, "autocontrast" could perhaps create acceptable results. I don't use Photoshop, but at least on Picture Publisher's autocontrast, you can select how much to sacrifice shades from high and dark end of the histogram, to get higher contrast than the optimal.
My copy of PS for mac has a photocopy effect in it already. However, I recommend changing the levels, contrast and possibly adding noise. Radiofred (talk) 12:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I recently downloaded the Dev-C++ compiler. It's working fine except every time I open the program, it has to install and show all the dialog boxes like the first time it's been used. I also have to reconfigure my settings for this reason. Is there any way I can get it to stay installed and not have to go through the installation and setup process every time I open it? Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 00:48, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not an option. He's looking for a free compiler. In any case, it's actually the GNU compiler, and Dev-C++ is the IDE. And I have had many problems with this product in the past. I would only suggest playing around with the options, or reporting it on their bug noticeboard. The Evil Spartan (talk) 01:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and let me clarify that by saying that Visual Studio is an entirely worthless pile of complete trash that doesn't even work. Gr. :D\=< (talk) 02:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It'll probably work fine for you, I'm just one of the people that it mysteriously craps up on so I have to use Anjuta from xubuntu + mingw32 :D\=< (talk) 03:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So is there any other free C++ compiler anyone would suggest? I'm willing to uninstall this one. It gets really anoying going through the setup process every time I use it. Zrs 12 (talk) 01:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
OK. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 02:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is wrong. I have never had that kind of problems before. Do you have write permissions in the configuration files of the program (I guess so, but you never know). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 02:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you need XML schema if you can generate perfect XML contents by a program?
Why couldn't people just use a simplified computer language to validate XML? If you can use a simplified version of BASIC or C to write the validator, you don't need to learn another set of syntax.
Why are there so many stupid ways to assign a variable? There are only so many types of data and logic operations, why can't they create a unified syntax? Isn't it stupid to have ADD(x, y) or x PLUS y when you can simply write x+y? -- Toytoy (talk) 05:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It wouldn't surprise me if x+y is just an overloaded operator pointing at an actual function called ADD(x,y) and if something like x PLUS y was retained for backward-compatibility.. there are usually good reasons for this kind of thing :D\=< (talk) 14:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
3D graphics cards - just for games?
So you own a relatively high-end Nvidia or ATI graphics card and a modern CPU. You get a bit of eye candy in Windows Vista, and you can play the latest games. What other applications and software exist that demonstrate and take advantage of modern 3D graphics cards? I`m thinking along the lines of artistic graphics demos, graphics-creation applications, or even inventive game designs outside the standard shooter/RPG/RTS realm. Thanks, –Outriggr§06:00, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In addition... you can enable maximum settings in older games and experience them again; there are many demos lurking around nvidia.com itself; demos from futuremark.com (3dmark) and related; run HDDVD or Blu-ray content on your computer instead of your PS3; do digital (DAT/HD) video-editing and compresssion to DVD or divx. In think we've pretty much covered most of it. It sounds quite limited but I'm personally contented with the wealth of games and demos out there. Sandman30s (talk) 11:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this one is the best part about having a relatively modern machine.. even if it's not a gaming machine you can certainly play like Unreal Tournament, an excellent game better than UT 2k3, 2k4, and 2k8, at max effects and 1600x1200 resolution. :D\=< (talk) 14:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
fonts in the terminal
On a computer not running a graphical user interface, what determines the fonts or letter representations used in the terminal? --Iownatv (talk) 07:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It depends. My understanding is that the font used by many of these is stored in the video card's BIOS and implements Code page 437, though some operating systems do define their own fonts, or have the option to do so. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's an article: Text mode. It's not extremely detailed though. If you're talking DOS, it's probably using the font in the video card's BIOS. Linux distributions are far more likely to load an alternate font for the console, because the video BIOS font wastes a lot of slots on non-essential characters like smiley faces and box-drawing lines, which can be put to better use supporting larger alphabets. (There's only room for 256 characters in a VGA text mode font - 512 if you're lucky.)
Linux distributions are also increasingly likely to enable the fbcon console driver - which doesn't use the hardware's text mode at all, but requires the kernel to do the job of drawing character glyphs, using a default font that's built right into the kernel image! --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Original IBM-PC only had text mode, as did computer terminals such as adm3a, vt100, vt220 etc. Later, display cards were developed that had graphics modes in addition to the text mode. Even today all graphics cards have text mode, which is used for example during the boot time and when you enter BIOS setup.
When using text mode, only the text data is kept in memory (1 byte/character). This limits the maximum number of different characters to 256. The display controller hardware draws the character to the CRT screen on the fly while refreshing the display. The bitmap images of the characters are stored in the ROM of the display controller. Old terminals only had a single 7-bit character set (max 128 characters). More advanced terminals such as vt220 had multiple 8-bit character sets. The user (or the software being run) could choose which character set to use (for example for different languages). Downloadable soft fonts could be available, too. Different fonts (serif, sans-serif etc.) were usually not available (due to the low resolution).
Of course it is possible to create a terminal using graphics mode, too. And if you run DOS-box in Windows, it simulates the text mode inside a graphics mode window. Then you can choose the font from the system menu (at the upper left corner of the window).
How do people make the "cracks" for software which requires a registration code? Does the wiki have an article on this? I have searched but found nothing. xxx User:Hyper Girl12:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A simple explanation may be appropriate.. on Windows (for *nix it's a little weird because of interpreters, though the .NET framework complicates things too) exe files are little more than processor instructions packed together into a file. These binary instructions can (with the oversight of the OS) be placed directly on the CPU's instruction inputs and the processor executes them.. if you're not familiar with how things work at the chip level, it doesn't make a lot of sense but for an extremely simple computer imagine the control lines going into a multiplexer- read that article and it'll make sense. Anyway, so these instructions are just binary machine code.. simple things like ADD, JMP (to another memory location), CMP (compare), but assembled into binary. Well with a (soon-to-be-illegal according to Richard Stallman) tool called a disassembler, you can interpret the binary instructions as data and and parse them so you can see which operations they correspond to, like ADD, JMP, CMP, etc. By examining the (extremely lengthy) assembly code you can get a feel for a program- and since you know exactly what bytes in the program correspond to which instructions (there are few things you can do to obfuscate the machine code since it has to go right into the instruction stack, and none to effectively obfuscate it) you can modify bytes. . . obviously including changing
CMP userinputtedkey therealkey
JNE failed
to
CMP userinputtedkey therealkey
NO-OP
This is ridiculously simple, and I don't know if crackers actually use disassemblers, but you get the theory.. the program is on your computer, and it can be modified transparently, though only on a very low level. A lot of people don't realize this but that's the reality of it- your programs are just data and they can be modified however you please. Microsoft was worried that drivers and other privileged code could be modified however """"malicious"""" people wanted, so they started signing their code, taking a checksum or something of all the code and then checking it before execution and refusing to run if the code has been changed- of course what's to keep people from just cracking the driver checksum code? Well, malicious code can't because of DEP but users can crack their own computer because they have root access (not at all really for Windows, but we'll say they do), and a lot of 64-bit windows users have done that since it doesn't allow unsigned drivers at all. Then Microsoft decided to do the same thing, but extend it so cracker's can't change code in other things too, including game files, so cracks are impossible. How do they do that though, if you can just crack the checksum program? Well they take away the user's low-level access to their own machine (well, another degree since a lot of things in windows are already locked out even to administrators). That's right- there's a higher level account than you on the machine, a hypervisor running in ring -1, and only Microsoft has the 'login' control information, not you. DEP prevents you from changing the code running in hypervisor mode, which includes the code that loads programs into the instruction stack (or whatever it's called I forget) and checks for signed code. That project was called, Palladium, now it's called the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, coming to a near-future Microsoft Windows, utilizing the TPM in the computer you bought in the last 5 years, and taking away your freedoms. Due to the DMCA it's illegal to flip certain bits in your own memory chip, if those bits have to do with copy protection. With Palladium that's extended to the entire operating system, as well as trusted programs- you're legally locked out of your own machine, and if you attempt to regain control you may go to prison. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html:D\=< (talk) 14:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Froth, I believe you mentioned, quite some time back, that I can disable TPM using BIOS. Can I continue to do that in the future? What if the BIOS does not give that option to me? Do you think Intel will ever take away that option from its customers? Kushalt16:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt they'd take the option out of the BIOS and (as long as you don't have anything authenticating to the TPM at boot) you can always just pry it out physically or use a free OS. But take a look at the diagram- without a TPM you can't use any secure applications. Presumably the OS would fall back to a crippled "non-secure" mode that still has functionality, but commercial programs would be encrypted with codes from the TPM so that only your TPM can run them (the wet dream of software licensing).. so you wouldn't be able to run them. SSL would probably be tied into it too so you wouldn't be able to connect to secure sites. But there's really no reason to tear out your TPM- the "trusted" platform is a very good idea from a security standpoint and dedicated cryptographic and key-storing hardware has been needed for a decade.. a TPM is perfect for storing and authenticating SSH keys or for hard drive encrpytion like BitLocker.. but when it becomes "treacherous computing" because you don't have access to it, that's bad. :D\=< (talk) 16:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
From what you said, I assume that it is up to the operating system to decide to have trusted or treacherous computing. Can I assume that if an application is available for an operating system that does not recognize Palladium (or some similar acronym), it can be run as if the TPM did not exist on the computer? I am sure that Linux and FreeBSD will have at least one distro/flavor that will not have anything to do with Palladium. If I can cite this, it seems that Mac OS X does not have TPM protection, either. Please correct me if I an wrong. ÍKushalt18:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, the theory is perfect. Inevitably people will leak unencrypted versions of code or (extraordinarily unlikely) the control codes from Microsoft, and certain Palladium apps will become usable without it. But even with a free OS not running a Palladium hypervisor, the code is still encrypted and you need the TPM to use it :D\=< (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello!i am facing a problrm that i install Edubuntu 7.10 on my old compaq pc with 550 MHZ processor ,10 GB disk and 128 MB Ram,when i install the winxp after edubuntu as a dual boot edubuntu is not shown as the list and when i try to access the drice D on winxp also there is no D drive in My Computer, so what i do becoz i have many important files in that.......usman khan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Usmanzia1 (talk • contribs) 12:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Usmanzial!
I went ahead and added your question as a different heading.
As far as I know, for dual booting between MS Windows XP and a Linux Distro, the best way is to install Windows XP first and then install Linux. I think your situation is more serious than what I originally thought. Do you have back ups of your important files from D:? There is a possibility that you might have deleted the data. If I were you, and if I did not have recent enough back ups, I would keep the computer turned off and try to discuss a solution for data recovery. I am thinking along the lines of removing the hard disk from the computer and adding it as a slave in another computer and trying to salvage the data using data recovery software.
I would like to know what other wikipedians think in this matter.
Kushalt12:48, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank You Kushal but i say how can i detect the D Drive and also Edubuntu not boot.it says os error.i tried partion magic but no plus result.[reply]
According to our RuneScape article, "Players [ . . . set] their own goals and objectives. Players can engage in combat with other players or monsters, complete quests, or increase their experience in any of the available skills" So the point is whatever you want it to be. --LarryMac | Talk16:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's a fantasy MMORPG.. I'm sure a psychologist could do a real sikoanalyzation but IMO it's about being a powerful figure that all the NPC townsfolk love because you help them and and all the other players respect because you're high level, have good armor, etc.. mostly increases self esteeem, though of course addictive elements like micro- and short-term rewards are the reason people keep coming back :D\=< (talk) 16:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Newegg is great, but TigerDirect sells stuff über-cheap. I bought a used laptop there for about 1/3 the price of a new one, and it runs perfectly. Don't judge people on where they shop. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 17:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would not try it. If it says 30 A as minimum, I would not buy that PSU, unless I had evidence that this particular combination works. Kushalt18:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea what I am talking about, but... The graphics card says "combined 12V current rating of 30A". The PSU says +12V at 28A and +12V at 25A. Is it possible that its "combined 12V current rating" is 53A? This is consistent with the fact that this is a 750W PSU, and the card expects only 450W. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Watts are what matters, 750W is more than enough to power a system with a single video card. In an average system setup that's probably overkill, but it leaves room for future expansion and a margin of error should make the system more stable. Mad031683 (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no. No, in the sense that one could easily make a PSU which can give 126A of 5V and 10A of 12V - this will have a total of 750W but will be completely useless for running the aforementioned graphics card. Yes, in the sense that no-one would do that - the manufacturer of this PSU surely had high-end graphics cards in mind, and wouldn't make it incompatible with them just to spite you. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, perhaps I'll call the manufacturer, just to make sure. And yeah, I use newegg somtimes, too. I know that 750 Watts is overkill for a single video card (my motherboard can't handled SLI, anyway), but I want to future-proof it a little. Useight (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resizing the partition on a windows xp system.
I would like to know how to resize the single partition on my windows xp system in order to make space for installing linux(keeping windows xp on the resized partition).
Please give me information on what software to download and from where. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.110.245.31 (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just make sure that you back up everything (this is important!), then, install Linux for double booting options. If you are using a mainstream distro such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Knoppix, you will be able to do everything from the live CD. Just please don't forget to back up your data, music and what not, please. Kushalt18:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You can use the "diskpart" command line utility. While the Microsoft description does not mention the "shrink" command, it does exist. (Maybe it's only in Windows Vista, which would explain why it's not mentioned on that page.) See [9] for command-line details.
You can also go into the disk management console. Use the Run command from the Start menu, and enter "diskmgmt.msc". You can right-click on the hard drive partition that you want to reduce, and "shrink volume" may be an option. –Outriggr§00:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have my Windows XPSP2 system anymore. However, as far as I remember, I did not have such an option. (Perhaps because I was too wary of NTFS and never converted my hard disk to a dynamic disk?)
If you are creating a dual booting computer, it never hurts todo check disk and dis defragmentation just before you pop in the Linux live CD for the installation. Kushalt13:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On a machine running Windows XP SP2, I checked diskmgmt.msc and it does not have a 'shrink' option, i.e. a way to shrink an existing partition without loss of data. Same thing for the command-line utility diskpart. Google for 'diskpart vista shrink' and you can confirm what others said above, that the shrink is only available on Vista. Buying an external USB hard drive instead of partitioning your main disk is another option to consider, now that hard drives have become so cheap. The Linux program GParted says that it can shrink partitions. I personally think I'd only trust Partition Magic since I've used it and realize that XP has tricky corner cases to solve, like immovable files. EdJohnston (talk) 19:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, stay away from Partition Magic if you have Linux on there and stick to gparted. Partition Magic can wreck havoc with its half-ass ext3 support. --antilivedT | C | G04:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To whom it may concern: I am 8l years old and have been an able typist since I was a young girl. Having recently received an electronical typewriter and printer, which I am using at present, I have been unable to return the line carriage whilst composing correspondence electronically. My neighbor is a young boy and has mentioned to me that I cannot use a computer as a typewriter, but I believe that must surely be bunkum, as I have seen instances of people typing correspondence on electronical typewriters numerous times on the television. Whilst using this Encyclopedia, I noticed the Reference Desk and hope the librarians may be able to render assistance. Yours faithfully,Mary Gilmore —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.32.97 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, you might be talking about manual carriage returns, where you have to physically push the carriage back, which predated my time. You can't do this on a computer. Instead, you have to use the Return key as I said above. It's the key to the right of the P and L keys. (I'm European, so on my keyboard, there are other keys in between, but I am fairly sure Americans have it immediately next to the P and L keys.) JIP | Talk20:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, most American keyboards have it on the middle row with ; and ' between the l and return, \ is above it and Shift is below it. I find this post a little strange since she had the computer savvy to post on this page. Mad031683 (talk) 21:29, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some keyboards have the 'Enter' key make an L-shape, taking up two rows, but most American keyboards have it on one row. I also find this thread suspect. Useight (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re the WP:AGF issue: Note that the original poster wrote "I am 8l years old", using a lower case "L" instead of a "1". I'd say that supports the claim that she has been working as a typist long before the PC era, and posted the question herself. --NorwegianBluetalk10:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A WYSIWYM XML editor?
I am looking for a WYSIWYM XML editor. Is there such a product?
I need a tool to open plain text files and manually annotate the plain text according to a pre-defined schema. For example, if you're a cook, you may want to mark up your recipes according to the ingredients and cooking methods. -- Toytoy (talk) 20:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Never mind. I googled for it and guess what, the first result isn't the company! It is a forum of dissatisfied customers. If [10], is correct, you should demand a new modem right away. The link suggests a telephone number (0870 444 1820) but you probably have the number already. Hope that helps, Kushalt01:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This little ?'n just popped into my head. Is it possible to catch a virus, trojan, or worm, or other malware using the wii's internet browser? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.234.62.251 (talk) 23:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wii security is good. There are a few potential ways a hacker could try and get in:
The Opera web browser - Opera is very good when it comes to security and patches quickly. Not much risk here.
Adobe Flash is also installed, and is a bigger target due to its large install base. This is a bigger risk.
If anything, the games might be an easier exploit then Opera, as games tend to be built for speed over security. But I imagine this would require some hefty reverse-engineering to do.
If someone tried to exploit one of these, it could crash your machine. However, taking control of the machine would be difficule. Exploits normally need to interact with the operating system, so exploits written for other operating systems (eg: Microsoft Windows) won't work. In short, exploits affecting the Wii would need to be written specifically for the Wii.
Another route would be the WiFi connection. This sort of approach would lead to man in the middle type attacks, rather than taking control of your Wii. It would only be available for anyone in range of your wifi connection. The Wii supports good encryption (WPA), but some older WiFi routers only support the older (broken) WEP.
No one outside of Nintendo knows how to make a program run on the Wii, yet. The best they could do now is to make Zelda crash. [11]. So the answer to your question is no, at least not yet.118.90.78.205 (talk) 11:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
February 16
rstatd/portmap access through firewall
I'm interested in making rstatd connections available to a single host through my firewall, but I'm not sure how to do it (or if it's feasible). When rstatd starts up, it chooses a random (and privileged) port on which to listen for UDP, and registers with portmap. Is it sufficient to allow tcp/udp to port 111 (sunrpc) to this particular host, and allow established/related connections through as well? I'm running CentOS 4.6. Thanks. --Silvaran (talk) 00:15, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Specs which may or may not be relevant: PC, Windows XP, IE, Safari and Firefox available, no special image software. I'm trying to grab this image off of Google books to use as fair use in an article. In IE I have right clicked and tried "save picture as". In the window that opens I only get two options for "save as type," gif and bitmap. I see that Wikipedia supports gifs but when I try to open the saved image I get a blank screen. I then tried saving it appending .jpg to the name, which did save to my desktop with a different icon, but it has the same opening problems. To wit, when I attempt to open it, it defaults to Windows picture and fax viewer but there is no image. I then tried right clicking on the image icon, choosing "open with" and choosing paint, and internet explorer (the only three program options he menu has) and none work. Some help for the clueless?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Downloaded, saved and opened without problem; ready to upload. Can you give me a bit of an explanation as to how you did this so I can do so in the future if the same problem arises? I hit the zoom in button and hit the print screen button on the google book image in an attempt to duplicate what you did. So I assume that now the image is saved in some way in my computer's memory, tied to print screen—how would I take the "print screen memory" and save that as an image (I'm sure it's screamingly obvious but: *spoonfeeding required*).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When you hit the print screen key on your keyboard, Windows copies an image of your screen onto the clipboard. You can paste it into a number of programs, perhaps the most simplest of which is mspaint (check Start, Programs, Accessories). Holding in the ALT key while you press the print screen key will copy only the active/focused window to the clipboard. When you use this method, you suffer from WYSIWYG. Essentially, what you see on your screen is what you're going to end up with--no better, no worse. That's why :D\=</Froth zoomed in, to get the most detailed view of the page you wanted before capturing the screen. --Silvaran (talk) 03:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To save anything you can see on your screen:While viewing it on your screen:
1) Hit the "Print screen" button, it's probably on the top right of your keyboard.
2) go to Paint. It's in Start>Programs>Accessories.
3) Hit the "edit" button on the top left of the screen.
4) Hit "Paste". You will see your page. If you want to make any changes this is a time to do it.
5) Hit File> "Save as" Then give it a name to save under.
6) Now you can exit paint and go to Start>My Pictures and find it saved under the name you gave it.
If you want to save words you can do the same thing but go to Notebook to save it in the same way.
Now that's spoonfeeding! Done thanks. My only problem was where to paste the image and that I could paste it jin the same manner as text; telling me to open paint was the key. Thanks everyone. Image by the way is here and put to good use.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:48, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Fuhghettaboutit. I'm the one who wrote the 1-6 above and glad I could be of help. I clicked on your "here" and saw your image - great! Now maybe you can teach me (please spoonfeed) how you get the click on "Here" to go to your picture. I'd like to try to do that with a picture of my own. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.68.202 (talk) 17:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
P.S. What is the character between .png and "here" I don't see any character like that on my keyboard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.68.202 (talk) 17:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On my computer, the character | is "Shift" + "\". that is, I need to hold shift while I press \. Hope that helps. Kushalt 20:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I believe it is called piped link. Kushalt20:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
| I did it! Now I'll try to copy what you have above here lets see if this works.
Well that didn't work. I see that you have to have a page in Wikipedia by the name of the picture and that your picture isn't in featured pictures. I don't know that I want to register and create a whole page in Wikipedia just for my little picture. Your picture is at least of interest to others but I might be infringing on some property rights if I tried to use this picture. Did you take that picture yourself or did you get it somewhere else? I got mine online, but I could try to do it using one of my own pictures. How hard is it to do?[reply]
I use Avast!, and turned off the voice notifications as soon as I got it. Does it have any more substantive disadvantages compared to AVG? Algebraist14:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I went to try AVG Security Software and got: Free - only $11.98 for 3yr, $15.88 for 2yr or $19.95 for 1yr. Not only do they not understand the meaning of "free" but they charge more for 1 year than 2 or 3 years! and I had to chose one of the above to download, not even a free trial period. So I went to Avast. At first I was turned off by the poor English on their homepage, but I read the writeup in Wikipedia and it won a lot of awards, so I downloaded it, had to restart and it ran a scan in reboot before updating. I don't want to scan every time I reboot but I don't know how to turn it off. Will go try to find out now. Thanks for the advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.68.202 (talk) 17:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Me again - asker of question - I didn't change anything, rebooted to see if it would scan on reboot again and it didn't, so I guess that was a one-time thing. Great! I'm starting to like Avast already.74.233.68.202 (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
AVG Anti Virus is free from http://free.grisoft.com/ AVG-AVpro and the full AVG security suite do cost money (and the free edition can't be legally used for business purposes). -- 17:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Finlay McWalter (talk • contribs)
I went to the free.grisoft.com site which you suggested and downloaded AVG Anti-Virus free edition. I had to created a restore point and uninstall my new Avast first. It looks good so far. Thank you very much for your help.74.233.68.202 (talk) 22:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am trying to add buttons (spans) to a webpage using Javascript and have them run a function when they are pressed. The problem is that I can get the code to work in about 3 of the 4 browsers I test it in, but never all 4 at the same time. What do I do to get, lets say, alert("Hello") to run when a (Javascript generated) button is clicked in all major browsers.
When I do something like this I make it an anchor tag, not a span. Something like: <a href="javascript:yourFunction();">Press me</a> usually works fine. Then you can assign those anchors a class to make it look more button like, if you want (add a border, adding some padding, get rid of its underline, etc.). However even in this case if it is something I'm expecting a lot of people to use and am worried that they might not have Javascript turned on, I'll put the javascript in the onClick= property and then put an alternative but still-functioning approach in the href property. It makes it transparently workable even without javascript turned on. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How about this?
<input type="button" onclick="alert("Hi");" value="Click me" />
The spans are being added using JavaScript (i.e. people without JavaScript will never see the buttons). I tried adding a onClick attribute containing the function to call (again in Javascript). This worked fine in everything except Internet Explorer 7 which was happy to add the elements to the page but none of them would respond to mouse clicks. Thanks, 89.127.160.227 (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page. [Priority 1] For example, ensure that links that trigger scripts work when scripts are turned off or not supported (e.g., do not use "javascript:" as the link target). If it is not possible to make the page usable without scripts, provide a text equivalent with the NOSCRIPT element, or use a server-side script instead of a client-side script, or provide an alternative accessible page as per checkpoint 11.4. Refer also to guideline 1.
That doesn't help. But if you must know the buttons are for a textarea. Without Javascript the buttons will do nothing and so there is no point in displaying them, which is why I want to add them with Javascript in the first place. 159.134.98.23 (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am using Spanish-based XP and this barnacle seems to have become incorporated into Wikipedia by some type of outside influence. Every time I redirect to another Wikipedia page, in the "Ver" menu (in English, I guess, Appearance)in the drop down menu "Barra del Explorador" (in English, I guess, Explorer Bar)the line item "SE Sidebar" always reverts to checked (enabled) status. I have looked for the way to disable it many hours, with no results. Thanks.189.136.132.116 (talk) 22:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Getting MS Access data into a MySQL database
I've got a database in MS Access that I'm trying to get into a MySQL database. I'm having difficulty exporting one of the tables, though, because it contains a few very large text fields (full-text contents of long documents). With the other tables I've been able to just export them as CSV and import them through phpMyAdmin, but it doesn't handle the full-text fields right at all. I've tried Googling around and all I've found are little scripts that people have written for Access that supposedly can export the data to SQL but they seem to struggle with the large text fields as well — they overflow or otherwise just don't work right with newer versions of Access (I'm using Access 2003). (They also just seem poorly written to me, the authors not even knowing how to do declare specifically which library a function is from so it won't conflict with other similarly named functions!)
Oh, and here's an important caveat. The MySQL database is on an OS X machine, and the Access database is on a virtualized version of XP that runs inside it. (Access doesn't run on a Mac, obviously.) So I can't use any of the Windows-based database management tools, I don't think, because they can't import to the MySQL database directly. Blah.
I have a Mac running Leopard. I want to make a simple data logger that works over USB, so that I can measure a voltage (from 0V to 5V), convert it to digital, and send it via USB to the Mac. I then want to either get or produce a piece of software to display it as a graph, and also to be able to export the raw data to Excel.
Would it be possible to make the hardware from an old joystick, as surely they contain an analogue-to-digital converter? How would I go about this?
And then, what would I need to do to produce the appropriate code to record and graph the data. Which language would be best, or is there an existing programme that is free.
How old is the joystick? Gameport ones don't contain any circuitry at all (except the later models) and all the ADC is done in the computer, but you can't use that as Macs don't have gameport. Newer USB ones either have the optical detection (Microsoft ones) which would be of no use for you, or the more traditional potentiometer ones (getting rare). I have heard of people using their sound card's line-in to use as ADC, if you can find a good guide for it that might be the easiest way to do what you're trying to do. --antilivedT | C | G04:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
NNTP control messages in Thunderbird
Is Thunderbird capable of sending a valid control message to an NNTP server? If so, how do I configure it to send all the required fields (besides "Control:" in the header, and those it would be sending anyway)? NeonMerlin18:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Script class
Would this script classify as a CMS, a template engine, or what? (It basically prints out headers/stylesheet, reads some data from requested file and prints <h1>, includes requested file, and prints footer.)
(and no, this is not an attempt to advertise my site.)
--grawitytalk / PGP19:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Proxy question
Would it be possible to download a piece of software on my home computer and use it as a private proxy from somewhere else? For example software "a" can let me configure a proxy at home and only that exact copy of "a" (on a Flash Drive) could let me access my internet/home proxy. YamakiriTC§02-16-2008 • 20:11:43
It's technologically feasible. Note, however, that there's nothing to prevent the remote machine's owner from installing software that invisibly copies the contents of any inserted flash drive to the hard disk. To defeat this you'd need to type in a password on each use, but that doesn't help if they also have a keylogger. To defeat that combination you'd need a one-time password system.
All that aside, you could for example run an ssh server on your home machine and use PuTTY in dynamic forwarding mode (-D command-line option) on the remote machine; this effectively turns your home machine into a SOCKS proxy. -- BenRG (talk) 22:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
iMovie
I am using iMovieHD as a part of iLife '06 on an Apple MacBook. I have a question regarding iMovieHD. Is the [dot] imovieproject the only file I need to back up to back up an imovie project? Does it include all the deleted scenes and sound effects? I want to back up some of my movie projects and I want to make sure I do it right. Any suggestions? Kushalt21:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is my iTunes Music Library.xml file corrupt?
Okay so...I want to import listening the last.fm client so my profile will have my previous listening history. However, this does not work. The last.fm people said the file is either too small or is corrupt. I probably have about 1000-ish plays in iTunes and the iTunes Music Library.xml file is "1.5 mb on disk" - so do you think the file is fine, and that there is another problem? I get no errors or anything when using iTunes or synronising my iPod. -- Staceytalk to me22:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the size is OK. I just checked mine, which is 2.4 MB, which covers 1662 items (counting duplicates). Did you check the previous iTunes library folder?
"Did you check the previous iTunes library folder" do you mean the "Previous iTunes libraries"? Last.fm says it imported but nothing showed up because it's either small or corrupt but it seems to be neither. It's really annoying :\ -- Staceytalk to me01:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wish I could be of help but I know nothing about last fm. Yes, I meant "Previous iTunes libraries". Try working with the latest one from the folder. I hope it works. Kushalt04:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
February 17
A Mystery: Connection losses while streaming
Hi everyone,
I have a bit of a mystery going on with my computer. I was trying to watch House online, for free, the other day, and my connection keeps dropping! My wireless internet connection seems to drop ONLY when I'm streaming videos (i.e. episodes from ABC or FOX.com). Every ten minutes or so, the video will stop, I'll get a 'limited connectivity' message, and I have to disconnect and reconnect to the network for it to work again.
So, in the vein of House, here's the list of symptoms:
I'm running Windows Vista, with a Speedstream 6300 modem, running on WPA-PSK with a very long password, and a group key renewal rate of 3600. My computer is a brand new dell XPS m1300 with the standard intel wireless chip.
I've tried changing the channel number, there are no microwaves or 2.4Ghz phones in the area.
Any ideas on a differential diagnosis? In windows XP, I read about a conflict with the Wireless Zero service, but im running vista and there is no equivalent that i can see.
Is there difference between widgets and applications
Apple had said that iPhone will not open to outside applications. But I think it already has something called widgets right from the start of iphone. Just want to know whether they two are different. Has iphone allowed third party widgets from the start? Are viruses not possible in widgets? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.24.87 (talk) 06:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
havin problems with my modem on ubuntu
hi
I´ve problems with my Aopen modem
on ubuntu. it is a pci device
with drivers designed for windows Xp
and I can not use it because the Gnome PPP does not recognizes it
I need some help o information
where to find help
thank a lot
alejo
Can anyone tell me if there is a rough formula that can be used to calculate the optimum pixel size of an image for printing high quality digital enlargements using wet photo processing (not inkjet printers)? I have an amount of digital art that I wish to get printed at 18" x 12" or 30" x 20" I'm currently working in Photoshop at around 3000 pixels wide but not sure if this is anywhere near high enough. Thanks for any advice. Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.144.69.28 (talk) 07:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It all depends on the viewing distance. A billboard may look perfectly fine from your car but each pixel will correspond to something like a 1cm square, which is clearly not acceptable for a 4×6 print. --antilivedT | C | G08:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
3000 pixels gives about 250 dpi for an A4 print, which is nice. You could probably blow it up to an A3 poster and not feel any special quality reduction. For a 30 x 20 print, this will be ca. 100 dpi, which should just be just about enough. Any stuff above that is printable on larger sheets, as they are conceived to be viewed from a larger distance, so you can live with a lower image resolution. Hope I helped a bit. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bleh, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, MSN had some weird plugin (or did they used to have an overlay of Internet Explorer?) that allowed atleast two users to share a browsing experience. Now, it seems that there is an extension for Firefox by the name of Cobrowse: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1469
Unfortunately, this extension seems to be no longer developed (was updated for 2.0 back in Oct '06). Anybody know of something similar, hopefully as an extension for Firefox, which may be better-er? Washii (talk) 09:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
nokia hack
can one bypass the nokia security code?there is a site that says when uve lost ur security code,it can generate a new security code for u.is it a hack or crack or just a flaw? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.74.73 (talk) 10:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
