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February 26

Laptop and External Monitor Resolution

I have a VGA out port on my laptop. The laptop has a 1280x800 native resolution. Now, my question is, can I connect an external LCD monitor that has a higher resolution, say 1440x900 or a 1680x1050 and have content displayed on the external monitor at the native resolution of the external monitor, even though the built it screen has a lower one? Sorry if this isn't worded very well, I'm not too good with computers. (The laptop's running Vista btw.)(And it also has a HDMI and S-Video output, if that matters) RedStateV (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible - maybe you should supply the type of graphics chip the laptop has so that someone can tell you if it's capable of outputting a higher resolution. Alternatively open 'help' and search for 'monitors' or 'graphics' you might be able to get the answer there..83.100.138.74 (talk) 05:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The graphics card is a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. RedStateV (talk) 05:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

look around here : http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600M_techspecs.html - the 'chip' has quote "Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz " - there are the max resolutions. 87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you want to clone or extend? In other words do you want the external display to have the same content as your primary one, or do you want extra desk space like as if you have a super wide monitor? If it's the latter, then yes you can, but if the former, no they must operate at the same frequency, and so will be limited to 1280×800. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

What do "clone" and "extend" mean? Hah, I really don't know that much. RedStateV (talk) 17:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

"Clone" means that the exact same image is displayed on both screens, "extended" means that your desktop is spread across both screens, and you can move windows between screens. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

With reference to a previous answer I don't think the only two possibilities are 'clone' and 'extend' the other option is to turn off the laptop screen and only use the external monitor. The graphics card is almost certainly capable of different and higher resolutions, so I guess the answer to the original question is yes. BUT you might need to find out how change the settings - the hdmi should automatically detect the correct resoloution for it, whether or not it will automatically turn on, and whether or not it will turn off the laptop screen depends on the software you have.. maybe someone else can answer these points.87.102.118.114 (talk) 20:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

With all this new information, let me try to refine my question, can i plug in an external monitor at a resolution of say 1440x900 while keeping the laptop resolution at 1280x800; both screens at their full native resolutions? RedStateV (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if you run them on extend mode. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright cool, thanks. RedStateV (talk) 03:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox Resources

I've noticed that after having Firefox running for a long time, and then look at the "Mem Usage" in the Task Manager, Firefox has gone from a relatively small number to a relatively large one. It does this on both XP and Vista and my question is why does this happen and is there anything i can do to fix it? Thanks Deltacom1515 (talk) 03:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Try disabling all your addons and see if it changes anything. Ariel. (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a result of known problems in Firefox's memory management. It should be fixed in Firefox 3. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Time-Consuming Machine

How long should Apple's Time Machine take to backup a disk for the first time? Mine has been running for 22 hours now and has moved less than 16 GB. (The external HD that I got for the purpose claims 480 Mb/sec, which ought to move the whole 80 GB in 22 minutes.) I guess it compresses as it goes, so one shouldn't expect "raw" data speeds, but still ... —Tamfang (talk) 05:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

i would count in days, not hours. the whole point is for you not to have to notice it (as a resource hog on your machine being backed up)!! it's ideal, and better than other backup solutions precisely BECAUSE it chooses to be so discreet you dont notice it's going on the background, but when 8 months from now you still haven't turned it off and need a backup, VOILA. can more intensive backup solutions say that? that they don't get turned off to make things faster? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.84.247 (talk) 09:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, it ought to run at low priority; but during most of the day the computer is doing nothing else but screen-saving, so what's it waiting for? —Tamfang (talk) 19:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Screen-saving possibly? :D\=< (talk) 22:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, Time Machine should speed up when the computer is not doing anything else. By the way, it was very funny, Froth! Kushal 17:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

A few points:

• I don't remember the specifics, but when I first installed OS X 10.5 and did my first Time Machine backup, Time Machine copied 60–70 GB in less than an hour. So clearly, something is wrong. What it is, I can't say. I do have a FireWire 400 drive, but I doubt that accounts for such a disparity.
• Time Machine doesn't compress its backups.
• Time Machine doesn't transfer data continuously; it does copy operations every hour or so, while your external hard drive is connected.

Larry V (talk | e-mail) 22:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Specially enumerated list in LaTeX

Hi! Does anyone know how to, in LaTeX, produce a list that looks like this?

1.1 asdf
1.2 asdf
2.1 asdf
2.2 asdf
2.3 asdf

Thanks. —Bromskloss (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

According to Guide to LaTeX (Fourth Edition), you can use \renewcommand to change the label for the second nested list \labelenumii, and have it include the label for the first nested list.

Unfortunately, if you don't have any first level items, I think you'll have to blank \labelenumi. So:

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{}
\renewcommand{\labelenumii}{\arabic{enumi}.\arabic{enumii}}

followed by something like:

\begin{enumerate}
\item\begin{enumerate}
\item asdf
\item asdf
\end{enumerate}
\item\begin{enumerate}
\item asdf
\item asdf
\item asdf
\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}

which compiles fine for me in "LyX". Hope this helps. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 18:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that works for me. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of the indentation. —130.237.45.207 (talk) 08:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

iPod managers

Which of the iPod managers (Comparison of iPod managers), thats compatible with Windows Vista, allows the user to transfer songs and videos to the iPod without ever having to install iTunes and without needing access to the internet? 99.240.177.206 (talk) 12:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

List files

Is there an easy way in Windows XP to make a list of files contained in particular folders (e.g. as a txt file)? 200.127.59.151 (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Pretend it's Unix. Open a "cmd" window and at the prompt, type: dir > temp.tmp. A file name temp.tmp will be created containing the output of that directory command.

Atlant (talk) 13:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

But go ahead and call your file temp.txt so that it will open in Notepad. And if you don't want to clutter up the directory whose contents you are listing, give it a full path, such as dir c:\temp.txt. And if you only want the filenames, and not all the size and timestamp malarkey, use the b switch (b is for bare) - dir /b c:\temp.txt. Oh, and I'd say that's pretending that it's DOS, if it were Unix, you'd have to type ls -al or something similar and cmd.exe would choke. --LarryMac | Talk 14:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If you put it in the same directory as the dir you're diring, the listing itself might show up in the listing. Depends on buffering and such :D\=< (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrong again. --Kjoonlee 00:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Back

A year or two ago, whenever I pressed the "back" key on my browser (IE), I almost always got precisely the same page I had previously been looking at: presumably taken from my own computer's cache. Yet lately, pressing "back" takes me to an updated version of the page - rather like I'd pressed "back" then "refresh".

My question is this. Suppose I prefer things the old way: is there a setting where "back" means (or, at least, defaults to) the version in the cache. AndyJones (talk) 13:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's IE6, try this - go to Tools\Options\General then click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section. Change the radio button at the top to Never. This may cause you to need to use refresh a lot more often, depending on your browsing habits. IE7 might be similar, but I don't have access to it right now. --LarryMac | Talk 14:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try it. AndyJones (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Excel data sieve

I have a spreadsheet laid out kind of like this:

   A      B
1  Alan   Yes
2  Bob    No
3  Carol  Yes
4  Dan    Yes
5  Ellen  No
....

What I want to be able to do is harvest the data from this list on a separate worksheet, to give an automatically updating list of all those entries in column A that correspond to a "Yes" in column B, like this:

   A
1  Alan
2  Carol
3  Dan

I've tried approximating this using a list, but that is only compatible with more recent versions of Excel, and this needs to work across older versions as well. I also tried Pivot Tables, but that didn't seem to work. I'm sure I've seen this done before. Any suggestions? Thanks, jeffjon (talk) 14:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, Excel. Unable to do very obvious and simple things without a lot of trouble. The easiest approach, and it isn't very easy, would be to write a VBA function to harvest the information for you. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

A pivot would work. You would highlight the data range (or simply columns A:C) and then pivot. Youc an then add "B" into the 'page field' filtered to 'yes' and then 'a' into the row/column field. This will provide you with a list of only those with "Yes". The only problem is that this would mean if 2 Carol's appeared in the list it would only have one entry rather than two. Your best bet is to use VBA - it's not a difficult function to write (though I don't unfortunately have the time to write an example for you). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:07, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered using an Autofilter? This would let you show just the "Yes" names without needing to have an extra worksheet. The tricky part of your question is the "automatically updating" bit: I presume you mean by this that if you change Bob from No to Yes then his name will appear in the filtered list without any extra action. I've worked out a way to do this using only worksheet functions: let's see if I can explain it here:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	Name	Select?	Yes so far	Numbers	Count	Item	Name
2	Alan	Yes	=COUNTIF($B$2:B2,"yes")	0	=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$9999,D2)	=1+E2	=IF(F2>COUNTA($A$2:A65536),"",INDEX($A$2:$A$9999,F2))
3	Bill	No	=COUNTIF($B$2:B3,"yes")	=1+D2	=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$9999,D3)	=F2+E3	=IF(F3>COUNTA($A$2:$A$9999),"",INDEX($A$2:$A$9999,F3))
4	Charlie	No	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...	copy formula down...

Copy down as far as you need. If I haven't messed up, then column G will show precisely the names from column A that have Yes against them in Column B. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Just to explain the idea behind this: I work down the rows counting how the cumulative number of Yeses. The numbers of times each of these numbers occur are the sizes of the gaps between the names to be selected. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you please fix the row numbers? It's driving me crazy every time I look at this page.  :-) --LarryMac | Talk 19:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Andrew, that works perfectly. It took me a bit to realize what was going on here, but it's very clever. Thanks for your effort. To 194.221.133.226: I did try Pivot Tables, but specifically what I couldn't get to work was the backwards compatibility; it has to work in Excel 2007 and 2002. VBA is a last resort for me. Thanks to all. jeffjon (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Frontpage = problem...

I was trying to show someone how to do the basics of Frontpage and they accidentally made my desktop a website. Is there a way to reverse that? Thanks!! --Zach (talk) 16:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Control panel > Display > Desktop > Customize Desktop... > Web > uncheck anything that's checked — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried that but there was nothing checked... --Zach (talk) 20:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you tell us which version of Windows you are running? Active Desktop is sometimes enabled by settings in the Folder Options dialog, if I'm not mistaken. --LarryMac | Talk 20:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just say no to FrontPage! (luckily, discontinued by Microsoft in 2006). EdJohnston (talk) 01:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm using XP Media Center.... And I usually use Dreamweaver and Flash, but this was a quick tutorial of Frontpage :) --Zach (talk) 12:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux Puppy display problem

I'm completely new with anything but Windows, so I have no idea what to do. I installed Puppy Linux on a usb-stick a few days ago. Now the problem is that when if I choose to use Xorg for my display, it only shows a part of what "there is to be shown", about 1/4 of it with 1280x1024 resolution, less with smaller. This seems somewhat intended since the view can still be moved around with mouse. Xvesa works fine resolution less than 1280x1024, but at 1280x1024 ironically gives me an error that 1280x1024 is the optimum display mode. I really would like to have higher resolution. What to do? --212.149.216.233 (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

HELP

I AM NOT TYPING IN ALL CAPS ON PURPOSE. something is messed up on my keyboard. have to hold down each key for one second to type - all caps was because i must have held down caps lock. Also audible click from hard drive when each letter appears. Please help - no extra keyboard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Me again. I restarted the computer, and now it's fine - including no audible click when each letter appears. What was going on? --71.194.241.127 (talk) 21:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Assuming you're using Microsoft Windows, it's possible you accidentally activated some of the Accessibility Options in Control Panel. Then again, I find that some applications sometimes seem get confused as to whether the Shift or Control keys are up or down, with annoying and confusing results. Usually tapping the offending keys and switching between applications fixed the problems, but in extreme cases it might be that only a reboot would do. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it. If accessibility options got reset each time you restarted the computer, that would be the most stupid accessibility software. Kushal 06:16s, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Stupid or not, it does seem to be the case, at least for the Windows Sticky keys option. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

February 27

Executing a command over ssh doesn't preserve the return value.

I'm trying to write an automated check to see if a machine has the latest installed kernel currently running on it. To this end, I'm comparing ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1 against uname -r. I want to run this check via ssh on a central server. Unfortunately, I've run into a bit of a snag. In short:

I ssh to my server and see this:

$ if [ `ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1` == `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi
BAD

I do it from another server and see this:

$ ssh otherserver "if [ `ls /lib/modules/ -1t --color=never|head -1` == `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi"
GOOD

I can manually run each component of the test remotely, and they return what they should. Why does running the command over ssh make a difference? grendel|khan 00:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I think your backticks (``) are executed locally and substituted in by the local shell before ssh is run. Maybe you want to use single quotes instead of double quotes. --Spoon! (talk) 01:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the backticks are interpreted by your shell on the local machine. One good way to fix this might be to put this stuff into a shell script and just "ssh otherserver scriptname". Friday (talk) 01:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

There are three main differences between single quotes ' ' and double quotes " " in the Unix (and therefore Linux) shells:

1. Shell variable expansion using $ is still performed inside of double quotes.
2. The backtick mechanism `...` works inside of double quotes.
3. Using the backslash \ to escape special characters (basically ", $, `, and \) works inside of double quotes.

(Inside single quotes, on the other hand, nothing is special, and among other things there's no way to have a single quote inside a single-quoted string.)

Number 2 is little-known, but Spoon and Friday are right, it accounts for the OP's problem. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Other problems in that command waiting to bite you later include the bashism '==' comparison (correct syntax is a single = for string comparison in the test ([...]) command) and the bad ordering of arguments to ls (options belong before non-option arguments; allowing them backward is a non-portable feature of GNU getopt). And I really don't like the implication that you've got an ls that shoots multi-column colored output down a pipe, but that's probably just an alias in the wrong place. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, all. What a wallbanger. And it turns out that my ls doesn't actually shoot multi-colored junk down a pipe; that was just me building it out of blocks I wrote by running each bit in an interactive terminal, and assuming that it did. So I'm left with the following. grendel|khan 03:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

ssh otherserver 'if [ `ls -1t /lib/modules/|head -1` = `uname -r` ]; then echo GOOD; else echo BAD; fi'

Computer longevity

Is it bad to keep the computer on continuously? Does that shorten it's lifespan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.226.26.154 (talk) 02:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The computer will start running slower. It's RAM will get full, it will be running tons of processes, etc. I turn mine off every night. We sleep at the same time. Useight (talk) 02:58, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That's not true at all. It's a good idea to shut off the computer when you're not doing anything with it (it wastes a lot of power when lots of people leave it on), but it doesn't "start running slower" on account of being left on. Well-written programs that don't have memory leaks will not fill up your RAM unnecessarily; processes don't just start running on their own. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 03:02, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

A Utopian computer will not get full of memory leaks, hung processes, and random unforeseeable errors over time. However, we live in the real world. Programs are not perfect to begin with. They do have errors. Also, many (if not most) users install all kinds of garbage on their computer that is written by people who know very little about proper programming. This tends to include spyware and related nasty programs that run whenever they feel like it. All together, computers are helped by a periodic restart to clean everything out.

As for shortening the lifespan of the computer, the common belief is that turning a computer on and off will shorten the lifespan of the electronics. How much? Not a lot. I have had servers die in a matter of months and they are rarely turned off. I have a laptop I bought in 1997 that I turn on and off all the time (often multiple times each day). It hasn't died. So, protecting your electronics by leaving them on all the time isn't based on a hard fact that your computer will die after a specific number of boot-up times. It is rather random - just about as random as having a spider climb in while the computer is turned on and shorting out a couple components. -- kainaw™ 03:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Nearly lost the info due to an edit conflict... any ways...Make sure to restart the computer regularily. This will remove any background processes that may have come up, by your own doing or even by spyware and adware programs. However, keeping your computer on longer may be helpful, for example allowing Google Desktop to index files, or other such things. But you should probably turn off the computer, or put it in hibernation. (Please be aware that hibernation is not the same as turning off the computer, as it saves all processes running and shuts down. Read more on the hibernation page). PwnerELITE (talk) 03:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

See, told you, 98.217.18.109. Useight (talk) 03:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If you need to reboot constantly to maintain performance, you're either using a pre-NT version of Windows, or something is wrong. You shouldn't just accept that as a part of using computers; it isn't. Malware or extremely craptastic software might cause this, though usually with the latter you can just kill and restart it. Standby/suspend/sleep is a good idea though, or hibernate for longer periods / for computers that can't suspend properly. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as the software goes, Linux is said to be much more friendly towards continuous operation than Windows.

For the hardware, in usual circumstances, as kainaw points out, unnecessary turning off\on can cause more damage than continuous operation. However, I guess that if your computer has a problem with its cooling and your parts get overheated, continuous operation can be harmful.

98 mentioned power, and said that a lot of power is wasted by "many people leaving it on". I think the last is faulty logic. If you take any phenomenon and multiply it by the number of people involved, of course you will get a large number. To reach an objective decision we need to measure the cost\benefit at the individual level. So think about your computer as a heating stove that runs on a few hundred Watts. If it's winter, you're possibly operating stoves anyway so nothing is really wasted. If it's summer, you're possibly operating air conditioning, so you'll have to pay for energy the computer takes and for the energy required to cool the heat generated by it (which is on the same order of magnitude). It's up to you to figure out how significant this cost is to you. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 10:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If you have a reason to leave it on, leave it on. If you're leaving it on just so that your friends can see that your IM program says you are sleeping, that's a stupid reason to leave it on. But anyway, my argument was not about the individual cost, but indeed, the social cost. If people turned off their computers (or put them into a very low-power consumption mode) when not using them, it would save a lot of wasted energy. College students in particular seem to feel that they should leave their computer on at all times as a severely over-powered answering machine; that's just wasteful of natural resources. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

"To reach an objective decision we need to measure the cost/benefit at the individual level."

See also Tragedy of the commons. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If I understand this correctly, it addresses a point I did not mean to make (though I see how you would get that impression). It is basically an extension of the Prisoner's dilemma - if every individual works to maximize his own benefit, everyone suffers. But I didn't imply the OP should act selfishly, but rather that he should think reasonably about the quantitative implications. Let's assume that keeping the PC on overnight has a cost in terms of a person's electrical bill of, say, a dollar. Let us also assume that this will have ecological implications that will worsen the state of humanity in an amount also equivalent to a dollar. If a person is altruistic, then the total damage of leaving the PC on is 2$. If this is justified by the advantages, the correct decision will be to do so - and if he feels bad about taking a dollar from the rest of humanity, he can always give it back in the form of charity to a cause he deems worthy. But the cost is still only 2$. Saying, "a billion people do this and thus the total cost is 2 billion dollars which is a huge amount" is cheap demagogy as far as I am concerned. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not cheap demagogy to suggest that people should engage in more environmentally sensitive habits when the cost of doing so on an individual level is so low. If consumption habits were lowered by even very small amounts, there would be great benefits. I'm not exactly asking people to give up their cars here, though if they lived in an area where that is feasible it's not a bad idea! --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The total wastage\damage is an important criterion for an activist choosing an agenda worth campaigning for. It is not important for an individual, however ecologically minded, faced with a choice on how to behave personally - and is thus irrelevant to this discussion. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Any "well designed" spyware, malware, viruses, or other parasites will simply restart itself at reboot. It's not difficult to remove most such things permanently, anyway. (See Adaware) If individual programs are leaking memory (Firefox?) you could easily restart just that program. I keep my home PC on all the time. The only time I reboot is when I switch from Windows to Linux. (Or a poorly designed driver installer forces me too.) Since I haven't installed Linux on my new PC yet, at the moment my home PC has run over a month in Windows with no reboot, with no problem at all, and no unusual memory or CPU consumption. (I'm running Windows XP, Pro) 72.10.110.107 (talk) 14:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I have to second (third?) what 98.217.18.109 and Consumed Crustacean have said above. If it's convenient for you to leave your computer on (or sleeping/hibernating) all the time, you should be able to. People in this thread have said things like "The computer will start running slower... its RAM will get full" and "all together, computers are helped by a periodic restart to clean everything out", but that's not true in the general case. In the special case of broken or toy computers, they may be helped by periodic restarts, but real computers don't need them. This is not some utopian fantasy I'm spouting, either -- the laptop I'm typing this on has been up for 63 days. The only times I reboot it are when I'm forced to by one of the few remaining (broken) software installers that inanely insists on it. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:40, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It'd be great if people were to cite some sources for their assertions. I was told 15 years ago that turning computers on and off was bad for the hard disks specifically because it wore out the motor "brushes". But I have no actual citable source for this claim, or any idea whether motors are better now than they were 15 years ago. Temperature cycling might reduce the life of electronics, though again I have no source for this. Tempshill (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I took apart a hard drive made circa 1997 and it didn't use a "motor" per se. It used an electromagnet between two permanent magnets to move the drive heads. I doubt that turning computers on or off has any effect on the hard drives, mainly because the hard drive makes a point of moving the heads to the outer unreadable sector of the platters right before the PC shuts off. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't install crappy software or IM nonsense. If you're running Vista or BSD/*nix you will rarely (every few months?) have to restart your computer and if you don't leave things running then you won't have memory leaks. Holy crap people it's not that hard, just check your task manager or ps every few days and see if anything's taking up a lot of memory, and if there's anything then restart it. You'll have a similar experience with win 2000 or xp if you strip them down a bit. No it's not bad for it to leave it on, and having your IM client report that you're sleeping is a perfectly good reason to leave it on if you don't want to boot again in the morning. If you're dealing with a user, tell it to restart the computer regularly, but anyone intelligent can easily manage their computer's resources and perform basic on-line maintenance to keep it running for long periods of time without restarts. Don't install stuff all the time, just what you need, and get familiar with what processes tend to freeze or leak and clean them up when necessary. I can't believe people are giving advice that you have to restart regularly even on linux. That's completely wrong. I've read innumerable stories of epic uptime on slashdot.. I recall one story of a network tech rewiring a small school.. he was following the cables to try to find the main router, and traced them to the back of the janitor's closet where under mops and piles of dust he found an old pentium 1 beige box.. both fans completely burned out, hard drives utterly wrecked. It was running BSD from memory acting as the router for the school with an over 5 year uptime. :D\=< (talk) 18:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Ignoring all of the above, it doesn't really matter if you turn the computer on and off, or if you leave it on all the time. There are two major factors that can cause the non-moving parts of a computer to fail: thermal cycling causing crack propogation in chips, and electron wind eroding wires within the chips. One of the final steps in manufacturing computer chips is to cut the silicon wafers apart into individual chips; this creates miniscule cracks at the edges. Every time you turn a computer off or on, the resulting temperature change will cause the cracks to grow slightly, and eventually, a crack will cross a critical bit of a chip. Keeping computers on all the time isn't the solution to this: as long as the computer is on, electrons flowing through the wires will occasionally knock copper atoms loose, damaging the wires. It's a very slow process, but because of how small the wires within a computer chip are, it doesn't take much to wear them out.

For a typical computer that's turned off every night, it's a 50/50 chance which one of the above will cause it to fail. Either process will take many years to kill a computer, and it's far more likely that the computer will fail from some other cause before then. --Carnildo (talk) 21:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Electromigration (the electron wind referred to above) doesn't kill well-designed circuits although it is a major problem facing chip designers. Chip fractures are pretty rare too if you're not toasting your chips through bad cooling or overclocking. On the other hand chloride contamination (salts) getting into a critical part of a plastic-packaged chip does kill computers. So does the drying out of electrolytic capacitors. Both are made far worse by overheating so it turns out that dead fans are a big cause of system death. Bearings on hard drives also wear out, practically on a pre-determined schedule. Soon, thanks to ROHS directives, tin whiskers and broken solder joints will likely be a big cause of computer death.

Nowadays, I'd say the better bet is to sleep your computer if possible and if you tend to leave a lot of work "open", otherwise shut it down. This may change when brittle ROHS-compliant solders become more widespread.

Atlant (talk) 00:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Gamer Fo life :P

Anyone play guildwars? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 04:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I know someone who does. Could I ask what the question is? Kushal 04:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Just reaching out to People and saying HI There isnt much to do in a place like fallon nevada unless your gonna knock someone up or your in a Gang...I love playing with people :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 05:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:Tyop The Typo project is fun. - You can help! :-) Kushal 06:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

ha ha im amused :P >.> <.< >.< not really im soooo sorry i inconvinced you with my edjewkated tipoes i trwy ta mak Em beta fo yaz! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 06:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I play guild wars. Have all 3 campaigns beaten (most quests, most masters mission rewards), but haven't done any of the crazy hard stuff like Sorrow's Furnace, Underworld, Fissure of Woe, or a lot of the Realm of Torment quests, and I don't own EoTN. Only one character, only one run. I've got like 180 hours in the last 2 months :O :D\=< (talk) 00:58, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

sweetness whats your in game name maybe we could hook up and play :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 20:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Mage Illusioner, named from the Progress Quest class. I'm actually playing right now (bought GWEN 3 hours ago.. not impressed) until some people go to sleep and my ping is low enough to play Insurgency :D\=< (talk) 03:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

you guys might want to take this conversation to a discussion page

Tell me how this is done

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8471/1204033097892lt6.th.png http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8471/1204033097892lt6.png

Browsing 4chan last night, I found this very curious image. Those two are the same image. The first is the thumbnail of the second. You can download and open it in photoshop, but the full size image became the image in the thumbnail. There is a sly trick to this... the way the pixels are arranged maybe? But I can't figure it out. Enlighten me please? Aurora sword (talk) 05:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The big one has a gamma tag. The image gamma is set to 0.015150 or about 1/66. This convinces your image viewer that the image is very bright and needs to be darkened to be displayed correctly. Of course that only works if you are using an image viewer that understands and respects the gamma tag. The first viewer I tried didn't, and for a minute I wondered what was so weird about it since the images looked the same. Both images are actually present in the big one, but only one of them is bright enough to still be visible after the large gamma correction is applied. The other one becomes so dark that it is just a bunch of single-pixel-wide black rows and columns which aren't noticeable unless you zoom in. You should be able to see both at the same time if you look at the big one adjust the gamma (brightness).

The smaller one, in spite of having .png on the end, is actually a jpeg, with no gamma tag. The conversion process has lost more information than a typical image resizing, because the gamma tag is gone. Also, it seems to have lost enough detail that the other image is not visible regardless of brightness level. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 06:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I see, gamma tags eh? In other words it fools the viewer. The bright pixels contain the girl image and the dark pixels contain the forest image. Thanks a lot. Aurora sword (talk) 06:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Oddness: if you have a laptop, you can see the second image by looking at the first one at a weird angle. On my Macbook I can see it by ducking down low and looking up at the screen. Crazy. Why should that be? --98.217.18.109 (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

a lightweight (couple of megabytes!!) LOCAL web server with cgi support for windows? FOUND IT!

I want to test my python cgi script locally, what lightweight web server can I download (a couple of megabytes) that doesnt' require a bunch of configuration?

FOUND IT! not even megabytes, 700 KB, called abyss. already running my scripts locally....

heaven must be like this

Harddrive misreporting size

Hi everyone,

I have a DELL Inspiron 6000, which, I am about 99% sure came with a 40gig harddrive. Now, when I right click on C drive and go to properties, it reports a 71 Gig harddrive. I've had a pretty massive computer slowdown in recent weeks, and I'm considering reformating, but I want to solve this problem first.

thanks! --Cacofonie (talk) 12:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Gparted will most probably report correctly the size of your hard drive. I know it's a partitioning tool, but it is also useful as this, ain't it? --Ouro (blah blah) 13:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, boot up a GParted live CD and it will tell you what's going on. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there aby possibility y9ou ahve turned on disk compression? That might explaina performance slow down and apparent increaded disk space.

bash aliases

How do I make a bash alias so that everything passed to the alias (example: myalias --foo bar) get passed to the actual command? Or is this only possible with functions? --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 16:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I just tried this and it worked:

alias e='echo $*'

Strictly speaking (but the reasoning is somewhat obscure), this would be better:

alias e='echo "$@"'

—Steve Summit (talk) 16:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you have to do anything special. I have an alias from mingw32i586g++ (or whatever the heck that executable is called) to "mingw" and it still takes arguments perfectly fine. :D\=< (talk) 16:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Aliases pass on arguments just fine. The trick is if you don't want them passed, or want to expand more than one alias, etc. In bash, making an alias's expansion end in a space — alias a='b ', for instance — makes the following word subject to alias expansion when the alias is used. And alias a=b; alias b=c works as expected; you can even combine them with alias a='b c'; alias b='d '; alias c=e and have "a" become "d e". --Tardis (talk) 16:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

.bashrc|.bash_profile|.profile: SSH vs SFTP

Is there a .rc (such as .bashrc) that only gets executed for SFTP logins? only for SSH terminal logins? --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 16:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think SFTP even starts a shell. With SSH, I don't think there's a separate file for it, but you can probably (by analyzing the output of ps) determine from within one of the startup files (.bash_login, perhaps) whether the current session was started by sshd. --Tardis (talk) 17:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I just noticed that only SSH shell session sets SSH_TTY=/dev/ttypd, the others don't. But all SSH|SFTP|SCP use .bash_profile|bash_login|.profile. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 17:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I believe any login to a *NIX system will run the "shell" configured for that account in /etc/passwd (see chsh). That shell can be any executable you like, but in your case is clearly bash, which will automatically process the various initialisation scripts you mentionned.

If bash is invoked for a non-interactive session (I don't know if SFTP does this or not, but actually think it might well) it may invoke different processing, but it will certainly set different variables. I believe one is the magic variable $-, which will contain an i when interactive (you can test it with case). - IMSoP (talk) 19:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Setting up workgroup names

Hi,

I'd like to use a Debian box to set up local DNS names for the computers on my network, so I could access "http://mydell/index.html" or "http://debian3/bugzilla/" by just typing in those URLs. From skimming, the only advice I saw was to actually set up a whole DNS server, so every time I access any site on the Internet, the DNS lookup would be on a computer of mine that'd be hosting DNS for me. Can I do the first part without doing the second part? Tempshill (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

You can use a hosts file, but you'll have to set it up on each client computer separately. (This approach doesn't even need a separate DNS machine.) --Tardis (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! That'll probably work fine. Tempshill (talk) 21:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

plays sound files at the press of a button

I'm looking for a (free) program that allows me to assign any wav or similar file to a particular key and then play it on a seamless loop when I press that key (EDIT: and stop playing it when I take my finger off the key). Also it should allow you to bind multiple keys to sounds and play them at the same time. I'm sure there's some complicated music making thing that has that feature hidden in it somewhere but I can't get past the confusing interfaces. Is there anything that fits this description? --86.144.102.254 (talk) 18:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen any free ones, there might be one but I've never seen it. George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 20:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It may help to start with Audacity. That's an oddly specific request, though. It sounds like you would be better off writing a simple program yourself. May I suggest Game Maker if you are not experienced? --Russoc4 (talk) 20:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I've also never seen any free software to meet your needs, but it may help you to know that the hardware version of what you want is called a sampler. jeffjon (talk) 20:30, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

LaTeX issues

I am trying to use latex (bibtex) for Harvard style citations, and am encountering many problems:

1. I'm not able to get rid of repetition of author name in case I cite multiple references of the same author. For example, I get (Wainwright 1982, Wainwright 1988) whereas I want (Wainwright 1982, 1988).
2. I can't get rid of long lists of authors on some citations, where I want them to be replaced with et al.. For example, I get (Kanzawa, Hoshino, Chiba, Hoshino, Kobayashi, Kamasawa, Kishi, Osumi, Sameshima & Tsuchiya 2006), where I want (Kanzawa et al., 2006)
3. I want to cite several papers "as noun" in the beginning of a sentence, but can't do it. For example, I want something like: "X (1943, 1956, 1996, 2001) proved P". But I'm able to cite only one reference using \citeasnoun .

I'm using the dcu.bst style file (I've tried others), and I'm using the harvard package. Any help will be highly appreciated. deeptrivia (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello. In my LaTeX days I settled on natbib for citations. It had the best coverage of these sorts of issues. Good luck! --87.74.1.108 (talk) 21:06, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

what do tr and td stand for in html tables

what do the abbreviations stand for in html table tags —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.58.97 (talk) 23:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

<tr> creates a row and hence stands for "table row". <td> creates a cell within a row - I believe that the "td" comes from "table data cell". Xenon⁵⁴ 23:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

yep. There's also <th> for table header. Don't use tables, use divs and CSS. :D\=< (talk) 00:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, don't use tables if you're not displaying tabular data. There are still plenty of good times to use tables. You just (generally) shouldn't try to use them as a means to doing complicated layouts, as used to be done. (But even then, they sometimes have advantages over CSS, not the least that they are often much easier to use for things like simple column layouts which render more uniformly than do the CSS required to do such a thing.) .--98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

OK well my advice is to never use tables, they're nasty and difficult to control. :D\=< (talk) 00:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally think that sometimes, although desirable, CSS and IE makes divisions nastier to control than tables... x42bn6 Talk Mess 00:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I second x42bn6's assessment. Sometimes CSS is easier to control, but often it is not. It takes a LOT of CSS to make columns work correctly (much less work correctly in browsers other than Firefox), whereas a few nested tables can do the job extremely easily without any difficulty at all. On the whole I think CSS is indispensable, but there are some places where tables just are easier, if more (theoretically) inelegant. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Easier but inelegant.. sounds familiar. The more elegant solution is always the better one, don't be lazy and use tables :D\=< (talk) 04:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

No, the "elegant" solution is not always the better one in the real world, something you'll probably learn once you spend some more time there! Personally I'm not at all convinced that tables are not appropriate for things like simple columns, either. Personally I find the two lines of HTML needed to set up a two-column table much more "elegant" than the 10 lines of CSS required to do the same thing. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Tsk tsk all this talk of real world. I don't need more real world experience, you should be jealous of me for being able to afford doing the Right Thing! The shorter table tags might seem more elegant, but as we move to the FAR better xml-y style of website coding, HTML tags are supposed to tag divisions in content, which is then actually formatted and styled with CSS. The ideal way is to just have your page content in xml tags and have xslt sheets to define how it should be displayed in the browser. We're only halfway there but you should get in the habit of using that model even now with divs and css. :D\=< (talk) 02:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Right. So the following:

<table border=1>
<tr><td>Row 1, Cell 1</td><td>Row 1, Cell 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2, Cell 1</td><td>Row 2, Cell 2</td></tr>
</table>

Renders like:

Row 1, Cell 1	Row 1, Cell 2
Row 2, Cell 1	Row 2, Cell 2

Relatively simple, no? It gets much more complicated, but that's the basics of it. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

In the meta-discussion about tables vs. css, we are at a point where CSS can do most of what tables can do, but not all of it. For example, if I want an area where all text is aligned to center both vertically and horizontally, I can <table><tr><td align='center'>My Content</td></tr></table>. Try and do that with a div and CSS so that it works in all popular browsers (any by "popular", I don't mean just IE6 and IE7). Over time, things such as vertical-alignment will become supported by CSS. We'll also be able to attach the height or width of one div to the height or width of another div - so that if one expands, so does the other. Tables do this, CSS+div does not. So, we are using tables, knowing we shouldn't, because CSS hasn't caught up with the capabilities of tables yet. -- kainaw™ 16:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Why would you want to center something vertically? :D\=< (talk) 04:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

February 28

creating 3D objects

I'm a member of an online forum, and one of the big projects over there is a RPG that everyone is collaborating on. The program is in it's very preliminay stages, and the leader has asked people to help create basic land objecs, such as boulders, trees, etc. I want to help but I have no previous knowledge of coding.

To be safe, I asked him what types of programs can be used he resonded as such (I don't know what any of it means):

"I can accept 3d graphics in any of the following formats:

.b3d

.x

.3ds

If you cannot produce 3d models in any of these formats, let me know and I'll see about converting."

Is it posible for some of you guys to write codes for objects and paste the code here, for me to send back to my forum? If this is impossible for some reason, or just a really large job, I don't want to inconvenince anybody. I'd appreciate any help, and am perfectly fine with crediting anyone who wants recognition for their work, if they so desire. --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 00:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I know that .3ds is the file format used in a program called 3D Studio Max. It's a pretty complex program. That .b3d might be Bryce, I'm not sure, but that's an easier program to use. Useight (talk) 00:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Whatever's easiest. Could somebody write a code for, say, a boulder, and paste it here? --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 01:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure those are binary formats; you can't just "write a code" for it. 3ds has its own MIME type (application/x-3ds) so I doubt it's XML based. You'll need to actually get Bryce or 3D Studio Max, both extremely pricey applications, to contribute to the project. :D\=< (talk) 04:58, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The format appears to also be supported by Blender (software) which is free. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 05:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There is also Gmax which isn't supported anymore but you can still download, and is free, and should produce the .3ds format you need, or at least something the project leader can convert from. Good luck with your project!

Fake Edit: Also have a look at Milkshape which appears to have better community support, and looks a tad easier to use. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Blender3D is free, and van export in .3ds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.170.32 (talk) 22:23, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Typing speed over time

Have there been any studies into how much typing speed improves over time and with real-world practice? NeonMerlin 01:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Just my personal observations: when I first began using computers, I was unable to type very efficiently or accurately. This, however, all changed once I began using MSN Messenger to chat with my friends. This real-world practice of typing greatly improved my typing speed and accuracy. Acceptable (talk) 02:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I was looking at the keyboard to type until about 8th grade.. we had a stupid typing book we had to work through, which didn't help at all, but a few months later I just sort of realized that I didn't need to look at the keyboard to type and my typing speed shot up cause I didn't have to move my hands out of the way in between letters to look. Now I have terrible typing habits.. I hit y with my left index finger, don't keep my hands on the home row, but I type fast enough. :D\=< (talk) 04:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Real-world practice: from having to look for letters to over 300 cps within eight months, with proper training mind you. Helps in undercover situations when you have to type in the dark :) --Ouro (blah blah) 06:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Weird MS Access problem

I have a form in MS Access where clicking on one listbox will cause it to (in VBA) populate another listbox. The second listbox is pretty straightforward and is populated by just changing its Rowsource to the relevance SQL query based on the clicking of the first box. The second list box has six columns; mostly of text data.

It works fine on my machine. But for reasons I can't figure out, on my colleague's machine (which I don't have physical access to -- I work on the other side of the country from him), the list box mysteriously doesn't populate all of the six columns, only the first three.

I've had him run a few special debug versions; when I do a DLOOKUP on the same data it works fine, so I assume it's not a problem with the data itself. When I have Access go through each entry in his listbox and check the .Column property, it says it has all of the data. The SQL is being formed correctly, and the other four columns come in just fine.

And yet -- the data doesn't display on his! (I've seen screenshots.) Why on earth would this be? It doesn't give him any sort of error and there's no reason I can think of that this would be the case. He's using the same version of the software on the same OS.

Any ideas? I've tried populating the listbox using non-SQL methods (i.e. making it a Value list and then drawing the data out of the tables in the VBA and populating it) but that won't work for different reasons (too much data -- it overloads the Rowsource property). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Could this be caused by your colleagues machine having a different screen resolution to yours, or using "large fonts" vs "small fonts" in display properties? If this is the case, it should be simple for you to set your screen properties to match. Are you running the same versions of Access and Windows?-gadfium 08:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, yes, I think he has a different (smaller) resolution. I'll try playing with the font size and see if that helps. What's weird is that some of the columns show up fine, while others don't. They're all the same font. I'm pretty sure we're running the same versions of Access and Windows. There's a slight chance his is Access 2003 while mine is Access 2002, but I don't think that should affect something like this. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

New name for iPod

I just purchased a used iPod Touch 8gb from my friend. However, in the iPod, it has his name in it "Wesley's iPod" inside the software thingy. Is there anyway I can rename the iPod without having to restore it? Because he has downloaded some songs on there for me and I dont wanna lose them all. THANKS! Hustle (talk) 03:12, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If you single click on the iPods name within iTunes after having it selected in the menu bar you should be able to rename it. Alternativly you could use another program to back up the contents of the iPod to your hard drive, but this would probably be illegal and ethically I can't tell you how to do it. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, backing up is very important. I don't see any ethical dilemma on backing up any stuff that someone already owns. Kushal 03:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

USB battery pack

USB ports can transfer electric current, thus enabling them to power peripheral devices. However, can a computer receive "power" from a USB peripheral, such as a "USB battery pack"? Acceptable (talk) 04:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I would assume that the computer would have to be physically wired to accept power from the USB port. Kushal 05:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

USB ports cannot recive or supply that much power all at once. Certainly not enough to power a computer. Firewire MIGHT be able to do it since it can carry a lot of power, but USB cannot. EDIT -According to the Firewire article it looks as though even firewire can only carry 45 watts, which isn't enough to power a desktop PC.TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Think about it, if all the power could go into powering whatever is plugged in to USB, how could the "host" computer receive enough power to stay on? That could introduce a paradox where both computers are plugged into each other and powering each other. Reminds me of IT professionals that plug an extension cord into itself. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You remind me of the 127.0.0.1 loop. Kushal 21:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

V=I/R Mac Davis (talk) 23:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Some computers can. My pocket PC for example takes it's charge from an AC USB interfaced powerpack, and can also take power from a battery pack, via the usb interface.

about drupal base website

i want to build a website where top and leftside navigational bars are different. for that what to do.please tell me the steps.

I use frames, although somebody will probably shout at me for it ;). (Frames are a terribly outdated approach to web page layouts but for no particular reason I'm loathe to update my markup skills). --Joe^Talk_Work 12:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You can use tables for your page layout. That is easy if you just know HTML. However, the proper method is to make each nav bar a div. Give an ID to each div. Then, use CSS to position the divs exactly where you want them. Of course, you'll spend a lot of time battling inconsistencies between browsers to get something mostly usable. -- kainaw™ 13:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Fast redirect

Is there an easy way to have an url on my website redirect to another url, which would be seamless like tinyurl works. I have almost know knowlege of HTML. Would it be possible to get some simple code where I could just paste into notepad, replace a couple of lines and then place in the root directory of my ftp, so the address would be something like mywebsite.whatever/redirect.html If it isn't possible what is the easiest way to achive what I want? TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If you use PHP, this should work:

<?php header("Location: http://somewhere.dot.com/page.html"); ?>

If you use Perl or ASP, use a similar command to send Location header.

If you need pure HTML, then read about Meta refresh and why you shouldn't use it. But it won't be seamless.

--grawity ^{talk / PGP} 10:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about PHP. Will placing this code in a blank html file then putting it in my root directory work? TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Also, tinyurl isn't seamless- if you want REAL seamless then redirect using the webserver (the apache rewriteengine or nothing in suck IIS) so it's actually indistinguishable from the end page. You can also redirect with DNS entries but that's bleh :D\=< (talk) 12:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You could also use JavaScript: document.location.href = 'http://example.com/newpage.htm';, though this has the same kind of disadvantages as Meta refresh, and would not work at all for people who have JavaScript disabled. The simplest solution is probably Meta Refresh with a delay of 5-10 seconds and a polite message telling people they're about to be redirected and a suggestion to update any bookmarks to the old address. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:39, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If you put the PHP code into a file with the extension .php, it might work automatically, as many commercial servers automatically have PHP installed on them. But it probably won't work if you give it a plain .html file name, as most servers are not (for performance and security reasons) set up to process .html extensions as PHP files.--98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

If you can only use html, you can add this code to the top of the html (inside the <head>...</head> tags, if possible). But it's better to use the PHP version if you possibly can.

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=http://www.example.com/">

--h2g2bob (talk) 00:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

modular algorithm in javascript ? need source codes

how can i solve this problem with using javascript?

[ x1= a (mod 100) , a= 20 (mod 37) ]

[ x2= b (mod 100) , b= 15 (mod 37) ]

[ x3= c (mod 100) , c= 18 (mod 37) ]

must be ; x2= a.k + y (mod100)

and

x3= b.k + y (mod100)

i need find b and c.. thank you best regards.. Altan B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.98.230.220 (talk) 10:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

This appears to me to just be a convoluted form of the Chinese remainder theorem. Do you understand that theorem? If not, writing a program to solve it will be difficult regardless of the programming language. -- kainaw™ 13:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You use the % operator to do modulus math in Javascript, if that helps. 10 % 3 = 1, etc. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There are really two questions here: (1) devise an algorithm to solve the problem; and (2) implement this algorithm in JS. It's not clear which of these you need help with. In any case, this looks suspiciously like a homework problem: see the notice at the top of the page about our policy on answering such questions. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

im making a machine. it is not homework, i need solve this problem. dont abuse on someone and be careful before do it! Altan B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.98.230.220 (talk) 18:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Is my computer dead now?

I'm not an expert at these things, so I just realized I destroyed my hard drive's file system when I was to do it for an usb-stick. I'm very happy now. Anyway, I still have Puppy Linux running, but it was installed on the same hard drive (along with Windows XP). So:

• Are all my Windows files now gone?
• Can I just reformat back to ntfs without losing anything?
• Can I turn power off and boot Windows?

In case anybody cares, here are the first 512 bytes:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000  33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 50 07 50 1F FC BE 1B 7C  3ĄˇŠ¼.|ūP.P.ü¾.|
00000010  BF 1B 06 50 57 B9 E5 01 F3 A4 CB BD BE 07 B1 04  æ..PW¹å.ó¤Ė½¾.±.
00000020  38 6E 00 7C 09 75 13 83 C5 10 E2 F4 CD 18 8B F5  8n.|.u..Å.āōĶ.‹õ
00000030  83 C6 10 49 74 19 38 2C 74 F6 A0 B5 07 B4 07 8B  .Ę.It.8,tö µ.´.‹
00000040  F0 AC 3C 00 74 FC BB 07 00 B4 0E CD 10 EB F2 88  š¬<.tü»..´.Ķ.ėņ.
00000050  4E 10 E8 46 00 73 2A FE 46 10 80 7E 04 0B 74 0B  N.čF.s*žF.€~..t.
00000060  80 7E 04 0C 74 05 A0 B6 07 75 D2 80 46 02 06 83  €~..t. ¶.uŅ€F...
00000070  46 08 06 83 56 0A 00 E8 21 00 73 05 A0 B6 07 EB  F...V..č!.s. ¶.ė
00000080  BC 81 3E FE 7D 55 AA 74 0B 80 7E 10 00 74 C8 A0  ¼.>ž}UŖt.€~..tČ 
00000090  B7 07 EB A9 8B FC 1E 57 8B F5 CB BF 05 00 8A 56  ·.ė©‹ü.W‹õĖæ...V
000000A0  00 B4 08 CD 13 72 23 8A C1 24 3F 98 8A DE 8A FC  .´.Ķ.r#.Į$?..Ž.ü
000000B0  43 F7 E3 8B D1 86 D6 B1 06 D2 EE 42 F7 E2 39 56  C÷ć‹Ń†Ö±.ŅīB÷ā9V
000000C0  0A 77 23 72 05 39 46 08 73 1C B8 01 02 BB 00 7C  .w#r.9F.s.ø..».|
000000D0  8B 4E 02 8B 56 00 CD 13 73 51 4F 74 4E 32 E4 8A  ‹N.‹V.Ķ.sQOtN2ä.
000000E0  56 00 CD 13 EB E4 8A 56 00 60 BB AA 55 B4 41 CD  V.Ķ.ėä.V.`»ŖU´AĶ
000000F0  13 72 36 81 FB 55 AA 75 30 F6 C1 01 74 2B 61 60  .r6.ūUŖu0öĮ.t+a`
00000100  6A 00 6A 00 FF 76 0A FF 76 08 6A 00 68 00 7C 6A  j.j.˙v.˙v.j.h.|j
00000110  01 6A 10 B4 42 8B F4 CD 13 61 61 73 0E 4F 74 0B  .j.´B‹ōĶ.aas.Ot.
00000120  32 E4 8A 56 00 CD 13 EB D6 61 F9 C3 49 6E 76 61  2ä.V.Ķ.ėÖałĆInva
00000130  6C 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61  lid partition ta
00000140  62 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E  ble.Error loadin
00000150  67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74  g operating syst
00000160  65 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61  em.Missing opera
00000170  74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00  ting system.....
00000180  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00000190  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
000001A0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
000001B0  00 00 00 00 00 2C 44 63 1D 5C 0F 6F 00 00 00 00  .....,Dc.\.o....
000001C0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
000001D0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
000001E0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
000001F0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA  ..............UŖ

Thank you. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 12:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

What exactly you did, step by step? And no, you can't re-format your disk.

(I changed "512 bytes" to a more readable version.) --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 15:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I opened Gparted, then I just simply chose "Delete" and applied the operation. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 15:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Solved, Solved, Solved. After some research I burnt this Gparted LiveCD on DVD and TestDisk did the job. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 17:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice job. Useight (talk) 18:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

LaTeX issue

(moved to WP:Reference desk/Humanities#LaTeX issue)

Linux and Windows: both?

I was thinking that the mainspace on the enWiki wouldn't have the answer to this question (what do you know, they didn't), but I was wondering, if I install Linux on my Windows XP computer, will I be able to switch back and forth between them? i.e., if I wanted to use Linux one day, then the next, I wanted to use XP, would that work? Or am I just getting my hopes up for nothing? flaminglawyer^c 22:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

That's called a dual boot and look, there's a mainspace article! --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 22:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Dual boot allows you to boot one or the other. Another option is virtualization. You can use a virtual system (like VMWare) to run Linux inside of Windows without any dual booting or partitioning. The drawback is that Linux will run much slower under virtualization than it will if it was booted directly. Yet another option is a live CD, such as Knoppix that doesn't install anywhere on your harddrive. -- kainaw™ 00:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Much slower? I thought the performance hit associated with virtualization was typically only a few percent. Friday (talk) 17:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't just the virtualization. Usually, virtualization reserves ram for the embedded OS. It doesn't get ALL the ram, only a small chunk of it. With less ram and rarely a direct connection to the harddrive, things slow down. -- kainaw™ 18:54, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

A few percent? Snort :D\=< (talk) 21:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Vmware for example claims to measure a 3% or so slowdown on integer operations and more like 9% on floating point. Do you have some reason to believe otherwise? Friday (talk) 15:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You can also run the Linux kernel along with Windows, giving you the ability to run Windows applications side by side with Linux applications. See andLinux — Kieff | Talk 06:55, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

three

1.can one rip photos from a pdf?how 2.there was a trivia question that one cant create a folder and give it a certain name in windows.i cant remember but am sure its true.what is it 3.my cd drive is jamed the led thingy is working but the cd drive does not open the cd.how can i open it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 22:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

1. If you have PDF editing software (Adobe Acrobat, Foxit PDF Editor, et al), then it should be a matter of right-click and copy/save. If not, you can always use Print Screen.
2. Perhaps C:\con\con?
3. Sounds like something's stuck inside. I don't know if it's possible to pry off the top, you might have to get a new one. Xenon⁵⁴ 22:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it is possible to create such folders in Windows NT (NT = XP/2000/2003/Vista). (mkdir \\.\C:\con\con\nul\aux). But in Windows 9x, C:\con\con (or any other device) will crash the system. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 09:54, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

1.Actually, even Adobe Reader can select photos from a PDF so that they can be pasted into an image editor. Make sure you have the latest version. It usually works just fine. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

3. Almost all CD, DVD (tray opening) and floppy drives have a tiny pinhole in the front. Stick a straightened-out paperclip in the hole - it should pop the drive open (or in the case of a floppy, pop the disk out). Don't jam it in too hard, otherwise you may damage the mechanism.

Unless you are unfortunate enough to be on a macbook (not pro).Kushal 18:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If, on the other hand, you can add/remove a CD from the drive, but can't access it on the computer: do you mean it is not starting automatically? Can you access the disk by right-clicking and choosing "Explore"? Is the LED flashing orange? Green?--Kateshortforbob 23:58, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

boot fom flash?

how the hell does one boot from a flash?i bought my pc last year and i cant see that option from bios.i alos have never seen any mother board that supports that,coz i have a knoppix iso file and i want to install it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 22:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible. Basically what you are doing is burning the iso to a CD, partitioning your USB stick from the command line, and then copying necessary files over to your stick. You can then use Knoppix Persistent to save your settings to the stick and have then applied when you boot. Good luck! Xenon⁵⁴ 23:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There must be a more efficient way. Why would I want to burn something onto a CD just to copy it to a flash drive? I know CDs are cheap but still, that's wasting a CD (unless I use it, or keep it as a back up). Kushal 18:54, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

You can mount the knopix iso and copy the files from there, then you will need to run syslinux on the usb stick.

something like mount <iso_image> /mnt -o loop=/dev/loop0 would mount the iso on /mnt under redhat or a derivitive of redhat. The name of the loopback may iffer on other distros. Then syslinux -s <disk_dev> should make it bootable.

hack

okay in our class we have our computers networked and our pcs are named from agent 1-agent 7.am agent two the guy who always has the coolest stuff(new movies e.t.c) in his machine is agent one.sometimes the guy cuts someone off and u cant get into his machine.how can i hack into his pc,just to show him i can.we are all interconnected to a server.and previledges are set on who has access to what.i just want to get into my classmates machine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Without knowing more about what kinds of machines they are, what operating systems they are running, and what type of networking is involved, it's a bit hard to give any useful answers to such a noble cause. Sorry. But in general, the easiest way to "hack into his machine" is to trick him into installing a "remote system administration" tool like Back Orifice, which will give you access, though I should note that it's almost certainly against your school rules, and potentially against the law. If he complained, you'd probably get your computer privileges revoked altogether, I'm betting. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

BackOrifice is lame. Use SubSeven or Beast. (mail me for more info) --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 10:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm old skool, d00d. (Actually, I just haven't been paying attention to that sort of thing for a decade, it turns out! ;-) --98.217.18.109 (talk) 17:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux installation

Can someone give me step-by-step instructions for installing and running Linux on a WinXP comp; I seriously need some help. I understand that something called a "dual-booter" (dual boot) is needed, which I have found (GNU GRUB) and downloaded, but can't figure out how to use. I have downloaded the Freespire version of Linux, but can't figure out how to use it either. Can someone please help? (!) flaminglawyer^c 23:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

And, please, I will not be able to get on Wikipedia again for an hour or two, so don't ask any questions of me, or any comments at all that would require a response. Thanks so much, flaminglawyer^c 23:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

See this. You shouldn't have to download GRUB separately, it should come with the OS. Tips: be extra careful when partitioning - choose "Advanced install" at the partitioner and follow the instructions at the bottom of the "INSTALL Freespire on this computer's hard drive" section. Also, don't touch any NTFS partitions whilst partitioning. Good luck! Xenon⁵⁴ 23:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You should resize your NTFS partition first with a gparted livecd to give the installer something to work with.. I wouldn't trust the "freespire" installer to do it :D\=< (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There's always the completely ignored warning: Back up your important files before partitioning your harddrive. As for "installing" linux, you can opt to try out something like Knoppix. It doesn't affect your hard drive because it runs completely off a CD (or a USB stick if you like). It allows you to mess around with Linux a bit and decide if you want to go through the trouble if partitioning your drive and installing it. -- kainaw™ 00:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, thanks to you all. I personally found Xenon's advice to be the helpful-est, so I'll follow it first. Froth, I knew absolutely nothing about what you were talking about; you lost me at "NFTS partitioning." Anyway, I'll give it a try. Thanks! flaminglawyer^c 00:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Heed Kainaw's advice. Backup anything important before you mess around with partitioning software (which the installer is going to do if you want to keep your existing XP install). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

---unless you live on the edge :D\=< (talk) 02:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

If you really want to live on the edge, you'd take apart your hard drive and put it back together - knowing that if you such much as breathe all your precious data will be gone. But yes, back up everything. Then make a back up of that back up. Keep one near you, and one in another country if you can. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is what you wanted, but at least it worked for me. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

February 29

Extent of destruction of opening an email

With all the spam mail circulating around telling one to "Not open messages with the title 'Postcard" as they contain viruses...etc", I began wondering, to what extent can opening a malicious email do to your computer? If one just opens the email message, not attachments, can a virus really "destroy your Harddrive?" Acceptable (talk) 01:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you'll be fine as long as you don't open the attachment (especially if it's a .exe from someone you don't know). Once a virus is on your machine, there are a lot of different things it could do, like turn your PC into a zombie to send out more viruses, install a keylogger to try to get your online banking password, or delete everything off your C drive. I sent a virus e-mail once, there was no attachment and the e-mail's contents just said:

"1) Forward this to everyone you know; 2) Delete your C drive."

I don't think it worked. Useight (talk) 01:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there have been issues with some clients (Outlook Express / Outlook specifically, and there was something with Windows' PNG library or something) that have allowed emails to run code without the user opening an attachment. As they stand right now there's no such exploits I know of though. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think most or all clients have had such flaws over the years; I remember hearing about them in Pine and Eudora, and of these fixed Thunderbird security vulnerabilities the ones marked in red have the potential for malicious code execution. As far as I know no virus/worm that spread that way has ever caused significant damage—all of the major epidemics were caused by naive users running attachments manually. There have been tons of hoax warnings of this kind, e.g. Goodtimes virus. As someone pointed out long ago, the best subject line for a virus like this is not "GOOD TIMES!!" but rather "New virus warning", because who wouldn't open that? It's not technically impossible for this to happen, and it's a good reason not to use network software with huge market share (since you lose the protection of herd immunity), but other than that I wouldn't worry about it. -- BenRG (talk) 18:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

yes, Crustacean is correct. This is why some of us advocate for a particular E-mail client, well at least for novices. Kushal 03:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Also remember that the way viruses spread is NOT by destroying user's harddrives outright, but by turning the user's computer in a machine to send more viruses. In the process damage can be done and more malicious viruses have been known to corrupt and delete files from a hard disk but a virus which just destroyed your drive outright would not really be all that effective in the long term. Like real viruses, diseases which quickly kill the host tend not to have more than few quick outbreaks at any given time, whereas something like a common cold flourishes like crazy constantly because it just causes us to sneeze a lot and spread it further. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

download speed

I just now noticed, for the first time, that Firefox could actually calculate my download speed. I don't exactly know the standards for internet connection speeds, so tell me this: is an average of about 400 kilobytes/sec a good speed? flaminglawyer^c 01:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends on what you're paying for, and where you're downloading from. But yeah, that's not bad (probably). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're on a large network that's very good. My university has hundred-something megabit pipe (OC-3 I think), but it's maxed out for something like half of a typical weekday, so I don't see many of those megabits :) :D\=< (talk) 01:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is quite good considering you are talking about one download. Kushal 03:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

You can also find your download/upload speed at internetfrog.com. Useight (talk) 04:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Email for Paypal?

Anyone know the email for paypal? I need to dispute a payment(goods not received, still not available per the seller, should have been instant per the website, it is for a digital card) but I cannot seem to use their dispute resolution as I cannot seem to get anything that works as a transaction number off the email I have from them. Anyone know what email I should send something to to get their attention? Dureo (talk) 04:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC) whaddaya know, I guessed right :P Dureo (talk) 04:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Headings in XHTML

Headings in XHTML are: <h1></h1>, ... <h6></h6>. Why don't they use: <h level="1"></h>, ... <h level="6"></h>? -- Toytoy (talk) 04:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Oops! In XHTML 2.0 they use <section><h></h></section>. -- Toytoy (talk) 04:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Good thing they didn't do that in earlier versions, be cause IE6 doesn't support h[level=1]-type selectors. — Kieff | Talk 06:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

youtube problems

when i use youtube, the video never fully buffers. how do i fix it? i've already tried clearing my cache. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.104.189.221 (talk) 09:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Try increasing your cache size, maybe? Which browser are you using? Try a different one. --Ouro (blah blah) 15:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows Character Map

One of my favourite interests is to search through the Unicode characters available in the Windows charmap.exe application. Although I generally like the application and its features, I really would like the window to be resizable; in particular, I would like all glyphs (at least optionally) to be much larger. Are there any similar Windows software offering this feature? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I found one called PopChar that will magnify individual glyphs. Just do a Google search for "Windows Character Map replacement" and you'll get a whole bunch of choices. --LarryMac | Talk 17:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

proxying with a CGI python script?

I'd like to create a transparent proxy of Google's home page, with some of my favorite searches. I realize a firefox plugin could probably do that but I'd prefer a server-side solution. So how can I transparently insert some code into pages, but rewrite all the liks easily to point to my script instead?

For example, searching should submt to my script, which in turn should submit to google. "mechanical" might be a good library for this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.6.248 (talk) 21:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, you could do this with PHP pretty easily, especially if you used a spidering tool like snoopy, if you know a little PHP to begin with (but it's pretty simple stuff for the most part). I'm having a little trouble understanding exactly what it is you want this to do and why, but it seems within the capabilities of the spidering tool I linked to, which I have used many times to do simple retrieving and sorting of results from various search queries on a host of sites. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 03:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if something like Proxomitron or even Greasemonkey might also suit your needs? - IMSoP (talk) 13:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

March 1

Real-time VST Host

Hello again. I need a free VST host that I can use VST plug-ins with that runs in real-time. What I mean by "real-time" is that it records what goes through the microphone, passes it through the plug-in, and then spits it out the mic channel again (i.e. so that it alters what the microphone really hears - so I can apply the effect to voice chat and such). I can't find any, they all just record the sound as a file that I can play back. Chris16447 (talk) 00:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Jeskola Buzz is pretty old and buggy in some ways, but it can do that kind of stuff with a bit of work. 209.151.140.30 (talk) 01:29, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Firefox address bar

How do I change the amount of suggestions Firefox gives me when I type a few letters? Like when I type "en", it gives me Wikipedia's main page and a bunch of articles I've been to. The default is 6, but I want to change it higher, but I can;t find any about:config entries relating to it. 24.6.46.92 (talk) 04:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but you might be interested to know that that whole feature has had a major overhaul in the up-coming Firefox 3.[1] I'm typing this on Firefox 3 Beta 3, and can confirm that as well as the improved matching system and expanded display, it shows 10 entries instead of 6. - IMSoP (talk) 13:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

But I'm in the US...

For some reason, every website I visit that has a separate section/set of servers for people outside of the US automatically redirects me to said section. For instance, I type in http://youtube.com and end up at http://uk.youtube.com . Myspace seems to think I'm Canadian, and some sites (AMG, specifically) refuse to let me enter at all because of "inconsistencies" in my connection (although if I refresh the page a few times the problem goes away). I think I'm acessing Wikipedia from the servers in South Korea or wherever it is; it loads particularly slowly and it's really frustrating. Anyone have any idea what's going on? I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 and using Opera, but I have experienced the same problem with Firefox. I've cleared the cache before and done all that stuff... I'm considering just re-installing Opera and seeing if that does anything. Oh, and my Internet connection is via our wi-fi network. Help? Thanks in advance. --69.145.120.85 (talk) 06:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

That's actually a feature of the websites, usually. You can define "preferred languages" in the preferences window of most modern browsers, but from experience that doesn't help much. The websites are usually redirecting you based on your IP address. It is indeed very annoying, and your best shot is to find an option on the website itself to change what location you want. YouTube lets you do that, at least if you're a registered user. The other obvious option would be browsing using a proxy, but that's a sad way to deal with the situation.

So yeah, there's not a lot you can do besides that. I personally hate this behavior and wish people would stop serving me different content because I happen to be somewhere else. — Kieff | Talk 06:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Talk to your organisations network people or ISP. Sites tend to try and work out your geographic location via IP address. It may well be that the IP they are getting is a proxy, which may be located outside fo the US or be using an IP that is not allocted to the US. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.184.247 (talk) 09:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

more youtube problems

i've tried using another browser and increasing my cache size. nothing happens. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.104.189.221 (talk) 10:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it a problem across the board or just some videos? Does it affect Google videos? What kind of Internet connection do you have? Is it dial-up, ISDN, DSL, ... ? Please let us know. Kushal 13:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Home networking

I have a PC with Windows XP 32 bits connected to a cable modem, works fine. I have another PC but with Windows Vista, the Ethernet card correctly installed and all. Now, I perform a very simple operation: I unplug the RJ45 cable from PC1 (XP) and plug it to PC2 (Vista), PC2 gets a 169.254.x.x address and, obviously, can't access the Internet. Any ideas? --Taraborn (talk) 10:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Vista has its share of problems with device drivers. One hardware vendor is even accusing Microsoft of "last minute changes"^[2].

However, if your hardware is fully installed, I see no reason why the Internet won't work. Please try rebooting the Vista system with the cable in the Vista computer? That might help. Kushal 13:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Does this network uses DHCP? (there might be static addresses, which may be set on xp computer, but not on vista computer) -Yyy (talk) 13:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

That could be the problem. Try to find out the IP address when you are on your XP machine, copy it down, and use the same IP address on the Vista machine. Kushal 13:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm using DHCP and I've tried rebooting with the cable in the Vista computer, but didn't work. --Taraborn (talk) 19:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Your network service could determine whether you have to choose an IP address manually. I think you can easily figure out your IP address in your Windows XP computer. Is it static? In other words, does the IP address change when you reboot your XP machine? Kushal 03:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

There might be some possibility, that your ISP have tied your MAC address. Try manually setting XP computers IP address (and netmask, and gateway, and so) to vista machine. (write down IP configuration, assigned to XP machine by DHCP and input these data as manual configuration to vista machine). If this works, then ISP have not tied your MAC address and I do not know how to solve this issue. If this does not works, then you, probably, will have to change the MAC address of vista computer to be the same as that of XP computer. -Yyy (talk) 08:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

So, umm, have you tried to powercycle the cable modem? They keep a list of MAC addresses to give out DHCP leases, and if you've only got one IP and that lease is already taken, you won't get an IP. Powercycling should clear that list out. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:56, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to all, I'm trying all those things you pointed out. --Taraborn (talk) 13:05, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Heheh... rebooting the cable modem did the job :) Thanks mr. Crustacean! --Taraborn (talk) 13:21, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Viewing the metadata of an mpg file

Is there a tool or application that can read the metadata of an mpeg (.mpg)file? I've tried hard to find this on Google.

Rfwoolf (talk) 11:20, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Here's an example of what ffmpeg can tell you:

$ ffmpeg -i foo.mpg
 [...]
 Input #0, mpeg, from 'foo.mpg':
   Duration: 00:21:46.5, start: 0.374689, bitrate: 1298 kb/s
   Stream #0.0[0x1e0], 29.97 fps(r): Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p, 352x240, 1150 kb/s
   Stream #0.1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 44100 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s

Does that have what you were looking for? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 23:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Kubuntu NTFS partition mounting problem

I've been using Kubuntu for about a month now.I installed it in the same hard disk as WinXP but in a different partition.Then all of a sudden windows stopped working,more details here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 19#Windows XP Pro Booting problem. Ctrl-Alt-Del didnt work and i couldn't get to the task manager as well. So i decided to reinstall windows,but before that i wanted to make a backup copy of the data in the C:\.When i tried viewing them in my kubuntu file manager,all the ntfs partitions had disappeared from the storage media window.I got to disk&file systems in system settings and saw all the partitions where disabled.When i tried to enable them,i got the following message.

---

An error occurred while enabling /media/sda5. The system reported: $LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0) Failed to mount '/dev/sda5': Operation not supported Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choose one action: Choice 1: If you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly. Choice 2: If you don't have Windows then you can use the 'force' option for your own responsibility. For example type on the command line: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /media/sda5 -o force Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file: /dev/sda5 /media/sda5 ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0

---

I tried using the two commands but nothing expected happen(I'm new to linux,so fairly poor in using console).Please help me out here people.I have very valuable data in the c:\ drive and i don't want to lose it.Plus,i'm really sorry for such a long post. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chidam17 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

(fix link) --h2g2bob (talk) 17:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Chidam17 (talk) 18:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried the mount command? Try this command - if it fails, can you post the message why:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /media/sda5 -o force,ro,umask=000

It would also be useful if you post the fstab file - use cat /etc/fstab to display it on the console. --h2g2bob (talk) 21:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

And maybe dmesg | tail in terminal would help in diagnostic is well, but in this case it's obvious that you did not shut down Windows properly the last time, and now Linux doesn't dare to operate on it since it may be "dirty". If you want to force it, the code that User:h2g2bob provided should solve your problem. --antilived^{T | C | G} 21:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

March 2

uncle sam is watching you?

To what extent can the government track your internet activity?

Like, for instance, i know they need a warrant to do so, so they obviously cant base the warrant on your internet activity, right? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.79.223 (talk) 00:23, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The NSA does not always need a warrent, see the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Wired News reported that the NSA watches all the network traffic going through AT&T's peering points. The EFF thinks this may be illegal and has filed a lawsuit, Hepting v. AT&T. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:47, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Specifically see Room 641A. It's probably linked from that article; I got it the long way around :D\=< (talk) 02:23, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Keep in mind as well that if your traffic goes out of the country at any time that puts it in an entirely different legal category. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 17:22, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Another thing to keep in mind is how the government can perform the monitoring tasks that conspiracy theorists claim it does. Where are the millions of peons that listen to every phone call, read every email, monitor every web hit, scan all the P2P traffic, look up every book checked out of the library... A much more believable scenario is that the government monitors very specific "high profile" traffic patterns. For example, if you are posting rants on HezbollahWiki.org, the chance that your web traffic will be monitored goes up. If you buy chocolates from SwissChocolates.com, the chance that your web traffic will be monitored shouldn't really go up. Of course, there could be a weird terrorist group called the Swiss Chocolates and the computer could mistakenly flag your IP address as questionable. -- kainaw™ 21:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

even more youtube problems

this is my reply to your answer in my previous question.

i can't watch any video on youtube because it never ends buffering, it does not effect any other videos from other sites, and my internet connection is wireless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.104.189.221 (talk) 01:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

As a quick fix, you could try refreshing your browser while you're on the YouTube page, or bypass your web cache as you refresh your browser (for Internet Explorer: Ctrl-F5, Firefox (Windows): Ctrl-Shift-R, Firefox (Mac): Cmd-Shift-R). As a possibly more permanent fix, you could try expanding your cache size. Also, although this may not be the problem, are you up-to-date on Flash and Java? --JamieS93 14:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe your ISP is biased against Youtube, I mean, maybe they restrict access or whatever, huh? --Ouro (blah blah) 16:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Even if they do filter content, they most likely will give you an option to override the filters. Anyways, since in this case, the OP can go to the website and it is just the video that never buffers, I doubt it is the ISP's fault. By the way, OP do you use NoScript or any script blocking software? If you do, be sure to allow ytimg (Youtube image). Kushal 18:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

What is "diminished searchability of folders"?

When I was reading Windows Explorer, I came up to the sentence:

Windows Explorer includes significant changes from previous versions of Windows such as improved filtering, sorting, grouping and stacking, as well as diminished searchability of folders.

What is diminished searchability? At least at face value, it seems to be a bad thing. Is it a feature of Windows Vista? or an error in writing the article? Kushal 02:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

A vague complaint added by an anonymous editor, who also added "It is no longer possible to see an overview of folders in Windows Explorer which can make it difficult to find the folder you are looking for". One of the additions was reverted within a few hours, with edit summary which strongly suggests the intent was to revert the other one, or probably both. Diffs: [3] [4] [5]

Apparently someone with great love for winfile.exe was disappointed by the new interface, held a grudge for about 12 years, and then unleashed revenge by inserting a weak criticism into a wikipedia article. That'll teach 'em.

P.S. See find (Unix) if you wanna know what searchability really is --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Revenge is a dish best served cold. -- Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.134.115.242 (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Kushal 18:48, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Observers note: I'm expecting someone who cares more than I do about that article to make the correction, if I've guessed correctly --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiki?

How can i start my own? --Carpenter182 (talk) 04:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's just for personal use, you can download one of the Personal Wikis and run it on your computer. Otherwise, if you want to run the same software that Wikipedia is running on (MediaWiki), you will need to download Apache, PHP, and MySQL first, configure them, before downloading and installing MediaWiki itself. See [6] for more details. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Or register one from Wikia and the like. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Nah, don't do that. Wikia is a commercial operation that profits off of your work. Guroadrunner (talk) 07:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

But, please, mr. Carpenter182, do not crosspost. --Taraborn (talk) 13:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I quite like DokuWiki - it only needs Apache and PHP. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 14:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

One of the easiest is Bluwiki. Guroadrunner (talk) 07:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Storage life of flash memory

What's the shelf life of data stored on flash memory? --67.185.172.158 (talk) 07:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Assuming you are strictly referring to "how long can I keep flash memory sitting on the shelf and have it retain data", it is measured in years. The exact length of time depends on the device itself. If you dig around in the specs for the many models of flash memory available, you'll find guarantees of 5 years all the way to 100 years. -- kainaw™ 21:45, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If that "5 to 100 years" range is anything like the "20 to 100 years" guarantees for CD-Rs, I probably shouldn't be considering thumb drives for long-term storage. --67.185.172.158 (talk) 08:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

PMR446 Laws

hello, I've recently bough a lovely Motorola XTN446 radio. I've found a few shops where their security use PMR radios.

If i hang around outside the shop, interfering with their comments, making noises, and generally being a total radio a-hole, will I get in trouble?

Its an unlicensed frequency, and if they don't have interference codes set, its their own fault, right? Radiofred (talk) 12:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Not if they don't find you ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.170.32 (talk) 18:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Not being in any way a legal expert, my hunch would be that you would fall foul of laws on nuisance - ignoring the technology in use, you would not expect to stand around in the shop deliberately irritating staff without being challenged. You would probably be turned off the premises, and if you continued (say, by making faces through the window) the staff would likely involve the police.

Like I say, I've no idea about the detailed legality of it, but I don't see, morally, the difference between being a "radio a-hole" and any other type of "a-hole", so no, it's not their own fault, and yes, you likely will (and definitely should, IMHO) get in trouble. - IMSoP (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Home networking (II)

Okay, now I have another problem. I have my old ADSL Wi-Fi router, a USB Wi-Fi adapter for my desktop and a laptop computer. I'd like to setup a wireless LAN, using the ADSL router as access point and my two computers. Unfortunately, I can only have one of them properly connected to the router at a time, the other one gets the annoying 169.254.x.x address. Any ideas? --Taraborn (talk) 14:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

So what IP is computer that does work getting? Is it a 10.x.x.x, or a 192.168.x.x? If not, the router may not be doing Network address translation, and is just passing along whatever IP it gets from the modem. If it is within one of the two ranges, the router is doing something screwy with DHCP. In that case you can try just setting static IPs within the same range that the router working computer gets. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Volume problems

Okay. So... here's the deal. I put my DVD in my DVDrom and it played well.I was able to hear the sounds, but not the dialogs. The voice of the actors were extremely low, as if they were whispering, and turning up the volume didn't help much. I heard this might be caused by a too low volume of the central channel in relation to the other two. Is it so? And if it is, how can I adjust this? I use Windows Vista, by the way. HS7 (talk) 17:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I found DVD Genie had an option that could adjust the way the sound was processed by the DVD playback software I was using, which I think had to do with quality versus "loudness", and the way sound was mixed down from 5.1 Surround to 2 or ("2.1") speakers. - IMSoP (talk) 19:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

It is very common for DVDs to be distributed in 5.1 stereo surround. Playing it in stereo (or worse, mono) will result in overly loud music and sound effects and almost no dialog. One of the big problems with mono is that they often reverse the dialog on left and right. If you simply splice them together into a single line, the two signals nearly cancel each other out. Since I have an old mono-tv in my bedroom, I corrected it very cheaply by sending the right channel into the Y adapter directly and the left channel in with a 20' extension cable. The slight delay keeps it from canceling out the dialog without enough delay to hear it. Luckily, my DVD player has a setting to force 5.1 to 2-channel stereo, so I can hear through the surround sound. -- kainaw™ 21:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Firefox

why is Mozilla Firefox behaving funny? It's swapped the keys " and @ keys around and it's not putting in the apostrophes or quotation marks in until I press the next key. How can I fix it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.193.142 (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like you've accidentally switched your keyboard layout. Are you sure it's just happening in Firefox? This suggests hitting left Alt+Shift. (If that doesn't work, try digging around in the same settings screens that link directs you to). — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 21:43, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Nope, it's not a Windows problem. I've got it set to UK English & UK keyboard. It works fine in MS Word, notepad, etc, but not Firefox. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.193.142 (talk) 22:52, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Odd. My dad's laptop (Thinkpad, running Vista) did the exact same thing yesterday. Rebooting seemed to fix it, but the language settings were all definitely correct. 'twas just Firefox. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Happened to me a few months ago. The ~ was replaced with an odd character and needless to say it made being a Wikipedian very difficult. I only needed to restart Firefox to fix the problem. Xenon⁵⁴ 23:08, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not that sure myself that it is not a Windows problem (or rather, a feature that was turned on by mistake), as Windows stores per-application language preferences. To check, go to your language preferences in the Control Panel, and check which languages are installed; then, select to have the language being currently used shown in the Taskbar. Open Firefox; if the two-letter language code shown in the Taskbar changes, then press Ctrl+Shift (or whatever combination is selected as the language switch in the preferences panel) to switch back to your preferred language. If it doesn't, then it indeed is a Firefox problem. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Hard drive misreporting space

Hi. I'm trying to fix up a hard drive that ran out of space. I was able to take off several gigs, but I'm fairly sure the hard drive will fill up again in some time. My problem is this: I have a 40GB hard drive, and it's reporting 31.3GB of space is used on the hard drive; however, when I search the hard drive, the combined total of all the files is only 14-15GB (confirmed by clicking on every file and folder in c:, clicking properties, and looking at the sum total). The hard drive is in no way partitioned. What is this extra data, and how can I get rid of it? Thanks all. The Evil Spartan (talk) 21:47, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Check your System Restore settings (in System in the Control Panel) to see how much it's using. You might also want to try something like SequoiaView to help visualize currently used space. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I was able to knock out around 5-6GB off the bat, which helps a lot when you only have 9 left. The Evil Spartan (talk) 22:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Ugaritic font

I am using Firefox and Windows XP. I downloaded the Andagii font, unzipped it, and put it into my fonts folder. Andagii is the default font for Firefox. Before I installed the font, all I saw was ????. Now this is what I see. What do I need to do to get the font to display correctly? 70.162.25.53 (talk) 22:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Side question

Andagii is the default font in Firefox? Is that only if you have the font installed? Guroadrunner (talk) 07:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Any such thing as "too much" graphic card?

I've got a 4-year-old Dell 8300, OS=WinXP, with a really puny GeForce graphics card by today's standards; willing to spring for something newer and faster. Is it possible to get something "too good" for the rest of the system (considering its age) -- i.e., might there be features that are unusable because other parts of the OS doesn't/can't call them? Any specific recommendations?

Also, my recollection from years ago has been, "always use AGP if you got it, use PCI only if you don't have an AGP slot". It that still true (or true enough) today, or completely irrelevant?

63.226.131.108 (talk) 22:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC) Dan, a old fart in the computing industry.

I'm pretty ignorant myself, but have you heard about PCI Express? --Kjoonlee 22:48, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Believe it or not, that nearly answers my whole question. Since the Dell in question predates the PCIe standard, I must be careful *not* to buy a PCIe card! 63.226.131.108 (talk) 23:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

NetBeans IDE using too much ram

How can I reduce the amount of ram NetBeans IDE uses. During its operation ram usage goes to 200+MB. Before loading netbeans I usually have 140mb free ram available. Is there a way to reduce the ram usage of netbeans. I did not have this problem with the previous version (that version used max 130mb) Can I keep some un-necessary modules from loading or something? 24.250.129.216 (talk) 22:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)NetBeanUser

March 3

Decompile

Not trying to violate any laws or anything, just curious, are there any ways to uncompile a software to raw code? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.226.39.245 (talk) 00:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It is easy to decompile pretty much any program into machine language. Then, it is rather trivial to get byte-code or assembly language from that. If you are adept at reading assembly, you can go through the program without trouble. Most programmers cannot read assembly language at all. Turning assembly language into a high-level language (such as C++ or Java) is not a major ordeal. The problem is that all of the function and variable names are lost. So, you end up with code where every function has a name like "function12" and "function24". Every variable has a name like "int17" or "long11". There are no comments. So, once you do this, your next step is to try and figure out what the functions do and rewrite them with intelligible names. Then, if you are successful, you'll have code that you can hack away at. -- kainaw™ 00:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

And how exactly is decompiling breaking any laws? I'm horrified if this is some sort of common perception. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html :D\=< (talk) 01:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking more like...You guys would suspect me to be decompiling a program, changing it, and selling it or something. 99.226.39.245 (talk) 01:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is a typical quote from an EULA: "You may not modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software product.". « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 04:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

EULAs are hard to enforce. They're just legal gunk. There are other issues though (see Decompilation#Legality). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Why would anyone here even care about anything like that? Chill, 99. Preventive detention is not designed to prevent unauthorized copying of software. Kushal 01:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, just about every EULA I've seen flatly prohibits reverse engineering the licensed software, and if decompilation isn't tantamount to reverse engineering, I don't know what is!

(Which is not to say that, scofflaw that I am, I wouldn't hesitate to decompile and otherwise reverse engineer some piece of software that I owned, if the need presented itself.)

One other point: when this question is asked, the request is usually for an automatic program to perform the decompilation. It's widely claimed that an automatic decompiler is impossible to write, although that hasn't stopped some people from trying (and evidently succeeding, if the number for sale is any indication). —Steve Summit (talk) 02:04, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Reverse engineering is useful if you have a piece of legacy software whose source code is lost and you need to port it to a new platform or otherwise modify it. It is something that you might have to resort to even if you own the rights to the software. There's a big difference between being able to translate arbitrary machine code into human-comprehensible high-level language code and being able to reverse-compile code that was generated by a compiler (especially if the compiler is known). --71.162.233.9 (talk) 02:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't have much faith in trying to port old machine code to a whole new platform with a decompiler. In fact, I seriously wouldn't be able to keep a straight face.. I can see myself in a suit, meeting with the boss, him giving me the project, and my mouth working.. I can't fight it, I break into a grin.. I twist my mouth to try to distort the grin, but it doesn't work. I cover the bottom half of my face with my hand and look out, the top half a bright cherry red. A snicker cracks out from behind my hand and I have to excuse myself. :D\=< (talk) 03:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the decompiler article? --Spoon! (talk) 03:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Any free chess program that plays like a human?

Are there free chess programs that have a "human" style of chess play (instead of always playing the optimal move found by some resource-bounded searching)? --71.162.233.9 (talk) 02:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Vista + Ubuntu computer - what kind of problems are these?

I have a desktop computer which came with Windows Vista preinstalled. The computer worked, except that it would occasionally freeze dead for no apparent reason. A while ago, I set it up to dual boot Ubuntu 6.10, which I discovered was incompatible with my USB wireless adapter (which, yes, is on a desktop). Recently, I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10, which supports my adapter better. I couldn't upgrade it by standard means since I had no internet connection, so I attempted to completely overwrite the existing installation by CD. Being a Linux n00b, I rather botched this (I now have two swap partitions for Linux, one of which is unused), but more significantly, the computer freezes all the time now on both operating systems, and the BIOS takes forever to start. As a last attempt at getting the computer into some kind of working order, I decided to wipe the whole drive and start from scratch. Using the Windows disk that came with the computer, I merged all of the partitions back into the Windows drive and formatted the whole thing as NTFS. The Windows installer gets as far as the last step of the installation, but then it produces the error message, "Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed."

My question is: what kind of problems are these? Is it a BIOS problem? Did the drive arrive semi-broken, and the rebooting from the multiple Ubuntu installs kill it for good? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 04:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You might have screwed up the partition table; try booting into gparted and deleting all the partitions and committing the change. Then go through vista install and see if it has any problems. :D\=< (talk) 06:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Dazzle 150 power supply-urgent

I need to know, somewhat urgently, what the power supply for the Dazzle 150 video input device should be rated, since I don't know which "wall wart" goes with it. The Dazzle 150 has an input jack that fits (physically) the connector from a power supply I found which says it puts out 12 volts, 200 ma, 4.8 VA with the center connector positive. The Dazzle 150 has no power requirements information printed on on the device or in the instruction sheet, and I would rather not fry it. If someone has one or can find out the ratings of the power supply which it is designed to work with, I would greatly appreciate the info. The Dazzle 150 is also identified as Pinnacle Systems DVC 150. Thanks. Edison (talk) 04:31, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You know there is this amazing thing called the internet which typically contains info like this, and there is the other amazing thing called google, that helps you search that internet thing. So many people know about "google", that it has become the basis of a verb - try googling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.184.247 (talk) 09:37, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

ok don't bite.87.102.93.158 (talk) 11:07, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

To the original question: Please do your own research eg type "Dazzle 150 power supply" into a search engine and look for the answer..

Luckily not all of us are in a bad mood today .. here http://forum.videohelp.com/topic249736.html

gives the answer

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic249736.html

INPUT: 100-240V ~ 50-60Hz 0.4A

OUTPUT: +5V---2.8A

You still need to know that the plug you are plugging in has the correct polarity - there should/might be an indication of the polarity type near the input..87.102.93.158 (talk) 11:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously DONT plug in your 12V supply.....87.102.93.158 (talk) 11:07, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Video editing: seeking program to strip audio off video

Hi all,

I have a video file ( MPG format ) and I want to cut the sound track off of it so it is silent. Are there any easy programs that you recommend? Trialware or shareware is okay. Guroadrunner (talk) 07:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

errr, just turn the sound down on your computer :D If not, iMovie can strip sound, sure Windows movie maker can do the same. Radiofred (talk) 11:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

ipod touch wifi browsing

I have a DSL modem which does not have wifi and ipod touch. But what should I do to browse Internet in ipod touch using wifi in that modem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.139.114 (talk) 10:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, uhh, you can't. Since it doesn't have it. You can buy a wireless router, hook it up to the modem, and use that. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 10:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Damaged video files on bittorrent

Often from bittorrent I download a movie file, such as "steamy Sex Video leaked online.wmv", and when I play the file all I get is colored shapes and mangled audio. I've tried VLC and downloading codecs but nothing helps. What is wrong with the file? How can I play it? Weasly (talk) 11:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)