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August 30

Out of Focus?

This page in Wikinews has a photo of a museum building.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/73M-year-old_fossilized_fish_found_in_Canada

To me the photo looks seriously out of focus. Yet the larger versions of the image obtained by clicking it are much sharper. I thought it worked the other way around.

Can someone explain this?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 00:34, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't look bad to me...but it's a hard call. A large (but blurry) image will appear sharper when you reduce the size because the diameter of the "blur" ends up being smaller on the screen. A large (but sharp) image will EITHER appear blurrier or it will exhibit 'jaggies' when you reduce the size simply because it's smaller and there is less information...in general, the information present in one high res pixel can either be distributed over nearby low res pixels in proportion to some function of the distance to that pixel (resulting in some blurring) or it can simply be deposited into the nearest low res pixel - which results in a phenomenon called "aliasing" - which produces "the jaggies" and other nasty side-effects. SteveBaker (talk) 03:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

In this instance, a lot of the information that makes the image look sharp is pretty subtle -- the texture of the bricks, etc. In general, there's not a lot of contrast in that picture, so when you make it small, the few things that used to stand out no longer do simply because they disappear along with a lot of other information that goes away when you reduce the size. Hence, it looks blurrier. If the picture was defined more by stronger shadows or darker colors, this wouldn't happen. You can try this yourself by simply opening the large picture in just about any decent graphics editing program, increasing contrast and then resizing the image to 180x217 pixels. It'll look a lot sharper...

...oh, hell, out of boredom, I just experimented with it myself, so I might as well share the results. On the left, you see the original image and thumbnail, and on the leftright the version with increased contrast. You can see the difference in the thumbnail. (The increased contrast isn't doing the original image any favors, but the thumbnail certainly looks more detailed.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Left, right. WHATEVER, dude, I'm not slave to the Man's relative directionistic fascism, dude, I'm, like, a free spirit. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 14:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thinnest laptop

What is the thinnest laptop? User9156 (talk) 04:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

This Intel is the thinnest I can find, but it's not on the market. This Mitsubishi was not quite as thin but was on the market for a while. It's not the Air, despite all of the hype. Paragon¹²³²¹ 04:31, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Kushal (talk) 18:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Although Apple Inc claimed the Macbook Air was the thinnest at the time, it actually was not [1].My name is anetta (talk) 21:24, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

using a bot to disrupt a wiki

I'm trying to decide if this is a credible threat: "I could obviously use technical means to ban User:X from any page I wanted to. I am more than proficient enough with Pywikibot to make that happen." Does this claim make any sense or is it just hot air? --JWSchmidt (talk) 04:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It makes technical sense, but that's all. It sounds like they're threatening to run a bot that reverts user X whenever they edit page Y. Such a spiteful bot task would never get approved. Someone who did that would get banned from using bots, and blocked if it was necessary to make that happen. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Whomever was running said bot would just get banned themselves. It's easily to vandalize a wiki in the short term, harder to do something negative more than a few times. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:23, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. My thinking seems to agree with your thinking. --JWSchmidt (talk) 16:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Software Engineering

My question is that which is the worlds best university for bachelors in software engineering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.208.81 (talk) 09:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

MIT? Cambridge (UK)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 12:14, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Even the worst engineering school would tell you that it all depends on how you define "best". Cheapest? Most prestigious? Most likely to give you a great education? Closest to your family? Best weather, restaurants, and population of the opposite sex? --Sean 14:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Memory

Is it possible to get a list of all the folders stored on my computer in order of those that take up the most memory? My computer says I have over 90GB stored but when I add up the folders manually in comes to less that 40GB. Thank you, FYI: Windows Vista. Donek (talk) 12:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything that meets your requirements exactly, but when I need to do a "full audit" of my system, I open an Command Prompt window and enter

cd C:\
dir /a /s > C_drive.txt

You then open that file in write or notepad and review away. It will be in "walk-the-tree" order (i.e., by directory), but you'll have something static you can look at and fiddle around with. --Danh, 70.59.119.241 (talk) 15:30, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Does it have to be a list? A very nice graphical tool for figuring out where your diskdrive is going is SequoiaView. It shows a neat graph of your entire drive with all your folders represented as rectangles. The larger the rectangle, the larger the folder. APL (talk) 15:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

WinDirStat (linked from the SeqouiaView article) is a nice tool also. As far as your 50+GB discrepancy, there may be hidden files that are not visible based on your current folder settings. --LarryMac | Talk 12:49, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Alternatives to Adobe Flash tool

What alternatives do I have in Linux to the Adobe Flash tool? I am interested principally in creating simple animations for educational purposes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 12:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You might be able to run Adobe Flash in Linux under Wine. Ask of search here to be sure. There is also a guide here for creating FLV Movies with Ubuntu. JessicaThunderbolt 14:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

XP

What is the difference between Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home Edition? Simply south (talk) 14:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Home is for the average consumer. Professional is for businesses and power users - it contains some features that Home doesn't have such as Group Policy and better Remote Desktop support. We have an entire article devoted to the different Windows XP editions. Xenon54 14:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Recording streaming video on OS X (or XP)

Hi. I run OS X 10.4 and am trying to record streaming video (which has audio), for the purposes of playing it back during a presentation when I won't necessarily have an internet connection. It's a RealPlayer file, and I've tried to use VLC or MPlayer to download it but what do you know, neither of them work with this particular site or file (VLC gives me typical VLC "I got no idea what you are trying to do but I can't do it" errors) no matter how carefully I try to follow the instructions. I suspect it is because all sorts of authentication has to take place before I can see the video and I'm betting than VLC/MPlayer aren't sending the right headers or something like that.

I thought about instead using one of those programs that could record an area of the screen? Unfortunately I had real problems getting one that could record both screen and audio at the same time. Copernicus did a great job of recording the video but it doesn't record audio. No problem, I think, I'll just record the audio with another program, in this case Audio Hijack. And hey—it records the audio just fine. But I found it basically impossible to sync them together, almost certainly because the two programs record at different frame rates (if I get the beginning of the audio synced, the end is WAAAY off).

So yeah. Anybody have any suggestions? I haven't really looked into Windows options but I can run XP in Parallels so if you know if anything EASY that would be great for me. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You have done a lot of work into it. Can you use Audacity to squash the audio track so it takes up less time? It won't alter pitch. Let me know if I can help, I have OSX 10.5.My name is anetta (talk) 21:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's possible, but it would really be a pain. I'd have to figure out what the different rates were, convert them, then align them, etc., and being wrong on either front would set things out of sync. I'd like to avoid that... --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

RealMedia is a tricky beast. The best thing I can suggest is to use screen reocrding software like ScreenFlow or SnapZ Pro X. --71.158.215.87 (talk) 12:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm looking for free screen recording software. Not $100 software. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Next battleground for Browser Wars?

Does anybody else have this experience?

• At home, I use Firefox almost exclusively, without difficulty; admittedly, I don't do much that would put a strain on any browser.
• At work, site after site after site refuses to support Ffx. The common response is either "we're a Microsoft site" (implying, "and you should be too") or "Firefox is too buggy and unstable", which would probably be a great surprise to Mozilla.

Here's three different examples: Click on this link, to get to the Pacific Life login screen: [2] At least these folks don't blow you away -- another vendor's site simply says "We don't support Firefox, please go away."

Here's one of the the login screens for a Bank of New York site: [3]. Click on the login button. In IE, it takes you to the login screen (as expected); in Firefox, NOTHING happens, it just hangs.

Here's an internal screen from Redtail Technology page [Image:http://www.fileqube.com/shared/GLxkEShif90293] Note the second dropdown indicator, by Criteria? Not present in Firefox, causes a server error. (This is known to be a .NET application.)

So, am I out in left field here, or is Firefox really not a "commercial-grade" browser yet? --Danh, 70.59.119.241 (talk) 15:48, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

On the second site you referred to, at any rate, I got to the login screen just fine. I'm using FF3- which version are you using? You may want to upgrade, although I'm not sure if that's the issue. I've had very few problems with Firefox, and I prefer it immensely to IE, myself. IE simply doesn't support everything FF does. Oh, and could you explain how to reach the Redtail Technology page, just so I could see it for myself? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 16:53, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec)The stockbny.com site appears to work fine for me in FF3.0.1 (I see a detailed login screen wanting SSN/EIN, PIN, account# etc. info. I'd recommend that you make sure that you have the latest FF, with no web proxies and ad-blocking cleverware, and all firefox addins disabled - a lot of people blame either FF or defective sites for problems that are actually caused by dodgy plugins or defective security aps. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

There are very few reasons why a site would not be able to support Firefox. If it requires ActiveX plugins, well, that's pretty much the only real reason. Other than that, my guess is that their tech people have spent friggin' years trying to work around all of IE's inconsistencies and bugs and have finally gotten something together that works most of the time on IE, and are not willing to work-around their work-arounds to make it operation on Firefox. In general Firefox is about a million times easier to code for than IE. And note that there's a big difference in saying "we target IE" and saying "we don't support other browsers." What they're meaning there is usually, "we have just barely gotten this to look right in IE, which does not interpret many things in HTML and CSS correctly, and if you view it in Firefox all of our workarounds have produced something that doesn't quite look right. So just be warned that if it doesn't look right, it's not (entirely) our fault!" Which is also pretty lame but there you have it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

OP here, with answers to a couple of questions that have been raised. (1) I only this week have been prompted to upgrade to FF3, and have not done so yet. Initially, I thought I'd wait for a couple of point releases to go out (I no longer feel the need to be on the bleeding edge) before upgrading. I'll get on that. (2) I can't give you access to the Redtail site, it requires a login -- at which point you'd have access to all my client proprietary data! Nor, apparently, can I view the page source to give you something else to look at; every "page" is generated as https:. (3) I apologize for picking a heavily ad-laden site to store the RT image. It looked free and easy, perfectly suitable for one-time use. Has any FF2 user tried the stockbny site? Is .NET another loophole through which Microsoft can make web applications that only work with IE? Thanks! --Danh, 70.59.119.241 (talk) 17:46, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried the IE tab plugin? Coolotter88 (talk) 14:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Optimistically, I tried the BNY Stock Transfer thing with FireFox 0.9.2 (which works fine in all sites that tell me stuff I actually want to know). Clicking the sign-in button does nothing, but pretty obviously this is a Javascript problem. The source of www.stockbny.com/index.aspx is a quaint trip back to the last century, what with
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta content="Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.1" name="GENERATOR">
and even our very old friend
src="images/spacer.gif"
(and WtF is "http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5"? According to Microsoft itself, "The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable"). There's extensive user-agent-string sniffing for MSIE and Safari, and people who are way better than I am at staying awake are free to investigate www.stockbny.com/scripts/scripts.js and www.stockbny.com/scripts/MenuContents.js.
So they expect you to use MSIE or Safari. So corporate America talks to conformists. So what else is new? -- Hoary (talk) 01:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

External USB HDD

Every now and again my external usb hdd stops spinning and the computer cant save to it, neither can I read from it. I can get it working by rebooting the machine. But how else can I kick it into life, and what is likely to be wrong?--79.76.176.172 (talk) 16:59, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Since it's an external drive, have you tried simply unplugging it and reattaching it? That should be the same as a full restart. I don't know why it would be doing what you describe, but an external HHD is just a normal hard drive in an enclosure, so it could be any problem which affect normal drives. Also, is it powered via the USB port or does it have a power supply of its own? If it's powered only via USB then it could require more power than it's getting (typically USB gives about 5 volts but an external drive could need up to 12). Most portable external drives have a port for extra power, so try that too. Your computer itself might be the problem, so try the drive out on a friends pc to see if the same thing happens; you might have a dodgy USB port or your pc might be switching the drive off as some sort of power saving feature. JessicaThunderbolt 17:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

2.5" drives are generally bus powered. That is, via a USB port and not by a socket in the wall. 3.5" drives generally do. My Mac frequently shuts down my drive at random: "System Prefs>Energy Saver>Sleep disks when possible." But it re-starts them as necessary.My name is anetta (talk) 21:17, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Your USB port might well be busted. Most 2.5" enclosures come with a split usb cable so that you can power the drive from two ports. If you plug one in first with the drive already plugged in the other end you could easily zap the port you plugged in first. You should always plug the two ports in first then plug the other end into the drive. This same thing happened to me, lucky it was a work pc and still under warranty. My drive also spun down and stopped after a few minutes. Zunaid©® 20:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Digital television on the road

With the upcoming switch to digital television in the US, I am going to need to buy a replacement for my battery-operated television. Is it possible to get a watchable digital signal while in the back-seat of a car? Xenon54 21:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Depends a great deal on precisely where you are. Best reliable signals come from a rooftop antenna, but a few portable ones are going around. Quality varies hugely, I wouldn't throw any less than US$20-30 at one.My name is anetta (talk) 21:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

hierarchal graph of table

Is there an easy way to convert a table to an outline in Excel or Visio like the easy graph program in Linux? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.4.91 (talk) 22:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Which linux distro?My name is anetta (talk) 23:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Any —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.4.91 (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to be more specific - the programs supplied with the distros vary widely. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 05:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

My vague question ESP has been triggered. "The easy graph program" means not just any easy graph program but the graph program, /usr/bin/graph! It's a traditional unix utility. In a Linux distribution you're likely to find the GNU version, which is in the plotutils package. I still don't know what "hierarchal graph" means though. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 06:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't find it now but here is the image from the commons that was developed from a wiki table using the graph program.

beer types

The image show ALE, DARK ALE, and STOUT in a "hierarchal graph" - you know with links to the next level... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.4.91 (talk) 08:20, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't say that at all. It says it was drawn by "graph::easy" - if you'd spelled it correctly with the double colon, it would have been way more clear what you meant (and even more so if the person who wrote that description had spelled it with the correct capitals, Graph::Easy). It's a perl module, not even close to what I guessed. ESP invalidated. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 08:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Graph::Easy is one of the top hits for Googling "easy graph", so I had a suspicion that might be it. Of course, that doesn't answer the original question... « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 11:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

To remove all doubt, question, indecision, speculation or misunderstanding here is a link to the program that was used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.4.91 (talk) 13:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

outdent

So I guess this is a Microsoft Excel or Visio capability no one here knows anything about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.4.91 (talk) 01:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

August 31

Breaking into IT

What would be the minimum education required to attain an entry level IT (networking) position? Should a person start with a CCNA or A+ certification? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.123.238.50 (talk) 01:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

What country are you in? Algebraist 01:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I live in Canada, but am moving to Japan next year and figured it would be a good time for a career change. Plus there seems to be a lot of IT jobs in Tokyo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.123.238.50 (talk) 01:20, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Asking for best way is just a request for random opinions from strangers who could easily be trying to mess with you. Please try to rephrase your question such that it is a request for references, such as "How many entry level IT positions in Singapore require at least a 2-year college degree?" -- kainaw™ 01:22, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

^^done.

TO work in Japan you should be really able to communicate in Japanese. To switch countries you really need to prove yourself at home with experience before any employer will risk employing you. CCNA with a couple of years working experience would be a good start. Useful knowledge could be programming, project management and how to use spreadsheets and other electronic office tools. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Extra large headphones?

Are there any makers or models of extra large headphones? Even at maximum extension, most headphones (AKG, Audio Technica, Sony, Bose) barely reach around to cover my ears. I find earbuds too uncomfortable to wear and would like a pair of reasonably high-end on-ear or over-the-ear headphones for my big head. Like what would fit giant dudes Yao Ming, Shaq, or Michael Phelps? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 01:38, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

eDimensional AudioFX Pro 5+1. They're huge. They're also 5.1 surround sound (really a gimmick unless you game heavily). · AndonicO ^Engage. 01:40, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Are there any XL non-gaming or non-USB headphones? Just for reference, I wear a size 7 3/4 cap (62cm) and going from earlobe-to-earlobe over the top my head is 49cm. (yikes!) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 01:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have educational headphones I nicked from my school IT center similar to this which are massive, and they have extra room to extend too! The old ones are the best I think because most modern headphones are designed for iPods and traveling so are small and break easily. I'd look in second hand shops for some real old school ones and they will probably be bigger than stuff you can buy in the shops nowadays; just make sure not to get ones with DIN or XLR connectors as nothing uses that now. JessicaThunderbolt 14:06, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

• Beyer DT100 are pretty large 217.43.3.84 (talk) 20:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I also wear a 7 3/4 hat and my Sennheiser HD212 Pros fitted well. They are medium end (~$60) so you may want to consider them.--droptone (talk) 12:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Missing menu bar

I use Internet Explorer. In attempting to find something else, I accidentally went to the list that shows which menus are visible/invisible, and clicked the Main Menu one, thus dissapearing my Main Menu. I'd like to get it back, but I can't because the Main Menu is missing, which has the Show/Hide list. Is there an alternate way of getting my menu back? --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 05:31, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Press F10.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 05:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Woah. That was too easy. Thanks! --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 20:31, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Wiki users > dial-up vs broadband

Is it possible to determine what percentage of Wikipedia users access it through dial-up and how many through broadband? --71.158.215.87 (talk) 05:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Not really -- or, rather, not without conducting a comprehensive survey. There's no way for Wikipedia to determine whether an IP address is on a broadband or dial-up connection. (I suppose some ISPs might designate a certain range of IP addresses to dial-up users, for example, and make that information public, but I think those would be the exception, rather than the rule.) Furthermore, identifying unique anonymous users would also be impossible, since there are undoubtedly people who use broadband at work and dial-up at home. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

No, but I figure it would probably be somewhere close to how many people have dial-up, which the article puts at 10 percent of American adults. JessicaThunderbolt 14:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess that might be a reasonable approximation. Of course, the English Wikipedia is used by people from a whole lot of countries other than America as well, so you would need to first get the percentages of visitors by country and then find out the ratio of dial-up users to broadband users in that country, and then do the math based on that... Though now that I think more about this, I'm a little skeptical; in a lot of places people with broadband might be more computer savvy than dial-up users, and thus more familiar with the things the internet has to offer, such as Wikipedia, so that might skew the results, for example. (Or, you know, it might not, but I'd be a little hesitant to draw too many conclusions from this...) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

c programming

I have written a program and it is working well but since I modified it eventhough it works it does not work well with the goto function is there any solution to use instead of goto. If yes please be kind enough to e mail me to (email removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.115.29.238 (talk) 11:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

While loop and For loop. No, I am not going to email you. -Unknown IP

It's part of the language, see [[4]] for example, so should always work. Note its limitations though - you can't 'goto' just anywhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.13.226.238 (talk) 12:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

If you have to use goto, there's a good chance you're doing it wrong. Whiles, Fors, and the occasional switch are good for just about (or exactly) everything. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 00:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

What's asdf?

Does asdf stand for something, or is it just because the people who write asdf are right-handed so they use their left hand to write random stuff like asdfasdfasdfasdfasdf...

Well see ASDF but your idea about random stuff seems to be likely to come up far more than any of the genuine acronyms / abbreviations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.13.226.238 (talk) 11:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Our article on QWERTY implies it was a result of trial and error - the inventor of the typewriter fiddled around with different layouts until he found one that worked, and the layout that worked happened to have asdf on the left side of the home row. Xenon54 12:00, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if left or right handedness has to do with the randomness of it. Do people who are left handed write random stuff differently? That would be interesting if true. Personally I suspect it's just easier to hit actual letter with your left hand; my right hand pinky is usually hovering near the Return key and in that position the random typing wouldn't be all that interesting( ;';lk). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm left handed. I often have to type in a fake name to test our software at work. When I'm sitting at one of the common "testing bays" I almost always enter "asdf". I noticed a while back, looking at the logs, that that when I'm sitting at my own desk, with my left-handed mouse, I'm just about equally likely to enter "Asdf" as I am "hjkl" or something similar. Why do I sometimes go with asdf even at my own desk? I have no way of verifying this, but I'll bet that the "Asfd" logins correspond to times I started the software with the keyboard as opposed to clicking on an icon. APL (talk) 19:14, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

ASDF also works due to most users' rights hands being busy switching from mouse to keyboard. Most systems are set up as righties, so even left-handed users end up using the keyboard/mouse that way at times. Matt Deres (talk) 16:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Get rid of Yahoo! sign in seal on Linux

Resolved

Yahoo's new feature called “sign-in seal” is meant to help prevent phishing attacks by allowing users to upload a custom logo to the Yahoo login page. This article shows how to clear it on Windows but I would like to know how to do it on Linux. Another question - If I do not create any sign in seal in the first place, will Yahoo still give me that mysterious "shared object" in order to track me?

Thanks -Abhishek (talk) 14:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I found the directory at "~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/%some random number%/" on my Linux; dunno if it's the same on others. --Spoon! (talk) 18:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, found it. Being a paranoid, now cookies are not the only thing I will be deleting regularly.-Abhishek (talk) 02:50, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Though honestly, there are better ways to try and guarantee your security and your privacy than worrying about cookies. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Like what? -Abhishek (talk) 15:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Three Well, lets make it six words, Pretty Good Privacy Tor (anonymity network)

. Kushal (talk) 22:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks -Abhishek (talk) 14:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

HDMI to VGA

I would like to connect my PS3 to my VGA monitor - there are leads and converters available, anyone have any experience with these? What's the best way to transmit audio?

thanks 80.229.160.127 (talk) 15:01, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Your monitor comes with speakers? --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:14, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Question about Nokia Music Manager

Just wondering, would I be correct in thinking that the "M4A" option in Nokia Music Manager is HE-AAC, or HE-AACv2? Would I also be correct in thinking that the "AAC" option is AAC-LC? Thanks in advance - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 18:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

September 1

Downloading from MyBloop.com

Hi folks. I have a major problem downloading from mybloop. Apparently all the files i download seems to give me an error "Access denied. This file cannot be shared in this way. Please use the links given on MyBloop.com. " when using FireFox. When i use Internet Explorer, it says the page could not be found. Even download accelerators cannot connect to MyBloop. The weird thing is that my friends can download everything they want on MyBloop. How do I solve this problem? Thanks in advance 1st September —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.21.154.110 (talk) 02:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Well really you should ask them but it sounds to me that when it says "use the links" it is saying, "don't link directly to the file", if that's what you are doing. Are you getting to the file through the site's navigation or are you trying to download it directly? Many sites don't let you download files directly because that causes you to miss all the ads that keep the site afloat. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 05:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Photo

Is there any software in existence which can tell the owner of a website when and who has downloaded an image from their page? Is it available for a normal mortal like me to integrate into a website? --S.dedalus (talk) 03:01, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Server logs have that sort of information in them. If you don't have an ability to access/use those, the only other way is to serve the images up with some sort of script that'll take down that information. It could be done in PHP, for example. It would add some additional work for the server to do but if well-written it wouldn't be a problem.--98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:19, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Even server logs can't tell you whether someone merely VIEWED your photo - or whether they DOWNLOADED it - because those are identical operations as far as your server is concerned. If you are concerned with the possibility that someone is violating your copyright on the image...forget it...there is absolutely no way to tell - and no way to prevent it. SteveBaker (talk) 21:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, you can enforce your copyright through the normal mechanisms. But merely downloading something that you've uploaded for viewing is not a copyright violation in any way. (As noted, downloaded and viewing are the same thing from a technical point of view.) --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:43, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That’s exactly what I needed to know. Is there any way of simply making an image undownloadable? --S.dedalus (talk) 05:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Not really - the user has to download it to their computer in order to view it, and once there they can potentially copy it (the best you can do is make it difficult for them to do so, but at worst they can always take a screenshot and get it that way). The best solution is not to put pictures online if you want to protect them, but if it needs to go online you should only add low-resolution versions so that the applications are limited if someone does try to reuse them, or watermark the images. - Bilby (talk) 06:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Super High-Rez Maps.Google imagery?

While looking up cow pictures to try to witness the cow-compass phenomina for myself, I noticed this page [5]. What's the story behind this area? It looks like those high-rez photos are from a REAL low altitude. I notice that some of these patches are roughly in a straight line, but otherwise it seems completely random. Why and how does google have patches of super-high-rez images for bits of land smaller than a football field, in the middle of a sea of very poor low-res images? It seems like an interesting oddity. It makes me feel like I should go up to the roof of my building with my camera and take a photo of the parking lot for Google. APL (talk) 05:32, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I read somewhere that these were taken by the National Geographic for a feature or some such. fake edit: Aha found it - [6] I was right 88.211.96.3 (talk) 08:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Neat! Thanks. APL (talk) 17:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

c programming

Hi everybody...is there any way by which I can use the functions created in one C program in another program without rewriting the fuctions all over again?? i.e. I have some functions in say "file1.c" which I would like to use in "file2.c" how can I do this?? This must be similar to including header files in a program but how do I include the whole program?? Please help...

Thanking u in advance... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 10:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

While I have never programmed in C myself I believe you should be able to either include the shared functions in something like a header file, or compile the functions into a library and link them to the different projects you have like other C libraries, or just have multiple source code files and link them together at compile time in a modular fashion. Phydaux (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The way to do this is to create your own header file. Put function prototypes for the functions you want to share into a file with a .h extension. The name doesn't matter, but it's probably best to name it file1.h so that it's obvious where the function bodies are. Second, include that header file into file2.c with a line like #include "file1.h". (Don't use #include <file1.h> since that tells the compiler to look for a system header file by that name.) Third, tell the compiler to compile both file1.c and file2.c and link them together. If you're using an IDE you can do this by adding both .c files to the project. If you're using a command-line compiler you can just list both .c files on the command line. If you want to be more sophisticated you can create a Makefile, but for a small project with just two .c files there's probably no need. -- BenRG (talk) 15:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Google

Resolved

Using Google, how can I find results of a word or phrase that are not on a particular site? For example, results for "Mario" on any site except Wikipedia. February 15, 2009 (talk) 11:07, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Easy, use -site:sitename.com

Using your example you would use: Mario -site:wikipedia.org

Phydaux (talk) 11:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The minus sign can also help you find sites without that word, as well. So if you wanted to look for Mario, but exclude all results with "Nintendo", you'd do Mario -Nintendo. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 14:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Some advanced search tips from Google and a cheat sheet - Phydaux (talk) 14:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard Locks Up

Every once and a while, my MacBook keyboard will strangely lock up. I've only experienced this problem while using Firefox, but every time it occurs, I have to restart my MacBook for the keyboard to respond. I'd normally think that it's just a hardware error, but my mouse is always completely responsive. So, I'm just wondering if (1), anyone has ever experienced this, and (2), does anyone know a way to fix the problem without having to completely restart the comp? Mastrchf (^t/_c) 15:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

1) I have an (intel) mac and never experienced it. Even on Firefox, my main web browser. 2) Have you tried just restarting firefox, or a wireless keyboard?78.149.67.3 (talk) 18:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

• Can you work if you plug an external keyboard? NerdyNSK (talk) 14:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll try an external keyboard next time it locks up. Thanks for the help guys. Mastrchf (^t/_c) 16:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Data structures

What is 'Abstract data types'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.103.228 (talk) 17:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

It would be so great if there was... like... a huge encyclopedia online, for free, where you could look this stuff up! 90.235.27.105 (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

...Or if classes had accompanying textbooks with indexes in the back to quickly look up the exact answer the teacher is looking for. -- kainaw™ 17:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The textbook might be a better bet; our article on abstract data types is spectacularly bad. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 17:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

It's better now—I rolled it back to an earlier, more coherent version. -- BenRG (talk) 20:14, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

No but seriously, I want to know too. I've been re-reading Code Complete and there's stuff in there about it but I still wasn't quite sure. ADT != class? ADT subseteq class? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 20:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

"class" is a keyword used in some languages... "abstract data type" is a concept that can apply in any language that has types. For a good example of abstractness, see the fpos_t type in C's <stdio.h>. It represents a position in a file. In most cases it's an integer, a simple count of how many bytes you are from the beginning of the file. But you can't assume it's always an integer. The specification is loose enough to allow it to be a struct containing multiple integers, or a pointer, or even some kind of floating point monstrosity. The only way to get a valid fpos_t is by calling fgetpos(), and the only legal thing you can do with it after you got it is call fsetpos() to return to the file position where you were before. So it's very abstract, but is it a "class"? C doesn't have classes. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:46, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

From the responses so far, and from the article, it appears that abstract data type may mean different things depending on which language you are referring to. The example given by tcsetattr is simply a typedef for a long or a longlong / __int64. Closer to the spirit of what tcsetattr alludes to is the concept of an opaque pointer. However, I don't think it is common to refer to neither typedefs nor opaque objects as 'abstract data types'.

In C++, an abstract data type is a class, which specifies an interface while deliberately leaving the implementation unspecified. All its functions are pure virtual functions, and it has a virtual destructor. You use it by inheriting from it. When doing so, you essentially promise that your class will comply with the "contract" that is specified by the class declaration. The benefits are twofold: (1) you can write generic code, which will work with any object that complies with the interface; (2) you will minimize interdependencies in your code - clients depend only on the abstract data type, not on a particular implementation. This will also increase compilation speed, as the abstract data type header file will typically be a lot smaller, and have fewer, if any, include files itself, than the header file of a typical implementation. Using abstract data types is also a means of breaking cyclic dependencies. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that what you describe matches some definition of an "abstract data type"? It seems to me that what you're describing is an abstract class, a somewhat narrower concept. Confusingly, the latter article redirects to "abstract type" on wikipedia, but there is still a distinction to an "abstract data type". In any case, it seems to me that software engineering concepts are generally defined in multiple conflicting ways in different communities. 84.239.160.166 (talk) 18:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not aware of any official definition of ADT, although the article contains this link, which I find somewhat self-contradictory (it contains data, but is independent of the implementation). Bjarne Stroustrup uses the terms "abstract type" and "abstract class" interchangably in "The C++ programming language (third edition)". I limited my answer to C++, because, in that context, the terms are synonymous AFAIK. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I picked fpos_t specifically because you don't even know whether it's a pointer or not. The "typedefs don't count argument" is just C++ bigotry. "What? C can't have all our cool features without the extra language complexity! It must not be real abstractness." Baloney. What's more abstract than a type that you can't do anything with except call a get and a set function? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:00, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Data structures

PDLC-Program development life cycle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.103.228 (talk) 17:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes? What about it? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 17:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Silly me, I've been looking all over for Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystals lol. The main stages of the program development life cycle are: development -> testing -> market introduction -> growth -> maturity -> saturation -> decline. The Product life cycle management article goes into each stage in more detail. JessicaThunderbolt 20:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

TWO FIREFOX

I can I run two Firefoxs at the same time. When I open one then when I open the next it says it can't cause one is already running. I want to run two at same time. How? Thank you in advanced very much. 79.75.181.132 (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you try File > New Window? Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

If you want to run multiple Firefox profiles, say for example if you share a computer with roommates or something, you can set them up using profilemanager. This page explains how, and this one gives some more complicated methods. If you want to log into the same site under multiple different accounts, an easier option is the cookiepie extension which creates a set of cookies for each different tab or window simultaneously. JessicaThunderbolt 19:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Mozilla Prism may also be of interest to you. Kushal (talk) 22:44, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

New Keyboard

I just got a new emachines keyboard and it has special buttons, the regular keyboard is working great, but the special buttons are unresponsive. I have an Insignia. The Keyboard model # is KB-0108. How do I get them to work?Elatanatari (talk) 20:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

You need to download and install a driver. Looks like this is the one you'll need. JessicaThunderbolt 21:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

IT qualifications

In the United States (specifically Texas), must one possess a license, certification, etc., in order to legally repair computers for a profit? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 23:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

A private detective license, in case they find child porn and need to document it. Yes, Texas is batshit insane. I didn't know they went through with it though. --mboverload@ 23:34, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Seriously? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 23:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Batshit Insane --mboverload@ 23:38, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. That's freaking crazy! Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 23:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I just skimmed through the law and didn't see anything about regular computer work. This story seems to say that it's for technicians performing forensic work and investigating the actions of a "third party." Check the discussion.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 11:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

September 2

Audio Fix

I have a few videos (Windows Media format, .wmv) where the audio is very very quiet. Is there any way to fix that? Black Carrot (talk) 00:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you can put WMV files into iTunes, but within the library you have the option to set the 'volume' for each video/track inside its "options" - you can also ask iTunes to 'equalize' the volume of songs in your library. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I can only find a way to change iTunes' own playback settings, it leaves the original file quiet. Can anyone recommend a free video editor that I could do this in? Black Carrot (talk) 13:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I think VirtualDub can do that sort of thing. There are some links to how-to guides here.--Heron (talk) 19:38, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

McBSP I2S interface

how can a I2S non compatible device be made to communicate with I2S standard compatible devices with the help of DSP processor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.61.1 (talk) 07:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

uTorrent

hi, ok this is my problem: i used (previously to yesterday) uTorrent and the saving folder was on an external hard-drive...but i have had to re-get utorrent because i deleted it (the program was on my comp.) so thats what i have done. The problem is that because i have a load of files that are 1/2 downloaded on my ext HD i would like finish them, of course, but as it is a 'new' utorrent i doesnt 'interact' with them. Is There any Way i can put this right so the 'new' utorrent can 'do' the files from the 'old' utorrent. For various reasons i cant do system restore and i have Windows XP btw. thanks, --81.77.136.150 (talk) 10:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think if you load the same torrent back and point the save directory to the same one as you used before it would hash the existing files and continue from there. At least that's how you do it in other torrent software that I've used. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

is there any way of telling which one is the original torrent, when i try to find them, from the files that have already been downloaded (in part)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.77.136.150 (talk) 11:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The download directory will only contain your partially completed downloads. You will need to download the .torrent files for each from the website you got them from originally. Open the .torrent file and then set the download directory in utorrent to the directory that your partially downloaded file is in. utorrent will rescan the files and then begin downloading or seeding. Also see this guide which has more info. JessicaThunderbolt 16:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

goat skull in motherboard

i read on helpline about goat skull being found inside of a computer when opened to put new chips in, all embedded in the motheboard. also have heard it might have a link to satanic images put there in the computer shop and displaying on the screen. does this happen?? does it happen often? Bradley10 (talk) 10:59, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I sprinkled holy water on my PC motherboard just in case. Magic blue smoke came out, so I think you may be right. ;) Franamax (talk) 11:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The only vaguely relevant Google result I can find is this (someone making a custom PC case with an image of a goat skull on the side). I'm pretty sure goat skulls on motherboards and repair shops putting satanic images on computers doesn't happen that often. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 14:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

A possessed computer? In that case, don't put your hand near any fans. :) Rilak (talk) 17:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what? Are you actually seriously asking whether this happens often -- that is to say, whether Satanic computer shops put in satanic images and embed goat skulls in the computer's motherboard? I hesitate to say this, Bradley10, but in the interests of honesty: a lot of your questions make going by WP:AGF pretty difficult... but AGF I will. So, uh, no. No, it doesn't happen often. Considering that a motherboard is exceedingly unlikely to work with a goat skull embedded in it, what with goat skulls being, well, goat skulls instead of computer parts, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that barring some really weird and unique prank, it doesn't happen at all. Ever. One simple reason for this, apart from the technical challenges involved, is that if someone buys a computer from you, and you put a goat skull and Satanic images in it, chances are that that you're going to have a really crappy day in a courtroom sometime in the near future. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Reinstalling Windows or switching to Linux will resolve most goat skull-related problems. -- BenRG (talk) 00:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Captain Disdain. If it happened, it was a prank. It would be perfectly possible to shove a goat skull inside the case of a desktop PC (depending on the available space, of course) and give the owner a nasty shock when he next opened it up. I doubt you could embed it into a motherboard though - there would be no room for the 'workings'. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Now captain that is an interesting question --- Is it illegal to put a goat skull in a machine and satanic image on the computer? also I have only heard of this happening once and I did not see the comptuer in question; just that "it was showing BAD THINGS... bad bad things" and that when opened there was a skull of a goat in there. to think about it it may not have been embedded in the motherboard, just in the computer?

i have seen a computer with an alarm clock inside it but this is much milder Bradley10 (talk) 13:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Torrents

what is generally considered the fastest 'torrent downloading program'? thaks--81.77.136.150 (talk) 11:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The program you use will not affect your download speed (at least not in any measurable way). Your download speed depends primarily on the number of seeds (see the BitTorrent article for details on how BitTorrent works) a given torrent has, as well as their upload speeds. The best thing you can do is to set your upload speed as high as you can without saturating your bandwidth (70%-80% of your maximum upload speed). — QuantumEleven 14:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

utorrent is considered one of the fastest in terms of CPU speed as it uses minimal computer resources (14 MB of RAM). In terms of download speed, as QuantumEleven said above the program doesn't make any difference. Things that effect speed are your internet download speed, number of seeds, peers and leechers, and the upload speed of the seeds and peers. So in other words you could have the fastest broadband in the world but if the seed is only uploading at 300 kb/s then that is the fastest it will go, and similarly if the seed is uploading at 300 kb/s but you are on dial-up then it will only go as fast as your download speed. JessicaThunderbolt 16:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no statistics to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if different BitTorrent clients do have noticeably different downloading performance. Clients have a significant amount of leeway in which peers they connect to and which pieces they request, and some might have better heuristics than others. -- BenRG (talk) 11:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It's the public tracker vs. private tracker comparison that matters way more. I'd be very surprised if I ever use up the whole bandwith on one mininova torrent. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

What are some good private trackers and how do I get to register when I know nobody who could let me in (i.e. invite me)? user:Everyme 06:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm Confused

Is it possible to install an IDE hard drive on my motherboard?

My motherboard has one IDE header which is currently used for my CD/DVD Drive and 4 SATA Headers, one of which is being used for my current Hard Drive. The last time I had two IDE devices on this header, my Windows boot.ini file registered the second device as a Hard Drive (it was a ZIP drive) and somehow found a windows installation on it, which corrupted my boot.ini.

You can see my fear in installing an IDE hard drive on this header. Should i do it or spend some money on a SATA hard drive to circumvent this problem? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can install an IDE hard drive in your PC. After you install it, you may want to go into your BIOS (read your motherboard's manual for how to do this, usually your press F1 or DELETE at startup) and make sure that, in the boot order, the hard drive with your OS installed comes before the hard drive you just installed. Otherwise, your PC will try to boot off the new hard disk, which will cause problems. — QuantumEleven 14:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there any specific arrangement i should use? Should i put the HDD first on the cable or second? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The hard drive is usually set to cable select, but by changing the jumpers, you can make it slave or master no matter which plug on the cable it is. It doesn't matter at all whether if your drive is the master or the slave, they're equal. Coolotter88 (talk) 16:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 11:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you plan on having both an SATA and IDE drive in your case, the SATA drive will have to be the master. If you plan on using the IDE for storage, then you'll be fine, but if you plan on dual-booting them, you'll be in for some headaches. When installing an OS on an IDE drive, the installer usually refuses to modify the MBR on the SATA drive, meaning you have to go into BIOS and change the boot order each time you boot into a different OS. I managed to get it to work normally by creating a custom GRUB configuration on my IDE drive. It was a huge pain.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 12:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Darn. Maybe that's why i had so many problems with the ZIP drive. I guess i will buy a small SATA drive then. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 16:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not just buy a IDE-to-SATA adaptor? Then you could plug your IDE drive into a SATA slot via the adaptor. There's many places you can get one if you search. Zunaid©® 20:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I did not know those existed. I will look into it. Thanks! 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Blender (software) as CAD tool

does someone have good experiences using Blender as CAD tool under Linux? I am searching a 3d CAD for Ubuntu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a category for Category:Linux computer-aided design software. Many of the names clearly state "3D" in them. Blender is rather popular and has many online tutorials. -- kainaw™ 18:15, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I know that Blender is popular, but not as CAD software. That´s why I am asking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, blender doesn't really make a good CAD tool. It's ability to make things to accurately specified dimensions or to place things at accurate positions/rotations are all kinda crappy compared to "real" CAD programs. You can't calculate volumes or check "goodness of fit" of parts, or find center of gravity...there are just a ton of CAD-specific stuff it doesn't do. I don't know whether you know - there is a specific version of Google for Linux-only searches here: http://www.google.com/linux - if you enter "CAD" into that search box, you'll find all of the popular Linux CAD software. [7] seems to be a pretty good list of "possible"'s.

SteveBaker (talk) 06:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Want the URL link for C-programming which contains the sample programmes

Respected Sir / Madam, I am ramnath from Bangalore, Very much interested to learn C-programming. I have some difficulty for applying Logic for C-programming. I have already one URL link of C-programming which contains the Theory about C-Programming. I want one more link of C-programming that should contain sets of Sample programms.

So, Kindly provide me the Same

Thanks, Ramnath —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ramnath1979 (talk • contribs) 19:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Google Search. There are also Wikibooks on C programming. -Abhishek (talk) 06:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

php file uploads

i'm writing a function to handle processing file uploads and ran into some what of a problem. I'm trying to move the file from the tmp directory to a image folder but every combination of file path yeilds either "file or directory does not exist" or permission denied. I've tried setting the folder with both 777 and 757 permissions and neither allow it to work.

hers the setup up of my server (shared hosting), some path/public_html/stuff visible on web, so i created a folder called images inside public_html (so its path is public_html/images)

i define a varaible $file_path ="/images/"; (i've tried having the / at start, end both etc, nothing seems to work)

this is what i then use to move the file:
if(!move_uploaded_file($image_tmp,$file_path)){
$field="file";
$form->setError($field, "* File error 0, Contact Admin");
return 0; }

where $image_tmp=$_FILES['file']['tmp_name'];

so my question is wher am i going wrong with moving this file?--90.216.21.128 (talk) 20:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

/images/ is a directory off the root of your file system. Is that actually the location, or is it relative to your home directory, or the working path for your program? You probably need to specify something like '$HOME/images' or '../images' or '~/images' --LarryMac | Talk 20:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

tried the three things you said none of them worked, i'm not sure what you mean but images is a directory inside public_html where anything i put is avaible on the web, the script itself resides in the same folder that contains images--90.216.21.128 (talk) 20:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I had a PHP uploader a very long time ago. The code's still lying around here, this is what I have:

<?php
$uploaddir = '/var/www/mysite/uploads/';

$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#[ ]#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']);
$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#[^()\.\-,\w]#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']); 
$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#(_)+#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']);

$uploadfile = $uploaddir . basename($_FILES['userfile']['name']);

if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)) {
   $message="Upload successful, yay!";
} else {
   $message="Upload failed, boo hiss!";
}
?>

I assume the preg_replace stuff was getting rid of nasty characters in the filename. Anyway, note I gave it the upload directory relative to the root of my system's filesystem. This was Linux + Apache + Apache's PHP module. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 21:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

thanks just needed to include the full path and the bit with basename--90.216.21.128 (talk) 21:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Ndiswrapper on Kubuntu

Ok, I am dual booting Win XP and Kubuntu 8.04.1 KDE 4. I downloaded the ndiswrapper (on XP because I have my drivers installed on it) and put it on a flash drive. I booted Kubuntu and extracted ndiswrapper. Then I went and read the file it gives about how to install it. I followed the directions word for word (except it didn't say make uninstall and make as root but I had to because I didn't have sufficient permission otherwise). However, on the make and make install parts I kept getting errors, but I kept going. When it got to the part to install the driver ("ndiswrapper -i driver.inf"), I was notified that ndiswrapper wasn't installed and I needed to apt-get it. Well, that won't work because the whole reason I need it is to connect to the internet (apt-get and surf and stuff). I can't figure out what the problem is. (BTW I also tried sudo apt-get while booted on the liveCD and logged-in on Kubuntu with the disk in the drive.) Any ideas? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 21:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Basically, it had errors when you tried to compile it. So, it didn't compile and didn't install. Without knowing WHAT errors it had, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to help. -- kainaw™ 00:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. Here:

I'm removing the 50K of error messages, a bit much for the reference desk. All we need to know is

loadndisdriver.c:15:20: error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory

You don't have any header files. Before trying to do any compilations on a Debian-derived distribution, you should apt-get install build-essential --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you read those errors? You don't even have stdlib.h installed. You don't have a system set up for compiling software. Did you install the development (devel) packages for the kernel before trying this? I know, it is a catch-22. You need to be online to install with apt-get, but you need to compile to get online. You need a complete install disk with ALL the main packages on it. That will allow you to install the devel packages and then you can try to compile the driver. -- kainaw™ 01:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I thought those could be contributing to the problem. So I boot linux from my hard drive and put in the install CD or how do I install those dev packages? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 01:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the "real damn easy to install" Linux systems is that it is damn hard to do a custom install. You don't want to install from a live image or just select the quick install option. You want a custom install. You'll be shown the packages you can install. As tcsetattr mentioned, you need to select the build-essential package when you install. -- kainaw™ 12:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

In Debian, we'd simply boot normally, apt-cdrom add the disk with the packages on it, and apt-get install build-essential. Has Ubuntu made it harder? To find out, I downloaded an image called "kubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso" (md5sum e0b9861df26c54acfd62bf35abe859f6) and it has the necessary deb files. apt-cdrom add should work on it. If not, dpkg -i by hand --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

September 3

Backing up .wav Files on DVD-R

Hello. I have Nero 6. How can I back up .wav files onto a DVD-R? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 00:43, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Can't you just, 1. put a DVD-R in the drive, 2. open it in Windows, 3. drag your files onto it, 4. click burn or whatever? I'm assuming you want to back them up as files rather than try to burn them in a way that is readable by a DVD or CD player. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am backing up music files on a DVD-R so that a CD or DVD player can read them. --Mayfare (talk) 01:53, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no DVD equivalent to an audio CD. See this thread. If you just burn the WAV files to a DVD as 98.217.8.46 suggested, it will probably work in many modern players. MP3 or DVD-Audio would probably work in more. -- BenRG (talk) 03:04, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Hate to point this out but the above person is way way wrong. There are no CD players that will read DVDs (that I know of) as they need a different laser assembly. If your CD player specifically states it will read from a DVD then that is fine but I have never seen one. However if you use a DVD player as a CD player there is a good chance it will read wav files straight from the disc, and that would just requre you to drag them onto the DVD in nero and burn it. Also there is a small but good chance your CD player will play MP3s though, but only through a CD. If you encode at 320kbps you shouldn't notice a difference between the CD and MP3 unless you have really good speakers, but you'll be able to fit quite a lot more songs on it. Also the above person mentions DVD Audio but encoding a CD to this is pointless since it uses up almost as much space and you don't gain quality (you never do when converting audio to a higher bitrate) and may actually lose it due to the transcoding from CD audio to DVD audio 88.211.96.3 (talk) 10:03, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

You're right, I shouldn't have said "many players" since it's probably still true that few of them have a DVD pickup. DVD-Audio supports lossless audio at a variety of sampling rates including 44.1 kHz, so it's unlikely that there'd be any transcoding loss. It wouldn't save much space (it would save a little if you used MLP), but that's not the point—the point is that, unlike WAV-on-a-DVD, it's an official standard, if not an especially popular one. -- BenRG (talk) 11:00, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Back to the original question: how about converting your wav files to mp3's? There is a very good chance your DVD or CD player would be able to play them. Sandman30s (talk) 14:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Mobile applications and plug-ins

Where does a modern mobile phone store its applications and plug-ins - on its flash memory card (or whatever a mobile uses) or on the SIM card? I would have thought the flash card, but a colleague is wondering if they might be stored on the SIM card. We both initially thought that the limit of a SIM card's storage is a few kilobytes of contact details, but a PowerPoint we've received on some new Bluetooth technology is causing some confusion. Thanks in advance. --81.171.134.226 (talk) 09:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The SIM has a very small data capacity, and it wouldn't be useful to store apps on it since any mobile phone capable of running said apps would have some sort of inbuilt flash memory at the very least. Even if you could fit an app on the SIM I doubt the phone manufacturer would have a way of executing data from it because it isn't needed. It should be noted that the SIM isn't even primarily for storing numbers but is the phones way of authenticating your credentials against the network for billing purposes and allowing you to use the network. 88.211.96.3 (talk) 10:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Woah hold on actually have a look at Java Card. It seems I'm wrong and you can actually run small programs off the sim but it looks to be mostly security stuff 88.211.96.3 (talk) 10:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

E-mail

Does deleting a message from your sentbox delete it from the inbox of the person you sent the message to (if they have not replied)? 124.181.254.143 (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

No. The recipient's copy is stored on the recipient's mail server (typically managed by their ISP or by Google/Microsoft/whatever). Unless you control that server or can log in to the recipient's account, there's nothing you can do to delete the message. -- BenRG (talk) 11:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Not that this will help you if you have already sent the email but if I ever need to send anything that I might need to change I send the message as a link to a .txt file (or if it needs to be visual then a .jpg) hosted on my webspace and for one I can delete the file if I need to and I can also see if the message has been viewed yet via my logs. Gunrun (talk) 12:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

If the mail is sent internally in your organization/company/whatever, your system may have functionality that allows you to "recall" a message. Microsoft Exchange, for example, has an option that partially allows you to recall messages (though the recipient may circumvent it if s/he really wants to). I remember eight years ago or so I worked at a place that ran a system called FirstClass and then you could completely recall any message sent to other people in the system even if they had read it (provided it was not moved from their inbox). Jørgen (talk) 19:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I've never thought of that Gunrun! Very clever indeed... ;) SF007 (talk) 07:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

mobile phones

explain about bluetooth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.196.130 (talk) 11:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Bluetooth - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:22, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Technology...grr...

I messed up an SD card by taking it out of my camera while it was accessing the card. Now it won't format on the camera or my computer. WTF? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 16:04, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe PhotoRec can help. And maybe the camera is saying "humans ... grrr...". --LarryMac | Talk 16:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I have formatted "lost" SD cards on my Linux box. If you know someone with Linux, ask them if they can do a mkfs.vfat for you. -- kainaw™ 16:24, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I had a similar problem. I fixed it by booting the pc in DOS, running fdisk and deleting the existing partition then making a new one, reboot the pc, run "format E:" (replace E with your cards drive letter) and then it worked. If you don't have DOS already you can download it here and run it from the livecd. JessicaThunderbolt 17:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I did a circut test and found that the card had fried. It's useless. Sorry...31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Mounted filesystem going read-only

I have an external SCSI device that periodically goes read-only on my Redhat system. Is there some way (I don't really care how) to tell it that it can never ever under any circumstances go read-only? I don't care if writing to the disk is going to cause a black hole and destroy the earth. The disk must always be read-write. -- kainaw™ 17:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

If the filesystem is going read-only without your intervention, something is wrong. The Linux kernel doesn't change a filesystem write-enabled status without user intervention and without reporting to dmesg. So, there must be something in your dmesg saying what happened. You probably have a filesystem corruption that was detected by the FS layer of the kernel, and it remounted it read-only to prevent further data corruption.

If you don't care for the data, just redirect your writes to /dev/null. --Juliano (T) 19:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

For a change of pace, I'll answer the question instead of attacking the motive. The behavior of ext2/ext3 filesystems when a disk error occurs can be altered with a mount option. Look for errors=remount-ro in your /etc/fstab and change it to errors=continue, or add -o errors=continue to your mount command line. If the option is not given in fstab or on the mount command line, it will be read from the disk superblock, which you can modify with tune2fs -e continue. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I have errors=continue in fstab. I just removed the journal and restored it. Of course, I did another lengthy e2fsck fixing all problems (bad inodes) and scanning for bad sectors (none found). If it goes read-only again, I'll alter the superblock to reinforce that I want it to stay read-write. Thanks. -- kainaw™ 23:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I've seen this problem in the past when using an external USB drive as my boot drive in SuSE 9.x or maybe 10,x (I think is was a Seagate drive) - the drive would autonomously decide to power-off after not being used for a while - and for some reason Linux would get really upset about that and mark it read-only...which of course screwed everything up from that point on (because stuff like /tmp and my swap space would be RO) and eventually resulted in the system locking up on me. I never did find a fix for it - it was flagged as a "known problem" by SuSE and plenty of people in my local Linux usergroup had seen something like it. But I'd be surprised if an external SCSI drive would power down like that without the OS telling it to. However, just for grins you might try getting rid of the power-save options and see what happens. SteveBaker (talk) 10:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Default "home page" when opening a browser?

Are there statistics that show what web pages or categories of web pages people tend to use as their "default home page" that first opens when opening their web browser? Mine, for example, is set to Google for quick searching, but I can imagine others setting it to their company's Intranet, a weather page, news page, etc.? --142.108.107.93 (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't find any statistics on the web, but I'd imagine that search engines and browser default homepages would be the most common. Without conducting an extensive survey it's impossible to know for sure. JessicaThunderbolt 19:49, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Mine is set to about:blank — Shinhan < talk > 09:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I once used a friends computer and started his browser, and there was a page with many scantily clad young women. I'm like "Dude, every time you start your browser? Seriously, man, that ain't healthy!" 83.250.202.36 (talk) 17:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

My "default home page" is the 50-70 tabs I had open the last time I closed the browser. --Carnildo (talk) 22:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

webcomic

I'm trying to remember a webcomic I like.

I can remember the plots of some of the individual strips, and it is done in the style of this one, which I found called Sinister Bedfellows. In the one I am thinking of, there are usually three photographs, and something like newspaper cut out words put over them. It's a poetic webcomic.

• One I remember had the words "my house burnt down yesterday, it feels better everytime"
• One involved sending his heart to someone for Christmas, but he couldn't because it was broken.

Thanks, maybe you can help :) I'm looking through all of the comics listed at List of webcomics, and have been trying to search through Google. I really need to find the site! Mac Davis (talk) 19:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I found it! Sorry about that. The comic was called "a softer world." Mac Davis (talk) 19:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

September 4

As Root

Hey y'all. You may recognize me as the n00b who often asks stuff here. ;) Anyways I have a question for being root in Ubuntu. The Examples that come with Ubuntu are owned by root as such I being a normal user(Though I can log in as root), I only have "read-only" access. How do I log in as root(I usually login from the terminal but I don't how to do anything in the terminal other then installing stuff, and getting updates) or do something else to "unlock" files that are owned by root? If I need to clarify my question, please say so.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 00:06, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

From the command prompt... If you know root's password, just type "su". I personally type "su -" to load root's profile. If you are in the sudoers file (/etc/sudoers in Ubuntu, I believe), then you can run any command as root by appending "sudo" in front of it, as

in "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf" (don't run that). You'll be asked for YOUR password, not root's. -- kainaw™ 00:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Mmmh now how to open the documents in Examples? Or how to enable read+write by a normal user?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 00:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Once you are root, you can use chown to make you the owner or chmod to allow everyone read/write ability to the Examples directory. -- kainaw™ 00:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

ER can you give me the "specific" command?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 00:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind I did it. I "unlocked" the file. Then relocked it. It's: chown (name of user) (name of file/folder/directory). This changes the owner and thus who can edit the permissions. :D Thanks guys.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 01:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

When I was a noob, I was told, "Learn to use man and check out all the files in /usr/bin." I figured out that you can do something like "man chown" to learn what the chown command can do. I then looked in /usr/bin and used man on them. I found a lot of cool things. I still think the advice was a tad rude, but I'm glad that I followed the advice. -- kainaw™ 01:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You can give "read" access to all users with sudo chmod a+r /path/to/file. And as Kainaw said, use the man pages. -Abhishek (talk) 02:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

D:/ doesn't read discs

Hey guys, I've been having trouble with my laptop (Toshiba, running XP) regarding the CD/DVD drive for a few months now. Ever since I tried to run what I think was a bootleg DVD in it and the software I was using to run it crashed, the drive has been unable to read discs. Well, I think it reads them, but it does a whole load of weird whirring sounds for a few minutes and then does absolutely nothing, and then I can't access the disc via the computer. I have been able to install IL-2 Sturmovik by putting in the disc JUST as the computer boots up, but after this the same thing happens if I put in a disc. I have considered purchasing an external CD/DVD drive so I can play Spore when it comes out, but what exactly is the problem here? I think it's the software, and as far as I know there's no way to remove the drive from the computer. I can't rollback because I never updated the driver. Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 01:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

A Linux LiveCD/LiveUSB would be useful in here, to test out if it's hardware or software problem. If you don't want to download a Linux iso you can maybe try safe-mode, since it appears that you could access the drive for a brief moment before it goes dead. Laptop optical drives are usually replaceable, sometimes even with different parts, without too much problem. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

What brand of laptop is it? Most companies will sell you an internal drive thats easily replacable, but this will cost more than an external drive. However it will look nicer. In the meantime if you wanted to get Spore you could always get it off EA Downloader or Direct2Drive, both of which are legal, easy to use, and don't need a CD drive. Both are fairly good although I consider direct2drive better because it lets you download your games forever whereas EA Downloader has a limit of 6 months unless you pay $5 extra. Also if you order before the game comes out you get the Spore creature creator for free I think (not totally sure) TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:29, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh a thought. Have you tried removing the DVD drive and booting the PC without it, then closing the PC down and putting the drive back in again. I had an issue similar to this with a floppy drive and this fixed it. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I'm not sure if I can remove the drive. There doesn't seem to be a way to. It appears to be quite a crappy old thing, I think it's about 2-3 years old now. Will have to check the model on it though. Anyway, my granny purchased me both Spore and an external drive today, so we'll see how that goes. Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 06:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It could be that the "bootleg DVD" used AutoRun to install some kind of malware which interfered with later use of the drive. Sony got in huge trouble for doing something like this a few years ago. SecuROM, which ships with many games, seems to be notorious for causing drive problems. -- BenRG (talk) 15:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Bawww, it appears she bought me an external hard drive, which I already have. I'll look into Direct2Drive, but I already have the game, I just need to install it without a CD drive. Would I be able to install it on the external hard drive via the family computer and transfer it to my laptop? Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 08:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Google Chrome

Is Google Chrome any good? I have no intention to replace my beloved Firefox 3, but I'd be interested in seeing how it is before giving it a roll myself. bibliomaniac15 03:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Fast -Abhishek (talk) 06:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks pretty okey. I have been using opera for a long time and I love it. One thing to notice is for every tab on Chrome there is a separate application/instance of
Chrome. I am looking for some developments in future. Ultimately one day you have to shift to Chrome so get used to it. 61.12.10.34 (talk) 07:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not try it yourself. It doesn't replace Firefox and if you don't like it you can make it go away. I myself like it, especially the way tabs work, and the way it intergrates with Vista's Aero interface. It's also bloody fast and the download manager and incognito mode are great, but I miss adblock. Since the browser is opensource and supports plugins though I suspect there shall be an adblock extension soon enough. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Shockingly, software doesn't have to be open source to make it's pluging work... so because it's open source has no bearing on the development of an adblock extension. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 10:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but open source means that even if google specifically trys to stop an adblock extention (and they may do seeing as adverts are their main stream of revenue) someone can just fork the code and remove that part. TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

So true, and if a TV company decides to remove the parts of the TV that let is show channels, you could take the parts and create a new TV. Of course it's not very helpful to the conversation to bring that up, because there is no chance of Google doing that, and you clearly realise your reasons for being supportive of open source are somewhat unstable or you wouldn't feel you had to try and force it into posts like this where it really has no bearing, and your example was just silly. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

How about this: if a browser supports extensions, you can implement an ad blocker as an extension. If it's open source, you can implement it in a code fork. Being open source and supporting extensions means you have two avenues for introducing an ad blocker, so it's reasonable enough to mention both. (Especially since, per the below, Chrome doesn't actually support extensions.) -- BenRG (talk) 15:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Nope, you're (i know you're a different person, i'm generalising cause i'm lazy) still pushing your views on open source like they're more important than they are. If someone uses Google Chrome code to write an ad-free browser, it is no longer Google Chrome. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 22:45, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily, Sometimes in open source there are patches or alternative, non-official binaries that add additional features or make changes that the official maintainers won't do. This is a lot of effort, because every time the official project is updated, the patches or alternative binaries must also be updated, but it does occasionally happen.

Usualy these patches are absorbed into the main trunk, but if they aren't for whatever reason, they can be maintained indefinitely in parallel to the software project itself. This is a lot of effort, but it's less effort than creating a total fork.

Whether the patched version would still be chrome is a philosophical question that's really just nitpicking. APL (talk) 01:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Does chrome really support firefox-style extensions, or is that just a myth? I can't find any evidence of that. As far as I can tell Gears isn't useful for making the kind of plug-in we're talking about, here. APL (talk) 15:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Not currently, apparently.  :-( --LarryMac | Talk 15:34, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I downloaded Chrome when it came out, and I've been using it as my browser for the last couple of days (I've been using Firefox since like pre-1.0, I figure that it would be nice trying something new), and it's pretty nice. It's certainly lightning fast, it looks nice, and it's got enough features to be useful. Although stuff is missing (like any way to handle feeds and the omnibar ain't no awesomebar, among many other things), it works decently enough. I like it! 83.250.202.36 (talk) 17:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that Google's idea of a "way to handle feeds" would be Google Reader. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for built-in functionality. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That's not what I meant. When you go to a page with an associated feed (like a blog, or a wikipedia history page), a little feed icon appears in firefox and internet explorer 7, so you can easily subscribe to it. Google Chrome doesn't have that, so you have to either dig up the link on the site or look at the source (where it is in a <link> tag). And when you go to a page which is a feed, both IE and firefox gives you simple ways to subscribe to it (using the browser or Google Reader, for instance). Chrome doesn't do that either. Compare for instance this feed from the New York Times in Firefox and Chrome. Chrome doesn't even render it nicely. It's rather incredible that a Google Browser offers no way to easily add feeds to Google Reader. It's such an easy feature to implement, and so basic, that it's quite stunning. 83.250.202.36 (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I get it now. I thought you meant something like Firefox's Live Bookmarks. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

No Linux version....fail. SteveBaker (talk) 03:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Have you guys read this recently? Kushal (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

advanced Perl help!

On a Perl forum, someone wrote me a perl script to parse a CSV (comma separated value) file. I've saved the code here: User:Nichalp/code. Now I noticed a major bug in that the last line of a CSV file does not get parsed. I tried to contact the author, but he seems to be offline for the past week, and the code is well over my head for me to understand. Please could someone who can understand the code help me? I think it has to do with the eof check. I have put up a sample CSV file content on the page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yuck. First of all, you should be using the well-tested Text::CSV module, not some anonymous hack parser. Secondly, yes it is almost always wrong to use eof() in perl (the read operators have eof/error return values which you should be checking for instead). And why are there 2 different read loops? Too much of a mess to fix. Kill it, get Text::CSV from CPAN, and start over. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 05:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Webpage update monitoring

Is there a program or website that offers the service of monitoring a specific list of other web pages for changes? And then emailing me or something when there is a change? It doesn't have to check all the time, just once an hour or once a day or whenever I tell it to. Kind of like the Wikipedia Watchlist, but for the web. This would save me the trouble of going through the pages regularly to check for changes, which happen infrequently so it is a waste of time. I know that I can monitor updates to RSS feeds; but this is about regular web pages, not RSS feeds. Thanks, --71.141.123.164 (talk) 06:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

If you use Linux, it would be trivial to script a sequence of moving a local copy of a page to a backup, wget the current version of the page, run diff on the two versions, send email (or save a local log message) if diff doesn't return null - you can even add the diffs to the email. Add it to Cron. Get creating and have the script read URLs from a file so you don't have to write a script for each page you want to watch. -- kainaw™ 12:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Failing that, the page may have an RSS feed for this. Check the website in question for links. — QuantumEleven 12:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Not wanting to be picky but, um, they explicitly don't want an RSS feed. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 12:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, crumbs - that should teach me to read questions more carefully! Sorry, OP. — QuantumEleven 10:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Not that messing around with wget, diff and cron isn't cool and everything, but if you're not into that stuff, there's webservices like Versionista (which I believe was inspired by wikipedia's history and diff functions). I haven't used it personally, but I hear it works great. For instance, if you look at this comparison you see that the McCain campaign removed Tom Ridge from some speaking-thing. Nice, huh! 83.250.202.36 (talk) 17:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Delete Sarah Palin as non-notable!

Google hasn't heard of her: [8], clearly doesn't exist. :-) So basically, I got this search result about a half an hour ago. I haven't seen that happen before and once I repeated the search, it was back to normal. Do you know what (probably simple) explanation there is? Servers overloaded etc? Fribbler (talk) 16:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That picture is altered. When Google doesn't find ANY results (as the message says), you do not get 10 pages of results below the message. Next time do a better cut and crop. -- kainaw™ 16:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Hadn't noticed that. Should have clicked on those before I closed the window. But nay, I have not 'shopped the picture. I swear on my wiki-reputation that that picture is an unaltered screenshot. Curiouser and curiouser..... Fribbler (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I did notice your sig after replying and wondered if some anon was manually typing it in... but, you could still be an anon manually typing in Fribbler's sig! -- kainaw™ 16:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

But I could not alter the page history showing it to be me.... :-) My guess is that, at the time of the search, I was clicking lots of things quickly and I must have somehow cut the search off half-done. But I can't reproduce the result. Fribbler (talk) 16:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a possibility. In Firefox, a pretty solid indication of that would be the message "Stopped" rather than the usual "Done" on the bar at the bottom of the window. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Anyways, not having a Google hit does not mean it is non notable. Kushal (talk) 22:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The long list of other pages certainly suggests a poorly faked image...and it's REALLY hard to type anything into Google that sounds remotely like English without getting either some valid hits or a "Did you mean..." suggestion. Just try it! Any combination of believable English names produce hits - and any "almost" real names produce a "Did you mean...". Also, the Wikipedia article on Palin has existed since October 2005 - LONG before you did that search - and at the barest minimum, that would have constituted one ghit. But Sarah Palin is a common enough name - and even if "sarah palin" didn't match for reasons of non-notability, you'd still have gotten some pages that had "Sarah Miles" and "Micheal Palin" that would have matched (there are 2,430 Ghits for "Sarah Miles" and "Michael Palin"). So we KNOW for 100% sure that your search result (as illustrated) is broken.

So can it be a FireFox bug? No! At least not a remotely credible one because the page says "Your search - sarah palin - did not match any documents." - no possible combination of failing to render text could result in that appearing on the screen - look at the search results HTML code - it's a very simple piece of continuous HTML. How would the surrounding text (which Firefox would have to have "dreamed up" somewhere) get wrapped around your search term with all of the boldface tags perfectly in place? For a random rendering bug - that's an awfully tough coincidence. Finally - (albeit perhaps circumstantially) in the Palingoogle image, there are 48 pixels between the bottom of the pale blue bar that says "Web" and the bottom of the "sarah palin" text. When I do it (Firefox 3.01, Google.ie - seemingly the same fonts, etc - but with a genuinely failed search) that is only 36 pixels - and no amount of window resizing makes it come out any different with that font choice.

Hence, I also accuse our OP of faking the image. SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

So probably not a Firefox bug. Likely a momentary Google bug. I'm not sure about the pixels. Something to do with my widescreen laptop resolution perhaps. I would like to reiterate that I have not faked the image. Had I have then I would basically be trolling. Not something I would do. Fribbler (talk) 15:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I would like to add that if an article doesn't meet notibility guidelines the non-notable template should be placed on the page to alert other editors, with reasons on the talk page of that article. And if you have questions about this then the Wikipedia:Help Desk is the place for them not the computing reference desk. - Phydaux (talk) 11:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I am aware of that. The title was of course a joke. It's the technical bug that I'm interested in. Fribbler (talk) 15:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Most of the top results (except for wikipedia) in google are cloaking sites and google knows about them and just lets them keep on cloaking and getting the top result everytime. William Ortiz (talk) 21:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Java

In Java, are classes objects? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.223.156.1 (talk) 16:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

In Java, a class is the description (the code, the file, the actual stuff the programmer typed into his editor) and an object is the instantiation of the class (the stuff the variable points to). -- kainaw™ 16:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

So what's this [9] all about then? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.223.156.1 (talk) 16:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It's about a class named Class, from which the JVM creates Class objects. --LarryMac | Talk 17:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Is that a yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 18:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No. --LarryMac | Talk 18:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

In general, try and stay away from "meta"-elements like java.lang.Class (with the exception for java.lang.Object, which you can't stay away from). Concentrate on learning the language, and worry about the under-the-hood stuff later. 83.250.202.36 (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It boils down to how you define "object", which can mean different things to different people. My own feeling is that classes are not first class objects in Java, since to manipulate them like other objects you really have to reach around the language's back. For example, to create a new kind of class (not a new Class object), you have to call out to a Java compiler and then load the resulting byte code. Compare that to the kinds of class manipulations you can do in Smalltalk or Perl, where you can dynamically assign new methods to a class. --Sean 19:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

2 YouTube questions

Question 1

1. Can you rename your YouTube account?

Question2

2. Can you transfer videos from one account to another?

No, you can't do either, unfortunately. --jh51681 (talk) 18:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

All you can do is download the YouTube video and upload it to the new account, or upload the original, if you still have it.--ChokinBako (talk) 11:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

How to develop a WIKI portal

I am trying to post a new article on wikipedia but I am not sure how to do it. Can someone please help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vishnuteja84 (talk • contribs) 19:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Your first article. Xenon54 19:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia: Help Desk. For any other questions you have about using wikipedia. -Phydaux (talk) 11:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

firewall log

I looked at my firewall log out of curiosity and saw a lot of text like:

Sep 4 15:00:28 82 Firewall[38]: Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 70.215.252.82:49197 from 209.85.147.104:80

What does this mean and should I be concerned? Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.215.252.82 (talk) 20:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't be. Whatever it was, your firewall blocked it. Old-school internet worms works by scanning the internet for computers with a specific vulnerability that they can use to infiltrate yet another computer (and thus spread the worm further). They fill the tubes with random noise like this. Firewalls block these attempts so that they can't accomplish this.

I would say one thing though: a much better protection against this can't of thing compared to a software firewall is a NAT router, which will drop these packets before they can even reach your computer. I strongly suggest you get one, since they are dynamite for protection against incoming hacking attempts 83.250.202.36 (talk) 21:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The local port (49197) looks like a dynamically assigned port number for an outgoing connection, the remote port (80) is the standard HTTP port, and an RDNS lookup on the remote address reveals that it belongs to Google. So I think what probably happened is that you made a web connection to Google and your machine decided the connection was closed before Google's did. When Google subsequently sent another IP packet, your machine interpreted it as an unrelated "connection attempt" to that now-unused port. Nothing to worry about, in other words. I don't know what "stealth mode" means, but it might mean that the firewall simply ate the packet rather than sending a RST packet back. The RST is supposed to tell the sending machine to close the connection in case the last close request got lost, but it has the side effect of letting the sending machine know of your existence, which some people think is a security risk (since the sender might be scanning for in-use IP addresses). -- BenRG (talk) 21:29, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

"Stealth mode" probably means any packet other than a SYN packet sent to a closed port. The traditional way to see if a port is open is to start opening a connection to it (send a SYN packet), but every firewall and intrusion detection system ever written will spot that. There are other ways of seeing if a port is open (send an ACK packet, send a FIN packet, send a null packet, send a Christmas-tree packet, etc.) that are less likely to be detected. --Carnildo (talk) 23:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3 Closing Randomly

OK, I never used to have this problem, but all of a sudden Firefox 3 started having issues on my computer. It'll just disappear- close down without any warning or error message. It doesn't seem to matter how many tabs I have open or what sites I'm on, it just happens. Thankfully, if I start it back up, it will let me restore my tabs, but it's really getting annoying. The last time it happened, it eventually started coming up with an error message saying something about how it could not be found (or something, I can't remember it exactly). And then I tried other programs, and they came up with the same message! Even the Task Manager and command prompt wouldn't come up! Finally, I had to completely restart my computer and reinstall Firefox. I really don't want to do that again this time (I've already gotten the "can't find something or other" error message, but haven't seen it since restarting my computer this time around.) so I'm wondering if somebody can give me some insight into what exactly is going on and how I can fix it? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 23:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

1. What kind of computer are you on. (I mean, we're not psychic!) 2. Do you have any special extensions installed. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I've got a Windows XP. As for extensions... erm... lemme think. I think there's StumbleUpon on it, and I know Veoh's little bar comes up. Not entirely certain. I have tried to start it in Safe Mode, but it still doesn't work. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

If other programs are doing it - then it's probably not a Firefox error - but something more systemic. When you get an error like this - you REALLY need to get into the habit of writing it down. If you had the exact message for us - we'd stand a good chance of being able to diagnose it.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Uploading files to Google Sites

Google Page creator allows files under 10 MB each and 100 MB in total to be uploaded. Does Sites have this feature? How can I use it and what are the limitations? Thank youKushal (talk) 23:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

September 5

Online survey websites

I recently came across www.awsurveys.com, which pays for surveying. How much money can anyone earn by way of these websites? These websites dont pay a fixed amount. For example, if I start a website and pay a fixed amount for people to take surveys online, how much would I need to pay survey takers daily? Simply put, if I pay $1 daily for taking a short survey for five minutes, will there be takers?

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Does_this_look_legit.3F. As for takers—I doubt it. Five minutes of my time is worth more than $1 plus I'd have to go through all the hassle of telling you where to send the check and who to make it out to (and I'd be worried that you'd only be doing it in order to get my address to sell to spammers). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, What is the payout an average person would expect for spending 5 minutes taking surveys; assuming no spamming is done? Any idea?

Simply answering, yes. There will be takers. Will they be your targetted demographic is an entirely different question. Kushal (talk) 03:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Proxy server

I'm trying to use a proxy server to access a website that's only available in the US. I've tried and tried but all the instructions I found everywhere on the internet are so full of computer gibberish that I'm not getting anywhere, and I don't understand how you find a proxy server to use. Do I have to have a computer in the US whose IP address I can use? Surely not. I'm so confused. Please explain to me how to set up a proxy server in the most dumbed-down words possible. Thank you most kindly!!! Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Removing any sort of computerish word I can think of... The site is only available to U.S. computers. So, must have a computer in the U.S. to view it. What you want is a computer in the U.S. that will let you give it a web address and it will return the web page from that address. It is an in-between man. For example, if you are underage and you want to buy alcohol, you get an in-between guy. You give him the cash. He uses the cash to buy alcohol. He gives you the alcohol. It appears that you are asking "how can I be the kid trying to buy alcohol and the guy who is buying it at the same time?" You can't. You need to locate a proxy server in the United States. How? Google. Also, ensure you don't type anything important into it. Back to the example before - assume you give the guy your credit card to buy alcohol. How do you know he didn't copy down the information from the card when he was in the store? Similarly, you cannot trust the operators of proxy servers. -- kainaw™ 02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

vtunnel.com , proxyninja.com there are many just google.. -UnknownIP

Try Tor (download here). In the Vidalia Control Panel click "View the network" and select a node from the country you want, then append the address with it's name followed by ".exit" - so "google.com" would become "google.com.random22.exit". Replace "random22" with the name of the exit node. JessicaThunderbolt 19:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Graphing one variable against another in Open/NeoOffice Calc

It's wonderfully easy to make pretty charts in Calc, and to label them prettily. But prettiness aside, I'm having trouble getting them to show what I want them to show.

I have a Calc spreadsheet with "time" running from A2:A21 and "number completed" from B2:B21. "Time" is a regular arithmetic progression: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12.... It's my independent variable. "Number completed", the dependent variable, is of course not quite so neat. The number in B7 (for example) is the number completed in the time in A7 -- you get the picture, I'm sure. So, in the graphic representation, I want "time" as my x-axis and "number completed" as my y-axis. (Just the kind of stuff we were all doing with pencil and graph paper when we were 13 years old.)

Calc tries hard to be helpful. It sees that row 1 contains text and starts by graphing B2:B21 in red (good) and also A2:A21 in blue (thanks but no thanks) against "row". I can easily zap the latter but this means I have unneeded gaps between my pretty red bars. Also, my numbers are plotted not against time but instead against "Row 2 Row 3 Row 4 Row5" etc. Thanks, but I want them plotted against "0, 3, 6, 9", etc.

I've a hunch that I should have named/labeled my rows before attempting to make the graph. In the past I've received spreadsheets with named columns and perhaps named rows too, but I've never wanted to do this and now that I want to try it I can't see how. (Right-clicking the leftmost column doesn't bring up an option to "adopt row labels from the cells of this column" or similar. And yes, I've RTFM.)

So, uh, what very obvious fact have I been too dumb to notice? -- Hoary (talk) 02:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you did but you definitely don't have to label your rows. In Calc, start with Insert|Chart and answer all the questions. for "X axis" write "time" and for "Y axis" write "number completed" and away you go.

I'm no expert in Calc so I'm just guessing that you stumbled on some super-helpful (or not) "wizard" that I've been lucky enough not to stumble on. Just make the chart in the regular way and you'll be OK. Tama1988 (talk) 11:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. I started from scratch and it all went as you said. Thanks for the encouragement! -- Hoary (talk) 06:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Code samples when job interviewing?

I recently lost my job (I'm a computer game graphics programmer) - although I don't anticipate having trouble finding another one. One of my colleagues who was also let go has been asked to produce a "code sample" prior to getting a face-to-face interview. They want to see a piece of C++ source code that came from actual work that exhibits his programming style/ability.

I've been in the programming business since the late 1970's and I've never heard of a company asking for that before. I often see "programming tests" - but never a request for an actual code sample.

Some people have suggested that the "real" test is to see if the programmer will actually produce a piece of code from his previous job - which would show that he's prepared to break confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements and thus be "A Bad Thing". But a tiny snippet out of (probably) a couple of million lines of software that's not really security-sensitive really wouldn't matter to anyone.

Has anyone here ever heard of a company asking for code samples before? Does anyone here interview programmers with this technique? What are they looking for? How big should the sample be? Is this some fancy new interview technique?

SteveBaker (talk) 02:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, if I was a coder, I think I would simply say that due to NDA issues, you're unable to produce any code from your previous work, but would be glad to demonstrate your ability in some other way, such as a programming test. Not only is that likely to be true, but I think you're right in assuming that this is a way to test you. If so, it strikes me as a kind of a pointless test, but then that's what tests like this tend to be. If you do want to submit a code sample to them, I think you can reasonably expect them to tell you what the sample should be like in terms of size or function or whatever. -- 213.157.89.9 (talk) 09:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes - but when needing a job, failing to meet the demands of the company recruiter tends to be a bad thing. Programming tests are a pretty common idea these days - maybe half of the jobs I've applied for demanded one. They are generally rather fun - nobody who can actually come close to being able to do the work should have much trouble with them. SteveBaker (talk) 10:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but surely no company recruiter would expect you to violate a confidentiality agreement? Of course, if you've been working on open source stuff or something, then it wouldn't be a problem, but if not, what else can you do if you can't provide the code sample? Especially if it is a test of your professional ethics, I really can't see you losing by politely explaining that you can't provide a sample because of a non-disclosure agreement. (Oh, and the anon post above was from me; I didn't realize my login had expired.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree in part with this process. When I had my own company years ago and had to hire a developer, I asked for a little sample of code produced so I could see the programming style, attention to details such as comments and indenting, etc., and guess what - the first person emailed me a whole lot of source code one file at a time, one email at a time! This showed me that the person had no clue how to use a zip archive, just for starters. The next person's code showed a big lump of code without modularization - a big "no-no" in development. I eventually hired someone about ten tries later. I was quite fussy actually, as I asked some questions that I had recently not known the answers to. I wanted to hire someone who knew more than me - lots of recruiters don't want to teach people - and I didn't regret the decision. Sandman30s (talk) 12:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

When I was looking for my current job a lot of places asked for code samples, but I was looking for an entry-level job, I didn't think that the practice was common for more advanced-level jobs. One of the justifications for this I've heard is that it helps you find people with a "passion" for programming, because the code has to be code they cooked up in their spare time.

Helexe Games used to have a humorous "how do I get a jobs in games" FAQ on their website.(WayBack Machine Link) that covers this about halfway down the page. Essentially, they want to use it like an artist's portfolio, and they expect that someone who programs for a living would have done some programming on their own at some point as well. APL (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I would just write up a generic class to show your programming style (a page or less). When I've interviewed programmers in the past I never did that, but did ask them to code a little something during the interview; nothing hard, just enough to be sure they're not bullshitting me (which is strangely common). --Sean 15:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

"(which is strangely common)". This has surprised me as well. Recently where I work we were interviewing for a couple of programming positions. It's astonishing the number of people who apply, talk a good talk, but can't actually write a very simple program. The ones I hate are the ones that ask me for help completing the test as though it were a complex homework assignment that we should all collaborate on. Perhaps asking for a code sample is intended as a way of weeding out these no-hope big-talkers. APL (talk) 17:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

At a previous workplace of mine a new guy was hired, and a few days later when he was all settled in he comes into my office, describes the simple utility he was asked to write, and says he's just having a little trouble getting started. I describe the general approach he should take, and he says "yes, yes, I see", and goes off. The next day he comes back and says while he understands how to write the program as a whole, he's having a spot of trouble on what the first line should be. Hmm. I tell him, and he says "yes, of course!" and goes off. Next day, he comes back and says he's having a bit of trouble on ... the second line. He was fired later that day when I discussed the situation with his boss, and the truth came out. A few weeks later I get an email from him: "thank you for your kindness when we worked together recently. I'm happy to inform you that I'm now the director of software development at XYZ Corp. The reason I'm writing is to ask your advice on this system we're developing ...". I wish I was joking. --Sean 17:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if we worked at the same company? ... I was asked such questions a few times by recruiters, and I always said, "of course not, everything I did for my previous employers is proprietary to those employers." --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 02:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't at all claim to be an expert in the field or anything, but I suspect what the recruiter heard was "of course not, I don't practice my craft outside of the workplace." APL (talk) 07:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

GameCarearGuide.com, which I believe is associated with Gamasutra and GameDev magazine, mentions in several of their articles that programmers should have code samples prepared and ready. (Example [10]) This is more about breaking into the industry than moving from one position to the other, but it's not inconceivable that some places wouldn't differentiate their first-stage hiring procedures. APL (talk) 07:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

usb hubs

I have two 4 ports usb hubs and if I plug more then one thing in nothing works, do I need drivers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.173.10.17 (talk) 09:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

No - you shouldn't need drivers.

Does your hub have it's own power supply? Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Does it need batteries? If so, does it have batteries? Are they nice new batteries? Are you really, really sure about that?

If not, it may be that your PC is unable to provide enough power down a single USB cable to power two or more peripherals. The USB spec requires only a very limited amount of power to be provided by the PC host...and all USB peripherals should limit themselves to just that amount - most take far less than that maximum - but maybe not in your case. It's certainly possible that a PC that only produces just enough power (a laptop for example) - combined with two fairly power-thirsty peripherals - would be enough to make everything stop working.

If that's the case, go get a decent USB hub with it's own power supply - and your problem should go away.

The only other thing I could imagine would be if you plugged one hub into another...I've never tried that and it might not work...but it doesn't sound like that's what you're saying.

SteveBaker (talk) 10:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I was in the midst of suggesting that you check the power supply, also. I have one or two devices (like a scanner) that will not work if the hub does not have its own power supply. My hub is connected to a power strip as well as to the computer, and I'm able to use it all the time. --- OtherDave (talk) 10:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep. USB hubs are really pretty dumb machines - power distribution is about the only thing that can go wrong. It's annoying that companies sell the ones with no power supply though - that's a violation of the USB spec and they really shouldn't be allowed to sell them. SteveBaker (talk) 10:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to add to the confusion: my USB hub will work, in spite of having its power supply disconnected, for some small items (like a USB transmitter for a wireless mouse). It will not work for the scanner, which doesn't have its own power cord. My theory is that the scanner just draws more power than the hub can borrow from the PC. After my initial confusion, I chose to leave the hub connected to its own power source all the time. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Need Advice on buying a laptop!

Hi I was wondering if someone could help me choose a laptop to buy. I can spend up to £500. I'm off to university this september so I need one that can do word processing and make presentations etc. The operating systems I'm most familiar with is XP/Vista so I'd be happy with either of these. However, I also play a game called Counter Strike Source. The recommended requirements are as follows: '2.4 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX 9 level graphics card, Windows 2000/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection' (taken from steam website.)

A laptop I'm interested in called the inspiron 1525 found on dell.com has the following specification:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5750 (2.00 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache) Video card - Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 Memory - 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024] Hard Drive - 250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive Optical Devices - 8x DVD+/-RW Optical drive, including SW

I don't know whether this laptop will be good enough to play the game. A friend told me I'd need a laptop with a duo core processor and discrete graphics card for optimum performance when gaming but I've heard these are expensive.

Any response would be great and any other suggestions for laptops I could buy which meet my requirements would be very welcome. Please don't get too technical as I'm not brilliant with computers! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.125.174 (talk) 10:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

An easy way to do this would be to take the game into Curry's, PC World, etc., and ask the shop assistants there if it will work. They might even let you try it on one of the display machines of the laptop you are interested in. Bear in mind, though, laptops these days are far better than they used to be, but are still not optimised for (modern) gaming, unlike desktops.--ChokinBako (talk) 11:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about the game but I can tell you that for your serious uses you do not need MS Office. Get OpenOffice.org instead. That way you'll save some money and have more to spend on beer, I mean a computer you can play your game on. No, wait, you're going to university. Forget playing computer games, spend your time with other students. With or without beer. Tama1988 (talk) 11:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is the calories ... :P Anyways, I am sure beer was just a joke. I don't play many games on my macbook but I still find plenty of distractions if I want to. Unless you must play CSS on a computer, I would suggest you to wait and get a console instead. Kushal (talk) 14:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Counter Strike Source is based on Half Life 2 and from what I've heard it either won't run on a computer using integrated graphics or it will run very poorly. Doing any kind of serious 3D graphics whether it be gaming or production graphics on a computer using integrated graphics is not going to result in satisfaction. I would suggest getting discreet graphics. Rilak (talk) 11:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

CSS is not quite as intensive graphically, but I agree - Intel integrated graphics is hopeless, rather get something with an Nvidia chip on it. My laptop has a Quadro NVS and has no problenm playing CSS or more demanding games for that matter. Sandman30s (talk) 11:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all your your help guys. I see that using intergrated graphics is not a good idea then. But what about this laptop- It is an Acer Aspire 5920H. I wonder if this would be any good. Please give me your assessments/reccomendations!

Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 / 2 GHz ( Dual-Core )

RAM - 2 GB (installed) / 4 GB (max) - DDR II SDRAM ( 2 x 1 GB )
    - Please call 0870 167 0818 for double memory offer
Hard Drive - 250 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400 rpm
Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Screen - 15.4' TFT 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) - 24-bit (16.7 million colours)
Optical Drive - HD DVD-ROM - integrated
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS - 256 MB

spec taken from laptopsdirect.co.uk Thanks again to all who have helped —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.125.174 (talk) 14:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't exactly your question, but keep an eye on the maximum RAM for your computer. (I am content with my Inspiron E1505, but I can't take the RAM beyond 2 G. ) You might choose to get 2 G now, as with your Acer example, but that machine can take 4 G. RAM is the cheapest add-on speed boost you can manage; with some laptops, other kinds of upgrades (like graphics) are difficult or impossible. So spend on what's harder for you to upgrade after the fact. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

That looks perfectly fine to play CSS at a decent resolution (not sure if it supports your native WXGA resolution though, which is always first prize on a laptop), or even modern FPS games at lower resolutions. Sandman30s (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Software glitch; not sure who's responsible

I asked a couple of questions about my new computer here recently. Now I have more.

On several occasions, I have seen a message onscreen stating that I am not connected to the Internet and telling me to connect. Sometimes it still says it won't. And yet when I go to other sites, there is no problem.

I finally concluded the problem was not with my computer or the Internet provider, but it was the fault of a slow web site. The software can't distinguish betwen the inability to connect with the site and the Internet actually being out. In these situations, I know to check the blinking light on the modem and it is almost always blinking.

And the other day, I repeatedly got the message I needed to connect to the Internet, and was repeatedly told I wasn't. Later I discovered, after actually going to other sites, that the address I was using had an invalid character in it; this is supposed to give me a message saying "no such web site" or something like that.

Rather than bother tech support people who are likely to be somewhere in Asia, I'll just see if someone here knows what to do. I found what version of Internet Explorer I had, but I can't seem to access that information now.

Looking at the box the computer came in I have "Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1". Hmmm ... given Vista's bad reputation, maybe that's what's causing the problem.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, Alt-H worked for me. Explorer is Version 7.0.6001.18000.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any screenshots of the error? Is it a message within Internet Explorer or a little popup near your task bar telling you that you've been disconnected? I'm just wondering if your problem is with some hardware (motherboard/NIC/Ethernet cable). Laenir (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't know what a screenshot is or how to make one. It's a small popup in the center of the screen giving me three choices--Broadband, Dial-up, or Offline. If I click on "Broadband" it almost always gives me a smaller popup on top of the first one which tells me to click on "cancel".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Steps to make a screenshot in Windows: 1. Press the Print Screen (PrtSc) key when the screen looks like what you want us to see. 2. Go to Start→Run..., type "mspaint" in the box and click Ok. 3. In MS Paint, choose Edit→Paste, then File→Save. 4. In the Save dialog box, choose "PNG" from the "Save as type:" box and then save the image somewhere. 5. Upload the image, e.g. to ImageShack or Wikipedia itself. 6. Link to it here.

I suspect this is some kind of software provided by your ISP. Does it tell you to click "cancel", or does it just have a "cancel" button and no others? If the latter, it's probably trying to connect and the "cancel" button is there in case you change your mind. Try not clicking it and see what happens. -- BenRG (talk) 21:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Need a javascript bookmark for downforeveryoneorjustme.com please

Using Firefox 3 if that makes a difference. Basically what I'd like is a bookmark that, when I click it, opens the currently selected tab's address at DFEOJM. It would need to strip out the http:// though, DFEOJM doesn't like it. So if I visited http://en.wikipedia.org and it was unavailable, I could click on the bookmark to bring up http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/en.wikipedia.org. I know zero javascript but it seems simple to do.

For bonus points, I set my bookmarks to open in a new tab by default. Is there a setting to make a specific bookmark open in the same tab?

For super-duper bonus points, is it possible to write a Firefox plugin that automatically loads the DFEOJM page whener a "site unavailable"-type error is encountered? Zunaid©® 16:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's your bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){location="http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/"+location.host;})()

--grawity 16:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thanks grawity! and bonus points for letting it open in the same tab :) I'll leave this open just in case someone can do part 3 of the request, but part 1 and 2 are resolved. Zunaid©® 19:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You might have hit upon a goldmine with your third request. I am looking forward to having this included in Firefox 3.2 (of course, I would rather Mozilla use a different provider from DFEOJM). Kushal (talk) 03:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Copy files in Windows

Hello. Can someone tell me how to do the following in Windows: Given a directory D and a target directory T, copy every file contained in D (or it's sub directories, recursively) to the equivalent location within T, assuming that T has the same subfolders, but to exclude files with a certain name. I'm not sure I explained that well. Another go: we have two directory structures. How to copy just the files from one to another. No directories will be overwritten or created. Some files will be excluded. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.223.156.1 (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

xcopy from the command line can do most of that, but I don't think it can do all of it. For example, xcopy D T /s /exclude:file1 will copy all the files in D (and all subdirectories except empty ones), except the list of files contained in file1. If T already contains files, you might be able to use the /u switch, which will only copy files from D that already exist in T (u for "update"). Beyond that, I think you'll need a short program of some type. --LarryMac | Talk 19:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You could install Cygwin and then run something like this from the bash command line, replacing SRC, DST, and EXCLUDE with your file/directory names (note that SRC appears twice):

     IFS=$'\n'; for i in $(find 'SRC' -not -type d -not -name 'EXCLUDE' -printf '%P\n'); do cp "SRC/$i" "DST/$i"; done

Warning: untested, may destroy the universe. -- BenRG (talk) 20:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if RAR or ZIP etc. supports this, but I remember a DOS archiver called ACE (that works in Windows) that had a switch -x to exclude files to write into an archive. Once you extract the archive using the e parameter it will by default retain your directory structure. You didn't say if you wanted to make this a batch copy, but if so then ACE can be run on the command line. You can investigate WinACE, WinRAR, etc. to see if they support the "exclude" switch. Sandman30s (talk) 23:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

If bash seems a bit daunting and you don't mind paying money for software, I think that Take Command will do what you want. -- Hoary (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

How do you track a website visitor's IP range in IPv6 so if they change their IP you can track who uses the same range?

How do you track a website visitor's IP range in IPv6 so if they change their IP you can track who uses the same range? First there's three different ways to convert IPv4 to IPv6 and the IPv4 in hex sometimes is at the front and sometimes at the back. Plus, I've been trying to understand IPv6 and it looks like IPv6 when changing range isn't like IPv4 where 123.123.123.(changes) will be a range and so it can be predicted. But instead IPv6 looks like ranges will change numbers randomly like someone will have their numbers assigned for the firs 64 bytes and not use the rest and the range will change up there, then some other IPv6 IP will use 96 bytes and the range changes elsewhere, etc. William Ortiz (talk) 21:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Linux dual boot

I am interested in installing Linux on my machine; I would like it to be able to dual boot. I currently have Windows Vista SP1 installed. My background is short to none with Unix (I have worked with Bash in MacOS X however). My issues are this:

1. I just bought my first computer, and I don't want to gunk it up. It was expensive, and I'm poor. If it is too complicated or risky, I won't do it.
2. I am interested in running a good Linux based system for educational purposes (it's much easier to get an IT job with Linux experience).

Does anyone have any suggestions or a good tutorial on how to install the dual-boot system, and which Linux version I should try it with. Thanks a lot. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:22, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

[11] is a guide for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a good choice since it is so very often the first Linux distribution that people try and people often dual boot. This means that the amount of material on the web of the "I'm coming from a Windows system and I'm trying to / I just / I want to / I had problems with...." type is huge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 23:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You can't screw up the hardware with software (well not usually, see Halt and Catch Fire and Killer poke), so if you bought your computer from a computer vendor as opposed to built it yourself it usually comes with recovery options, so if you screw up your software you could always use the recovery wizard to reset the software to factory condition. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

As for the Ubuntu interface, it's not to hard to figure out. If you know how to use a computer well, you'll be fine with Ubuntu. Although after you get used to where everything is, I'd recommend checking out the command line.(Applications--> Accessories--> Terminal). It's an easier and faster way to do tasks. To update Ubuntu use Update Manager or the command line. Update Manager: System--> Administration--> Update Manager. However the command line (BASH) is much faster. To update use: sudo apt-get update. Enter the password you use to login and it will quickly update the computer. Also use: sudo apt-get upgrade to upgrade and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu when a new version comes around. To set the root password(Needed for some actions) use sudo passwd root. To add or remove programs try "Add/Remove" found: Applications--> Add/Remove. Voila! You have a list of programs to install from. Or alternatively use System--> Administration--> Synaptic Package Manager to get specific packages or uninstall more than one package. Ubuntu comes with a full suite of programs and you can easily add more. To install from a download: Download the file to(Usually in .Bzip or tar.gz format) Use archive Manager(Pops up automatically as it is the default program) to extract the file. Then go to the command line. Use cd (Name of Directory where you extracted to) then into the program file itself. The run ./configure and the make and then make install. I should note you need to be root to "make" and "make install". Don't worry if it sounds complicated. Experiment! And in no time at all you'll have everything figured out. I loved Ubuntu when my dad first showed it to me and now I use almost all the time using Windows XP Professional SP3 only when needed. And feel free to ask more questions if you need to. A word of warning, do *not* always login as root. You run the chance of completely wrecking the computer if you don;t know what you are doing. Don't worry though, use the man command to get the manual about a command. Good Luck!:D(Did I mention Ubuntu is completely free and is basically comes as a premium system? Compare that to Windows[Which costs quite a bit] where you have to buy ''more'' software just to make it good.)(Everybody else here on the Reference Desk may correct mistakes I made in this quick guide)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You might also be interested in getting your toes wet with Wubi (installer). Kushal (talk) 03:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

!AAH! That takes forever! It downloads all slow(It's a big file) and it will take literally days for the download. Just use BitTorrent to get the ISO image from the Ubuntu website, burn it on a CD, and install using the CD.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 04:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Xp54321. I used Wubi on a Toshiba Satellite on Comcast "High speed Internet". (I know we all love to hate Comcast but please read the whole story.) I think I was able to download and install Ubuntu in a matter of about two hours. Probably because I was doing this at night. I did not realize that your mileage may vary. I had been using dial-up for ever myself but lately I seem to have taken broadband for granted. I apologize for any misconception. By the way, Xp54321, do you know if it is possible to instruct Wubi to look for the Ubuntu image locally? I think that would be the best of both worlds, to borrow Miley Cyrus' words. Kushal (talk) 05:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I read this somewhere on Wubi forums sticky-- if you put wubi.exe and the ISO in the same folder, it will use the locally stored image for installation. Didn't try it myself though. -59.95.98.102 (talk) 06:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Google chrome and videos

Hello,

My (prehistoric) laptop is now host to all 3 main browsers. I want to love Chrome, and i'm so nearly there, but why does it insist that I download all of adobe's whizz-bang freeware just to watch a few videos when IE (and to a lesser extent, firefox)can just deal with it? Anyone else have this problem? 82.22.4.63 (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it hasn't happened on my computer, but I just installed the new version of Flashplayer (before I installed Chrome mind you). Youtube and any good video site these days uses Flashplayer; the fact that not all videos are working on Firefox shows you are certainly using an ancient version of it. That said, I did already have Flashplayer crash on me once. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You need the Flash player to watch Flash movies. Firefox and IE can't "just deal with it"—they have the player installed already, you probably just forgot you installed it (or it came pre-installed—which isn't exactly great either). It's not a "problem", it just means the browser isn't installing third-party tools behind your back—which is a good thing. Just install the player and you'll never have to deal with it again, and you'll forget you did it as quickly as you did the time you installed it to work with Firefox. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't like Flash a lot. It's great and all for movies/videos etc. BUT it hogs a huge' amount of CPU processing power. One (cool) thing about Chrome is that it lets you see what is using how much CPU.(In percentages). I looked. Guess what? Chrome and all its subprocesses were using less than 5% of the CPU(This is on my brother's computer,Specs:2.20 GHZ, 1.00 GB of RAM, 225 GB hard drive plus a second 139 GB hard drive.) but Flash alone was using 20% of the CPU! Google says it improved Javascript's speed on Chrome but Firefox has an addon called Flashblock which blocks Flash elements on a page. You'll find your web browsing speeded up by it. It can be found here. Chrome has yet to have such a feature but I should note Chrome is fast and certainly light and easy to use. However I feel it needs some more features before it can take on giants like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Opera or Safari etc.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Would you prefer that those crisp graphics that Flash provides be streamed as an unsharp video file, clogging your connection? Although I can not comment on how well Flash is optimized, it does use the CPU for a reason. =)--mboverload@ 03:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I know, I know, but still, Flash should somehow be improved as to not hog so much CPU.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 04:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Also, it could be used a LOT less. Flash is needlessly used when a static image would be perfectly fine, mostly due to crappy marketing departments. Thus supporting both our points =) --mboverload@ 04:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Typing vowels with macrons in Linux

I'm taking a Latin course, and I need to type vowels with macrons, but I can't find a way to do it. Before I switched to Xubuntu, I used Debian with GNOME, and I was able to type them by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Alt+[unicode string, e.g. 0101], but now for some reason it doesn't work anymore. I've tried using an AltGr keyboard layout, but it doesn't seem to have macrons. I also tried mapping the left Windows key to Multi_key using xmodmap, but that seems to revert back to Super_L whenever I close the terminal emulator or restart X. Somebody help please??? --Anakata (talk) 22:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you using the same IME as before? --Kjoonlee 00:50, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure. How do I find out which one I'm using? It always worked fine before, so I never paid any attention to it. I have SCIM installed, but I don't think it's the default because when I want to use it I have to right click and select it from a menu first.--Anakata (talk) 02:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

That's so silly that they're making you do that. As I'm sure you know, THE•ROMANS•WROTE•LIKE•THIS. They didn't have macrons. But I digress. It's far less convenient, but you can use OpenOffice's Writer to insert a symbol by going to Insert --> Special Character.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 05:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

On my debian installation you can type macrons with AltGr+Shift+] followed by the letter you want (like this: ē). You can get other accents in a similar way, e.g. AltGr+; then e for é. This may work on ubuntu too. 163.1.148.158 (talk) 09:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, AltGr+Shift+] then e results in this: ”e. Is there a file somewhere with all the AltGr combinations and what they result in?--Anakata (talk) 13:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

September 6

OS Kernels

How can I repair the damaged or lost kernels of Win XP SP2? --Omidinist (talk) 03:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Omi, can you give us the exact error message you are getting? --mboverload@ 03:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

CD doesn't play and this message appears: 'The application failed to initialize properly (c0000006). Click on OK to termiante the application.' --Omidinist (talk) 12:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

iTunes problem

hi, ok:

i have itunes on an external HD along with all my songs, however, from what i can tell, all the 'info' about itunes (eg libraries, play count etc info) was stored on my computer (windows XP) so when i 're-set' my computer after a virus problem this was killed. Thus when i open up itunes now, from my external HD, its as if ive just got it. This is of-course a big problem for me. However, because i kinda foresaw an event like this i regularly saved a 'backup' version of the 'previous iTunes library' file on my ext HD. Is there any way that i could load that 'previous iTunes library' up, bareing in mind all the song file paths are the same...? thanks, --81.76.41.196 (talk) 13:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)