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May 13

TCP sockets, do they have two socket addresses...?

From our article, Internet socket:

"As seen in the discussion below, in the TCP case, each unique socket pair 4-tuple is assigned a socket number, while in the UDP case, each unique local socket address is assigned a socket number."

May someone, please, provide a reference for that statement? --Taraborn (talk) 00:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a reference, but I can explain it (which might help to assuage doubt or find a reference): it refers (at least) to a server's sockets, which will all share the local address and port but have different remote addresses and/or ports. --Tardis (talk) 14:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I understand what it says, and it seems reasonable to me, but I wanted to be completely sure that it is true since I've been unable to find a different source that states the same (that TCP sockets need 2 socket addresses unlike "normal" sockets (like UDP's) that only have one). --Taraborn (talk) 17:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll have to wade through RFC's if you want to find a reference for that statement, but be careful, the "sockets" and "socket numbers" discussed in the article are not the same as "sockets" and "socket descriptors" as programmers know them. If you are trying to improve the article the only advice i can give you is to remember that socket objects or socket descriptors in APIs and programming texts are different animals from the sockets and socket numbers of RFC 147. If instead you're trying to understand network programming then ignore the Internet socket article.

Is it true that TCP sockets have two addresses while UDP sockets have only one? Yes and no, depends on how you look at it i guess. Both types are bound to a local ip and port. Connection oriented TCP sockets listen and accept incoming connections (on the server side) or connect to a remote ip/port (on the client side). Connectionless UDP sockets send and receive datagrams to and from remote ip/ports.

Using TCP from the client side you first request a socket object/descriptor, then bind it to a local ip/port. You have now associated two parts of the 4-tuple with the socket, but you're not yet ready to send any data, first you must connect to a remote ip/port. Now you have the full 4-tuple associated with the TCP socket and can go ahead and read and write to the socket.

Using the connectionless UDP you start out the same way: request the socket, then bind the local ip/port. The difference is that the UDP socket does not connect to a remote ip/port, after binding the socket you're ready to send and receive datagrams. But now you have to fill in the remote ip/port part of the 4-tuple each time you send a datagram, and the socket implementation will tell you the remote ip/port each time you receive a datagram. See sendto() and recvfrom() in the Berkeley sockets API.

You always need the full 4-tuple in order to transfer any data using TCP or UDP. Sockets are bound to the local ip/port which fills in two parts of the 4-tuple. TCP sockets are connected to a remote socket which fills in the other two. UDP sockets are never connected, the 4-tuple is filled in for each datagram (which can be a different ip/port each time). It's probably true that somewhere within the socket implementation a "socket number" is assigned to a UDP socket after it is bound (two parts of the 4-tuple) but only after a TCP socket is connected (all four parts of the 4-tuple). So what? Who cares? Only the programmer who writes the socket implementation, and the unlucky editor looking for a citation for the Wikipedia article.—eric 08:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To add to the confusion, you can indeed call connect() on a UDP/SOCK_DGRAM socket, but all it does is say "use this address when I use send() rather than sendto()". --Sean 14:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On some platforms, connecting UDP socket is needed to be able to receive ICMP messages that your outgoing packets generated (eg Port unreachable) Unilynx (talk) 18:24, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WAV Sound in Java

Hello. The Web was unhelpful to me. When I want to play a .wav audio clip in my applet, the console displays "java.io.FileNotFoundException: <File Name Here> (The system cannot find the file specified)". The .wav file is in the same folder as my source. I tried other alternatives on the Internet, which led me to a wide variety of other errors. How do I debug this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 01:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Post a minimal complete program demonstrating the problem. --Sean 13:34, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it! Now, I have a NullPointerException error.

AudioClip wht = getAudioClip (getCodeBase, "L:/Reversi/1000 Hz.wav");
if (turn)
{
     ...
     wht.play ();
}

--Mayfare (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Post a minimal complete program demonstrating the problem. Something tells me you'll fix it again! --Sean 14:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this should do it: AudioClip wht = getAudioClip (getCodeBase(), "1000 Hz.wav");

What was happening: getCodeBase() was already getting the path. You need to use the relative path (in this case, just the filename, since it is in the same directory) for the second parameter, so far as I can tell. Applet Javadoc Washii (talk) 23:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Still no sound. --Mayfare (talk) 22:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this will help. --Sean 13:28, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Phone numbers when registering domains

I resent having to publish my phone number when I register a domain. I don't want to get any phone calls, and I don't want anybody to get my phone number from running a whois. I am under the impression that I can lose my domain name registration for not keeping the phone number updated and current (as I know you can get the name challenged, and lose the domain, for having an e-mail contact address that bounces). I assume this is a relic of the late 1970s that never got changed. Is there any way around having to have a phone number in the whois record, other than paying the registrar $20 a year for the privacy service? Tempshill (talk) 02:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Theoretically - you should provide that data. However, I don't think anyone would ever come after you if you put garbage there. But - should you ever need to prove that you own the domain - or defend your ownership of it in the face of some heavy-hitter who claims your infringing their business name or something - then having fake data there would be bad - which is why there is a concern. Most domain registration services now offer the possibility to put their address/phone number in those fields and have them keep your data privately in case it's actually needed. I think it's called "ID Protect" or something. See this [1] for example. $8 per year...ouch! SteveBaker (talk) 03:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a lot of domains for a long time and I can only think of one or two times when anyone has called the phone number. I do get occasional pieces of snail mail spam to the mailing address. There is a ton of email spam but it is filtered by the registrar. I agree the requirement is obnoxious. There are various ways you can get around it, but they involve paying extra, so bleh. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 08:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Zoom concept in computer / Computer Graphics

If I zoom the image(both vector and raster) what will be the geometric pattern of the pixels or dots?. Whats are the operation and algorithim of zoom —Preceding unsigned comment added by Indranilzee (talk • contribs) 04:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For scaling of raster (bitmap) images, see Image scaling. For vector images, take a look at Vector graphics. Both are limited by the available detail in the starting image. While raster images may become [Pixelation|pixelated] without interpolation or appear blury with interpolation, vector graphics retain their crispness. However, the accuracy and realism of the scaled image is dependent on how accurately the image represented is encoded. Well defined geometry, such as shapes and fonts will continue to look good, but images such as maps and terrain will reveal that they do not have unlimited accuracy as you zoom in on them. Also, subtleties such as texture is difficult to accurately represent in vector graphics, but can be simulated using texture maps. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Fractal compression you can zoom things like terrain and it can look quite reasonable, but it is generating detail that doesn't exist in the original and strange things can appear. Dmcq (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A zoom of a 2D image is quite different from 3D. In 2D, you are just making the image larger or smaller - where in 3D you are changing the relative sizes of things closer and further away by different amounts. In either case, when you make the image smaller, you have to remove information - when you make it larger, you need to add information. Generally, both of those things are difficult. When you shrink something, you have to take care not to cause aliasing - when you grow it, the absence of additional information will either make it come out pixellated or blurry.

In 3D, we convert the 3D position of an object out there in the world into 2D using the effects of perspective:

  x' = x * s / z
  y' = y * s / z

...where (x,y,z) is the position of the object in 3D and (x',y') is the corresponding position in 2D space. The constant 's' relates to the amount of zoom. Changing that number causes the display to zoom in or out. SteveBaker (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR

Write a program to multiply two 16-bit unsigned numbers stored in the memory and store the result in the memory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abhi8 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the top of this page for our policy regarding homework. And please do not post the same question to multiple forums. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a particular tech review site I can't find

Hi, I'm looking to build a new computer, and I remember an article on CNET/ZDNET/whateverNET, in a blog called Hardware 2.0, about CPUs, motherboards, etc... It's quite recent, but I can't find it. Thanks in advance! 144.138.21.201 (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ZDnet: Very Best Kit List Taggart.BBS (talk) 19:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!144.138.21.132 (talk) 10:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MS word - replacing commas with dots in numbers

Does anyone know a good way to replace only the commas in numbers in a word document. I had an old script for a search string that replaced only the commas in numbers with a special character and you could then go and replace that character with the dot. But last time I tried I couldn't get it to work anymore. I think they might have changed something in "search and replace" or there's a box hidden somewhere that needs to be ticked or unticked - as usual :-( Any clues would be highly appreciated. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 08:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Look for a "regular expressions" search and replace feature. You would want to search for (this will depend a little on the regular expression flavor they use) "([0-9]),([0-9])", and replace it with "\1.\2". Or something. --Sean 13:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with Word's method is that you can find by wildcards but not replace by them. So it is easy to find all of the commas surrounded by "Any digit" (^#), but you can't replace them without obliterating the digits in question. --140.247.252.198 (talk) 17:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In Word, you can do 10 global replaces ("0," -> "0#!", "1," -> "1#!", etc.); do a search for "#!" and put back any that should not be replaced (a long process if there are lots of them); finally replace all "#!" with ".".

Alternatively, move the entire text into an editor that supports regular expressions and allows you to record short macro sequences. When done the whole lot can be moved back into word, but you will have to fix up any headers, bold, itaic, etc. Astronaut (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Exporting isn't an option I just spent a fun-filled night extracting the text from a locked .pdf file and putting the formatting back in. Could one use MS word's crappy macro editor to cook s.th. up? I know using the recorder won't work so I guess I'll have to look into what commands they offer. (Sigh. Assembler used to be sooo easy. It took ages, but you knew what the box was doing.) For this file I guess I'll have to go with the manual wildcard search and destroy, ahem, replace.71.236.24.129 (talk) 08:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

try using the macro below:

The Macro


Sub Macro1()
   Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
   Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",0"
       .Replacement.Text = ".0"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",1"
       .Replacement.Text = ".1"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",2"
       .Replacement.Text = ".2"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",3"
       .Replacement.Text = ".3"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",4"
       .Replacement.Text = ".4"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",5"
       .Replacement.Text = ".5"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",6"
       .Replacement.Text = ".6"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",7"
       .Replacement.Text = ".7"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",8"
       .Replacement.Text = ".8"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
   With Selection.Find
       .Text = ",9"
       .Replacement.Text = ".9"
       .Forward = True
       .Wrap = wdFindContinue
       .Format = False
       .MatchCase = False
       .MatchWholeWord = False
       .MatchWildcards = False
       .MatchSoundsLike = False
       .MatchAllWordForms = False
   End With
   Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
 End Sub

Thank you, thank you! (Redo 1000000 times) 71.236.24.129 (talk) 09:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR

Program to multiply two 16-bit unsigned numbers stored in the memory and store the result in the memory?--Abhi8 (talk) 09:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the fifth time you've posted this question today, I asked you on your talk page to stop. If you continue to keep posting it, rather than wait for a reply in the original post, I will report you for disruptive behavior.

Since your textbook aparently doesn't help. here are a couple of pages that might help you with your homework assignment: Microprocessor (and links from that aricle) Computer program Assembly language Instruction set Machine code Multiplication algorithm Signedness Processor register Computer memory. Please note that our articles are not written to specifically deal with your problem, so referring to your class notes or textbook is likely to be much faster. You should also try to remember what your instructor may have mentioned regarding the relationship between adding and multiplying numbers. Lots of luck. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 09:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Open Source Bubble?

I fear that the next tech bubble is among companies like Sun Microsystems and Novell, who have made the decision to give away their products for free. In an effort to "compete" with Linux, Sun decided to give away Solaris. They also give away their Java IDE (NetBeans), their database program (MySQL), and their office suite (OpenOffice). They "sell" an identical suite (StarOffice). But why would someone buy StarOffice when they can download OpenOffice? I have no idea. What were they thinking? Did they want to make Sun into some sort of non-profit organization like Goodwill? If so, they more-or-less deceived the people who gave them their savings -- their investors. If I had been unfortunate enough to loan Sun money (via bonds or stock) then I'd be pretty angry right now. Giving your product away sends the message that it's worth nothing. The whole business-friendly open source theory is just that -- a theory that is looking more and more fanciful as time wears on.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 10:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're in the wrong place. Rant elsewhere. Shadowjams (talk) 10:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, you must be the owner of the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, huh? I actually think that you are in the wrong place.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 10:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're not really asking a question, though, you're just soapboxing. A suggestion you take that elsewhere is valid, as this isn't the place to promote your own views. You're already starting from a personal assumption ("Giving your product away sends the message that it's worth nothing") which does not apply to everyone.

Perhaps he's confused us with the Free Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit With Whatever the Heck They Want. APL (talk) 02:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That said, many companies are seeking to transition to a service based revenue model, ie. give the product away for free but charge for the support service. Think of it as the disposable razor model of business. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a question above. "why would someone buy StarOffice when they can download OpenOffice? I have no idea." I have no idea either. Why would someone do that? Anyway, regarding the rest, all I can say that it seems like a viable business model. Services and more valuable than products and these companies are earning millions and millions selling their services. The products serve for attracting clients--Mr.K. (talk) 10:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whether it seems like a viable business model is no longer relevant. It has been proven nonviable. Sun never made enough money off of these services. And they gave them away permanently by licensing their source code under the LGPL. This left them without an exit strategy. I find it telling that Sun is being bought by Oracle -- a company known for pricing their products high.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"why would someone buy StarOffice...?" It's probably for the same reason that someone would purchase an operating system. Clearly, there are dozens of free, free operating systems. To some extent, they provide "equivalent functionality" to non-free, non-free systems. However, in the assessment of most end-users, these systems are decidedly not equivalent, and there is some feature worth paying for in Windows, Mac OS X, or one of the licensed Linux or Unix systems. Why do most people continue paying for something that they could replace with a free alternative? Maybe because they see added value, where you see no added value. A free market allows for various opinions to interact with the price-point of any given product or service - but it's a statistical process. (If you decided that wheat had no value because it was useless to you, that would not change the market price of wheat - but if most of the major grain distributors agreed with your assessment, then... ) Equivalently, if you decide that OpenOffice does have a monetary value, you are more than welcome to find someone and pay them for it - but that won't change the market price. Nimur (talk) 13:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Price is determined by supply and demand. For the price of something to reach $0 on the open market, there would need to be zero people willing to buy the product. I find it very unlikely for that to be the case with StarOffice/OpenOffice. The executives at Sun decided to price their products at $0, thus ignoring the law of supply and demand. Many companies price their products higher than this law projects as part of a prestige-pricing strategy. Sun, on the other hand, decided to market to the cheapest people in the business. That makes absolutely no sense to me. They tried to make money off of people who refuse to pay for software. Wow. Maybe they never asked who their "customers" were, and if they didn't, Sun executives need to give their pay back.

Speaking of supply and demand, you can always just lower the price of your product if you want more customers. If you want to attract more users, just lower the price. Giving it away for free is the equivalent of throwing in the towel.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What you don't get is that Sun isn't a core office or netbeans company. What the point of giving away packages for free is is to create added value for customers to use their other services, even if it means sacrificing revenue streams from products that they no longer consider their specialty. Maybe no one is buying Staroffice. But it wasn't like people were all buying Staroffice before Openoffice came around - Microsoft had pretty much cornered the market. They've turned Staroffice from a pointless weight around their necks that cost them money to maintain which could barely be recouped from pathetic sales into free advertising and a source of lucrative support monies. That's good business sense. You might as well ask yourself this: why don't videogame companies charge for game demos?--129.67.117.76 (talk) 13:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are indeed soapboxing, but one possible answer for the scattered question: Maybe you get some technical support when purchasing a StarOffice license? Tempshill (talk) 15:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that you can't have a bubble unless people are speculating something up. I'm not sure that's happening here. Whether open source is or is not a good business model will depend on a lot of conditions within the companies. But it is clear that they are engaging in a realistic and well-thought out business model: use open source to build up geek cred and brand-name recognition, but provide high-cost services to companies who can't or aren't willing to afford leaving everything up to a bunch of hackers. It's not the disposable razor model, whereby everyone pays some regular, small amount over the long term. It's a model where you get a lot of little (economically insignificant) people to use your product as a gateway to the big-money corporate investments that come with having a good reputation. Will it work out in the end better than a fully-proprietary system? That's the key question. They obviously think it will, or at least won't do worse. But you can be 100% sure that it is not an ad hoc decision they made based on being charitable. Real companies don't work that way. --140.247.252.198 (talk) 18:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sun's main bread-and-butter was hardware and ding-ding-ding support! StarOffice specifically. It's sub-$100/seat last I checked, and that money pays for support. NetBeans was free to help distribute Java as a language (NetBeans is a pretty good IDE. Rival Eclipse is free as well, and is probably much better. Hmm). Novell sells support with SuSE, as does Red Hat, and they make a killing at it with RHEL (Yahoo! comes to mind...). And I would have been perfectly happy to invest in Sun. Plus, some of those investors just got a nice payoff with the Oracle buy-out (boo...) Washii (talk) 23:37, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I forgot: A lot of the work in Solaris is based off OpenSolaris now. So, that free OS giveaway with many users helping to improve it? Funnels right back into their paid product. Washii (talk) 23:40, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Sequence of instructions

Sequence of instructions to reverse a two digit hexadecimal number available in the register AX using shift and rotate instructions.--Abhi8 (talk) 10:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the top of the page about homework questions. Tempshill (talk) 15:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Musical Software

I am using Cakewalk's SONAR to write music using a Yamaha S03 synthesizer. Even though it is easy to use, has its limitations. I was wondering if there is any other software to do the same job, but with more audial flexability but still having a easy-to-ues interface. Any help appreciated. --DJ Bogan (talk) 01:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to arrive at MTBF for an STB?

Hi, different vendors quote different figures for MTBF and have different methods to calculate. Is there any standard way of arriving at MTBF for STB? ThanksDearkundan (talk) 11:38, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Usually a HALT test is used. This process subjects many units to high temperature and constant use, and applies an empircal formula to convert failure rates to failure-rates under normal conditions. If there is a standard, ISO or some other more specific industry consortium would probably publish its methodology - but these sorts of technical standards reports tend to be proprietary and expensive (sort of a "certification fee"). Also, it's not guaranteed that all vendors follow the same system. Nimur (talk) 14:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Word equal to 0000H

Word placed in register AX equal to 0000H without MOV or AND instructions.----Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Be good if you specified the microprocessor but the simplest way I can think of doing this is to turn off the power. Then again that might make it all 1s or undefined so maybe I better think more. Hmm, perhaps I better shift the contents out, but then where do all the 1's disappear to? That's very worrying. I could of course subtract it from itself or exclusive or it with itself but that seems incestuous. Anyway once I've got it set to zero how do I keep it zero? You really need a write once register, I think best is to use an electron microscope and electron gun to zap the bits of the register so they can never be one again. Dmcq (talk) 12:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-2's complement of the word

2's complement of the word in register AX without NEG instruction.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quote from the terms of the reference desk:

"If your question is homework, show that you have attempted an answer first, and we will try to help you past the stuck point. If you don't show an effort, you probably won't get help. The reference desk will not do your homework for you."

I see no evidence of any effort. Do you understand the question?, what have you read in wiki about it?, have you examples of code you tried but didn't work? Even then you probably won't be given 'the answer' but pointers so you understand the problem and how to solve it. Dmcq (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read 2s complement? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Number of logic 1's of the word

Number of logic 1's of the word available in the register AX using rotate and other instructions.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This can be either a very boring question or quite an interesting bit twiddling exercise. See Hamming weight for the more interesting side. I'd guess though they expect you to just shift the word a bit at a time, and accumulate the count going round however many times there are bits in the register. As a confirmed bit twiddler I hold my hands up in horror. With a good modern 64 bit machine and the way memory is going down in price one could simply have a 4GB array with all the answers and look it up for 32 bit registers. Actually for a number of results this would almost certainly be slower nowadays than working it out with a good algorithm because he whole 4Gb wouldn't be in the cache. For more complex calculations though sticking everything on a big SIM card might be quite a good idea. Dmcq (talk) 07:57, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you could shift and mask smaller segments. For example a 32 bit register could be split into four 8-bit values, which could then be looked up in a 256 byte array and the results for the four look-ups added together. You can decide what trade-off between memory and speed you want, for example 8 four bit pieces or two 16-bit pieces could be used. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to exchange two register contents

Sequence of instructions to exchange two register contents using stack.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why use the stack when wiki has a whole article on XOR swap algorithm. Using the search box at the top left is a good idea. Using a search engine is also a very good idea. Actually one can use add and subtract instead to make it less esoteric but xor was good for graphics. Dmcq (talk) 08:56, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way it's not a good idea to use xor for swapping variables when writing a high level language, not only will it make the code obscure but the compiler can do a better job of optimizing if you just use a temporary variable. Does the OP really have to program in a low level language? - it should be left to people who like that sort of thing and will put in the effort to learn the various gotchas practically any microprocessor has. Dmcq (talk) 09:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in array of 10 bytes

Instruction sequence using string instructions to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in an array of 10 bytes stored in the memory and to store the number of occurrences of the byte in register AH.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Code segment to find the square of a byte

A code segment to find the square of a byte available in register AL using XLAT instruction.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidently these questions are homework. We will not do your homework for you. Do you have a conceptual question? Nimur (talk) 13:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't remove other people's messages. I've restored Nimur's response. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 17:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. SteveBaker (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To repeat Matt Eason; Please don't remove other people's messages. I've restored my own, Niumur's and SteveBaker's responses. Dmcq (talk) 09:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

itunes space

I have been trying to add some songs to my itunes library but it keeps telling me there's not enough space so I deleted some stuff and yet the storage space available doesn't increase... Any light shed on this issue would be appreciated 79.153.197.238 (talk) 15:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try emptying your recycle bin. GARDEN 15:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google map problem

I am having trouble locating the address of 72 rue Charles Michel in Paris. I can find nearby addresses and Google maps seems to do a virtual tour of the area - however not any high numbers anywhere near 72 on the rue Charles Michel. I can find only the low numbers of single digit and teens and twenties. I know the address exist because of this reference which I find in various other books as well. The address exists, however Google maps apparently does not show it even though it shows streets with similar numbers in the neighborhood. Perhaps the name changed when it got near that number. Clues? -Doug Coldwell ^talk 17:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to my streetmap of Paris (Plan de Paris par Arrondissement) bought when I lived there several years ago, there is no rue Charles Michel within the 20 Arrondissements, the Bois de Boulogne, or the Bois de Vincennes. There is however a place Charles Michels in the 15th Arr. at the intersection of av. Emile Zola, r. Linois and r. des Entrepreneurs (and above the Charles Michels metro station). Astronaut (talk) 18:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed your reference was from over 150 years ago, and specifically mentions St. Denis - not Paris. The r. Charles Michel in St. Denis is numbered up to 50 in Google maps. Where numbers higher than 50 would be, there is a modern industrial estate. However, using Google's "Street View" (with surprisingly high resolution in France), I can see number 68 and next door is a Cafe/Restaurant/Hotel called "Le Relais" (48°55′51.9″N 2°20′32.5″E / 48.931083°N 2.342361°E). The building you are looking for is either "Le Relais" or the large derelict building on its own plot to the left of "Le Relais" (as you look from the street), or maybe it was between these building and has been demolished. Astronaut (talk) 18:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes!!! You are a little more sophisticated on these maps than I am. Can you give me a link that shows "number 68 and next door is a Cafe/Restaurant/Hotel called "Le Relais". A link using the Google's "Street View" so I could see the buildings there. I know the building is a four story building, probably the derelict one. Would like to see a picture of the derelict building. Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I cannot work out how to get a link to jump straight into Street View. However, the GeoHack mapping thingy is quite easy to use - click on the location I provided, scroll down to Google Maps, click on the map link, scroll in as far as you can. Then, to enter street view, you can drag the little yellow man (at the top of the zoom scale) to the marker on the map. You click and drag on the photo to turn the view around, or click on one of the white arrows to move up & down the street. Exit street view by zooming out again. You will easily get the hang of things.

Anyway, as a shortcut, here are two Panoramio photos of the buildings in question - photo 1 is number 68 (the tall building) and "Le Relais" half in the frame on the left; photo 2 is the large derelict building. Astronaut (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking on Street View, I've just noticed "72" painted in the wall next to the gates to the derelict building (unusual, because a small blue plaque is usually how the house number is indicated). I'm pretty sure the derelict is the one you want.

~~Looking at the satellite view from above, I guess the original plot extended down to the River Seine, before the N14 (bvd de la Libération) and concrete embankments were built.~~No, there was a towpath along the riverbank. Astronaut (talk) 20:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do believe you got it. Thanks. In this reference it shows the architectial design of 1853. Looks like the same building to me! It is a building by Francois Coignet, a biography article I am working on in a sandbox. It is unique in that it is the first reinforced concrete building. The architecial drawing I probably can use in Commons because of its age. Now if I can just figure out how to get a modern picture of it that can be used in Commons. Any ideas?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. The plaque below the "72" on the top line I think says "Francois Coignet". --Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At first I didn't think it was the same building, but if you look carefully (Google Street View again - this time from bvd de la Libération), the front view in the reference is the side that overlooks the River Seine. It has the correct number of windows and you can still see the small gate from the garden onto the riverbank towpath (Chemin de halage), now the bvd de la Libération. As for modern pictures, you could pay it a visit and probably take all the photos you want. Alternatively, you could try contacting the photographer of both the photos I linked above (and this third) and see if they'll release it under GFDL. Astronaut (talk) 21:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

... or this photo looks familiar. Astronaut (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your help on this.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you'll spell it François when you make it a real article. —Tamfang (talk) 05:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just gotta say that this is a GREAT thread. The RefDesk denizens are an amazing resource! --Scray (talk) 03:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copying a LOT of files in Linux

Hi,

Just a slight problem i have. I need to move ~90gigs of files to backup hard drive, but doing

mv * /mnt/myexthd

it complains that 'the argument list is too long' (which I do understand... each file is only about 3.8MB)...

Is there a way that I can copy everything in just one go?

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try moving the parent directory. For example, if you have a gajillion files inside of /home/me/music, then use mv /home/me/music /my/backup. However, that MOVES the files, not copies them. If you want to copy, use cp -R /home/me/music /my/backup/ -- kainaw ™ 20:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Thanks Kainaw! Worked perfectly! PrinzPH (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) In cases where you don't want to move the parent directory you can use xargs, which is designed for exactly this issue. For example, to move all the files ending in .mp3 to /mnt/myexthd, do:

find -name '*.mp3' -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t /mnt/myexthd

Who said the command line wasn't user friendly! --Sean 21:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can just use the shell:

for t in *.mp3; do mv $t /mnt/myexthd; done

If the individual commands are very fast, this may be slower than the find method, but it's easier to type and to remember. --Tardis (talk) 16:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or just use rsync --h2g2bob (talk) 02:02, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Selling a used Laptop

What precautions should I take when selling a used laptop? I would imagine that there is a lot of personal/private data on my laptop right? What are the steps I need to take in order to erase these data when selling my laptop? Acceptable (talk) 21:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How I would do it: First, go through it thoroughly and backup any data you want to save. Then download a linux distribution (either puppy linux or ubuntu) and run it as a live cd on the laptop. While booted into this live cd (which makes no changes to your hard drive) go through your folders once again to make sure there isn't anything you want to save. If you are really paranoid or had very sensitive data on the laptop, run the dd command to zero out the hard drive (it overwrites every bit on the computer with a zero.) Then install an operating system on the laptop (either from the live cd, or your original operating system disks if they came with the computer.) If you are a non-technical user, you'll have to use google extensively to find out how to implement each of these steps (especially the dd command.) Taggart.BBS (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do it the way Taggart.BBS said. A possibly easier way for a person unfamiliar with Linux would be to boot from an external USB hard disk and use a disk shredder program on the internal drive. Tempshill (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also consider using Disk encryption on your next laptop. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.92.42 (talk) 00:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could use disk encryption to wipe your hard drive instead of a live CD. If you use Windows then install TrueCrypt, set it to encrypt your boot drive with an impossible-to-guess passphrase, and when it's finished encrypting, sell the computer and forget the passphrase. -- BenRG (talk) 01:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why do that when you can simply wipe it? --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you use a boot CD there's an hour or two of down time while the drive is wiped, and you have to schedule it at the very end when you're otherwise finished with the machine. TrueCrypt encrypts the drive on the fly while the system is running, and of course you can keep using it afterwards. Also, you don't have to burn the boot CD, which means one less piece of plastic in your life. -- BenRG (talk) 12:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it were my laptop that i was selling i would use the True crypt way. First i'd choose a 64 character key, Manly composed of my email address, home address.. maybe my mouse S/N, just what ever i can find. Then after i write that down i'd use that to encrypt the hard drive with 7 passes. That will most likely take all night. Once done I'd format the hard drive. :) Hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 14

Forgot My Computer Password

I forgot my computers password and was wondering if anyone knows how to log (or hack) in without one. My computer uses Windows XP. I can enter in to another user but can not, or don't no how to, change the password from another user. --DJ Bogan (talk) 00:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can log in as the Administrator, you can reset the password in the "Users" Control panel. Astronaut (talk) 02:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to login as the Administrator, any administrator account would do. Or the reset disc mentioned below. F (talk) 04:32, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Offline NT Password & Registry Editor boot disk allows you to change the password of any account on your computer. --169.232.232.219 (talk) 06:03, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cracking Windows login passwords with physical access is almost trivial with the SAM file and Ophcrack. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

zenity (Linux)

Does anyone know how can I do this in zenity (the collapsible text)? Reading the man pages did not helped... _thanks_ Hacktolive (talk) 00:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well I can't see an easy way to do this. You could investigate options such as --class and --gtk-module (see: man zenity). Alternatively, you could get hold of the source code and try to make your own Zenity to support the collapsible text feature you want (start by contacting the guys mentioned on this page). Astronaut (talk) 10:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I tried "man zenity" but it did not help, anyway, just found other way to do it, maybe even better. thanks anyway Hacktolive (talk) 00:32, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

google can't find her

Any idea , why google can't find the article Annemarie Eilfeld? 92.227.16.188 (talk) 08:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think google builds its database by crawling the web, so if no other pages on the web link to that article google will not index it, because it doesn't know it exists —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, but it is linked, at least from one site:

http://www.thewiplist.com/celebrity/Annemarie+Eilfeld_1840752/

and 4 times within wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Annemarie_Eilfeld

Is it possible, that the template in the Daniel Schuhmacher article might cause the problem? Regards 92.227.16.188 (talk) 12:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article has been around for just one month. Give Google some time. It is a good thing that Google takes time to index articles on Wikipedia. It would be a waste of time to index articles as soon as they are created since most are quickly deleted. -- kainaw ™ 13:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My experience is, that google needs 5 to 12 hours to index a new article. Let's wait and see: Umar Khan, created today, 13:27 (UTC). 92.227.16.188 (talk) 13:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's a bad example, because somebody has put a speedy delete template in it (without a reason, by the way). Let's take this: Lectionary 122, created today, 13:32 UTC 92.227.16.188 (talk) 13:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the problems are to many redirects as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Bowers#Annemarie_Eilfeld
or the blue names in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_sucht_den_Superstar#Finals_elimination_chart_6 (they should be redlinks (except Eilfeld and Schuhmacher))
92.227.16.188 (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Video playback problem

For the last few days, I have been having trouble playing videos : the videos slow down, play with interruptions or pause midway. This happens for videos being streamed online as well as for files stored in the computer. The videos, though, play more or less alright in the VLC Media Player (which I recently downloaded) but even with this, sometimes, the videos display gets muddled up. The problem occurs with Realplayer, Total Video Player and Windows Media Player, with every video I try to play. Any solutions? --Leif edling (talk) 08:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you checked your hardware acceleration settings? 144.138.21.132 (talk) 10:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With these very settings, the videos were running perfectly up until a few days ago. If there was a problem with hardware acceleration settings, would it be possible for the videos to run in one player and not in the others? --Leif edling (talk) 11:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of things can cause jittery playback. Have you installed some new program (or malware) that is running in the background and occupying a large chunk of CPU? Have you updated any codecs or other video playback tools? Are these the same videos which previously played well? Have you had a hardware change or new drivers? Windows media playback is a sort of complicated pipeline of software, ranging from the file system to a decoder to a DirectShow filter to a graphics overlay and finally out to the screen... any one element can cause havoc with the others. Nimur (talk) 14:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

These vids were running perfectly just a few days back. I have not had driver changes/codec updates done recently. If it were malware, how come the videos run more or less without a hitch in vlc? --Leif edling (talk) 15:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May i ask what Operating System you are using? as this is a known bug in Ubuntu.– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Windows XP.--Leif edling (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Netrw functionality outside of vim?

I'm wondering... is there a free latex editor for windows with functionality similar to the netrw plugins of vim? I.e. the ability to edit files via ssh. I know that Kile can do this, but there isn't a windows version. Thanks, --129.67.117.76 (talk) 13:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at SSHFS? It may solve your problem without a plugin by mapping a "virtual" file system over an SSH connection. You will be able to access remote files as if they were on the local machine. There is a Windows port available, as well. Nimur (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you install Xming and PuTTY, you can run the graphical editor remotely, on the Unix system, by ssh-ing in first and then starting the graphical applications. This really helps work around many Windows and *nix portability issues. Nimur (talk) 14:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what your priorities are. If you like vim and are missing this feature from it, then you can just run it on Windows. If you don't like vim and your only concern is having this feature in some editor on Windows, then you have many choices: Emacs can edit over SSH (although you'd need to get an SSH client separately), and there are many others. If, instead, you're looking for an editor that's specifically good for LaTeX and can work over SSH, then that's a matter of taste, of course: you can even search for these (although oddly the first hit there seems to not do SSH). If none of those suit you, then Nimur's suggestion of decoupling the LaTeX and SSH parts is surely the way to go, because then you can look for good LaTeX editors without having to restrict yourself to ones that directly support SSH. --Tardis (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

instead of , why?

My friend couldn't explain to me why what's in the title applies. She suggested I ask you. Obviously, I know nothing of programming, or I'd know the answer to this... 90.193.232.41 (talk) 14:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Standard HTML (and XML) requires that nested tags are strictly ordered. This eliminates ambiguity about which tags apply at any given level of the Document Object Model. Although a lot of web-browsers accept non-standard HTML like the example above, they are technically "incorrect" if they render, and are just trying to gracefully fail instead of popping up an error message. Take a look at HTML and XML#Correctness. To put it in layman's terms, these specifications exist in order to make sure that there is exactly and only one correct interpretation of the document object model. If you violate those rules, you introduce ambiguity into how you want the document presented. (In your second example - after closing the span tag, but before closing the bold tag, there is a region of uncertain text-formatting). Nimur (talk) 15:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it uncertain? What else could it be, other than bold? 90.193.232.41 (talk) 15:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The example as given isn't ambiguous, but consider "". Does that mean "<b₁><b₂></b₁></b₂>" or "<b₁><b₂></b₂></b₁>"? Only be imposing the above rules can you make it unambiguous. --Sean 17:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Though it is of note that both of those are functionally identical for any text in the middle of both tags. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my understanding, it's not so much the question of how to merely display the text, but how to interpret it: if someone asks for the contents of the span tag (say, from JavaScript, or some general DOM application), what should be returned? We could introduce a new data type "still-open tag" (and "already-open tag" for other cases), but that would complicate everything because HTML would then contain more than tags; furthermore, in the "already-open" case you would lose access to any attributes that were specified earlier. If we implicitly adjoin a  to the return value so as to make it a legitimate fragment of HTML, then someone that scans through the document tag-by-tag will decide that the b tag ends twice when it really doesn't. Put differently, given AAAABBBBCCCC, what is gained by not rewriting it as AAAABBBBCCCC (or as AAAABBBBCCCC) that justifies complicating the set of possible HTML constructs? --Tardis (talk) 17:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A simpler answer, which I think is equally correct, is that modern software treats markup languages like HTML and XML as defining a tree structure, where the contents of each matched pair of tags is a branch, and can contain either more matched tag-pairs (a sub-branch) or text.

Another way of looking at such markup is as a set of instructions that have to be followed in order - so that abc could be interpreted as turn on "italic" mode; emit "a"; turn on "bold" mode; emit "b"; turn off "italic" mode; emit "c"; turn off "bold" mode.

But this makes manipulating the content much more complicated - you can't change the "b" into a "z" (but keep its formatting) without following all the instructions again from the beginning. As Tardis points out, you could come up with ways of interpreting an unbalanced set of tags as a tree, but they'd introduce a lot of complexity for very little gain. - IMSoP (talk) 18:30, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ripping a DVD?

Alright so I have this Chobits DVD, and I want to put it on my computer and possibly convert it to a MPG so it can play on my iPod, but the only things I'm able to use are Windows Media Players, iTunes, and all basic tools on my computer.(Parental controls are not allowing me to get to Google or anything other than Achieve Online website and Wikipedia.) Is there a way to do such a thing with the things I am provided with? Gothrokkprincess (talk) 16:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a direct quote from Microsoft's website;

"
It is not possible to use Windows Media Player to rip movie files from a CD to your computer's hard disk. However, if you can see the movie file on the CD in Windows Explorer, then you probably can copy and paste that file to your computer's hard disk instead.
"

Now, as of about 2 minutes ago i did not know that you can not rip DvDs with WM. I did not quote this to be rude, mealy informative. It does suggest something useful. If you can see the DvD in My Computer then try Copying the files to yuor hard drive. I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Yeah, I figured that out the hard way, by crashing my computer almost.(I can't stand vista!) And I also figured out how to copy and paste the files, I'm doing that right now actually. 6 Minutes left. ^^ Yay! It's in VOD format though... Wonder how I can convert it to MPG... Hmmh.. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you might have to download something to do that. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But.... Try dragging the largest of the VOB files in to iTunes, See what happens _{Disclaimer; I am not responsible if your computer suddenly bursts in to flames :)}– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa man my computers running slower than usual! x_x;; Uhm, see, thing is, I don't use iTunes for my iPod, I use Rock Box, so I just plug it in, and it's like a Flash Drive, or thumb drive, same thing. Copy paste into folders I make into it, and it plays. Only thing it can play video wise though is MPG's.. v_v;; Sadens my heart that all my mp4's will no longer play on it. T^T Poor poor narwhals..! Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright! I found a way to convert it without a converter!! I think.. Just right click, Rename, and delete the VOB part and put MPG. xD It changes it automatically..! Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:03, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure if that will work. Its kinda like slapping a label on a Spanish book saying "this book is in English". Please let me know if it works. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well it worked whenever I took m4a music files, changed it to MP3, and they played on my iPod. Even if it didn't support m4a. ^^ I don't see why this wouldn't work, but oh well. I'm copying them onto it right now, then I'll see if it can play them or not..! I'll let you know in 1O minutes when it's done. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some interesting information

DVD - MPeg differences

Copied from 'http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/dvdmpeg.html' DVD - MPeg differences

DVD uses a subset of MPeg standards ISO/IEC 11172 (MPeg-1) and ISO/IEC 13818 (MPeg-2). Restrictions Streams - 1 video, up to 8 audio Coding - MPeg-1 vbr/cbr, MPeg-2 MP@ML or SP@ML vbr/cbr Data rate MPeg-1 maximum video 1856Kbps, maximum audio 384Kbps Mpeg-2 maximum video 9800Kbps, maximum audio 912Kbps

note: audio options other than MPeg exist, see extensions Image size Mpeg-1 352x240 (NTSC) or 352x288 (PAL/SECAM) Mpeg-2 720x480, 704x480, 352x480 (NTSC) 720x576, 704x576, 352x576 (PAL/SECAM)

Frame rate coded - 24fps progressive, 29.97fps interlaced (NTSC only), 25fps interlaced (PAL/SECAM only) displayed - 29.97 (NTSC) and 25fps (PAL/SECAM)

Color space color primaries and transfer characteristics NTSC - 4 (ITU-R BT.470 M) or 6 (SMPTE 170 M) PAL - 5 (ITU-R BT.470 B or G) matrix coefficients (RGB to YCbCr) 5 (ITU-R BT.470 B or G) or 6 (SMPTE 170 M)

Audio sampling rate - 48KHz (MPeg audio only, other audio formats have their own rates) Aspect ratio - either 4:3 or 16:9 GOP max MPeg-1 18 frames (NTSC), 15 frames (PAL/SECAM) MPeg-2 36 fields (NTSC), 30 fields (PAL/SECAM)

note: typical rate is .5 seconds, with one GOP per VOBU note: GOP's are NOT optional pack size - fixed at 2048 bytes, system stream level (one DVD sector) Low delay - not permitted

Extensions Private stream 1 (Audio and subpictures) sub-stream 0x20 to 0x3f are subpictures sub-stream 0x80 to 0x87 are audio (AC3, DTS, SDDS) sub-stream 0xA0 to 0xA7 are LPCM audio

Private stream 2 (Navigation) - see PCI packet and DSI packet DVD-Video home

– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Huh.. I didn't know that, thanks.. o.o; Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It opened as if it were going to play, I clicked Play From Beginning, and it just froze on me, and I had to restart the whole thing.. Man.. Now how am I gunna play em? T.T Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lets try something. Open your start menu. Right click on your internet explorer, click 'Run as Administrator', If it lets you run it then you might be able to get around those Parental controls. Once done download VLC– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nope it asks for an Admin password. T^T Plus I already have VLC, it's just blocked. v_v Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, i don't know of any way to convert these files for you. That is unless you somehow unlock VLC or download a converter. VLC has the ability to convert the VOB File for you. Talk to the person who put those restictions on that computer. Ask them nicly to unlock VLC for you. Tell them the truth; That you would like to copy DvDs that your own to your iPod. Good luck. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmh.. My Dad put them on here so I could focus on school, seeing as though I'm home schooled, I highly doubt he will unblock it.. Ugh, oh well, just going to have to have friends email me some converted files then. Thanks though! You helped me quite a bit. ^^ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would it hurt to ask? in the mean time lets just wait, Maybe someone else sees something that i am overlooking.– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, will do. ^^ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you use a password cracker to gain administrator access to the computer and download the tools you need onto a usb stick. Then they'll be available to you under the restricted account (don't use the admin account all the time cause you'll be caught) and you can hide the usb stick when needs be. Also download portable tor and portable firefox so you can view other websites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 21:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or have your friends download and burn Ophcrack– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What you want is DVD ripper software. There are lots of places to download it from, but unfortunately Achieve Online and Wikipedia are not among them. Best bet is to ask your parents if they will download a variety of ripper software for you - be prepared for a discussion about the morals of ripping DVDs (best not go down this route if they are copyright lawyers or film/TV execs), but if you try to break the parental controls, the answer will always be "no" until you have earned their trust again. Alternatively, get a friend to download the software onto a USB pen drive or CD for you. Astronaut (talk) 12:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saving a web-page: Firefox vs. IExplorer

Sometimes (but consistently) IExplorer is not able to save a page at all (mainly from nytimes.com, but also others). However, I don't have any problems saving these pages with my Firefox. Why?--Mr.K. (talk) 17:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because Fire Fox is way more awesome and WAY more advanced than Internet Explorer is. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 18:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, or to put it more precisely, Firefox is standards-compliant —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have already suspected that Firefox was more advanced. I just didn't know where and how.--Mr.K. (talk) 11:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Consider upgrading to IE8 (assuming you aren't already using it). I've just tested and saved multiple pages from nytimes.com without a problem. ZX81 ^talk 13:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can try using some sort of virtual printer to save webpages for future use 194.99.216.135 (talk) 07:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Install Windows on ext3

Is it possible to install windows on a ext2 or ext3 partition? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I believe I watched my Dad do it once a while back. Though I'm not too sure how he did it, what he was doing, and whether or not that actually was what he was doing. @_@ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No. Windows is built to work with FAT, FAT 32 and NTFS formats only. You would need to hack some sort of application into the windows system architecture to make this work, which would be far more trouble than it's worth. In short, windows is not compatible with ext3 unless microsoft decide they wish to include support. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is de-compiling and re-compiling the kernel an option?– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is not realistically practical. So much would change that your resulting system would no longer be "Windows." Nimur (talk) 20:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, it would almost be easer to just install linux, then install VirtualBox and us windows under that... oh well– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

This seems within the realm of possibility even without Microsoft cooperation. GRUB could presumably load NTLDR off of an ext2 partition. There is an open-source clone of NTLDR (FreeLoader, part of the ReactOS project). And there is a kernel-mode ext2 driver for Windows (Ext2 IFS) which could deal with the rest of the boot process. I think NT can also boot from a ram disk (like Linux initrd) and it might be possible to hack something together that way. I tend to agree with the "more trouble than it's worth" assessment though. I wouldn't use this unless it was stable and well supported, and it's hard to see the motivation for putting that much effort into it, since the two-partition approach works just fine. The only advantage I can see would be saving disk space, but I think most people have more disk space than they know what to do with. -- BenRG (talk) 14:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are dead wrong. It is not possible to have a working copy of Windows on an ext3-partition. 194.99.216.135 (talk) 07:15, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Er... okay... could you elaborate? -- BenRG (talk) 14:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask why you want to use ext3 in Windows? What's wrong with NTFS?--24.8.183.197 (talk) 14:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Install linux (or BSD) on ntfs (or fat32)

Since linux is open source there should not be any principial problems, right? There is UMSDOS, but it works only in fat16 (and has been discontinued), and there is Wubi, but it creates ext2(3) filesystem image. Is there a more native method? -Yyy (talk) 08:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Linux based disk utilities

Are there Linux based Disk utilities that will mimic Checkdisk and Defragment on a NTFS Drive? Or could these programs ge downloaded and installed under Wine?– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

fsck would be the equivalent to chkdsk. Most of the filesystems that are used under Linux do not support defragmentation, and generally rarely have need for it; see the defragmentation article for more details. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 19:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The idea behind this is to mount a NTFS disk and use Linux utilities to check for NTFS problems. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 19:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

NTFS-3G might have some utilities for that. Windows programs under wine MIGHT not work due the the low level requirement for this kind of programs SF007 (talk)

I don't think ntfs-3g has that support. These guys talked about it and linked [2] to a *nix based ntfs defragger. I have no clue how well it works, if at all, or whether to trust it. I don't think fsck will work with ntfs (which is why ntfs-3g is around). You might find this [3] interesting though. Shadowjams (talk) 02:06, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Font identification?

Can anyone help me with this font - it's from the opening titles of Dad's Army, but is still in use (the modern DVD commentaries etc. are produced in it). Thanks! ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 18:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks very similar to "Bodoni MT Black"– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 19:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It reminded me of a bold version of Bookman. Tempshill (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More like one of the Caslon typefaces. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see the similarity to all those (and some people have AMAZING visual memories!!), but the picture's font is completely rounded, it doesn't have any corners, which all of those do... It's a hard one! I've also just found a larger example, already on-wiki (here) if that helps at all. ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 19:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please give an example of what other tv shows/movies have used this font? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't know of any, but as I say, there must exist an actual computer .ttf or similar version of this font, in modern times, as it's still in use on modern sources ([4] among other places). ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 20:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~:According to thiswebsite it is EF Aster. I hope this helped...~~– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Correction; Cooper Black seems to be the winner. At lease according to http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, definitely Cooper Black — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 22:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, guys! ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 06:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

– Cont) 20:23, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Photo-editing FOSS

Resolved

Hello, everyone! I was wondering if there is any decent photo-editing FOSS available. I'm looking for a little more than just the basic viewer with brightness/contrast controls and stuff. I'm looking for more editing capabilities (like something that can do touch-up effects), free software that could compete with Adobe. Thanks!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The GIMP is the closest free equivalent, but Photoshop is a far sight better. Tempshill (talk) 22:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Gimp is a good program. To quote from thissite;

"
Probably the oldest and most well-known open source graphic application - GNU Image Manipulation Program or Gimp was started in 1995 and has since then grown to the status it has today. Gimp is a valid competitor to all of the commercial bitmap drawing programs on the market. Among its features you find: powerful painting tools, layers and channels support, multiple undo/redo, editable text layers. Gimp as a plug-in architecture and a scripting engine that allow easy extension of it's functionality. More than a 100 plug-ins and scripts are already available. Also Gimp imports files from Photoshop (psd) and can also read scalable vector graphics (svg) files."

– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 22:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No doubt - GIMP is the answer. It's by far the most powerful and stable OpenSourced image processing program. I doubt claims that Photoshop is significantly better. I know a lot of professional artists who prefer GIMP - and the CinePaint program (which is a spin-off of GIMP) is used quite extensively in the movie business. But for the price - you certainly can't beat it! If you already know photoshop - you might want to check out GIMPshop - which is GIMP - but hacked to make it look and feel much more like Photoshop. Some people prefer the user interface of Krita - but it's nowhere near as powerful as GIMP. You may also want to check out Comparison of raster graphics editors...but you're almost certainly going to pick GIMP anyway - so you might as well not bother! SteveBaker (talk) 03:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What does the OP mean by "FOSS"? Astronaut (talk) 09:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FOSS. -- 164.214.1.51 (talk) 10:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Paint.NET is also quite good. It seems to have become less and less open sourced with time, but you can still get full MIT-licensed source code. -- BenRG (talk) 11:31, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unless GIMP has changed dramatically since the dozen times I have tried to be productive with it over the years, the real answer to this question is infact Paint.NET. It's free and very easy to use for the scope that the OP dictated. GIMP, while featureful and capable, is anything but user-friendly (even when compared to Photoshop). Having spent a decent amount of time working with each (Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET) I can assure you that for the imaging needs of almost all users, Paint.NET is going to be painless. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 18:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, everyone! I've downloaded the GIMP-powered "GimPhoto" and it's great. I'll also give Paint.NET a try per your suggestions. Thanks again!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:18, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 15

power cord temperatures

I see that power cords have temperature ratings printed on them. My question is this: is the rating the actual temperature of the metal conductor inside the cord when carrying the rated electrical current, or is it the maximum sustained allowable temperature before the materials in the power cord (such as insulation) will be degraded? The former would imply that the lower the rating, the better the cord; the latter would imply the higher the rating, the better the cord. Also, what do notations such as "FT1" mean? (I know that "FT2" means that the cable is fire-retardant, but not sure what that means in combination with "FT1.") Thank you. 72.83.73.48 (talk) 01:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This site [5] explains the flame test ratings in use. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ORKUT

There is this problem with Orkut that whenever I send 5 to 6 scraps to those who are not in my friends list then the posting gets disabled to the non friends for many hours but there is no such problem with those who are my friends why is this so???It really becoming a hurdle when I want to send invitations to strangers to join in my community.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.165.84.9 (talk) 03:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are probably better off asking at Orkut Support. Astronaut (talk) 09:26, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Computer auto start

Is there a way to make a computer automatically turn on whenever there is a power source, so for example if the computer shut down unexpectedly or there was a power cut, as soon as there was power available it would turn back on again? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Computerpowerstart (talk • contribs) 13:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, there must be setting in BIOS. (what to do after power loss)(usually choices are: leave off, switch on and mainatin previous state). -Yyy (talk) 13:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[ActivePerl] [Windows XP] DBD::mysql

ActivePerl
Windows XP

I want to install the MySQL driver for DBI. I do have DBI. And unfortunately, the default install does not have the MySQL driver. I thought it would be easy.

>ppm install DBD::mysql
Downloading ActiveState Package Repository packlist...not modified
Downloading log4perl packlist...redirect
Downloading log4perl packlist...forbidden
ppm install failed: Can't find any package that provides DBD::mysql

>install http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/DBD-mysql.ppd
ppm install failed: The PPD does not provide code to install for this platform

>cpan DBD::mysql
Going to read C:\Perl\cpan\Metadata
Database was generated on Fri, 15 May 2009 07:29:47 GMT
Running install for module 'DBD::mysql'
...
perl Makefile.pl --testuser=username

Failed to determine directory of mysql.h. Use

perl Makefile.PL --cflags=-I<dir>

to set this directory. For details see the INSTALL.html file,
section "C Compiler flags" or type

perl Makefile.PL --help
Warning: No success on command[C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=site
]
CAPTTOFU/DBD-mysql-4.011.tar.gz
C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=site -- NOT OK
Running make test
Make had some problems, won't test
Running make install
Make had some problems, won't install

What can I do now? -- Toytoy (talk) 14:20, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What version of ActivePerl? There are different URLs at uwinnipeg.ca for different versions. For 5.10.x try http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/PPMPackages/10xx/DBD-mysql.ppd. If that fails, you'll need a C compiler to build the package, the appropriate MySQL headers and libraries (at least mysql.h), and the INCLUDE and LIB environment variables will probably need to be set. I don't know what compilers are supported, but probably one (maybe both) of Microsoft C (cl.exe) and MinGW. -- BenRG (talk) 17:27, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! It's working! The Perl documents are pretty unclear. -- Toytoy (talk) 10:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Windows XP SP3 -- Reallowocating/repartitioning

In short: How do I resize Windows XP SP3's HD partition?

I am running Windows XP SP 3 on an Acer Netbook (160 GB HD, 1 Gig RAM). I am the computer admin.

The current Windows XP SP3 HD allowocation (partition) is 100% of the HD, however, I would like to reduce it to around 100GB, create another partition, and install Windows Vista Ultimate on the other partition.

I have read the instructions from Microsoft (to use Disk Manager), however, it requires already unallowocated HD space to create secondary partitions, which is already partitioned/allowocated to Windows XP SP3.

Is there any easy way to get this to work? Is there a hard way? Is it even possible?

I appreciate it, --67.32.193.53 (talk) 14:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The softwares PartitionMagic and GParted can do this —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 15:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just adding to the above, but make sure you back up your files first as a precaution. Although both of the above are good programs that shouldn't have any problems, if your computer crashes out for any reason like a power failure, you may lose everything on it - Repartitioning is pretty serious stuff. ZX81 ^talk 01:08, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Explaining to a computer illiterate person how to get rid of spyware and keylogger

Resolved

A friend of a friend (no really!) has an ex who apparently installed some sort of malware including a keylogger on her computer. She is computer illiterate. I'm recommending that she reformat her hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch as this is the simplest and almost 100% guaranteed to remove the malware. I'm not in front of her computer so I wrote up the following e-mail. Did I leave anything out? Remember that this is a person who is computer illiterate who will be unable to perform most of these tasks herself which is why I'm recommending that she seek an expert/professional to help her.

My E-mail explaining what to do

If your ex has installed any spyware or keylogger on your computer, there is no easy fix. You're going to need help from an expert/professional such as HP or Best Buy's Geek Squad. I could also help you (I'm a professional software developer with a degree in Computer Science.)

(Note that if you use a service like the Best Buy Geek Squad, remove all personal information, compromising photos, etc. before giving your computer to them. Make sure you empty your Recycle Bin. Even then, personal files can be retrieved. You'd need to use a utility to make sure your files cannot be recovered. I can recommend some utilities to do this if you decide to go this route.)

Unfortunately, I am not physically in front of your computer and I cannot give detailed, step-by-step instructions. However, in general, these are your best options:

a) Reformat your hard drive and re-install Windows and all other applications you use. b) If your PC comes with a system restore disk (either a CD-ROM or DVD), you can use this. If it asks you any questions such as whether or not you want to reformat your hard drive, answer Yes. You can call HP and they will be able to step you through the process. Make sure that they understand that your computer has been compromised with by both spyware and a keylogger.

Note that b) refers to the system restore *DISK*, not Windows System Restore which is a completely different thing. I don't recommend using Windows System Restore because it's not 100% guaranteed to fix your computer.

Before doing a) or b), make sure you back up all your files (pictures, music, documents, etc.) They will be completely erased and there is no way to retrieve them after they're gone.

In addition to above, there are several things you will need to do to make sure your ex doesn't compromise your computer again.

1) Pick a password that nobody will be able to guess. To be really safe, use a password that doesn't even contain any English language words or names. Use a mix of uppercase and lower case. Use symbols. For example, something like aUd@FN!bd_flU would be a good password.

2) Make sure Windows Firewall is turned on.

3) Get a good virus checker and malware checker. I can recommend some if you don't have any.

4) If you have a wireless router, make sure you turn on encryption.

5) Change your screen saver settings to ask for a password in order to resume working on your computer.

6) Make sure that you download all the latest security updates from Microsoft.

7) Get in the habit of logging off your computer when you're not in front of it, especially if there's a chance your ex might stop by. You don't want him to re-install any malware.

Like I said, there is no easy fix and you will probably need the help of an expert/professional to do all of this. I hope this helps.

A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

a) Reformat your hard drive and re-install Windows and all other applications you use. / The computer illiterate people I know don't know the meaning of "applications". On the other hand they have no trouble getting used to Firefox or Opera, and they do more and more stuff while browsing. Thus (unless there are hardware complexities), any present-day GUI OS is about as unthreatening as any other, and they all look much the same.

1) Pick a password that nobody will be able to guess. [...] For example, something like aUd@FN!bd_flU would be a good password. / That's utterly unmemorable (by any but a tiny minority of people) and would thus have to be written down somewhere, very likely on one or more scraps of paper that could easily be found by others. "No offence" but in my hoary opinion it's therefore a crap password. I try to use deliberate misspellings with the odd extra complexity thrown in, e.g. "konnektiKut": vastly more memorable.

3) Get a good virus checker and malware checker. I can recommend some if you don't have any. / Are these much good against such phenomena as Torpig? (Try reading the PDF from UCSB.) / 6) Make sure that you download all the latest security updates from Microsoft. / And keep doing it. And do it some more. And then do it again. Look, just tip her off to Ubuntu. It pretty much installs itself.

In addition to above, there are several things you will need to do to make sure your ex doesn't compromise your computer again. Indeed there are. My own suggestion would be to get the law onto this sleazeball. -- Hoary (talk) 16:22, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect antivirus software to be able to detect Torpig and the rootkit it runs on top of. Not out of the box, but with an update targeted at that threat. That's the main point of antivirus software, to keep on top of the threats actually out there with frequent updates. Anything you implement out of the box won't be much use after a while because the bad guys can test against your product. Yes, download the latest security updates, and then again, and then again. And do that on Ubuntu too, otherwise you're vulnerable. It's an automatic process by default. -- BenRG (talk) 14:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just change the IT jargon to plain English. "Applications" are "programs". "Malware" becomes "harmful programs like viruses or spyware". And so on...--Sonjaaa (talk) 18:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for both of your suggestions. No offense was taken, Hoary. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you remain on good terms with your friend of a friend after you have caused her to lose all her emails, email contacts, internet bookmarks, passwords, etc. (and those pictures and music files that were stored in non-standard locations). Seriously though, way too many people think the only solution to problems with Windows is to completely reinstall it. What is up with everyone? You provided good advice in the rest of your email but the advice to "Reformat your hard drive and re-install Windows ..." is the last thing you try when cleaning up a malware/virus infection, not the first. How about advising your friend of a friend to not use the computer until you can get a chance to drop by and do a proper investigation and cleanup on it - if you have to reinstall Windows then so be it, but at least someone who knows what they are doing (ie. you) will have had a go at a less drastic cleanup and had a chance to rescue all the personal stuff that needs to be kept. Astronaut (talk) 00:25, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I half agree with Astronaut. See what useful content you, knowledgably, can scrape off the hard drive before doing anything drastic to it. I return to Sonjaaa's comment: the computer illiterates of my acquaintance (and there are many of them) know next to nothing about "programs". They buy a computer from a store, and the assistant asks them two questions. First, if they want to use it for writing and calculating stuff. Yes of course they do, is the reply. Then the assistant says either of two things: (a) "then you'll need to get MS Office", or (b) "you're in luck, MS Office comes free". Secondly, if they want to protect the computer against viruses, prompting a near-identical conversation. And so much for "programs". Notions that you or I may have such as "This text editor is a bit awkward; I wonder if there's anything better out there" are as alien to them as the notion of changing the model of carburetor in my car is to me. An OS such as (K)ubuntu comes with what most (not all!) people need, it's suitable for most (not all!) and it's rather more resistant to well orchestrated attempts (e.g. Torpig) at intrusion and subversion than is the obvious commercial alternative. -- Hoary (talk) 00:54, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with installing a different OS—not Linux specifically, just anything other than what the computer shipped with—is that you lose OEM tech support. For the kind of person you're talking about, that's likely to be a big problem. They'd have to either pay someone else for support or rely on volunteer support from friends or online forums, and the latter is slow and is not much use if the problem is preventing them from using the online forums, which is often enough the case. Aside from that (or if the OEM support has expired anyway) I think Ubuntu is a fine choice for this kind of person, but there is no magic Unix security mojo. Unix boxes were like swiss cheese as recently as ten years ago, because people didn't care; the Internet used to be noncommercial and academic. The Morris worm exploited holes in professionally administered systems that had been known for years; that's unthinkable now. What keeps Unix or Windows machines secure is security updates. Ubuntu supports automatic security updating, so does Windows. Malware these days is written for profit and depends on a pool of machines run by naive users who don't install the updates. Most of those people run Windows. If they ran Linux then there would be a large pool of rootable Linux machines and "Linux would be insecure".

Anyway, none of this matters when your adversary is an angry ex who's savvy enough to install a keylogger. If they don't know your root password, they can just boot Knoppix. -- BenRG (talk) 14:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I've ever known someone get anything useful out of OEM tech support for a computer other than a reference number to use when sending back faulty hardware. Computer illiterate people use friends and family for tech support, that's why the OP is here asking the question in the first place - he's the guy this person has come to with her problem. --Tango (talk) 01:32, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They can't boot Knoppix if the CMOS is set not to boot from any external device and is itself password protected. (Or am I overlooking something?) -- Hoary (talk) 04:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If she's in the US just tell her to go to the nearest office supply box store that offers free computer virus check and removal. Office Depot offers it here right now, I've seen it offered by other companies either free or for a minimal fee. She'll likely have to listen to their sales spiel for ompteen things she should buy, but there's no purchase required. (OR Indicating that you're likely to buy something after you've asked "your boss" will shut them up faster than saying you're not interested.) If she feels uncomfortable she can always buy a pad of Post it notes or a pen or something to keep them happy. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 10:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Service desk specalists? Certification.

Do people who hire service desk specialists tend to look for certain types of certification or degrees, or is it just a matter of past experience? If one doesn't have professional experience in that kind of job but already has the computer skills self-taught, how can they easily prove it to potential employers?--Sonjaaa (talk) 15:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is an interesting question. Since it was placed on the Computer desk i will assume that this relates to computers. When looking to hire someone, Experience is Key. Some of the worlds greatest hackers where self taught without any (or very few) Degrees/Certs/ect... For example: Captain Crunch. It also depends on the person. Someone could have 5 PH/ds in Computer Science and would not beable to stand to soemone who has only an A+ with 50+- years experience, and a passion for computer. It all really depends on the person. I really hoped this helps. Please dont just listen to what i have to say, wait for other to voice their opnions. Thank you. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:12, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I could consider getting A+ certification...--Sonjaaa (talk) 18:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A+ is considered a requirement for many organizations. Also, getting your MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) is very handy to put on the resume. You get it if you pass any of the certification tests from Microsoft. Also, consider the Microsoft Certified IT Professional. If you really love studying and/or like self flagellation you can work on your MCSE. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is MCP the prereq to getting MCDST? Or what's the relationship between the two? Does MCSE replace MCP? Or is MCTS the new MCP? MCSA seems more reasonable for my needs than MCSE. So confusing. --Sonjaaa (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You get the MCP upon passing any of the Microsoft tests. The MCDST would be "better" then the MCP since it's requirements are higher. The testing to get the MCSA and the MCSE are very similar and some of the test overlap. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:11, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Service desk specialist is one of those mass market jobs. At big companies they are likely to run your application through a keyword scanner. If your resume doesn't generate the required minimum number of hits you can walk on water, no one will even look at it. (OR I used to do this manually.) For non-standard resumes it's best to look for a niche position and/or unconventional method of applying. Small companies, start ups, self-employment and networking (i.e. play golf with the boss, not computer networking) might work; if you don't want to invest the time and money in getting certified. Even getting certified is no job guarantee. It will just get you sorted into the "have a look at this one" pile. Good luck.71.236.24.129 (talk) 10:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should I stop learning on my own if I don't want to repeat it all in order to get qualifications in school?

Because apparently even an automath who theoretically knows everything would still need to go through formal education if they want a career. 94.197.175.208 (talk) 19:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is like an advice question you should ask in a place like Slashdot rather than here on the Reference Desk, but I'll answer anyway: Obviously you should keep learning on your own, wherever your passion takes you. This is on the Computing desk, so I'll assume you're interested in coding — the best coders are coders who code for fun and as a hobby, and most of these people self-directed their programming education. Tempshill (talk) 21:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And you learn better the second time you learn something. The things I actually consider myself exceptionally good at are things that I have now "learned" two, three times—things I learned once a decade ago, had to re-learn as part of some other function, maybe learn again to teach it or explain it to someone new. These are the things I really grok, as the geeks say. There is nothing wasted in redundancy when it comes to education—each time you learn something, you see more to it, you understand it on a deeper level. One is at a tremendous advantage if one is not always learning things for the first time. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Having gone through some of this with my son, I know it can be frustrating. All I can suggest is to try to find a school that lets you "test out" of doing a class. This isn't always possible - but in some cases it's possible to take the end-of-course test at the start of the course - and if you pass it to some pre-specified standard, you can skip the course. In my son's case, this didn't earn him credit hours - but did absolve him of doing that course as a prerequisite for doing something more interesting. It's well worth investigating. SteveBaker (talk) 04:05, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is, of course, "No." You should not stop learning things in the hope that on some future date someone will teach those things to you.

I agree with Steve, once you get to college, the curriculum can often be changed to meet your needs if you talk to the right people.(Department heads, Deans, Professors of classes you want to get into. Don't bother arguing with the registrar.)

For what it's worth, I've worked with a very good computer programmer who did not have a college degree. So it's not impossible. You absolutely can make a career out of being self taught.

On the other hand, I've also met (But thankfully not worked with) people who are "Self taught" but have peculiar gaps in their knowledge that they don't even realize they have. APL (talk) 16:21, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Even in some high schools, you can 'test out' of courses that are not legally mandated. You can get a job as a computer programmer without a degree if you have a strong resume and can show tons of relevent experience - but it's very very hard to get your first job with no experience and no degree. In the companies I've worked, your resume would probably be tossed out on sight by Human Resources before anyone ever got to see it. You'll end up working in some fairly low paid, miserable job for quite a few years before you can talk your way into something better - you're better off going to college instead - even if you hate it, you can get done quickly and avoid decades of much more miserable jobs. SteveBaker (talk) 16:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most (all?) US states and quite a few foreign countries have Homeschooling, "advanced proficiency" or "minimum attendance for credit" provisions if you are still in school. For college the best and safest way is just to tough it out as Steve said. You could risk getting (buying) an online degree, but they are rarely worth the money you put into them. As soon as you step off the "standard" path things tend to get rather difficult in unexpected and unpredictable places. (OR examples You can't get into the professional organization you want to join. Your promotion gets thrown out after x years in a company in favor of some snotty kid with a shiny new degree. You can't get the government contract for your own company because no one at your company meets their "competency requirements". Ditto for the bank loan to expand the business. You have to do countless extra acrobatics to get ISO certified. etc.) It's not impossible and you may not run into any trouble, but there's no guarantee that a "work around" for a degree is a one time fix. More likely than not any non-standard item in your resume will come back to haunt you at some point in the future. If you already know all the stuff they try to teach you in college you should have time to spare that you might invest in building some job experience. Companies love hiring students because they are cheap. Not everyone is cut out to be self employed. If you are, you could already start a business while studying. Some small projects that are available online don't care about your background as long as the work gets done to spec and on time. Good luck. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 11:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A true worldwide mobile phone

thumb|400px|GSM world coverage as of 2008 Do any mobile phones currently work in the US, Japan, Korea and everywhere else? I know you can get quad-band phones that support both worldwide and American GSM frequencies, but do any also work with the Japanese or Korean networks? Or is it still just satellite phones or nothing? 86.162.195.195 (talk) 19:30, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The GSM article includes the picture found at right (click on it for a larger version), which suggests that you'd do fine with a (possibly advanced) GSM phone in Korea (the good Korea, that is) and Japan. Lots of white spots elsewhere, though. Jørgen (talk) 23:13, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! (I'm the OP; sorry about the vandal(s)!) Does that mean Japan and Korea (the one strong in the Force, that is :) now use GSM compatible networks? Do they only work in 3G? That seems to be what Quad-band says, but it's not very clearly expressed. 86.162.195.195 (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The map above is out of date for Kazakstan, btw. I went there in 2007 with a Euro GSM phone (900/1800mhz) and I don't remember ever losing a signal, even picking mushrooms in a forest 100km out in the steppe! 86.162.195.195 (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HTML scraper and PostgreSQL interface

What Linux-based platforms exist that can interface with both the web and PostgreSQL and could implement an HTML scraper that copies its output to a database? (Ideal would be one that has low-level HTML processing built in.) Neon Merlin 20:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A custom PHP script on a LAMP server could do what your talking about. There might be cleaner/easier solutions out there. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:13, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are going to be using PHP, the Snoopy class is pretty great for the HTML scraping end of things. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 16

HTML/iPod Notes queries

For an assignment for university I am required to use the notes function on an iPod Classic, which utilises HTML language. We've been given a few pointers, but I'd like to use some other HTML or iPod language, whatever meta it uses. Is there a function for exceptions to 'now playing=false', and are videos affected by it? Secondly, is there a way to have a song start playing upon entering a note, or somehow make a song play at the same time as linking to a note? Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 10:45, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about the official iPod Notes Feature Guide? --grawity 11:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finding progress of for loop in Delphi application

I am using a Delphi application (written by me) to create a big fractal. The application has no GUI but runs in the background, and can run for weeks (paused only when the computer is hibernating). Now, because there is no GUI, I do not know how far the work has progressed, but because almost all the code is inside a for loop (for i := 0 to N do) I could easily create a breakpoint somewhere in the loop, inspect the variables and then use the value i/N as the current progress. The only problem is that I cannot access the for loop variable i, because it is "inaccessible here due to optimization". Before I use the applicatin next time, I will create a GUI so that I can read the progress, but is there any way I can read the progress of the current instance of the application, without terminating it and thus losing all data? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:20, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to already have it in some sort of debugger. If your Delphi has been compiled and your debugger can show you the processor registers, you can look for one that increases by one every time you hit a breakpoint at the top level of the loop. If it's being interpreted (but still is optimized somehow), you might be able to apply the same trick, but it could depend on where you put the breakpoint, so it could take a few tries (if it even worked). Other than that, unless it's writing an output file whose size you can look at or is accessing memory in some i-dependent fashion (in which case you could use a watchpoint), I think you'll just have to wait and see. You might be able to time a few iterations of the loop and see how fast it's running, and then look at its total CPU usage, but without the ability to determine i in the first place you'd probably have to be stepping it under the debugger (or at least strace or so, if such even exists for your platform), which would slow it down. You'd still get a lower bound for how far it's gotten, though. --Tardis (talk) 22:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Online Voting Script

How would I write a script to vote in the MLB All-Star Game Ballot online? I would want to go to http://www.guerrillamail.com/, get an email address (I could do that manually if it would be a lot easier), and then vote for all of the Toronto players here. RefDeskAnon (talk) 18:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I just realized that it saves my votes from before, which makes it a lot easier. Plus there is a CAPCHTA. RefDeskAnon (talk) 18:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of a few ways for autoclick voting, but entering info into boxes, CAPCHTA and other stuff that will change on each vote would require mega programming, I mean an entire program dedicated to the task —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 19:09, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would Autoit be any use? 78.146.103.200 (talk) 15:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Partially prime factorising very large numbers

I am looking for a way to find prime factors of a 1 million digit (random) number. I know getting a complete factorisation of such a large number is impractical, but I'm actually just trying to find one prime factor that is repeated (and isn't too small, say 5-10 digits minimum, I haven't really worked out how big it needs to be). Is there an efficient way of doing this on my PC? While I would like something rather more efficient than just dividing it by lots of primes and seeing what works, my first problem is that I simply don't know a programming language that can handle such a large number - can anyone recommend one? --Tango (talk) 18:30, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Any programming language that has a Bignum library (either built in or added) can do this - see Bignum#Libraries and Bignum#Languages (although at a million digits performance will probably suck for most or all). You might be better off using an existing integer factorization library rather than rolling your own (what you describe is essentially Sieve of Eratosthenes). 87.115.168.96 (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice regarding bignum. I am looking for something better than a simple sieve if possible, and recommendations for algorithms optimised for small factors of large numbers? --Tango (talk) 19:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you want it for but there are existing complete programs for this. PrimeForm can trial factor (and make a probable prime test if you want that). Note that the 20041023 development version of PrimeForm in the files area of [6] is far faster for trial factoring numbers of this size (based on TreeSieve trial factoring code by me). GMP-ECM has fast implementations of 3 other factorization algorithms for smallish factors of large numbers. I don't know the memory requirements at a million digits. You can also see our articles on Integer factorization but implementing something with an acceptable performance at this size can be challenging. If you tell us your end goal then we may be able to give better advice. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My goal is to find a repeated prime factor (ie. a prime such that the number is divisible by the prime squared), although I'm not interested in very small ones (I can easy tell if it is divisible by 4, for example, but that isn't useful to me). Well, strictly speaking, I don't need it to be prime, but any square factor will involve repeated primes, so it is probably easiest to just look for primes. I'm hoping to use it as a way to compress a random number (which should be impossible, but I'm wondering if there might be a flaw in the RNG that can be exploited - it is very close to random in terms of digit sequences, but I'm not sure that guarantees randomness in terms of prime factors). --Tango (talk) 00:30, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether you have special rules for which operations are allowed in the compressed version and how the size is defined, but it sounds like a computationally expensive way to try something unlikely to compress on average for an RNG. If you have a single specific number and don't care about average compression then you might get lucky on that number, but you could also get lucky with many other potential compression algorithms that are easier to try. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:09, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My idea is that you can write the number as

X^{2}\cdot Y

, which will have size proportional to

\log X+\log Y

plus a little overhead, which (if X is large enough) will be less than the size of the original number (which is about

2\log X+\log Y

). When I originally asked the question I was under the impression that it was very likely that there would be a repeated prime in there somewhere, but I have since looked that up and the odds are only about 40%, and there is a good chance that, even if it does exist, it is too large to be practical to find it. So, this isn't a particularly good method after all, but if it can be done efficiently it is worth a shot to see if I get lucky with the number in question. If it is going to take days or longer to compute, though, it's probably not worth the bother. --Tango (talk) 01:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your about 40% is right. The exact value is 1 - 6/π² = 0.392... If you want a prime with at least 4 digits then that drops to around 0.00013, and to 0.0000098 for 5 digits, and 0.00000080 for 6. I justed tested PrimeForm and factoring only worked to around 828000 digits on my PC with the tested version. But if you get trial factoring working at your size then you can easily factor to a size where the chance of missing a square is extremely small. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It drops to that low if you exclude really small primes? I didn't realise the drop was so dramatic. I think I'll give up now, then! Thanks for your help. --Tango (talk) 14:34, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Want to display an image somewhere on the web

I have a photo that I want to put on the internet for a few weeks so that other people can see it, and that I can provide a link to. Where would be the best place to do this with the least hassle please? 78.146.17.231 (talk) 22:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Imageshack.us is the first to come to mind. Seriously, Google is always your friend: G free picture host Washii (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Photobucket is another. Tempshill (talk) 03:20, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What are most suitable languages to learn for website development?

The only language I am fluent in is gwbasic. Suppose I wanted to make a website about for example collective intelligence, where people made predictions about eg the future values of various stocks and shares, these predictions were averaged, and then later in time compared to the reality. Rather complicated to do, I know. But what would be the languages I should learn if I wanted to create something like this? Or could I get some webpage creation software to do a lot of the work for me? 78.146.17.231 (talk) 23:05, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If all you're interested in is the display of static content, HTML will likely suffice, although these days also knowing CSS is a benefit. There are a number of specialized HTML editors available - heck, even office programs like Microsoft Word can save files as HTML these days. If you want to have interactivity, though, (like doing a computation based on user-provided input) you probably want to learn Javascript. If you want to get really fancy (like browser games), you'll probably want to look into Java (which is completely different from Javascript) or platforms like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. -- 76.201.155.7 (talk) 00:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that learning CSS is a must. Without it, your sites will either be hideous as normally viewed or else agonizing to update. Oh, and office programs like MS Word can indeed save files as a kind of sick parody of HTML, but I wouldn't bother. -- Hoary (talk) 08:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Start with HTML and then learn PHP. Tempshill (talk) 03:21, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to learn PHP. Webpage creation software wouldn't help you here. F (talk) 04:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, start with HTML, but before you get too far, take a look at XHTML, which imposes some different formatting rules. CSS and JavaScript are essentials that you will also need to become familiar with. Next you come to a fork in the road. You can take either the Microsoft path and learn ASP.NET, C# and Microsoft SQL Server, or you can take the open source path and learn Apache, PHP, and MySQL. The choice depends on the market. Many modest web sites as well as many of the most visited sites on the web (such as Wikipedia) use Apache/PHP/MySQL architecture, often running on a GNU/Linux machine. Many businesses across the spectrum operate essentially as Microsoft-only shops with the ASP.NET/C#/SQL-Server architecture. Oracle is also a major player for the database component. Good luck. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. If I spent say three hours a day five days a week learning HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Apache, PHP, and MySQL, how long would it take until I was good enough to crerate a decent website, even though I had to keep looking things up? 78.146.103.200 (talk) 17:40, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on how quick a learner you are! You have some programming experience, so I would expect you can you learn basic (X)HTML and CSS within a few hours. There isn't a great deal to learn with Apache, you just have to get it installed and set up, that might take a couple of hours if it decides to misbehave, but shouldn't take longer (that includes installing PhP and MySQL, they need to be set up together). You can learn basic SQL within a couple of hours, I expect, if you don't mind having to look up syntax and keywords quite often. Learning PHP is the probably the hardest part. Learning your second programming language is generally easier than learning your first, but still takes some time. It's difficult to say how long - it depends on you and on what you want to be able to do with it. --Tango (talk) 23:10, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Step One: Learn HTML - it's easy - you can get basic, static web pages up and running.

Step Two: Learn CSS - it's a simple extension to HTML - but you'll need it later.

Step Three: Learn PHP - in essence, PHP is a programming language that runs on the web server that can alter the HTML/CSS that's output to your users.

Step Four: Learn JavaScript - it also allows the kinds of things that PHP does - but it runs in the client's web browser.

SteveBaker (talk) 21:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you already know this, but what you want goes beyond what you can do with the typical free account that comes with the broadband internet service intended for home use. Although you can include Java or Javascript in web pages for such accounts, it executes on the client, not the server. Thus, there is no way to collect and organize information from visitors. (Some home-oriented ISPs let you include a guest book, but that is very restricted.) --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:27, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 17

Who would win in a fight generator

I'm looking for a program or something that (without any programming on my part) would predict the outcome of a fight between video game characters and other fictional creatures (I.E. Link vs. a Vampire). Me and my girlfriend are at a stalemate and would love to just know the outcome and figure SOME ONE had to have done this. Rgoodermote 00:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How do you expect a computer program to do that? The question isn't well defined. You would need to have information on their fighting capabilities in a way that can be compared - that information doesn't exist for characters that exist in different fictional universes. In most cases, it won't even exist for characters in the same fictional universe. --Tango (talk) 01:26, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I expect some one to have already done it for me. Probably in Javascript or PHP. Rgoodermote 01:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But how? It's impossible. The information needed to compute the result doesn't exist. --Tango (talk) 01:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not a gamer? The stats exist. Open up a game guide and they have em right there. As for the stats of a vampire, those exist as well. Rgoodermote 01:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The stats only exist in a way that allows for comparison between characters in the same game (you may be able to compare height and weight, but not skill and certainly not any special powers). And what stats are there for a vampire? You need to be more precise about what you mean, do you want Dracula? A D&D vampire? A typical Buffyverse vampire? Only D&D has any real stats and, again, they are only useful for fights against other D&D characters. --Tango (talk) 01:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They have specials in em. Plus, if that isn't enough. There are enough fan sites to make the hunt easy. As for vampire...the essential..which is Dracula. Rgoodermote 01:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are stats for the specials, but not in a comparable format. You can't compare "4/10" in one game with "5/10" in another since they are completely difference scales and there is no meaningful conversion factor. I've read Dracula, there were no stats in it. You would have to base it on stats that someone other than the author has made up, so it isn't really Dracula. --Tango (talk) 01:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The question and attitude indicate a probable troll. Tempshill (talk) 03:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gentlemen, the answer is obvious. The vampire would defeat Link. You don't need a computer to tell you this. Although, you can set up Smash Brothers to play by itself, matching AI characters against each other. We even have the complete list of possible match-ups. This may be the closest that modern technology can deliver. Nimur (talk) 02:20, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Obvious? I think not. The Light Arrows from Zelda would be a formidable weapon against a vampire, since you've basically got sunlight and a stake through the heart all in one blow. Even in the Zelda universe, the Light and Silver Arrows are supposed to be able to stop or kill immortals, so there you go. Link's definitely got a fighting chance. Indeterminate (talk) 07:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Internet never sleeps. Anyway, this goes to Link, no contest. He has a huge bag of tricks (let's not forget the Stone Mask), while vampires have, what, fangs and charm? And they can turn into bats? Link eats bats for breakfast. As if that weren't enough, if Link did die he would just restart the area with three hearts. Eventually the vampire is going down. -- BenRG (talk) 23:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fight generators are for pussies. Throw them all into a Blendtec, press the button; and at the end all you'll have will be Chuck Norris and bad guy smoke. RESOLVED -- Hoary (talk) 08:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This video answers any questions you might have on the subject. No Javascript needed. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way you could make a computer program that does this in any useful way. You're probably thinking of all the hit-point stats available on the internet, but it doesn't work. How do we know the hit points are compatible? If I base a game on a hitpoint scale of 1 to 10,000 then all my characters will slaughter characters from a game that runs from 0.0 to 1.0!

The more fundamental problem is the incompatibility of the "universes" the fictional characters come from. In a Zelda game, Link is virtually indestructible as long as he is holding up his shield. Does this mean that Master Chief doesn't have any weapons that could punch through Link's medieval shield? Even if Master Chief's weapons can't pierce the shield, can he use a sniper rifle to shoot Link's head? (It's never fully behind the shield in the animation of Zelda games.) Even assuming that Link survives Master Chief's attack and launches a counter attack, does the Master Sword effect MC? Zelda fan's will say "yes" because it's magical and can kill anything. Halo fans will say "no" because it's preposterous that the MC's armor is vulnerable to such ancient weapons wielded by such a small person.

There's no way a computer program could decide this sort of stuff on its own. If a program like this exists, it's only because someone has put in his opinion for all the variables. APL (talk) 16:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.googlefight.com/ </thread> CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 16:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks CaptainVindaloo, that's close enough to what I was asking. Rgoodermote 03:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a gamer, but if scores already exist, then could he not just try 1) converting the different scores into a z score or failing that, a percentage, then 2) decide which of the scores from the different websites are more or less equivalent, then 3) decide what the weighting of the various scores would be in relation to the characters fighting prowess, then 4) calculating a weighted average fighting score for each character? 89.242.109.25 (talk) 12:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, such a simplified scoring system would not work. The set of all things which can fight each other do not form a total ordered set, which is why all of these games have such complex scoring statistics to begin with. (In plain english, consider this simple example, common in many games: infantry can defeat rockets; rockets can defeat armored tanks; armored tanks can defeat infantry. Which has the highest score?) Complex interactions between combatants' unique abilities result in the need for a nonlinear combination of capabilities which cannot be mapped to a single linear statistic. In the pathological case, N different statistics are required for N different participants, with a unique match-up outcome for every possible combination. If time-variation is permitted, or if there is an element of indeterminate (random) outcome, then those must also be parameterized. The more realistic the model, the more sophisticated such parameters must be. Nimur (talk) 14:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Google

I think there are ways I can improve my google searches by using speech marks and plus signs and other stuff, but I can't find a page to teach me these things. Any help?91.109.232.157 (talk) 08:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google search basics: More search help (it's linked on the "Advanced Search" page). --dapete 08:58, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This cheat sheet (http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html) is also very useful, I use it myself. ny156uk (talk) 12:46, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Inkscape banknote tutorial

Hi, guys. I'm interested in finding the full version of this tutorial, but it appears it costs! Does anyone know of a free version, alternative (or does anyone have it and is willing to email it...)? Thanks! ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 09:13, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They are called spirograph images colloquially. Google "Inkscape spirograph" or "Illustrator spirograph" and you can find lots of different ways to make them (like this one or this one for Illustrator, but I suspect Inkscape can do similar things). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 18

Printing separate/different files

So at work, I have to print the same two worksheets every day. They are Microsoft Excel files and one is read-only while the other is not, so I can't combine the two files or anything. I always gotta print them on two separate sheets of paper. Any one know if it's possbible to print two separate files onto one page? TravisAF (talk) 02:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If the other file is not read-only, can't you copy and paste the content of the first page into that file? Nimur (talk) 02:47, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They're heavily modified files with all sorts of tables and borders and etc. Everytime I try copy and pasting, it distorts everything in both files. TravisAF (talk) 03:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't copy and paste. Use Paste, Special and choose the options for pasting Formatting and Values. Your borders etc will transfer correctly, and any formulas on the page will be transcribed into the current value, not pasted as the formula (which of course would refer to different cells in the new location).

If that fails, mark the print area in Page One, and reduce the scale if necessary, to make it fit half a sheet of paper. This will be the top half of your print-out. Page Two set up with half a page of blank cells above it,included in the Print Area. Feed the used paper back into the printer, and Page Two will print below the Page One material. To avoid the Page Two spacer over-writing the Page One stuff with gridlines, turn off gridlines in Printing Setup. If you need gridlines showing between the tables, set the thinnest black or grey border around those cells.KoolerStill (talk) 11:14, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or get yourself a PDF printer like PDFCreator, print both files to the same PDF (which will then be 2 pages), then print the PDF with a "2-up" setting that prints two pages on the same sheet of paper. I'm no guru at scripting, but I'd make a VBA script that opens one Excel file, prints it to PDF, closes it, opens the other, prints to PDF, closes it. Then I'd hope that my pdf print software supported command line, and make a .bat file that first combines the two PDF files into one, then prints them. That makes for 2 clicks each day (first VBA script, then bat file) but still quite automated. You could rescale the Excel files so that they look neat when they occupy half a sheet of paper each (possibly scaling up font sizes, etc). Jørgen (talk) 13:39, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or copy the area you want to print from each spreadsheet and paste them as pictures into a Word document. Enhanced metafile format works well in my experience - it produces readable images over a generous range of re-sizing. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is the objective to print both on one sheet to save paper, or to print one spreadsheet on top of the other (like a printed form), or to simply reduce the clicks needed?

To print both with one click, select both in Windows Explorer then right-click and pick "Print". Excel will open twice and each will be printed in turn. To print one on top of the other, put the first printed sheet back into the paper tray. To save paper, turn the paper over before putting it back in the paper tray. If you want either of these last two to be done with no manual intervention, you will need to look at the many suggestions provided by the others above. Astronaut (talk) 18:12, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Website causing internet to appear to disconnect

Whenever I visit xtube.com (so far the only site that causes this problem), my internet connection appears to completely drop. I get logged out of my messenger programs, downloads cease, and I can't open any new webpages for roughly a minute after I try to load that site. But internet only stops on my computer, and not the others on the network. I stopped going there several months ago when this started happening, but I just got the urge to visit it again and the problem still occurs. Other people I have asked don't have any problems. Anyone know why this would happen? 74.230.240.144 (talk) 03:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That type of video site used to, in dial-up days, disconnect you and switch you to a premium rate service, which you'd find out about on your next phone bill. Now this doesn't apply, there may be associated viruses hogging your bandwidth to send data back to their home base. Or it could be redirecting you for fake clicks on numerous pay-by-click sites. How does you machine stack up (OS, RAM) with those that don't get the problem? Do a virus and spyware check on your machine before you use the site again.KoolerStill (talk) 10:31, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My first assumption was also spyware, but scans have always come up empty. Unless the program is so obscure that major anti-malware programs don't pick up on it, I don't think that's the cause. My OS, RAM, and bandwidth are similar to others who don't have the problem, so I doubt that's an issue either. 74.230.240.144 (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good gaming mouse that work on glass?

What is a good gaming mouse that will work on a glass surface (smooth top and frosted underside)? I have a glass desktop and have been thinking of getting a new mouse. I've tried one of the Logitech G-series (forgot which) which didn't work, and I'm quite clueless on gaming mice in general; so any help would be appreciated. Wireless would be a plus (less of a mess on my desk) but not essential. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A laser mouse like a Logitech G5 might work but you should just save the bother and get yourself a mousemat. The problem is all gaming mice now use LED or lasers to read movement, and they don't work well on seethrough or reflective surfaces, so a mousemat is your best option. 212.219.8.233 (talk) 09:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Boy - if you had to pick a maximally mouse-hostile surface, glass would be it! Optical mice work by pointing a tiny camera down at the desk and tracking how the picture it sees moves as you move the mouse. But the focal length of the lens is very carefully set - and the glass will screw that up for sure - it's also too uniform to have an image the mouse can track. The alternative is a clunky old mechanical mouse - but those don't grip worth a damn on super smooth surfaces like glass. So either way, you're going to need a mouse mat - and at that point, any mouse should do. I guess you could try a trackball - some people love them - but many can't stand them...it's a matter of opinion. SteveBaker (talk) 03:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I personally use a Logitech Trackball. This type of mouse works on any surface, It will even work with a complete lack of surfaces. It does take a little time to get use to it, and some people never realy do get use to it. Some will say that trackballs are not gaming mice, let alone FPS mouse. As i said, its not for a everyone. I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've flipped the glass over now and use the frosted side as top instead. It was too rough but then I covered it with transparent book cover film and now it's like having a giant icemat! That opens up a lot more options... --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions in one

1. I'm switching my anti-virus software. I'm torn between G-Data, Avira, Kaspersky and Symantec. Which one would you recommend?
2. I'm also buying some new headphones. I've found a few selections to my liking and I would also like an opinion on these: 1, 2 and 3. I know these have customer reviews, which I've read, but last year I bought a pair of $50 Sony headphones that went out on me after only a few months, so this time I don't want to get screwed over again. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 05:22, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions" TravisAF (talk) 05:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Or predictions about future events. Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead." The "no request for opinions" has mainly to do with polarizing questions that are completely subjective, to which no factual answers can be given. Asking for an opinion on the quality of a product is an entirely different story. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 06:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of the anti-virus products you list, I only have experience with Symantec, which I found to be a resource hog and difficult to remove from my machine once I had decided in favour of other anti-virus software.

I now use Bit-defender, which is far from perfect (among other things the firewall conflicts with my network card), but my machine is more responsive than before I switched. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC).[reply]

(ec) And it's not legal or medical advice being sought. Anyway; Whipit - I can't offer any suggestions on the headphones, but I'll take a stab at the AV one. Looking over the Feb. 09 results at .av-comparatives.org I'd probably opt for the Kaspersky (of the ones you've mentioned). I see that G-Data also rates very high, but I haven't tried it so I'm not familiar with it. I wasn't happy with Avira (just a personal observation, nothing wrong with the product), and Symantec is only now getting back up to the upper-ranks with its 2009 improvements. Kaspersky has been around, and a top-notch AV proggie for a while, and if I didn't have Nod32, I'd prolly be running it. Of course, the decision ultimately is yours; have a look at some of the reviews and comparatives - then just grab what you like best. ;) — Ched : ? 06:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you experienced with operating system internals? If you are, I would recommend that you use HIPS software instead of AV software (try the free COMODO Internet Security, which includes an AV as well as a firewall and HIPS). I personally can't stand the fact that AV software has to scan everything you try to use, which slows down your computer considerably. Most AV software is very bad at self-protection as well - see the Matousec leaktest results. --wj32 ^t/c 08:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exploiting Google Safesearch

Suppose, a program does a google image search with Safesearch on, and another search with the same query, but with safesearch off. Now it finds the intersection of the images found and subtracts them from the second set, and voila! You have your own porn search engine, thanks to Google! Can this really ever work ? And if it does, isn't it some sort of a concern? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.80.114 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What a lot of trouble to go to. Leave Safesearch off and just type p o r n (without the spaces). Optionally add 'online', 'free', 'images' or 'video'. Optionally be more specific. Click GO. That's it, your own porn search engine. KoolerStill (talk) 11:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The exposure (no pun intended) is that you could potentially infer the exact requirements to fall into the 'safesearch filtered' category, and then possibly use that to keep your images showing up in all results. If that's any use to you. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 12:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you tried this yourself, already. What occurred? Tempshill (talk) 15:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why would it be a concern? SafeSearch exists to keep material you might not want to see away from your eyes. It can generally be disabled with a few simple clicks of a button. Its purpose is not to make it impossible to view porn, but to make it more unlikely that you view porn by accident. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MySQL table creation

Resolved

Is there an easy way to automatically generate the "CREATE TABLE ..." SQL command from an existing table? -- Toytoy (talk) 10:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I got it!

SHOW CREATE TABLE tblname; -- Toytoy (talk) 11:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. Wonderful how putting a problem into writing helps point you in the right direction. Good luck with it.KoolerStill (talk) 11:28, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An idle wondering...

Totally random question that I've been kinda curious about for a while now: what's the default size for the TTL on an IP packet sent from a personal computer (Windows, Linux or Mac)? It's an octet, so the max size is 256, right? Is it set to that? Is there any guidance from an RFC or something? 90.237.196.83 (talk) 12:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

128 seems pretty typical, but you are right that the max is 256. RFC 791 explains the function of the field but does not set an explicit starting value. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 12:32, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's rather inconcievable that you'd need to make more than 128 hops if everything was working like it should. Thanks! 90.237.196.83 (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

TTL is even more esoteric than that. It's actually intended to represent the number of hops or the number of seconds since creation (whichever is greater, basically a hop counts as no less than one second.) So the original intention was that a packet would be killed off after either 255 hops or 255 *seconds* spent being routed, whichever came first. Considering how long it's been since a packet (around 1400 bytes) could traverse the global network from one side of the planet to the other multiple times in one second, it just baffles my mind that at one point we thought to ourselves "so, how about giving the packet over 4 minutes to find it's way to the destination..."--66.195.232.121 (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Store and forward over a congested overseas link, or from a spotty connection in the middle of nowhere, or over a satellite uplink, can add appreciable amounts of time. Granted, even then 4 minutes is probably a long time to wait for a connection, but a 15-30 seconds latency may not be unheard of. Once you've assigned a full byte for the purpose, there's no reason to arbitrarily limit the max value. -- 128.104.112.117 (talk) 18:32, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on the OS it will vary, but if memory serves, Windows machines use 128, and hop in some predictable pattern. Linux uses some other starter an hops in a linear, but non-sequential fashion. Open BSD, for instances, uses a random start and random pattern (maybe)?). Shadowjams (talk) 09:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Open-source alternatives

I am trying to find open-source programs for following tasks:

simulate optical components
simulate fluid flow
speech recognition

Normally, I am quite satisfied with open-source alternatives and regard them usually as superior. There are just a couple of fields where I can't find an alternative.--Mr.K. (talk) 12:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you see POV-Ray? It's an open-source ray tracing program. You really need to be more specific about what you are looking for - you have mentioned three huge fields, and there are certainly open-source programs in all of them - but what exactly is it that you're trying to do? Nimur (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I need speech recognition to dictate texts. The other two are only out of curiosity. I would like to know how different sets of lenses work and also how the aerodynamic of different virtual car/plane or whatever works.--Mr.K. (talk) 15:09, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at our article? Several open-source items are listed there for voice dictation and control. Nimur (talk) 15:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) http://www.osalt.com/ seems to be a good website. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Osalt is amazing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 15:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are some open-source programs for speech recognition, however, how realistic is it to use them in a office environment (that means, if you want to really work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 15:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume that by "simulate optical components", Mr. K is looking for something like Zemax or CODE V, which you could use to (say) design a zoom lens for a camera and accurately predict its optical performance. POV-Ray isn't really suitable for that job... even if it knows something about refraction and reflection, it would be like using Adobe Illustrator instead of AutoCAD to design a jet engine. You could sorta, kinda, imagine doing it, but only as a painful exercise... -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, but these two are not open-source. Could it be that there is no open-source equivalent?--Mr.K. (talk) 11:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I know of. When I was in grad school, we mostly ran on open source, but we bought those two. I'd love to be proven wrong. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Change the default view for 'file open' dialogue box

When I am working I usually am interested in opening the most recently edited files which is easy if I need one of the files listed at the bottom of the "File" menu but otherwise a pain. I hit ctrl-O to get the dialogue box, change the view to "Details" from "List", then click twice on "Date Modified" to get the most recent files at the top. You can call me lazy if you like, but I hate going through the above every time I open a file.

I am running windows xp sp3 if that helps. misli h 18:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I hardly ever use the "Open" command anyway, I generally select the files by double-clicking on them (or dragging them into the application from) Explorer. All that tends to take is Alt-Tab to get me to the Explorer window, and with that one, I don't need to change the view settings every time I use it. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it is impossible to do what I want to do, sad. misli h 14:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Selling Old Computer - Value and best way to clean it up?

Hello all. I realize that Ref Desk is not the place to ask opinion-based questions, so I may be splitting hairs here...

I'm going to attempt to build a computer (my first build) and if all goes well, I plan on selling my old computer. Two questions: 1. what's it "worth" and 2. what's the best way to clean up the hard drive so someone does not recover/steal my personal info/files.

Machine: Dell Dimension 8400 purchased new in 2005. Works like a charm, not a thing wrong with it, I just want to try to build my own machine.

Comp Has:

3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading Technology
Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition
2 Gigs of PC 5200 RAM
Nvidia 6800 256 MB Video Card DVI/VGA and a TV Tuner
120 Gigs harddrive
CD/DVD RW drive
Floppy Drive
8 USB ports
Comes with a 15 inch LCD monitor, and standard keyboard/mouse set
I would keep Office 2007 installed

I see there is an auction for a similar 8400 on eBay that just ended at $202. However, that computer did not have a separate video processing card or a TV turner card. I was thinking about just putting $250 on it and seeing what happens, but I'd appreciate any advice.

I would try to sell this on eBay, Craig's List or through the local paper - whichever will yield the highest amount.

I want to ensure my files are completely gone. I was thinking about using the File Shredder program bundled with Spybot Search and Destroy. Any ideas?

Thanks for the time! :) Rangermike (talk) 19:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

File Shredder should do the job. As for the computer, I would not be surprised if you could do better by breaking it into component parts. The monitor itself could probably fetch you $80. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why get rid of it at all? You could keep it and use it as a second machine, a media server (with another hard drive), a tool to mess around with Linux, etc. You could give it to your parents, your kids, your grandparents, or you could give it to a charity. As for wiping your data, there are plenty of commercial and free disk cleaners and some reasonable suggestions in this previous discussion. Astronaut (talk) 20:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the same link, but should remain useful even after the post drops off this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

File shredders are nice, but if you want to make sure you've eliminated ALL your personal data - I'd format, and re-install the OS. Just to be on the safe side IMHO. — Ched : ? 20:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't trust file shredders. I'm sure they have good intentions, but secure file shredding is an unsolvable problem because files can be relocated, leaving bits of themselves behind, and the filesystem doesn't keep track of all the places the file used to be. Shredding free space (after deleting all sensitive files in the ordinary way) works in principle but is very difficult to get right in practice. I don't think it can be done at all on a mounted volume while Windows is running because the filesystem drivers don't provide the necessary support. And all of these techniques will fail if you overlook a sensitive file. The only way to be sure is to shred the whole drive, and the easiest way to do that is using TrueCrypt. After doing that you would have to reinstall Windows and Office if you wanted those to be available for the buyer. If you want to shred files or free space on a regular basis without reinstalling everything every time, SDelete is probably as good as it gets. -- BenRG (talk) 20:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, really, it depends on the data. We're not talking about nuclear design codes here, I imagine, just old homework and the like. A file shredder is better than just deleting it. Whether it is better than nuking the whole thing, well, probably depends on how important the data is. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate all the suggestions and thoughts on cleaning it up. I was planning on selling the machine and using the proceeds to purchase the components for my new build. But astronaut got me thinking ... maybe I'll use it to tinker around with Linux or some of the other open source OS out there. I've never used any other OS other than Windows. Now is a good time to learn/try something new. Thx! Rangermike (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, really. Or re-reconsider. Assembling your own computer these days, when you already have a perfectly good computer is less reinventing the wheel than paying handsomely for the unexciting "privilege" of removing a wheel from your car and bolding it back on. I mean, these days most of what you need is anyway on the motherboard, and the stuff you want that isn't is attached via unambiguous cables. (It's ages since I bothered with a floppy drive but I think that you can actually misattach it. Whereupon no mushroom cloud will arise; the FDD simply won't work.) Now, if you want to be adventurous you'll get some ancient monster paperback on how to assemble computers and dig around for an old case, an old motherboard, and some funky old stuff to attach to it. Don't forget such essentials as an I/O card (for RS232C and Centronics). The SCSI card may or may not work with your full-height DDS backup drive and the rest even after you've set the DIPs for the right ID numbers. My favorite item is the Hercules Graphics Card Plus; this works like a charm with either XyWrite or Sprint. I wouldn't skimp on memory: go for all of 2MB, and good luck accessing what's above 640kB! ¶ Alternatively, realize that you have a perfectly good computer already, one that's probably got (or can easily be given) bags of space for an additional OS. For which I'd recommend this advice (despite its title, not Ubuntu-specific). -- Hoary (talk) 03:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this, in part because old computers just aren't worth much. Your monitor will still be worth something for awhile because an LCD screen, even a small one (or especially a small one—not everyone wants giant ones!) will work basically the same three, five, however years later. Having an extra machine around can be quite useful if you do any sort of programming—I have a Dell from 1999 that I keep around to every once in awhile use for batch work (e.g. running OCR on a slew of files—something I can let running for days if need be). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to my Internet?

The information about my computer is somewhere in the history of my computing reference desk questions.

In short, it's an HP with Vista.

Friday, I couldn't get the circle to stop rotating. The lights on the modem didn't indicate a problem. I finally got the screen saying either I couldn't get to the site or I wasn't connected to the Internet. It had a place to click to "diagnose connection problems" and for one site where I was, doing that said that the site had a problem. There was a place to click to "repair" and I was able to go back to that site.

I was also able to go to Wikipedia. At first, I thought it was because the pages were in my history, though some of them didn't come up after CTRL-H even though I had been to them. Then I was able to go to other pages I hadn't gone to.

But on two other web sites, all I could get was the circle rotating and rotating. This wasn't just a Yahoo problem because it was happening to two sites. I couldn't get into my Yahoo email. I couldn't send the email that was on the screen. I saved it, signed in to another email account, and sent it. Then I turned off the computer. When I turned it back on, both sites were working again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rebooting is often the simplest way to solve networking trouble in Vista, as they've managed to move the networking information behind two or three additional screens when compared to XP's Control Panel. You may want to try launching a command prompt next time it happens and type ipconfig /flushdns to clear out any possible DNS resolution issues, and consider installing another browser such as Mozilla Firefox to isolate whether it's a general networking problem, or something specific to Internet Explorer. Coreycubed (talk) 21:11, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I like Internet Explorer and don't want to consider Firefox. I go to a library where I have to use Firefox and that's just a nightmare.

I have instructions written down for how to get to "ipconfig" or "flushdns" but I don't have the problem right now. I'm in the process of searching for the specifics of my computer.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here [7] are the details of my computer. I keep a link to how someone told me to search for my Help Desk questions, and substituting what appears in the URL when you search the Computing Reference Desk archives in the URL I was told to use for the Help Desk gives me my Computing Reference Desk questions. I'll keep all three of these.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

XPath: Equality match on list-valued attribute

I'm building an application that allows the user to flag elements within HTML documents for subsequent text processing. To future-proof my application, I have chosen to use XPath/XQuery syntax to identify the elements, but instead of incorporating a full implementation of XPath, I am currently hand-rolling support for a handful of forms of XPath rule. One thing I'm hung up on is the correct form of a rule to match one token in a list. At least one version of the HTML standard[8] defines the common class attribute to have value type NMTOKENS. As I understand it, this means that the value of a code attribute is a list, tokenized on whitespace. What I want to be able to do is specify an element/attribute/value triple (for the class attribute), e.g. (div, class, print) and have it match an element like:

<div class="foo print bar"/>

but not one like:

<div class="noprint"/>

By my reading of one source[9], I should use:

   div[contains(@class, "print")]

but from another[10], I should use:

 div[@class="print"]

I have been scouring the standards[11], and I can't see that this question is answered explicitly one way or the other, but I think the answer may lie somewhere in the way that the characters are assembled into collation units. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 21:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Phone location device/site

I remember hearing about some kind of facility a while back, where you could find out the location of a mobile phone. I seem to recall that you had to send a text message to a certain number so that they had you on their system and then you could go to a website and tap in your number and it told you where that phone was. Anybody know about anything like this?Popcorn II (talk) 21:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds a bit like Loopt. Bovlb (talk) 21:52, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of services that will find the location of a mobile phone. They are usually aimed at worried parents trying to keep their kids away from crime hotspots or hanging around in the park drinking with their mates. The owner of the phone has to consent to this (unless the requesting party is the police/etc.) That is pretty easy to do if the phone is your's or your kid's and usually involvs relying to a text message. Accuracy is limited to the location of the nearest phone network antenna (ie. about 500 metres in an urban environment?) and of course the phone has to be switched on. A Google search offers up lots of possibilities. Astronaut (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 19

Strange Japanese plug

I have a Japanese mate and he used to connect his external CD drive to a plug that resembles a USB. The difference was that the plug was a square with a smaller square at its side. It was as broad as a USB. What is that?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 11:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are multiple types of USB plugs - If you live in Europe you will probally think of the Type A plug as "The USB Plug". However, there are several other USB plugs (Image). From your description i think that you mean the middle one in this image - a plug type B. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe Firewire? Jørgen (talk) 13:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A photo/drawing would be nice. F (talk) 13:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably Firewire, but maybe eSATA? APL (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read our article? Universal Serial Bus? Oda Mari (talk) 04:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

autostart a crashed program

Resolved

If a windows program crashes (and they often do) is there any way to have the computer restart the program automatically? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. You'll have to restart it manually. The only exception to this rule is explorer.exe that automatically restarts if it crashes. Buffered Input Output 12:43, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To refine the answer by BufferedIO: There is no build in method to do this, but software (and freeware) is availible that will restart a program once it crashes. That type of software works trough minitoring the running processes. If a proces is terminated or unresponsive it will restart the proces. Some applications (Mostly security related though) have such functionality build in into them. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is exactly what I am looking for. Any suggestions for good programs to try? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 12:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just found something, seems to be working well. Thanks

My friend says the plural of "mouse" is "mouses" when referring to computer accessories.

I say he's full of crap. Who's right? What Is Moe? (talk) 13:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Both Mice and Mouses are acceptable, see Mouse (computing)#Etymology and plural. Nanonic (talk) 13:10, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ahh ec damn —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 13:11, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How admirably succinct. If you want a longer and more involved arugment, with academic references and all, ask on the Language RefDesk. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GNU Software

Where can I download a precompiled version of GNU Chess thats ready to work after installing. When I d/l the files from GNU sites you have to have a compiler to install. So where can I d/l the program so that its already compiled and I can just install and play. Thank you. --Mudupie (talk) 14:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that you can't take a program compiled for one system and run it on another system. So, you must state what system you are using to ensure that you are getting a program that will run. -- kainaw ™ 14:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, since this is not The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, I'm going to guess Mudupie is running Windows, and will want to visit the first link that appears when he Googles gnu chess windows download, which is this link at Sourceforge which has a Setup binary. Tempshill (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the link you want: [12]. It's not from the GNU people, but I've used past versions myself. I never bothered to get Xboard running though. I normally would suggest googling for it too, but I remember it being hard to find. Shadowjams (talk) 20:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English.dat

Hi....I'm finding files called english.dat spread around some of my folders. What is this file for? Any worries? 69.180.160.77 (talk) 15:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which OS? Which folders? In C:\WINDOWS, C:\Users, or C:\Program Files? It sounds like a file with English strings of an application. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try to open one of the files in a text editor (e.g. Notepad). Then you might be able to infer from the strings which application created the files. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, yes...Windows XP...and they seem to be placed pretty randomly. There's some in the My Documents folder, some in Program files. When you open them they contain: 28.03.09 09:56:08 passed .\HttpFunctions.cpp, 54. The content seems pretty static except for the last 2 didget number which seems to increment. 69.180.160.77 (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The number appears to be referencing time, so the last number would be the seconds. My guess is that they are used by some program to keep track of time that has passed since an event. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google Earth Resolution

hi, just out of interest where in the world is the highest resolution on Google Earth? thanks,--Abc26324 (talk) 16:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please clearify your question? Do you mean the resolution of the program that is called Google Earth? Or are you asking where the highest resolution picture of earth would be? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean best quality images, they tend to be cities and large urban areas. Countryside is usually poor quality —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 16:13, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What place(s) in the world have the best resolution, i know its likely to be urban areas, but is there anywhere which has the most detail (i heard that Prague is quite good?)?--Abc26324 (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My vote would be for Cambridge, Mass. Matt Deres (talk) 16:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've always been under the impression that 37°25′18.33″N 122°5′3.46″W / 37.4217583°N 122.0842944°W wins. Cycle~ (talk) 18:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether 15°17′55″N 19°25′47″E / 15.298542°N 19.42974°E wins, but it's awesome. Explanation here (also check out the locations in the comments). -- BenRG (talk) 07:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Load pre-installed windows in VirtualBox

Is there anyway to take a hard drive with windows XP pro already installed and run that under VirtualBox Without the BsoD? Or to at lease startup my own copy of winxp with the user profiles/settings/SAM files/programs from the windows on the hard drive? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to mintion, the host system is Ubuntu 9.04– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's the error message? I believe the problem is that windows xp makes a hash out of the hardware of your computer, and if that changes significantly such as moving to a completely different computer or vm it refuses to run as some sort of copyright protection —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 16:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I dont remember the exact error, but i do believe you are right, is there a way to remove or reset that hash? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Windows licensing restrictions wouldn't cause it to BSOD. --wj32 ^t/c 10:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I heard a different explanation for this phenomenon. If there is significant hardware change, the drivers may not match up so Windows does not work. You can try an on-top reinstallation of Windows. (That's what I usually do after changing motherboards.)

Java: Reading from a File

In Java, how can I read in a portion of a file beginning at byte number x of the file and ending at byte number y, where x and y are two numbers the user specifies? I need to extract information from a star catalogue, but can't read the whole thing into a byte array because it's much too large.

I'm a Java novice, so please keep your answers easy to understand. Thanks in advance. --Bowlhover (talk) 16:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I dont know very much about java, but would it be possible to cut down the file with python first? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:31, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very unhelpful answer. --Sean 17:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

_{sorry – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)}[reply]

You want to use a RandomAccessFile, seek() to x, then read y-x bytes with read(). ~~There's also a readFully() call that will do it all for you in one go, but the previous instructions will work in most any language~~. --Sean 17:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind about readFully(); its offset is into the data, not the file. --Sean 18:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

evolution email misbehaving with linux

Hi, I use linux, and evolution for my email. Some time back, I expunged my "Trash" folder (and my "Junk" folder), and for some reason they haven't been the same since. When I click on a message in my inbox and try to move it to a different folder, I can move it anywhere except "Trash" or "Junk". When I try to move the message, I get a list of available destination folders, and all the folders appear correctly, including "Trash" and "Junk", but when I click on either of those two, there's no response (the other folders work fine). Furthermore, when I delete something from my inbox, it stays in the inbox as a deleted message. I can choose the option "Hide deleted messages", and then they don't appear, but if I click "Show deleted messages", they appear with a strikethrough. I've tried googling the problem, and tried hunting through the "Preferences" list (and other places), but can't find anything. What's going on, and how can I fix this?? Thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 17:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it's really confused itself, you could move ~/.evolution aside and re-import your mail. --Sean 18:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

repair cracked glass screen ipod touch with glue

Can someone recommend a glue or paint like substance to seal cracks in the glass screen of an ipod touch ? so far as i can tell, the device (my sons) works; but I'd like to seal the cracks to keep water out and prevent further damage. Their are some car windshield repair kits that look close; any suggestions ? Judging from the number of internet sites offering repairs, a fair number of people have cracked glass on their ipod touch devices. The cost of repair is around 100 dollars, or you can buy the part and diy for around 40; however, the instructions available on the web , the repair is pretty difficult the first time you do it, when you don't know exactly what to do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.220.64.105 (talk) 17:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, cracked glass usually means the death of LCD panels - especially touch-sensitive panels. I would be quite surprised if there was anything much you could do to repair it. It's not just a matter of keeping water out. The system uses the glass in the screen as a capacitive layer that makes the touch interface work. It's hard to imagine how it could keep working if any of the cracks propagate all the way across the screen...and LCD display panels usually die completely after they get cracked. SteveBaker (talk) 23:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I cracked my cell phone screen and put one of those stick-on screen protectors over it, which was good enough that I didn't bother pursuing a more complicated and expensive repair. However, you can also buy ipod repair parts from many places online. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 02:46, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No wireless Internet even with strong signal

Hi. A customer of mine has an antenna on his roof that he uses to get wireless. (He lives in the middle of nowhere and pays someone to share their wireless) The signal from the antenna is piped into his Dell desktop computer via a coaxial cable. That works great, but he also has a Gateway laptop that his wife uses. There's a crossover cable that runs from his desktop to a Belkin wireless router. Now, the laptop sees the signal from the router, and it can actually log into the router (192.168.2.1). The signal is strong, too, and the Internet and wireless lights on the router are solid green. But every once in a while, even though Windows says it's connected, the laptop stops loading web pages and it can't ping anything beyond the router. There's only one other wireless network in the area, and it has almost no signal. He says he's gotten it to work by just rebooting the desktop computer. I got it to work today by disabling and re-enabling the connection inside the desktop. Rebooting the router doesn't work. Changing the channel doesn't work, either. It has no encryption. He has two connections listed in the Network Connections folder on the desktop. One is wired and the other is wireless. I think the wired one is the connection to the router. One of them uses a static IP -- I think that's from the antenna on the roof. He actually expects me to fix this problem. His computer is acting weird (really slow, etc.) so I was thinking of re-installing Windows. Any other ideas? Thanks for any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WinRAR anodeeven (talk • contribs) 19:31, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you have enabled Internet connection sharing on the desktop computer. In my experience that is unreliable. It also sounds like you have a wifi card in the desktop computer, i am guessing that the coaxial cable is connection to that wifi card. What i think you might need, that will simpify things a little would be to get a wifi repeater [13][14], and have that connect directly to that antenna, then have both the laptop and desktop connect wirelessly. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have another suggestion. Turn of the wireless router's DHCP. Then unplug the cross-over cable. Replace that with a normal ethernet cable but instead of plugging that in to the same plug on the wireless router, plug it in to a different plug, any plug but the one labled "WAN"(unless you only have one plug, in that case; same plug). See, the way i think you have it set up is that the desktop will give your router an ip address. Then the router, acting as a DHCP server will give your laptop an ipaddress. In by-passing the router's DHCP i hope this will fix it for you, If it does not then you might have to do the first thing i suggsted. Best of luck! – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ok. Thanks Elliott. I will try your suggestions tomorrow. Right now, the crossover cable is plugged into the "Internet" jack on the router. I have a spare CAT 5e cable that I will connect to one of the other jacks. I will also disable DHCP in the router.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 20:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From what your describing; that might or might not fix the problem. If i where in your place, before i bought a repeater, heres what i would do.

Disable Internet connection sharing on the desktop.
Assign an ip address to the wired connection on the desktop. (leave everything blank except the 'IP address" and 'Subnet Gateway')
keep the DHCP turn off on the router.
Download, install and setup privoxy on the desktop, and bind it to the same ip address that you choose for the desktop's wired connection.
Assign an ip address to the wireless connection on the laptop in the same rang as the desktop but set the 'Default Gateway' as the ip address you set on the wired connection on the desktop. (leave everything blank except the 'IP address', 'Subnet Gateway' and 'Default Gateway')

This would be done after you re-configure your router to pass DHCP requests to the desktop (my second suggestion)

This is just what i would do. Its kinda complecated if you dont know excatly how to do it. but it should work reliably. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And by all means, do not rule out reinstalling windows. It is a good idea if the computer is running slowly and acting weird. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm worried that his ISP has assigned him only one IP address. Hence the static configuration for the wireless connection on the desktop. So, could I give the wired connection on the desktop the same IP address as the wireless one? And could I tell the router to use that same IP address, as well? I used to use Privoxy to filter ads (I now use IE7 Pro). I would start it and configure the browser to use the local host as the proxy. But, are you suggesting that I route all network requests through it? Sorry for the confusion. I don't know much about Privoxy beyond browser applications.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 07:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, i am sure that his ISP only gave him one ip address. The only modifications i am asking you to do is to the wired connection on the desktop, and the wireless connection on the laptop. As for the ips, If you assign the ipaddress to the wired connection on the desktop as 192.168.1.3 then set the ip address on the wireless on the laptop as 192.168.1.4, then set the ip on the router to 192.168.1.5. On the laptop set the default gateway to 192.168.1.3. This is a complex setup. Without being there poking the computers myself it is hard to say that this will work or not.

This is how i think you have it set up right now. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clearify, I think that you should try to reinstall windows first. If the problem continues, then remove the cross over cable and replace it with a normal cable as i said above. If that does not work then reconfogure the setting on the desktop, and laptop. If that does not work then you need to set up a wifi repeater and place that closer to his neighbores house. If that does not work then the problem is with his neighbores setup. _{_{By the way, McGyver is my hero :)}}– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to use a Windows Mobile 6.1 Cellphone as a modem for a Windows Mobile 2003SE PocketPC

A few days ago, I got a hold of a Fujitsu-Siemens LOOX 720 PocketPC running Windows Mobile 2003SE, and because this PocketPC lacks a GSM module, I want to use my HTC Oxygen smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1 (flashed it myself) as a Bluetooth modem. Can anyone please tell me what must I do, so I can use the HTC as a modem for the PocketPC? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.113.188.222 (talk) 19:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mouse issues

Hello, i seem to be having some problems with my mouse. Here is some background information, the mouse is a logitech cordless trackball model number Y-UT76. The mouse pad is a 11.5 inch X 8inch World of Warcraft mouse pad, very flexible but not very stretchy. I am working on a Dell notebook running windows vista business, dual core 1.2GHZ with 2 gigs of ram (and a 4 gig flash drive acting as readybost). I have a 3Mb connection through Comcast. My office is 13 feet X 13 feet X 15 feet. I have a 22inch monitor. There is a ESI phone sitting next to my computer and it seems like it is plugged in to the network cable. My problem is this: My mouse courser is on the far left side of the screen, while my mouse has reached the right end of the mouse pad. I cant move my mouse any more to the right. I have no idea what to do. my secretary suggest that i need a mouse pad upgrade but i really dont want to spend the $800 for a new mouse pad. What can i do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 20:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Troll? As i must WP:AGF i will suggest that you stop by your local eletronic store, talk to a rep there and see if he can help you find a cheeper mouse pad to meet your needs. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

use the table —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need a longer mouse cable too. SteveBaker (talk) 21:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lift up the mouse and replace it on the middle of the pad. But if you really want to buy a new mouse pad, I will sell you one for half that $800. SpinningSpark 22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We really need to know the motherboard type before making rash suggestions. Either way I recommend switching to Linux, you can control the mouse "courser" with your mind. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 22:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your secretary is clearly trying to stiff you. Go organic! Instead of spending money to help big corporations pollute our children's air and water, use recycled materials such as wastepaper or used napkins. Remember, it's for the children! --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried rebooting without saving your files? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 03:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you'd be happier with one of these special graphics-laptops that don't even need a mouse? SteveBaker (talk) 14:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone complains there is not enough data provided for technical questions. Finally someone gives details, and what happens? I am glad to see the size of the office mentioned. That might be the problem. Such a small space may not have adequate cross-ventilation, causing dust to settle. (1) unplug, wipe and replace the USB plug for the mouse receiver. (2) wipe down the whole unit, with isopropyl alcohol or a cloth just dampened with window cleaner spray. Do the mouse pad, too, while you're at it. (3) remove the trackball and clean it, as above. Blow out the socket. (4) overnight, invert the mouse pad over the mouse, to keep both the mouse and the top surface of the mat protected against dust. KoolerStill (talk) 19:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Programming language help

I'm looking for a proceedural, and imperative programming language (capable of being compiled). It looks like I have many options to choose from - that isn't my main question. The problem I have is graphics output - specifically as part of what I'm doing I would like to output some 'results' graphically, specifically to Windows (XP) so probably through the windows API - all I need is the ability to open a window and 'plot' pixels to it. (Any other features such as directX or openGL support would be good but not essential).

So what I'm asking is for suggestions - I don't really want (or maybe even need) to learn a lot to do this - so as simple support for this as possible would be good. I don't even know where to begin to look for this, or how exactly the windows API would be integrated - maybe I just need to learn a small amount of the windows API, plus having the ability to call a windows API 'call' through the compiled code.

Is that clear? (I would pay for the program - though cant afford the thousands or many hundreds for the professional products such as the Intel Fortran compiler. Thanks.77.86.67.245 (talk) 23:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am a fan of Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. You write your code in the C# programming language. Technically, the code is not compiled into machine code; it is compiled into a .NET assembly and then that gets run with a JITter. But I don't think that will impact what you want; the end user will still double-click a file to run it. XNA GS has plenty of interesting graphics calls, as it has an emphasis on game development; but you can write any kind of software with it. It sounds like you need 2D output and doing so and plotting pixels is easy. The whole thing is free, also. Here is the download link and if you Google "XNA Game Studio" then you'll find out about available resources, sample code — you should start by taking some existing sample code and modifying it. Note that XNA GS can be used to build games for the Xbox 360; you can ignore all that sort of content and just write your software for the PC, running in a window. Tempshill (talk) 23:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want to draw pixels then GDI+ will do fine. Also, why would you care about what programming language you use? The standard for Windows programming is C, and if you want something easier to use try C#. --wj32 ^t/c 10:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I care what programming language I will use because I will have to use it, and I find simple languages designed to be proceedural easy to use. In other words - FORTRAN, proceedural versions of BASIC, maybe ALGOl, and Pascal where the types I was thinking of - all of which are available with compilers.

Can someone point me in the right direction as to where to begin as to incorporating graphics calls into compiled programs.? GDI+ sounds right - so how would I incorporate it—Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.67.245 (talk) 11:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you like Basic, then look through this List_of_BASIC_dialects_by_platform#Microsoft_Windows and decide what suits you best. 89.242.109.25 (talk) 13:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK I'm not really getting an answer - let me ask another way - suppose I choose Free Pascal or any other compiler language - is there a standard way of incorporating graphics routines into the program - does this depend on the compiler what will or will not be possible - and is there a standard way to access openGL/DirectX commands independent of what programming language I'm using - ie what is the most basic 'wrapper' for graphics commands and routines that can be used independant of whatever language I'm using? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.67.245 (talk) 13:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think your confusion revolves around the idea that graphics "commands" are a part of the programming language - and therefore the compiler. In fact, (other than in ancient BASIC interpreters running on Sinclair ZX80's and such) the graphics interface is just a set of functions in a library that you link to. These things are generally written in C or C++ - so unless you want to program in those languages directly (which isn't such a dumb idea) - you'll have to find either a set of wrappers for those libraries in your chosen language - or you have to find out how to call C/C++ functions from inside the language of your choice. But if you were to choose C++ as your compiled language - then it's simply a matter of including the definitions of those functions into your code:

  #include <GL/gl.h>   // Include OpenGL function definitions

...and linking to the OpenGL library. Precise details of how you do that would depend on your choice of C++ compiler and what operating system you use. In Linux, with GNU's g++, it's as simple as sticking '-lGL' on your compile command. Generally, you'll have to jump through some hoops to open a window and set up and event loop - and that'll entail dragging in more header files and libraries but those kinds of things are well covered in example programs you can find all over the Internet. SteveBaker (talk) 19:00, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that what the OP is missing is the concept of an API. Just about any development environment that runs under Windows will incorporate the API for Windows graphics calls. When using this API, you'll use the exact same logic no matter what language you end up using. By the way, I still think you should use C# and XNA Game Studio. Tempshill (talk) 20:09, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't most modern languages usually have many graphics commands of various kinds built in already? As far as I recall, even with ancient gwbasic you could draw lines on the screen and so on. 78.146.198.122 (talk) 21:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately no. Modern GUIs have terminal/console windows that emulate ancient text-only screens and almost all languages can run in the terminals and have built-in equivalents to PRINT, but they skipped over the GWBASIC full-screen graphical days. Which is a shame, because it was fun to switch into graphics mode with one command and draw lines with the second. To draw graphics in a windowed application you have to create the window, run a message pump so that it responds to events (like resize, close, repaint), and handle repaint requests by redrawing everything in the window. It's a fair amount of busywork. GLUT might be a good choice; it's a very simple library that just creates a blank window that you can issue OpenGL commands to. Most people think of OpenGL as a 3D library but it also has a full set of 2D commands, and it's easy to use, at least for simple things. This sample program just opens a window and draws a triangle in it (and redraws the triangle whenever the system requests it, and recalculates the coordinate system when the user resizes the window—you're still responsible for that stuff). I've only used it from C++, but a search for "glut bindings" turned up a bunch of hits. -- BenRG (talk) 10:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So things have gone backwards regarding graphics? That's bad. There must be some Basic variants somewhere that offer simple graphics commands. I hate these split-pane things. What about Logo (programming language)? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's NOT backwards - it's forwards!! With gwbasic, the ONLY way to draw a line was with that command. If you wanted to draw a line that's 'depth cued' (foggy) or whose color varies from one end to the other or which has rounded ends or use your 3D graphics hardware to draw 20 million lines a second...bad luck - that's not what gwbasic did - and that's that.

With graphics being an external library that's called using the language's standard function call syntax - you have a choice of API's and you can add new graphics features without having to rewrite your compiler and add new syntax. Think about it: The C language was invented in the 1970's - 3D graphics hadn't even been invented then! We didn't get 3D graphics in hardware until the 1980's - and not on PC's until the 1990's. If we were stuck with some kind of built-in graphics commands in C, we wouldn't be able to use it to write super-modern stuff like computer games and web browsers.

The single biggest innovation in C was to abstract out the I/O "commands" into libraries that could be added or removed as needed. In Pascal (for example) you use a special 'command' (that the compiler has built-in) to print a string to the screen - but in C you typically use 'printf' - which isn't a part of the language at all - it's a 'stdio' library function and it can be replaced if needed. The version of C that I use to program my Arduino single-chip computer doesn't even have a 'printf' because there is no screen attached to it (and printf would take up too much valuable memory).

Besides - what does it really matter that you have to say "#include <GL/gl.h>" at the top of your program and add "libGL" to the list of libraries you link to? That's two lines of extra 'stuff'. Then you have functions with parameters that you're already very familiar with - rather than special syntax that you have to learn. How would you (say) render a textured, Z buffered triangle using vertex and fragment shaders in gwbasic? You couldn't - it simply didn't have the syntax for that - yet I can do it with the OpenGL or Direct3D libraries (I even have a choice!) in a language that's WAY older than gwbasic.

Furthermore - look at it from another perspective - there are literally hundreds of programming languages out there. When a company like (say) nVidia adds a major new concept like shaders to their graphics hardware, in your world, they'd have to go to the authors of all of those hundreds of compilers and interpreters and tell them "Hey - you need to add a dozen new commands to your languages to take advantage of this major new feature"...versus adding it to one library that any of those languages can link to with zero change.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 20

Confusion

I dont Know if i am in the right place but how do you insert a Info Box on a new page you have created!?!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Colee Andersonn (talk • contribs) 02:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably the Wikipedia help desk is the better place. But let's give it a shot anyway. If the info-box already exists (it should be a 'Template:' page) then simply stick its name between doubled curly brackets. eg {{myNavBox}}. If you need to write your own template/NavBox - that can be a fairly daunting task...the best thing to do is to find one you like and copy it into your user-space. Change the parts that you need to change - and when you're happy with it - move it into Template: space. SteveBaker (talk) 03:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shrinking vector images in inkscape

I've traced an existing map of Asia in order to paint the various countries a certain color based on predetermined data. I've saved it as an svg image and colored it in. However, whenever I try to shrink the image down to fit a piece of printer paper, the tool only shrinks the outline and leaves the color the same size. How can I shrink both at the same time? I hope I don't have to shrink each individual country in order to do this. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 08:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did you try select all (Ctrl+A) and then shrink them? If you save your file as normal svg (not Inkscape svg) everything should be in a group already, but won't be if you just saved using the default settings. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saving it as a normal svg did the trick. Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A language that replaces HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Apache, PHP, and MySQL?

It seems I need to learn HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Apache, PHP, and MySQL to create a website. Is there any reason why someone has not or never will invent one language that can do all the things that these different languages are required for? It may make creating a website more accessable for the average user. 89.242.109.25 (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would not this superlanguage need to have all the complexities of all the things it replaced? If so, the existing mode is better — you can swap out, for instance, Ruby for PHP or Glassfish for Apache without having to change any of the other things. Sometimes one or more of these is used outside the context of a web page entirely: JavaScript is used in VRML, HTML is a common format for (even local) documentation, and MySQL can serve data to anything, not just a webserver. All these things really do have their own purposes: (X)HTML is content, CSS is style, JavaScript is browser-local computation (which has low latency but is slow and unreliable (as the server sees it)), Apache is the browser's server-side counterpart shared by all pages, PHP is server-side computation (which can access any data on the server efficiently), and MySQL is storage of and access to (potentially) massive datasets.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not quite as bad as you say: HTML and XHTML are not really different things, and you certainly don't need both. CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL are all optional (although many kinds of site will do well to use all four), and Apache isn't a language you have to learn (unless you're counting .htaccess files). --Tardis (talk) 14:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure COBOL could be extended fairly easily to do all these things too, sounds the obvious choice to me. ;-) Dmcq (talk) 17:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

COBOL doesn't get enough props. It's the only language where PERFORM ORAL_SEX UNTIL ORGASM is a legit line of code. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC) [reply]

Bah! You're just not sufficiently determined. C++ can do it...you just need to stick this at the top of the program someplace.

 #define ORAL_SEX =
 #define ORGASM ;
 int PERFORM ORGASM
 int UNTIL ORAL_SEX 96 ORGASM

Cobol needed to just die already back in 1978 when I had the misfortune to learn it. SteveBaker (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

#define??? Jeez, I forgot about those. I do .NET development and MS ripped them from C# years ago. Anyway, coming from a QBasic background, I hated curly brackets so much I once #defined them out of my code with something like this:

 #define endif }
 #define endwhile }
 etc.

Anyway, I've since came to terms with curly brackets mostly but they still annoy me. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it's the same reason why no one has come up with one tool that replaces a screw driver, hammer, saw, pliers and a tape measure. Each one is designed to perform a specific task. As Tardis points out, XHTML and HTML aren't two completely different languages. XHTML is simply a version of HTML that conforms to the more rigorous standards of XML which has to be well-formed in order to be considered valid. HTML isn't required to be well-formed. CSS compliments HTML in that it provides information on presentation (colors, fonts, etc.). MySQL isn't a language, it is a relational database. It does however use SQL which is a language. Apache is a Web server, not a language, although it might use one. I've never used Apache so I can't say and I'm too lazy to look it up. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair - HTML, XHTML and CSS are markup systems - not programming languages - and HTML/XHTML are essentially different revision levels of the same thing - if you learn XHTML, there is little need to bother with HTML. Apache is an HTTP server - it's not a programming language either. MySQL is a database system - and although there are elements of programming related to it's query language - it's really only borderline "programming". That leaves you with just PHP and JavaScript which are actually programming languages. I agree that it's unfortunate that these are not the same language - but they are VERY similar. The problem is that once you've been programming for a dozen or more years, learning another programming language is really no big deal - I learned PHP over just a few hours while writing a program using it! This is unfortunate for beginners - but if you are that new to the art, trying to put together a web site that uses XHTML, CSS, MySQL and both client and server-side scripting - then you are undertaking something that's well beyond your abilities. Start small. Get Tic-Tac-Toe working in a local directory using just XHTML and JavaScript. When it works, figure out how to install Apache and make it serve to the web. When all of that works, use some CSS style sheets to jazz it up a bit. Then write some simple PHP code to keep scores on the server. Then, install MySQL and figure out how to put those scores into a proper database. But if you're a newbie, this process could easily take you a year to do...it's a major chunk of effort! SteveBaker (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Links (programming language) is a language of this type, and I think there are others. None of them have really caught on, but it seems like a reasonable idea to me. Maybe it's not the right tool for every job, but what is? -- BenRG (talk) 19:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would that language be worth learning? Could it create a website that does not seem to be done by a beginner? 78.146.198.122 (talk) 22:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, without at least as much effort as it would take to learn PHP and HTML at beginning-level. Can I also just point out that if you learned this Links language, you'd actually know a lot less than knowing all the component pieces? Because knowing each of those can in itself be useful and lead to further ideas, projects, whatever. As others have pointed out, in any case, really a knowledge of some HTML and PHP could get you pretty far by themselves—they would allow you to sensibly use pre-existing classes and content-management systems (like WordPress) with some confidence. In such an approach you wouldn't have to worry about the raw SQL end of things or the Javascript end of them. If you are trying to do something bigger than what WordPress or a CMS would allow, then you're going to have to make a major time investment anyway, and it's better to learn the component pieces (which all do somewhat differnet things) that learning a single language that then writes the other languages themselves (which puts you perilously far away from understanding your own code). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I take your point about understanding things in detail allowing the discovery of other possibilities and opportunities. But I'm not intending to become a career programmer, I do other things as well and running my website(s) would just be a sideline. I would like to find the easiest quickest way of creating a website-with-database-of-user-content that does not look as if made by an amatuer. If I used something like KompoZer, would it be possible to add MySQL usage to it, and avoid having to learn all the languages above? I do not mind paying for an editor if that will do what I want. 78.146.67.27 (talk) 10:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

last modification on basic network topologies

hi, my name is kennedy. i used www.en.wikipedia.org as a reference on basic network topologies.

please i need to know about some few important facts: 1.the year of last modification of en.wikipedia.org 2.publisher of en.wikipedia.org

i will be grateful, if i am given an urgent reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.73.60.12 (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See this page about citing Wikipedia. Matt Deres (talk) 16:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A question about Twitter

I'm thinking about getting a Twitter account, and I'm wondering if people are expecting you to update it constantly, or can you update it whenever? Thanks for your time.

Americanfreedom (talk) 17:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From what i understand, You can just update it whenever you want to. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What're they gonna do, come to your house and refuse to leave until you update? You can absolutely update as often or as rarely as you want. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Twitter fanatics may expect you to update frequently; other people are more annoyed by the folks who use it as a shared IM cloud instead of an answer to Twitter's question, "What are you doing?". I used to update frequently and don't quite as much anymore. You may find that you lose followers by updating infrequently, or you may find that you lose followers by updating too much. There's really no rule to it. You'll find yourself sharing and communicating with like-minded people after a while, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Coreycubed (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

can GPS find my stolen mobile phone???

My smartphone Samsung Finesse was stolen, I downloaded the app. MetroNavigation(gps). Is it possible to locate the phone? If so how? The carrier is Metropcs, and Customer Service Reps haven't been very helpful. The operating system is Symbian, wuld that be an option?Justjeena (talk) 17:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I doubt you're going to get very far with this idea.

My understanding is that a GPS device receives signals and determines where it is - it does not broadcast any signals advertising its location. Unless your phone has an application which explicitly broadcasts / publishes this information somehow (and that application hasn't been disabled by the thief), the fact that your phone knows where it is is no help to you, because you can't ask it.

A standard mobile phone connection obviously is 2-way, and can be used to locate the handset based on which base-stations it is connected to. But for obvious privacy reasons, this is something that the phone company has to do, not you. It's also likely that the thief will attempt to re-program the phone so that it cannot easily be recognised by the phone company as the same phone you reported stolen. - IMSoP (talk) 12:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you really know you're blocked using AIM (AOL's instant messaging?)

Someone told me they were blocked by a few people on AIM - AOL's instant-message system. But, I've looked at the setup, and it looks like you can't see if you're blocked, because you can set the settings so you're invisible to the person you're blocking. In other words, if A blocks B, B can never see if A is online.

So, is this person talking out their hat? It seems really rude for someone to say they're blocking you - and if one would be that mean, I can't imagine numbers of people being that rude. (Then again, this is the Internet.) Or, is it really not possible to make yourself invisible to the person you're blocking, and they can tell you're blocking them? (Or, might the person A block B and just not put on the "iinvsible" cloak.)

Just curious. Thanks.209.244.187.155 (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Often times people will say they're going to block you. But you could probably figure it out. If someone who was on every day suddenly stopped showing up, and you were sure they weren't dead you could assume you've been blocked. In addition you might have a friend who can tell you if person A is online right now, or you might have a second account for that specific purpose. APL (talk) 22:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He probably has a different account that those users did not block so he can still see them log in. They would be shown on the one buddy list but not the other. --Peppage ^tlk 22:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right. You can tell if you are blocked by seeing if someone else can see them. This can be done with extra accounts or with the collaboration of a mutual contact. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On Windows Live Messenger, a person's personal message will not change if they've blocked you. So if you (somehow) find out what that is, you can compare it to the one you have on your contact list. A similar system may exist for other chat programs. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 21

Word 2007 - automatically populate document property using document contents

Hello,

I am a teacher & have to create a standard layout lesson plan for my management's occasional perusal.

I'd like the box (cell in a Word 2007 table) which they have called "Keywords" to automatically populate that document's tag (the metadata that is visible in Explorer and is made available to Vista's search via "tag:pythagoras")

Can anyone help? I assume I need to set that box to be a field, but then how to write the file's metadata, and how to capture multiple values into multiple tag values.

pythagoras; geometry ; proof

I'm in Word 2007 and about 5 years ago was a reasonable coder in VBA for Excel 2003 if that's any use at all!

Cheers Rob —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.127.178.85 (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Computer shuts down during high-load applications even after replacing power supply

Hello,

Recently, my computer started shutting down during high-load applications, such as 3D rendering and when playing video games that ran fine in the past. In these cases, the power supply was quite warm to the touch after the shutdown (the air being expelled by the power supply fan was also quite warm just before the shutdown event). As such, I replaced the power supply with one of a higher wattage (500W continuous for the new vs. 380W peak for the old) and roughly equivalent current allocation (e.g. 22A for +12V in the new power supply vs. 18A for +12V in the old power supply). However, the problem has persisted, even with the new power supply. Is it possible that there's some other problem unrelated to the power supply causing these issues, or is it possible that my new power supply is actually inferior to my old one despite its specifications being higher?

Any suggestions would be appreciated - I'm a tad annoyed at having purchased a new power supply and having the problem persist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.215 (talk) 01:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Check the temperature of air coming out of the CPU and graphic chipset fans. There may also some system status info you can look at, to check cpu temperature. Maybe those are causing the system to shut down. But yeah, power supply specs (especially on cheaper ones) are often exagerrated, like car stereos. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 03:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And try to look for busted capacitors on your board or some other critical components in your system. Chances are that the reason why your rig gives up after heavy loads is because of a fried and/or damaged motherboard. Blake Gripling (talk) 05:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think overheating is your next most likely cause. Check the temperature inside the box when you aren't doing heavy CPU/3D work - then again when you are. Possibly you have a dead fan...probably the one on the GPU. It's possible that the power supply may be a contributory factor to overheating - when you run a power supply close to it's limits, it runs a lot hotter than a higher capacity power supply running well below it's limits. But still - I bet it's either a dead fan or a clogged filter or lots of fluff accumulating inside the case someplace. SteveBaker (talk) 13:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

modern sorting algorithms

Anyone know a good reference for modern sorting algorithms, where Knuth vol 3 doesn't count as "modern"? I.e. I have a few hundred million items to sort on a multicore 64-bit x86 computer with several GB of ram (the internal sorting phase of a much larger external merge/sort). Where can I read up on algorithm selection and implementation, that utilizes the multiple cores, takes into account cache locality and possible NUMA memory setups, etc.? The current Wikipedia articles on sorting don't have much discussion of this stuff. Thanks. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 02:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Sorting algorithm and associated articles (if you haven't already). If this is a one time sort, I wouldn't spend too much time on finding the absolute best algorithms. I'd suggest you partition the data into manageable chunks small enough for in-memory sorts, and then merge the intermediate results into a final sorted list. A few hundred million records might take hours or maybe days, depending on the size of the key and data. I'm sure there are commercial and free software packages to do this. You might load the data into a database and sort it using a query. Any database worth its salt should use a reasonably efficient algorithm – possibly one that runs multiple threads and dynamically optimizes itself based on available memory. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did look at that article but it mostly discussed older, single-processor algorithms. E.g. it didn't mention Burstsort (maybe I will add a mention). I have 100's of billions (maybe trillions) of records and will be doing this operation a lot, and anyway I'm interested in general in how the "big boys" approach sorting now that everything is going multicore. 100's of millions is just for the internal phase. The external phase will be controlled by something like Hadoop, probably. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 04:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You mentioned Hadoop — did you see this announcement from 9 days ago where Yahoo says they broke records by using Hadoop to sort a petabyte in 16.25 hours? They appear to have used a very large cluster, and each machine has two quad-core Xeons. Sortbenchmark.org is probably going to be useful to you as well. Tempshill (talk) 04:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Well, if you have that much data, I think you will find that you will be mostly I/O bound, meaning your biggest limitation will be how fast data can be transferred between the processor memory and external storage (disks). I suspect that all of the "big boys" will take the partition-sort-merge approach. The key is calculating the maximum amount of data that can be efficiently sorted in memory in one chunk. That will define your partition size. The overall process will be to partition the data, load and sort each partition, and write it back out to storage. Once all the partitions are sorted, the merge phase begins, There is even an art to the merge process. For maximum efficiency, you should write the sorted partition data out to as many different devices (physical disk drives) as are available, and then structure the merge process so that it reads a maximum of one partition per drive at any one time, which allows the drives to operate at maximum efficiency. This will likely require a multi-pass merge operation. (If you recall the 60's and '70's Hollywood view of computes as a bank of spinning tape drives, that was not too far from the truth. Sorting large amounts of data was typically done this way.)

For more information, a google search of "sorting large data sets" seems to yield promising results. My opinion is that your best bet will be to select a commercial sorting package. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After looking at Tempshill's references, it appears I may have been off by a couple orders of magnitude on my initial guestimate. I guess I'm showing my years. I just ran a test on my two-year-old laptop and had SQL Server sort 100,000,000 random numbers in about 20 minutes. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tempshill: Yes I saw the slashdot story about the sorting contest. My dataset is large by the standards of typical desktop PC users but very small compared to "big boys" like Yahoo (they used a 3800 node cluster to sort that collection; I may be able to use around 5 nodes for my stuff). Tcncv, yes, I'm familiar with external sorting, I'm primarily wondering how to do the internal phase. Commercial software isn't an option. Re using multiple disks, hmm, I've never been able to keep more than one SATA channel full at a time (on linux), but I guess there are some tricks I can try. Realistically if I can sort a TB of data in 12 hours then I'm happy. I think Yahoo did it in under a minute. Thanks both of you for the url's, I'll see what they say about s/w and algorithms. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 07:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

iTunes movie archiving?

Hello, I'd like to free up some hard disk space by archiving some iTunes movies to another drive. Can I do that without losing one of the authorizations that iTunes' DRM allows? Thank you. LovesMacs (talk) 06:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The authorization only applies to this computer, and if you only move the movies to a different disk iTunes doesn't care - as long as it's the same PC. --grawity 11:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot access google

Intel Core 2 Duo, Ubuntu 8.1.0, Firefox 3.0.10. When I try to access www.google.com, Firefox will stay at "Connecting to www.google.com...". I can ping Google fine. Konqueror works fine. IE/Firefox on Windows XP works fine. The weird thing is that www.l.google.com works fine in Firefox+Ubuntu. How do I fix this? F (talk) 07:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Check your proxy setting, and possibly a firewall block. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Make sure you've not got some website blocking software installed that might have accenditly been set to block google.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, if it is proxy/firefall, Konqueror wouldn't work as well. I don't have website blocking software. F (talk) 02:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

XP default file sort order

In Windows explorer, files sorted by name are listed in some "alphbetical" order I would like to find a character that I can prepend to a file name to cause it to get listed AFTER the alphbetical files. So we might have "@first.txt, alpha.txt, zeta.txt ?last.txt" where ? is what I'm looking for. I've tried (!£$%^&*_+=@'~#;`¬- and am running out of ideas. Does such a character exist? Is there a list anywhere of XP's sort order. (Please do not mention the XP numeric sorting thing - I understand that and it isn't relevant to this question). Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 08:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what algorithm they use but it might be this. Empirical testing indicates that nothing in Windows-1252 sorts after Z. If you widen your search to the whole of Unicode then you have lots of choices because all non-Latin alphabets and syllabaries sort after Latin. For example, Α (Greek capital letter alpha) sorts after Z if you want to be maximally confusing, as does circled katakana tu if you're in a whimsical mood. (Font support not guaranteed.) -- BenRG (talk) 11:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in Windows 2000 and older, the sorting was purely ASCIIbetical - based on the ASCII codes of the characters. --grawity 11:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

æ, ø or å would work with a Norwegian locale, but I do not know how that sorts if your location is set to an English-speaking place. Jørgen (talk) 23:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it's ASCIIbetical - then you want the highest numbered ASCII code - which for English/US-English is '~'. I have no clue whether that would work though - I'm more of a Linux guy. Failing that, '{', '}' and '|' are also higher than 'z' in the ASCII code sequence. If you are using some internationalised setup then you may have multibyte characters and all sorts of other horrors - and all bets are off! SteveBaker (talk) 01:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What is an API in simple terms?

I do not really understand the idea of an API. Could someone explain it in simple terms please? For example, a graphics API: many language implementations already have graphics commands built in to the language. So why do you need a graphics API? Or is the graphics API there but hidden, so that the ordinary user writing code is not aware of using it, even though its there? Or does an API only mean something that requires the user to write special code within their programs to access it? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 10:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey. The problem with APIs is that the whole idea is kind of abstract. As the name suggests, an API - Application Programming Interface - is an interface (duh) that allows communication between stuff. Unlike, say, a GUI (Graphical User Interface), this communication is not between a user and a program - it's between a program and another program.

Here's an analogy. Imagine you are a program. You sit in your office, allocated to you by the manager (the operating system). Your whole point of existence is to perform calculations for customers (users). Of course, customers want you to tell them what your results are, but they want you to do this on the big screen on the side of the office building (the monitor). The problem is that you have no idea how to do that, and the control room (graphics card) is on a different floor that you don't have access to. So what do you do? You call up the switchboard, tell them you want the graphics people to do something, and they'll pass the message along.

In that complicated (and a bit rubbish) example, the switchboard would be an API. It allows one program to call functions and pass messages to a different program, even if they don;t have direct access to each other. Consider the Wikipedia web API ([15]). Programs don't have access to the Wikipedia database, but using the API, you can make calls, retrieve info, and even edit, just by sending requests to the API. You aren't directly calling a function as such, but it still happens.

On to graphics APIs. Put it this way: do you know how to make a graphics card do something? Not using a built in graphics function. Directly. Hm? Probably not. Programs do not directly interface with a graphics card - instead, they send a request to the graphics driver or operating system (using a graphics API) and the driver/OS does it. In-built graphics functions in high-level programming languages are simply pre-packaged and ready-to-use API calls, so you don't need to worry about opening requests to the driver, handling feedback, managing the graphics memory etc. so much. Lower level programming languages, like C, don't have this - so instead, you get a library of functions which does exactly the same thing.

DirectX and OpenGL are graphics APIs. High level programming languages hide their calls to DirectX/OpenGL under fancy function names. Low level programming languages have libraries that hide the calls. Of course, you can make calls directly if you want to , and know how - but there's no point.

Hope that massive essay clears it up - I got a little carried away :-). Ale_Jrb^talk 11:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So in summary if I'm using a recent variant of basic, for example, I can include one of the language's graphics commands in the program code, such as drawline(x1,y1,x2,y2), and it interfaces with the graphics API without me having to do anything more. But if I am using something like C which lacks graphics commands, it is much more complicated and I have to explicitly communicate with the graphics API. Is that correct? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially, yes. However, there are millions of libraries for graphics commands for C and other low-level languages, so if you get one of those, it will be little different to using in-built commands in BASIC. Ale_Jrb^talk 11:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

API = Application Programmer's Interface. It simply means that one group of programmers have written some code in which other groups of programmers will use. API is a reference to how these other groups of programmers will call the code. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There must be some language with "built in graphics" that you're thinking of - it might help us to help you if you told us what that was.

An "API" is just a term for the interface between the application and some kind of support library (in your case, it's a graphics library - but it could equally well be an MP3 player library or a library that loads JPEG images for you). Generally, the API consists of some constants and some functions - and perhaps some classes and such. The API is defined by some header file ("GL/gl.h" in the case of OpenGL, "d3d9.h" for Direct3D) - that lists what these functions, constants, classes, etc are...and the actual code that is run is in the library file - which (in Windows) is probably a ".DLL" file and in Linux/UNIX is a ".so" file. When you compile your program, the compiler looks into the header file to figure out what functions you're allowed to call - and when the program is 'linked' to the libraries, your program is simply calling functions inside the library file.

Some languages may have graphics commands built into the language itself - but these days that's largely frowned upon because it limits the language to use just that one way to do graphics (or sound or whatever). Most modern languages don't do that - they merely allow you to link your program to some external library and to call it via the API. So, in C or C++, you can link to the OpenGL library and call functions like glEnable(GL_ALPHA_BLEND); - or you can link to the Direct3D library and call SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,true); Neither of those functions are built into C++, the compiler has no idea that they have anything to do with graphics. It just knows that you told it to call some function or other that's in a DLL/so file someplace.

That's different from some of the more old-fashioned languages such as the BASIC that came pre-loaded in your Amiga/Atari/Sinclair that had actual graphical commands that were a part of the language itself - and which gave you no choice. Removing those kinds of 'hard wired' commands from the language specification and making them library functions was a major step forward because it removed limitations of what the language designer thought was good for you. Neither OpenGL nor Direct3D existed when C and C++ were invented - so the designers of those languages had no concept of drawing polygons or applying textures. When C was invented, 3D graphics didn't exist at all - nobody had ever tried doing that!

If there are any languages that still have that stuff built into the syntax of the language itself, the compiler (or interpreter) is undoubtedly calling some graphics API or other 'under the hood' to do the actual work...but because that's a fixed choice, you have no flexibility to choose how you want your graphics done.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic explanation Steve - but I think your Computer Graphics history is a bit wrong ("When C was invented, 3D graphics didn't exist at all - nobody had ever tried doing that!"! When C was invented, in the 1970s or so, guys like Paul de Casteljau at Citroen and Pierre Bézier at Renault and General Motors had been doing 3D computer graphics to model sheet-metal for automobiles for almost 20 years! You might be interested in The Origin of Computer Graphics within General Motors, (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Vol 16, No 3, 1994). Not only do some of these 3D graphics predate the C programming language - the earliest work predated the computer monitor by a few years! Take a look at DAC-1 - there's a nice History section in that article. Nimur (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well - just barely. The car designers couldn't interact with their designs in realtime - they mostly had plotters and techtronix storage tubes, and they really only had wireframe. It certainly wasn't 3D graphics as we'd recognise it today. SteveBaker (talk) 00:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be so hard on them! This video from the early 1960s shows some impressive graphics in real-time! I'm certainly not going to call it modern, and it clearly had some limitations, but it is recognizable 3D graphics! Nimur (talk) 02:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Whirlwind (computer) had real time 2D graphics in the 50s. Seemingly it had its origin near the end of WWII in an idea to build a flight simulator using a digital computer rather than an analogue one. Dmcq (talk) 09:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Too many icons and shortcuts on desktop to see

I use Windows XP, in classic mode. Currently I have so many icons and in particular shortcuts on my desktop, that the desktop screen is over-full and they have disapeared off the right of my screen. Is there any way to see these icons, by for example getting the desktop screen to scroll left? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Change to a higher resolution. Right-click on the desktop, select display properties, on the right tab you will see a slider. See if you can slide it further to the right. The higher the resolution, the more pixels you have on the screen, and the more icons you can show. They just get much smaller. -- kainaw ™ 11:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you use a LCD (as most do), there is only one appropriate resolution, so this will not help. You could try to install ant third-party software that lets you use a number of (often four) virtual desktops. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(simultaneous edit:)

Depending on your display hardware, you may not be able to get a higher resolution. However, you should be able to get the desktop up as a regular folder: click Start, then "Run...", type "shell:Desktop", and click OK.

My recommendation would then be to delete some of the shortcuts (if you can't see them all, they're not exactly easy access, are they?) and re-arrange the remainder onto the screen - right click the desktop and look in the "Arrange Icons" sub-menu.

Also, I've never used it, but Windows XP has a "desktop cleanup wizard" - again, right-click the desktop, and it's under "Arrange Icons". - IMSoP (talk) 12:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I use small icons on my 2K desktop by using this free ware. Try it! Oda Mari (talk) 14:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Double-click "My Computer", then "Documents and Settings", then your username, then "Desktop". The window that opens will have all the contents of your desktop, but in a normal Windows XP window that you can view by icon (and hence scrollable), or view by List, or Details, or whatever - perhaps that will be useful. Tempshill (talk) 14:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You don't even need third-party software for the multiple desktop management. Microsoft released a PowerToy for Windows XP, Virtual Desktop Manager, available here. Nimur (talk) 14:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to put my 2 cents in; Just clear off some desktop icons, right-click on the desktop, highlight 'arrange' and click on 'auto arrange' I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:35, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

now what i do is i have one folder on my desktop called "stuff" and everything goes in there. desktop stays clean and free and all my icons and other things are just a click away —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Desktop is not a good place for icons, because you'd always have something open covering them up. A few things you need frequent and fast access to, eg email client or Office, you can put on the taskbar by dragging their shortcuts to it. One "stuff" folder or the Desktop folder is not very efficient. Make desktop folders to sort your icons by type, eg Office, Graphics, Security, Downloads etc. Drag shortcuts to these onto the taskbar as well.The three most important items will show with their own icons. The folders will show on a small pop-up menu,which you can sort by dragging the items around.These will open on TOP of whatever else you have open. The desktop itself need never show at all.KoolerStill (talk) 20:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could get a bigger screen. I've now got a WUXGA screen with 1920x1200 pixels and I haven't even filled a third of the screen with icons but I'm sure I'll soon be lusting after a WQUXGA screen with 3840×2400 pixels! The laptop will have to be a pretty big for me to see them all though :) It's a no brainer and you should always get the hardware to do the work rather than doing any thinking yourself (umm perhaps that is a bit over the top!) Dmcq (talk) 09:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PAL / NTSC

Hi

Not exactly a computer question but I know someone here should be able to help me out. I dug up and old ps-one (the rounded-edge smaller version) which happens to be PAL, and our current tv is NTSC. Whats the best way to get this setup working? (all my games show in black and white).

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 18:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You need a PAL to NTSC converter. You won't get it working just by fiddling with the wires. Some are good, some are crappy. So, you'll get what you pay for. -- kainaw ™ 18:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Unfortunately, all PS1 games were, I believe, region-locked, so you can't simply buy an NTSC PS1 and play all your games on it. I don't believe it'll work, either, if you take a region-locked-for-Europe PS1 game and try to play it on an NTSC PS2 or PS3. You can do as Kainaw suggests, though that is expensive. Some televisions will take either PAL or NTSC video input. If you Google "multi system tv" then a bunch of them will pop up. If you have a fancy big screen LCD HDTV of some sort, it may take PAL input, too. Sorry, it looks like you're going to have to buy a new TV. Tempshill (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't excactly know, but perhaps a TV tuner card with video-in would work? If it supports both PAL and NTSC you could then use the TV-out from your PC to connect to the TV again (if you think your computer monitor is too small). Jørgen (talk) 23:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(this would be one example of such a card ($20 at Newegg).) Jørgen (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

chmod and App Runner "security risk"

Can anyone tell me if it is dangerous to do "chmod a+x" to a file instead of "chmod +x"? I know "a" stands for "all users". the problem is that someone said this was a security risk with App Runner: [16] Is this really a security problem? I think not, but I just want to be sure... This would just allow any user to run the file, right? where is the security problem in there? (the root password would still be required to run this as root) __ Hacktolive (talk) 23:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is not so much with '+x' but '+s'. That flag is the 'setuid' flag that causes the application to be run with the permission set of the file's owner. If the file is owned by 'root' then adding the 's' permission allows ordinary users to run this program as if they were 'root'. This is the cause of many exciting loopholes for the bad guys out there. Adding just 'x' only allows the user to run the program with his/her existing privilages - the program can't do anything that the user couldn't do some other way...so that's usually benign. However, for the security minded - turning off as many permissions as possible is clearly the smart move. SteveBaker (talk) 00:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But... I don't use the "+s" flag... I was refering to the "+a" flag... does the "+a" has the problem you just mentioned? (Thanks!) Hacktolive (talk) 02:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it will make problems. Any user could easily copy the file to their home directory and make it executable, so "+a" flag is not going to prevent anything.

Baeksu (talk) 08:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 22

iPod Data Recovery?

Help! I lost all my files on my iPod USB storage. How can I recover them? Is there any free software to solve this problem? Any solution, any at all. Please wikipedia, rescue me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.106.183 (talk) 01:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

.SDF file

How do I open a .sdf file? All the websites I've visited keep asking me to download a registry cleaner, which is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned. Does anyone know? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 01:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See if any of these match what you think the file should contain. Xenon54 (talk) 01:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The file extension does not uniquely define the file type or the program you need to use (in fact, the file-extension may not even match the true file-type). What is this SDF file and where did you get it / how did you make it? If you open it with a text editor or hex editor, do you see any sort of header or description? (Often the first few bytes of a binary file will be plain text to help identify the file). Nimur (talk) 02:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IE7 / Google "Find" function

I'm running IE7, version 7.0.5730.11 as I write. I also have the Google toolbar installed. I generally do MS-Win autoupdates as they come in, and a month or so ago I relented and let the Google toolbar notifier past my firewall so it could play.

The "Edit->Find on this page" function in IE changed to a very cool method. Instead of popping up a sub-window that had to be closed, a searchbox appeared at the bottom of the window in the non-client area, and when I started typing my search text, the browser page showed text matches immediately. Then a week or two ago, it all vanished and I'm back to getting the Find dialog box again.

I'm relatively sure the very useful Find function was something Google did (MS only "innovates" when they have to destroy a competitor) and I'm not really sure why it went away. But I want it back. Any ideas on how I could recover that cool functionality? Thanks! Franamax (talk) 04:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could try Internet Explorer 8, which has this functionality built-in. Short of that, try uninstalling then reinstalling the toolbar. If that doesn't work, they've probably "updated" the toolbar and deleted this functionality. 144.138.21.37 (talk) 06:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that's a good point. I kinda thought that one of the MS automatic updates a month ago was to move to IE8, so maybe that's where the new functionality came in. If that's the case though, how it got removed again is a complete mystery to me. I'm definitely running version 7 ATM. Franamax (talk) 08:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Samba file permissions

I have a directory on a Redhat box that I want to set to permissions 666. Every file in that directory (and all subdirectories) must be 666. With sticky bits, I have no problem with local users or NFS users. No matter what permissions they try to set, the result is 666. In Samba, even if the user specifies that it should be completely public, the permissions are set to 600. Short of writing a cron job to chmod -R 666 every couple minutes, what can be done to force Samba to work properly? -- kainaw ™ 12:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Winme

Can you run Windows ME in DosBox? All earlier DOS-based and 9x-based versions of Windows can run in the emulator, so why haven't I found any mention of ME? And, only half-joking, can DB run NT-based operating systems? 143.238.237.25 (talk) 13:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 13

TCP sockets, do they have two socket addresses...?

WAV Sound in Java

Phone numbers when registering domains

Zoom concept in computer / Computer Graphics

MICROPROCESSOR

Looking for a particular tech review site I can't find

MS word - replacing commas with dots in numbers

MICROPROCESSOR

Open Source Bubble?

MICROPROCESSOR-Sequence of instructions

Musical Software

How to arrive at MTBF for an STB?

MICROPROCESSOR-Word equal to 0000H

MICROPROCESSOR-2's complement of the word

MICROPROCESSOR-Number of logic 1's of the word

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to exchange two register contents

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in array of 10 bytes

MICROPROCESSOR-Code segment to find the square of a byte

itunes space

Google map problem

Copying a LOT of files in Linux

Selling a used Laptop

May 14

Forgot My Computer Password

zenity (Linux)

google can't find her

Video playback problem

Netrw functionality outside of vim?

<span><b></b></span> instead of <span><b></span></b>, why?

Ripping a DVD?

Saving a web-page: Firefox vs. IExplorer

Install Windows on ext3

Install linux (or BSD) on ntfs (or fat32)

Linux based disk utilities

Font identification?

Photo-editing FOSS

May 15

power cord temperatures

ORKUT

Computer auto start

[ActivePerl] [Windows XP] DBD::mysql

Windows XP SP3 -- Reallowocating/repartitioning

Explaining to a computer illiterate person how to get rid of spyware and keylogger

Service desk specalists? Certification.

Should I stop learning on my own if I don't want to repeat it all in order to get qualifications in school?

A true worldwide mobile phone

HTML scraper and PostgreSQL interface

May 16

HTML/iPod Notes queries

Finding progress of for loop in Delphi application

Online Voting Script

Partially prime factorising very large numbers

Want to display an image somewhere on the web

What are most suitable languages to learn for website development?

May 17

Who would win in a fight generator

Using Google

Inkscape banknote tutorial

May 18

Printing separate/different files

Website causing internet to appear to disconnect

Good gaming mouse that work on glass?

Two questions in one

Exploiting Google Safesearch

MySQL table creation

An idle wondering...

Open-source alternatives

Change the default view for 'file open' dialogue box

Selling Old Computer - Value and best way to clean it up?

What happened to my Internet?

XPath: Equality match on list-valued attribute

Phone location device/site

May 19

Strange Japanese plug

autostart a crashed program

My friend says the plural of "mouse" is "mouses" when referring to computer accessories.

GNU Software

English.dat

Google Earth Resolution