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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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

#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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

KompoZer seems to only be an HTML/CSS editor; neither of those languages is a programming language and (so) neither can talk to a database. (It might help you write JavaScript, but that can't (directly) access a database either.) So, no, sorry. I don't think that another editor is the right answer: if someone were to implement this monolithic website idea, it would surely be as a language like Links and not as an editor like KompoZer. (And once you have the language, there are many editors to choose from…) --Tardis (talk) 16:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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

If you are going to cite just Wikipedia as an organisation, the time of last modification be about 1/2 a second ago (my own OR suggests Wikipedia recieves over 100 edits per minutes). If citing a particular page, every page has a "This page was last modified on ..." at the bottom. Astronaut (talk) 15:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You can solve that by clicking on "Permanent link" in the toolbox to the left of the article. That gives you a link to the specific version of the document you are looking at. If you use THAT URL in your citation then you can be sure that anyone who uses your citation will find the exact article you were looking at - without any subsequent changes. Then you have a definite date at which THAT VERSION OF THAT PAGE was last modified. SteveBaker (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you should take a look at the 'Cite this page' link on articles in the 'toolbox' area' Washii (talk) 20:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I've checked the aspects mentioned above, and:

• all the fans (CPU, power supply, and graphics chipset) are running
  • during routine operations, the fan on the CPU is the loudest
  • during high-load operations, the power supply fan and the CPU fan are both pretty loud, and the air coming from them is quite warm
• I cleaned out some dust from the top of the CPU heatsink and fan assembly
• the capacitors on the motherboard look fine; there's no evidence of leakage or bulging

So, it seems like either the new power supply I got had inflated specifications (and is actually inferior to my previous one, which didn't even have this shutting down issue until a month or so ago), or there's something wrong with my motherboard that's not immediately visible. For the record, my (new) power supply is an Antec EA 500, my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, and my motherboard is an ASUS P5K. Any further thoughts on what might be wrong (especially with the motherboard) would be welcome, but either way the assistance so far has been quite helpful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.15 (talk) 16:59, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: I was just going through the Windows event viewer (another shutdown happened today), and I've got a message from the application that monitors the graphics card saying that a "System shutdown due to graphics card overheating" occurred. I guess this mean the problem's due to the graphics card, which seems kind of strange given that I've never had any issues with it in the past. Well, somewhere to start, I suppose. Thanks to all who offered advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.15 (talk) 17:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Then I'm definitely sticking with my claim that the GPU fan is the problem...you say that the fan was running - but perhaps not fast enough or something. Do you have any other boards plugged in next to the graphics card? If so, can you relocate them to a slot further away from the graphics card? You could try getting a can of compressed air from your local computer store and blast air into and around the fan to make sure there is no fluff or dust fouling up the bearings. Some of those fans have inlet and outlet holes that can get clogged - again, get in there with the canned air and blast it out. With some graphics cards, you can carefully unscrew the fan and pull it off - that would give you another way to make sure there is nothing fouling it up. Theoretically, you could replace the fan - but I'd be surprised if you could find a replacement. You may have to resort to a new graphics card. :-( SteveBaker (talk) 17:28, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

One way to be fairly sure that it's an overheating issue is to pull the side off of your PC and get a box-fan or a desk fan and point it into the PC and turn it on on full-blast. If your machine runs OK with that HUGE amount of airflow - then you know it's overheating...if it crashes still - then it could be something else. SteveBaker (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips, Steve. I pulled my graphics card out of the computer and it turns out the heat sink (which is under a plastic cover that can't be removed, something that strikes me as rather poor design) was covered with a thick layer of dust on the side nearest the fan. I was able to remove all this dust using a pair of electrical tweezers (not really their intended purpose, but it worked), and since doing so there haven't been any shutdown issues. I also installed ATI tray tools in case the fan speed wasn't scaling up with temperature increase on the card (which is apparently a big problem for a lot of 3000 series ATI cards), but to be honest I think it was just all the dust that had built up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.48.175 (talk) 15:50, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

(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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

• Double check
  • Make sure Konqueror is actually accessing Google and not just getting it from its cache
  • Make sure Firefox is not in offline mode
  • Check your Firefox proxy settings
  • Check /etc/hosts
  • Try to telnet into www.google.com 80
• Install the Web Developer extension
  • Try disabling caching
  • Try disabling JavaScript
• Try disabling extensions or create a clean profile with no extensions
• Try HttpFox for more detailed diagnostics

chocolateboy (talk) 09:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I thought of the curly brackets when the question was posted, but no, they sort before "A". Characters that are not in the standard ascii range, such as "æ" "ø" "å", cause all sorts of trouble if you dual boot linux and windows, or try to use a portable disk that was written on a Spanish pc on a Norwegian PC, etc. So I've gotten into the habit of writing these as "ae", "oe", "aa" in filenames. I think the safest solution is to prepend "zzz_". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Open Character Map (which should be under the Accessories menu, if it's installed), select the font "Trebuchet MS", scroll down to the bottom, you'll find several characters that work well, and look reasonable, including bullets. --Polysylabic Pseudonym (talk) 08:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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 ([1]). 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The advantage of a graphics API in its simplest form, is to separate your program from the specific display device differences. So, for example, you don't have to work out how to draw a circle, you just call circle(center_x, center_y, radius) and a circle is drawn. For each physical display device, the internal workings of the circle function may be very different to support a normal screen, a pen plotter, or a character cell terminal; but it is always accessed the same way within your program.

Another example: I want a shaded 3D surface on the screen. I don't need to work out what colour to draw each pixel, the graphics API lets me specify all the details about the surface (its shape, its position, its colour, its reflectivity, etc.) and it works out which colour each pixel should be. Astronaut (talk) 15:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

(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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Thanks. After reviewing all the suggested options, I have put the shortcuts in a 'Stuff' folder as 82.44.... suggested. A simple and effective solution. 78.146.162.232 (talk) 13:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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: [2] 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Have a look at our article undelete. It lists a few programs that should help. I hope this helps– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

.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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

I work in a computer shop, and that Automatic Update for IE8 caused a lot of problems. I saw quite a few computers that still reported and basically looked like IE7, but had the IE8 files. Washii (talk) 20:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Washii, I've encountered this problem as well. I had tried out Internet Explorer Beta 2 and later installed the Release Candidate after it was released and then finally installed the Release to Web version when it was released. With the RTW version, I left the option to download and install updates automatically checked. (As a test of what the option did; I had unchecked it for the previous installs, thinking it might cause the install to take longer) This caused problems. After reboot, I started up Internet Explorer. It looked like Internet Explorer 7 and it even gave me the Internet Explorer 7 welcome page! Clicking on Help-->About gave me an error message. Reinstalling with the option to install update updates automatically unchecked allowed Internet Explorer 8 to install just fine. As it is, Firefox is still my preferred Web browser. :-) Due to these problems, I'd recommend that users download and use the Internet Explorer installer from the Microsoft website, rather than install Internet Explorer 8 through Automatic Updates. Internet Explorer 8 is, as as I know, more secure than Internet Explorer 7. (Additions like the SmartScreen filter [Which is surprisingly effective] mean I recommend Internet Explorer 8 as pretty much the only Internet Explorer version you should be using if you absolutely insist on using Internet Explorer.) As for searching for a phrase or word on a web page, pressing Control + F will bring up a search-box at the top for Internet Explorer 8 or a search-box at the bottom for Firefox.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"...recommend Internet Explorer 8 as pretty much the only Internet Explorer version you should be using ...": I can't help but disagree with Xp5431. The new search is pretty nice and I appreciate the gesture to adhere to standards, but I still regret updating IE7 to IE8. Simply put, it has made editing Wikipedia more difficult, with difficulty placing the caret where I want, and random scrolling of the edit window (though this seems much reduced compared with how it was just after the update). I can think of some reasons to move to IE8, but IMHO there are some pretty compelling ones to stay with IE7. Astronaut (talk) 08:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

When it comes to Wikipedia editing, Firefox is tends to be better. (For me anyways) ;) I don't use Caret browsing so I can't speak as to how it is under Internet Explorer 8. I should note Internet Explorer 8 is more sluggish than Internet Explorer 7. Other people who have tried it out have also stated so. [They reported often having to pause to wait for Internet Explorer to do something] Firefox though, snaps to my command. :-)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 23:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

In your smb.conf file add in: create mask = 0666 (either to the individual share or to [global]) and that'll do what you're asking. Also if you want to do the same with directories (probably?) you'll want to add: directory mask = 0777 - Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 15:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I had create mode and directory mode, not "mask". I changed them to mask to see if it helps. -- kainaw™ 15:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

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)

I dont see why it would not work as Windows ME was the last to include real-mode MS-DOS subsystem. As for an NT based OS, i don't know. I say give it a try and let us know :) But if your looking to run multipliable Operating Systems consider having a look at VirtualBox. I hope this helped. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:50, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm just guessing here, but there's probably not a lot of interest in supporting ME because there are (as far as I know) no games that require it, whereas there are 95-only games and 98-only games. Win9x is an extremely complicated software system and there are insanely many little details involved in emulating something as complex as a PC running DOS, so just because 98SE (kind of) works doesn't mean it's easy to get ME working also. Support for NT seems unlikely to me since it's too far from the project's goals. You could probably get a better answer at the DosBox forums. -- BenRG (talk) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest using Microsoft Virtual PC. --grawity 12:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

DOSBox is intended for running DOS games only. Although Windows 3.x happens to work, it's not one of the project's stated goals. Some have been known to attempt to run Win 9x on it with mixed success, but there's quite a few pitfalls and caveats (it's not exactly reliable). ME was flaky even on real hardware. The best way to find out is simply to try. Just don't expect any help from the official developers. An NT based OS is not likely to work at all, due to those OSes wanting complete control over the hardware and DOSBox emulates the hardware only to the extent that is needed to run games. Suggestions that have already been made are VirtualBox and MS VPC. Other possibilities are VMware Server, QEMU and Bochs or any other virtualisation system you can find. 82.95.188.243 (talk) 21:03, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Try VirtualBox or VMware Workstation. No Virtual Machine can beat those two... -- SF007 (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

How can I turn off that annoying "time-teller" that appears when you highlight a particular point on a Youtube video's seek bar? 143.238.237.25 (talk) 13:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately YouTube does not allow you to configure this option. It is possible but extremely difficult to stream the original source video file to a different player of your choice (web-based or otherwise). Maybe you could write a message to the YouTube feedback teams. If your complaint is common enough, they may include an option to change this feature. Nimur (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Free webcam recording program

What is a good free program I can use to record videos with my webcam and mic? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

...Sure your webcam didn't come with one to start with? What's the make and model of the webcam? Vimescarrot (talk) 15:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You will find that a lot of video editing programs offer the option to capture video from a Webcam. On that note this website offers some free programs, I have no experience from this website so i can not vouch for the safty of these programs. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

If you are using Windows XP or Vista, Windows Movie Maker should already be installed, and it will allow you to "capture" or record video directly from a webcam and mic.--66.167.128.96 (talk) 06:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Port forwarding

Amongst my modem/router setup pages, there are two related to port forwarding. The first page is titled Single Port Forwarding and lets me forward a single external port to a single internal port on a specific internal IP address in the 192.168.1.0 - 192.168.1.255 range - I think I know how this works and for example how it lets me run a webserver that can be seen by the rest of the internet. The other page is titled Port Range Forwarding and is similar to the Single port version but has a "Port Range" (start and end) instead of "external port" and "internal port".

If I was to setup a range, forwarding ports 20 - 23, would that provide the same facility as having four entries on the Single Port Forwarding page, forwarding external port 20 to internal port 20, external port 21 to internal port 21, external port 22 to internal port 22, and external port 23 to internal port 23 (all to the same IP address)? ie. for each port in the range, is the forwarding between the same external and internal port numbers? Astronaut (talk) 14:58, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That is typically how such firewall management utilities work. What type of router or NAT translator do you have? Nimur (talk) 15:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on the information provided i'd have to say Yes. Using the range would be the same as entering in 4 sepreat entries in the single area. Try it, if the range does not work then try the single option, If that does not work then you might have some setting to fiddle with in your firewall. Good luck! – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

It's the same with my linksys router. The two pages achieve the same thing. Who knows why they therefore bother to have two pages. Rjwilmsi 23:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia and the GFDL

I asked a question at the Humanities Desk about why the Wikimedia Foundation is able to use the "or later" clause of the GFDL to change the license under which Wikipedia editors have, to date, made their contributions. I wanted to point there from the Computing desk because this is also a clause of the GPL. If you're knowledgeable, please comment over on that desk. Thanks - Tempshill (talk) 16:12, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

May 23

C++ question

I have some objects of a particular class. I want some way to call a specific function of all those objects without making a loop. By using base class,virtual class,etc. Please suggest a way to do that! 218.248.80.114 (talk) 01:47, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to achieve what you describe is to make a loop, or use for_each, but the latter is hardly an improvement. Consider:

#include <algorithm> // for_each
#include <functional> // mem_fun_ref

struct C { void f() const {} };

int main()
{
  using namespace std;
  C c[10] = {}; // array of 10 C objects.

  for_each( c, c + 10, mem_fun_ref(&C::f) ); // call f() for all C objects.
}

If you could describe your problem in more detail or show some code it will be easier to give more detailed advice. decltype (talk) 03:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

class C {
  virtual void exec();
};

class A : public C {
  void exec();
};

int main() {
  A  a1,a2;
  a1.exec();
  a2.exec();
}

Instead of calling exec() for both a1 & a2 or by using a loop, I want to use the property that exec() is derived from the same base class and execute all the derived exec()'s by a single function call. Thanks for the response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.80.114 (talk) 03:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I see. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do that that doesn't involve a loop or recursive function call somewhere. decltype (talk) 03:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to avoid loops? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You could make the objects connect themselves up into a linked list (have a 'next' pointer in every object and a static 'first' variable - then hook up the linked list in the constructor function and unhook it in the destructor). Now have the specific function do whatever it does - then at the end, have it call that same function on the 'next' object in the list. This is a recursive solution - no loops involved. However, recursion eats up stack space and the list processing adds lots of overhead - so is wasteful in this situation - you're better off using a loop.

  class Thing
  {
     Thing *next ;
  public:
     static Thing *first ;
     Thing () { next = first ; first = this ; }
     void execAll () { exec () ; if ( next ) next -> execAll () ; }
     virtual void exec () { whatever ; }
   }
 
   Thing *Thing::first = 0 ;
 
   int main()
   {
     Thing a1, a2;
     Thing::first->execAll();  // calls 'exec' on every Thing in existence!
   }

Derived classes of 'Thing' will work just fine. SteveBaker (talk) 02:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Given class Thing above, and ignoring copying and assignment, how would you implement the destructor? consider Thing * p; {Thing a1; p = new Thing(); Thing a2; } Thing::first->execAll(); decltype (talk) 07:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I was hoping you wouldn't ask that! I didn't want to complicate a simple answer. But what I'd do would depend on how time-sensitive the creation and deletion 'Thing' objects is - and how sensitive the memory they consume is. If time is critical but space isn't - then I'd build a doubly-linked list with both 'prev' and 'next' pointers. If space is critical but time isn't then I'd have the destructor walk down the linked list from 'first' until it finds a node whose 'next' equals the 'this' pointer of the node I'm trying to delete. From then on, it's easy.

Time-critical version with doubly-linked list:

  class Thing
  {
  public:
    Thing *next ;
    Thing *prev ;
    static Thing *first ;
    Thing () { if ( first ) first->prev = this ; next = first ; prev = 0 ; first = this ; }
    virtual ~Thing () { if ( prev ) prev->next = next ; else first = next ; }
    ...etc...
  } ;

Space-critical version that searches the single linked list in order to remove a node:

  class Thing
  {
  public:
     Thing *next ;
     static Thing *first ;

     void unlink ( Thing *thing )
     {
       if ( next == thing )
         next = thing -> next ;
       else
       if ( next )
         next -> unlink ( thing ) ;
     }

     Thing () { next = first ; first = this ; }
     virtual ~Thing ()
     {
       if ( first ) first -> unlink ( this ) ;
     }
     ...etc...
   } ;

(The above code is untested - I may have made a boo-boo - so beware!)

Of course, in reality - I'd be unlikely to deny myself the use of loops in the first place! Also, I don't like public member variables - so I'd probably hide more stuff in the 'private' section. Some of the cases that the code catches (like when 'unlink' tests that 'next' is null) can "never happen" so I could save time by converting the checks into asserts so they'd be compiled out in a shipping build...and of course this is not thread-safe. There is a vast, yawning chasm between what one writes as an example for Wikipedia and finely crafted working code!

SteveBaker (talk) 15:21, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

A LaTeXnicality

Resolved

I used \renewcommand to make the "enumerate" environment label each item with a capital letter followed by a period, thus:

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{\Alph{enumi}{.}}

renewcommand{\theenumi}{\Alph{enumi}}

\begin{enumerate}

\item so there

\item and so on

\item blah blah

\item \label{thisgap}

\end{enumerate}

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (\ref{thisgap}) corresponds to a 

I expected a sentence that says

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (D) corresponds to a

but instead I got this:

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (4) corresponds to a

How can I get it to show a (D) rather than a (4)? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I would use \renewcommand{\theenumi}{\Alph{enumi}}. MTM (talk) 18:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, MTM. It worked. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Recovery of SATA drive on PATA computer

I have a SATA HDD of my friend's computer in which the power supply failed. They bought a new desktop, but I don't have access to it. All I have here at my house are PATA computers. So, is there anyway I can go PATA to SATA for data recovery without any extra equipment (I have permission to take the computer with the messed up powersupply so I could sacrifice some parts of it.)? TIA, Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 03:27, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope. You couldn't even hook up the SATA drive to any connector that your computer has, if it lacks SATA support (which you can add to a PATA computer by purchasing a SATA PCI card). Tempshill (talk) 03:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Tempshill is right, There is no way that you can connect a sata HHD to a computer that lacks sata ports without getting new equipment. But, the equipment to do so is reletivly cheap. This, this, this and this are all about the same price depending on where you go. Personely i have one of these and i have to say it is very usfull. I got mine at Frys for about $14. Hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  05:08, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thought. Have a thumbdrive? (aka flashdrive). Take your (good) power supply out, install to friends (dead) PC, dump data to usb, revert P/S - copy said data to desirable location. Any value to that thought? — Ched :  ?  05:28, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Telnet/SSH2

Following on from my question about port forwarding, I have succesfully set up the forwarding of port 22 (and port 80) and tested that my webserver serves up the pages of my test site and I can use SSH2 to connect a telnet window to my webserver for remote admin. It all works well - at home. So now I've left the webserver running and gone to my sister's for the weekend. The webserver is still serving up the pages, but I cannot get the SSH2 window to connect before it times out. So is there anything obvious I have failed to consider? Astronaut (talk) 09:17, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Your client side (e.g. your sister's home network or internet provider) might be blocking certain ports. Have you tried accessing from other locations? Nimur (talk) 12:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I tried a neighbour's unsecured wireless connection and had the same problem, but it is quite possible that they are with the same ISP as my sister. Then again, perhaps the port blocking is a feature of all ISPs here in the UK. It did get me thinking that perhaps it might have something to do with the multiple firewalls somewhere in the route between my sister's network and my own (my ISP, my sister's ISP, and perhaps some more). One other thing also occured to me, would I need to set up some kind of VPN to make this work properly? (if so, why?). Anyway, I'll call my ISP next week and see if they can help. Thanks. Astronaut (talk) 16:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Your server side ISP could also be blocking the inbound connection. Or your firewall is blocking it. Or your router might be blocking it because it's set up to be configured through ssh. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

My modem/router is definitely configured to forward ports 22, & 23 (SSH and Telnet, respectively) to the server. My tests at home consisted of accessing my server using SSH2 via both the internal IP address of my server (to check the SSH2 was working) and the external IP address of my router (to check the port forwarding was working). Both tests were successful. I'm definitely getting the feeling the problem is firewall related (perhaps the external IP test manages to avoid my ISP's firewall?), but I just wanted to check that I hadn't missed out something really obvious to a networking expert but not at all obvious to me. Astronaut (talk) 16:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

FSB vs. memory speed

I am comparing two laptops: [A] has 667 Mhz FSB and 800 Mhz dual-channel memory, whereas the [B] has 800 Mhz FSB and 667 Mhz dual-channel memory. Which would be faster? And why? Thanks! --Masatran (talk) 09:46, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Some more details: [A] is Pentium Dual-Core, while [B] is Core 2 Duo. Intel Core 2#Synchronous memory modules recommends synchronizing FSB and memory speeds, but does does not say what happens when they are not in sync. --Masatran (talk) 10:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Core 2 > Pentium Dual-Core. In general memory clock isn't much of a factor in determining the performance compared to other things (CPU speed, GPU, amount of ram, etc.). --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Antilived is correct that your CPU choice here will have a much greater impact than your memory timing choices. This chart from Tomshardware from January 2008 compares FSB and memory speeds from 1066 to 1600, and shows that the differences using different FSB and memory timings when playing Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. are tiny, and are probably exceeded by measurement error. Other benchmarks in the same article, other than raw, synthetic memory bandwidth measurements, show even smaller differences, or no differences; from a practical point of view you will most likely not notice a difference, unless, possibly, your laptop tasks involve all memory access and little calculation, as though you were just sorting gigabytes of data all day. To answer the question about memory timing, I believe system (A) will actually clock the memory at 667MHz, so you will simply have memory that's rated for a higher speed than your laptop will drive the memory at; and system (B) will detect upon bootup that the memory is 667MHz, and underclock the FSB accordingly. In both situations you'll be running your memory at 667MHz. Tempshill (talk) 14:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

It probably won't run the FSB to 667Mhz but rather lower the memory multiplier so that FSB runs at 800 while memory runs at 667Mhz. Sure there's a performance hit from doing this, but it is a lot smaller than the difference the CPU speed makes. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:16, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

external hard drive problems

Got a bit of a problem with one of my external usb hard drives. The problem only began about an hour ago. The drive has two partitions, a 198GB fat32 one and a 40GB NTFS one. When I plug the drive into the usb port, only the 198GB fat32 drive shows up, but after a few seconds the entire computer freezes and becomes unresponsive. However, as soon as I unplug the drive the computer resumes working like nothing is wrong. The system is Windows XP. I've tried on another WinXp computer and exactly the same thing happens. The drive is not making any clicking sounds, I've not installed any new software and my other usb drives are working fine, so it's not a problem with the usb port or the usb cable either. Any ideas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 10:43, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a hard one. There could be any number of things wrong (failing sectors, wire in side the case could be lose, control board could be fried. ect...). But from the details you have given i'd have to say that the drive might be bad. The only way to really see if that is the case would be to restart your computer using a Ubuntu live cd. See if you can access the drive from that live CD. IF you can try to get rid of the partitions, formatting the hard drive and reforming the partitions. If after doing that you still cant access it from windows then consider that drive bad. Let us know how it turns out. I hope this helped – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. It's working perfectly under slax, so I'm at a complete loss for why it's not working on windows :/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 19:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Well at least I managed to save most of my stuff from the drive. But unless I can get it working again with windows it's pretty useless to me. Has this sort of thing happened before? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 19:22, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Try using a USB cable with the splitter on the end for extra power (it splits into 2 USB plugs to plug into the PC, one is the normal connection (data + power) and the other is simply for extra power from a 2nd USB port). Perhaps that will work? I've found that some USB hard-drives fail to work on my laptop (compared to my friend's PC), or sometimes fail to work on particular USB ports, if I don't provide the extra power in this way. Zunaid 07:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

what is the algorithm behind online maps?

For example, a map of a city is viewed online and I move across the road using the mouse. If it is magnified, one can see that parts of the maps are only loaded as required. Can you please say how it is done? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 12:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The algorithm is actually very simple. You have a current (x,y) location, and a current zoom level. The algorithm simply retrieves the images which represent areas near that (x,y) location (i.e. load everything in the range x-3 to x+3 miles). The efficiency comes from an effective data structure, storing the map image files for quick access. A more interesting algorithm is a query for driving directions - a complex web of interconnected streets must be searched to find a minimum-cost path (by distance, travel-time, etc). Nimur (talk) 12:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The general technique that is behind these maps is Ajax. Traditionally, when you interacted with a web page, your actions, such as filling out a form or clicking on a link or some other hot spot, caused the browser to send a request back to the server for new page content. That new content would replace part of all of the current page and the process would repeat. Generally you had to wait for each update. With Ajax, updating of the page is more finely controlled using JavaScript , which responds to your actions and, when needed, requests additional page content using a function called XMLHttpRequest. The difference is that the browser does not wait for the response and you can continue to interact with the current page. When the response does come back, another piece of JavaScript code is executed that takes the data and updates the appropriate portion of the display.

In the case of Ajax driven maps, popularized by Google Maps, the map starts out at some initial position and zoom level. The initial map is likely downloaded with the initial page. As you roll your mouse wheel, the JavaScript code performs several actions: First, it re-sizes the existing displayed image, which may initially have a low resolution appearance. Next, it determines what new images are needed to provide the higher resolution presentation for the new zoom level. If it already has some or all of those images (from earlier activity), they are immediately displayed. For those images that are not available, one or more calls are made to XMLHttpRequest to request those images. A short time later, when the requested images are received back from the map server, the JavaScript will replace portions of the current map display with the higher resolution images, eventually updating the entire map.

For efficiency reasons, those image requests are typically broken down into multiple sections or tiles. It is likely that the map server stores each tile as a separate image in its database. The images themselves come from several sources. Lower resolution images are based on satellite photos, while the higher resolution images are based on a aerial photography. Adjacent photographs are blended together to give the appearance of a continuous image, but you can often see discontinuities in color, lighting, and perspective where this has been done.

Panning works similarly. Typically, the web page already contains image data for areas of the map lightly beyond the displayed area, so slow panning is often seamless. As you pan, the JavaScript will use XMLHttpRequest to request new images to fill in missing parts of the map and to maintain a small buffer of surrounding the displayed map. Overlays such as streets, borders, labels, and other information is retrieved and processed similarly. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

C# and Bluetooth

Hi. I am trying to write a C# program that can receive files over Bluetooth (OBEX PUSH), and display transfer progress. Currently I'm using the InTheHand.Net.Bluetooth library from 32feet.NET

ObexListener listener = new InTheHand.Net.ObexListener();
listener.Start();

while (listener.IsListening)
{
    ObexListenerContext context = listener.GetContext();
    Application.Run(new RecvProgress(context));
}

but GetContext() only returns after all data has been transferred.

Is there any other way to receive files over Bluetooth? (Windows XP Pro, Microsoft's Bluetooth stack)

--grawity 12:57, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Mount folder on Ubuntu (Linux/GNOME)

Resolved

Anyone knows how I can "mount" a folder on Ubuntu, so that it appears like this? I tried "mount --bind" on /media/myfolder_name, tried creating symlics, etc... nothing seems to work... is this even possible? I think some apps do it with FUSE, but I just can't figure out how... __ Hacktolive (talk) 18:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I solved it with some FUSE utilities (bindfs in particular)_ Hacktolive (talk) 18:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I want XeTeX and I want it now...

I need to install XeTeX (and probably LaTeX as well) on my Windows Vista PC. But I'm not really comfortable with command-line based stuff with .tars and .bz2s and such, which is what all the distributions I've found offer. Is there somewhere on the Internet where I can get a nice big .zip containing all the necessary files and an installer that will do it for me? 137.205.74.169 (talk) 18:05, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Try MikTeX. MTM (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

+1. And LyX as well. --wj32 ^t/c 23:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ipod

So, my Ipod is broken.

Neither my computer or laptop notice it when I plug it in, it doesn't recharge, plugging it in to one of the usb ports in my computer managed to set fire to part of it, and it now just shows the recharging message and does nothing else.

It stopped working the same a few weeks ago, and I sent it to be fixed, and it came back recharged, but now the battery has run out again, it's back to how it was, and it seems the free repair thing is about to run out. And when I got it back, all the music had been wiped off and without being able to connect it to my computer, I can't put anything back on, even if it did work.

Oh, and the wire to plug it in has gotten itself a bit broken too now, so I can't use that any more.

What do I do?

148.197.114.207 (talk) 18:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You say the warranty is "about to run out", so presumably it hasn't run out yet. That makes it simple - you just send it back in. --Tango (talk) 18:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

But they didn't actually fix it last time. What happens if it comes back just the same as it did before, just with the battery recharged again? 148.197.114.207 (talk) 19:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You mention that the wire is broken, could a short circuit be the cause of the failure of this ipod? Just send it in again and tell them that they didnt fix it last time, also mention the fire thingy. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:05, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The wire sort of got broke after the rest didn't work. But I will try letting them know the previous problems still haven't been fixed, they might do something. Or exchange it for a new one. 148.197.114.207 (talk) 21:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

If you return something under warranty - but they fail to fix it - then you can send it back for them to fix even if the warranty has just expired. Just make sure that you make it clear to them that they failed to fix it last time. If they screw up AGAIN - you just keep sending it back with ever more exasperated explanations. If you call customer service and they can't understand this - employ the magic phrase "In that case, I need to speak to your supervisor." SteveBaker (talk) 02:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Screen going blank during Windows XP installation

I am installing Windows XP from a CD (onto which I bundled service packs according to this guide) and it starts out just fine (much better than without the service packs, because without them, Windows can't handle the large hard drive (300 GB)).

It formats the hard drive and copies files over to it and then it wants to reboot, but when the CD boots again, the screen turns black and all CD and hard drive activity stops. It just sits there. If I disconnect the hard drive and boot with the CD, the installation program starts as normal, but not when the hard drive is connected. Since the installation isn't finished, the hard drive itself isn't bootable.

I would appreciate suggestions on what to do. —Bromskloss (talk) 19:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that windows xp (no SP) will support any one HD up to 4TB. Try installing windows without slipstreaming any service packs in to it. And make sure your CD is clean. :)– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

May 24

"www." ?

Why is it that sometimes it doesn't seem to make a difference whether or not you type the "www." part at the beginning of a website address and other times it does? WHat exactly does the "www." part do? --212.120.248.41 (talk) 00:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

See World Wide Web#WWW prefix in Web addresses. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:49, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) www is just a subdomain, like the 'en' in en.wikipedia.org or the 'images' in images.google.com. There's nothing intrinsically special about it. It can point wherever the domain's administrator wants it to, so it's up to them whether to make www.example.com point to the same place as example.com. Usually it's best to point them both to the same place, and most major websites do so, but I expect there are good reasons for not doing it in some cases. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 00:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

When the owner of example.com registered his domain, he probably instructed his DNS server to translate both example.com and also the subdomain www.example.com to 208.77.188.166. When you type either name into your web browser, your local DNS server would translate either name into "208.77.188.166", and hence you'll get the same result. Tempshill (talk) 00:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to register your site with both www and nothing in order for both to work. I only registered 'sjbaker.org' - but both that and 'www.sjbaker.org' (and 'mail.sjbaker.org' and others) work. It's entirely up to the way you set up your HTTP server (Apache, for example). My site sends www.sjbaker.org and sjbaker.org to the same web page - but mail.sjbaker.org is handled by Squirrelmail. Go to a site like sourceforge.net and you'll find thousands of subdomains are served there. SteveBaker (talk) 02:23, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You have mail.sjbaker.org set to go to a different IP address than www.sjbaker.org and sjbaker.org (which both go to the same). You only have to register the domain once (the domain is just the sjbaker.org part), but you need to set the DNS records appropriately. --Tango (talk) 15:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

"you need to set the DNS records appropriately." - 'you' being 'someone' - it's often set up automatically by your host — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 18:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The above comments are true. As you know, there are many different domains on the Internet: microsoft.com, wikipedia.org, facebook.com, rejbrand.se, and billions (?) of others. The owner of a domain may then divide it into subdomans. For instance, you can look at en.wikipedia.org, sv.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org, and so on; in this case, each subdomain contains a specific language of Wikipedia. Another example would be a fictional company "My Company", selling cars, bikes, and lawn mowers: it could have its corporate website on mycompany.com, and use the subdomains cars.mycompany.com, bikes.mycompany.com, and mowers.mycompany.com to present its different divisions. "www" as a subdomain works in no special way - in principle, www.mycompany.com and mycompany.com could be two different webpages, but usually they are identical. Most (good) websites can be accessed both with and without the "www" subdomain. For instance, you can access either microsoft.com or www.microsoft.com, or either rejbrand.se or www.rejbrand.se. Sometimes, however, website owners require the "www" subdomain. For instance, you cannot access nasa.gov, but www.nasa.gov works fine. Sometimes "www" can be used before subdomans as well: for instance, you can access both english.rejbrand.se and www.english.rejbrand.se. The only example of a website with different pages with and without the "www" subdomain I know of is one of the (very few!) websites of the North Korean government: kcce.kp is obviously a different page than www.kcce.kp. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

So what are the advantages/disadvantages of:

• (a) requiring the www. part as in the nasa example
• (b) having www.awebsite.com and awebsite.com go to different sites as in the N Korea example? --212.120.248.41 (talk) 15:38, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

As I see it,

• (a) no advantages, a lot of people will try nasa.gov and give up (unless Google suggests www.nasa.gov). Still, I really wonder why they do require it.
• (a) it is only confusing. My guess is that the webmaster in North Korea is not an expert of website development...

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:09, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Andreas Rejbrand when he implies that it's an awful decision to have example.com and www.example.com go different places. The only thing it adds for users is confusion. There is a single situation I have encountered where you have to do this. Google Sites is a free website hosting service. They explain in detail how to configure www.example.com to point to the Google Sites web page; but they say they don't currently support the ability to direct a domain without a sub-domain, like example.com, to a Google Sites page. The (offtopic) workaround is to go ahead and point www.example.com to the Google Sites page, and use a domain registrar with a "free web hosting" service to host example.com, and just put an immediate HTML redirect tag to www.example.com, right at the top of the latter page. Tempshill (talk) 20:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the technical explanations above are correct; www.* is just a subdomain and can be anything. The previous comments are implicitly assuming that most of the traffic to a particular domain is web-browser, http traffic. In fact, the internet was not designed with this intention, although it has become the norm for most mainstream web users. To be honest, it makes much more sense for nimur.com and www.nimur.com to point at different computers; one is a round-robin load balancer to a beowulf cluster, while the other is an HTTP and HTTPS server delivering HTML content. The idea originally was to have a dedicated "www" computer for this purpose. In such a network, it does NOT make make a lot of sense for the web server to be the top-level of the entire network. Because a lot of people only use internet for web browsing of HTML pages, they forget about all the other services which might be on a network, and just assume that the top level domain is should alias to the web servers. In a more complex network, there are dozens of other types of computers (databases, compute nodes, network attached storage), which would never deliver "www"-style content. I would go so far as to say that a best practice design does NOT alias the top level domain name to the web server. If there is concern about confusing end-users, a lightweight proxy server can run on the top-level server, and it should send an HTTP Redirect command to the true www. server. This provides the most scalable and correct implementation. Nimur (talk) 17:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

A good point, except that according to that argument, surely the top level of the domain shouldn't be pointed at any server, since the argument can be applied equally to any of the nodes, or purposes, or clusters, within the network on that domain. As such, aliasing the top level to one of the nodes is really just a convenience, and if the main activity is HTTP, then aliasing to the web server makes perfect sense.

If there is no one main public activity for the network, then a multi-function redirect / proxy could be set up to respond to non-sub-domain requests - again, nothing more than a convenience. - IMSoP (talk) 20:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

TI 89 Titanium

Does anybody know where one can find a complete listing of the error codes (errornum values) and their corresponding errors for the TI-89 Titanium? --72.197.202.36 (talk) 00:51, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried asking this question on the math and misc desks?– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  02:09, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the proper forum for such a question. It appear that the TI-89 Titanium Guidebook has a list of error codes in appendix B. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Receiving VOIP/SIP calls without computer on

I am looking for relatively cheap Analog Telephone Adapters which each of my family members (I have an international family) would be able to plug into his/her Ethernet ports on their routers and with a VOIP/SIP service provider call each other directly without the use of a computer.

Can anyone recommend of anything of this sort? TheCuriousGnome (talk) 03:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I have a Linksys PAP2T and it's a good little device. Came bundled with my ISP's config file and was basically plug and play. It does tend to lose connection when I get a new IP though, so I need to restart my router every fortnight to keep my phone line running. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you pay monthly fees to a special VOIP provider (like Vonage) for it to work or does it only need an internet connection and then all calls are free to other VOIP phones? I am loooking for a technological solution through which each of our family members would not need to pay a 30 $ monthly fee for it to work. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 15:38, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

No I have Naked DSL and that is basically my replacement landline. I do get free calls to other users of the same service but otherwise it's the same as your ordinary landline, with cheaper tolls. In theory I could be half way across the world with an internet connection and still be able to use my landline and effectively free international calling but I haven't tested it out yet, so I'm not sure. --antilived^{T | C | G} 19:06, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

a question about dates in java

I have to get the input from a date picker from a web page coded in JSP and use the date to prepare a list of 5 consecutive days starting from that input date and write this to SQL database. But I should skip weekends from that list. i.e in that list Monday comes after Friday. For now, I just tried to implement the list of 5 dates without the weekend considerations. I got the date as a String from the date picker in the format "dd-mm-yyyy". I created a calendar object using

                         Calendar cal=Calendar.getInstance();

The input from the date picker is stored in a String object named "a". I put the following lines of code next:

                 SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-mm-yyyy");
                 Date d = dateFormat.parse(a);
                 cal.clear();
                 cal.setTime(d);
                 cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, 1);

d=cal.getTime(); I converted this "d" to java.sql.Date by using :

                 java.sql.Date sqlDate=new java.sql.Date(d.getTime());

But when I give 30th Jan 2009 as input from date picker it should start with 30th Jan 2009 and end with 4th Feb 2009. But when I checked the database the entry was from 1st Jan 2009 to 5th Jan 2009. What is the problem here? I will be thankful for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.16.180.5 (talk) 07:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Spare yourself a headache and use Joda Time: http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/. Java will switch to a new api (JSR 310) based on it anyways. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.123.183 (talk) 22:38, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

linux installation

my laptop has 500 GB hard disk it has been split into two while creation itself so now in my "my computer" there are two C: and D: each of 250 GB C: is full of windows vista now i want to install linux which is the best version of linux now and how can i install?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srini279 (talk • contribs) 13:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I would recommend Ubuntu or Super OS (remaster of ubuntu + "vitamins" like codecs and flash), you can find plenty of info at http://help.ubuntu.com or the ubuntu forums. I would also recommend doing a wubi install -- SF007 (talk) 14:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

pen drive problem with linux

there is an error message " Unable to mount pen drive " in most of the computers with linux as the OS . why is it so ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srini279 (talk • contribs) 13:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen that message - I use Linux all the time and I have loads of USB drives that work just fine. I'm a bit puzzled that you'd see an error message with that wording because Linux doesn't know that it's a "pen drive" - it's just USB mass storage - it could be anything from a camera to a large USB hard drive. Usually, if there is a problem, it says "Can't mount device" or "Can't mount USB device". Are you sure that's the exact wording of the message? Can you tell us which Linux distribution and release number you're using and what device you're plugging in? SteveBaker (talk) 15:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I have also never seen that error. I've never known Linux to refer to a jump drive as anything other than a "USB Mass Storage Device". What program are you trying to use to mount the drive? Are you doing it at the command prompt? Or through some graphical user interface? APL (talk) 19:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

this is basically the problem i boot the computer and then plug in the pen drive to the usb port and there is no removable disk drive created and when i right click on some file and click on send to the pen drive it justs doesnt do and this prompt comes as cant mount pen drive . dunno whats the problem ? but the same pen drive has no problem with windows vista of the same computer Srini279 (talk) 12:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Malware and Facebook

Everynow and then I'll get a bogus message from a friend linking to a phishing/malware site. When your facebook account gets hacked in this fashion, what if any actions should you take?

this just happened to my friend. he spammed out a link to "picoband.be". I've advised him to take typical antivirus actions on his computer, plus clearing out the saved passwords in his browser and changing at elast his fb password. are these steps necessary? are any other steps required/advisable? Thanks all --Shaggorama (talk) 15:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

There are instructions as to what to do here. It is the first link on Facebook if you go to "Help" at the bottom of the page. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:29, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Most of the time this seems to be from the user giving his/her identity to some random website claiming to need it for something. It's not really "hacking" in the typical sense so much as social engineering. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Perl, index, regex, positions

Perl's index function returns the first occurance of the substring within the string. The substring has to be an exact match. Wildcard or regex is not allowed.

Let's say I want to extract all the dates in a lengthy Wikipedia talk page. How do I build a hash made of, say, all the dates (values extracted using regex) and their positions (keys) within the talk page? E.g, 238 => January 2, 2005, 1045 => March 23, 2005, ... -- Toytoy (talk) 15:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

This should do it:

    $datepositions{$-[1]} = $1 while /(date-matching regex)/g;

-- BenRG (talk) 18:47, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

May 25

Is Facebook useful?

I guess this is a pretty dumb question. The obvious response is "useful to whom?"

I'll ask in a different, more specific, way.

Do people who answer questions at the Reference Desk find Facebook useful enough to be worth using? If so, what things do you use it for?

Thank you. CBHA (talk) 00:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I keep up with what friends are doing who I normally wouldn't see and play games. Dismas|^(talk) 00:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see the point. Why would I want everyone to know what I did today, what I like or don't like, what music I listen to, what shows I watch, and what the hell would I do with perhaps thousands of so-called "friends" I will certainly never meet? Astronaut (talk) 01:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to add "friends" who aren't actually your friends. As for why they'd want to know, well, they might, they might not. I sort of like to see what people are up to without having to get in touch with them more directly. It's a nice passive mix of voyeurism and exhibitionism. That being said, I've noticed that the people I communicate with most regularly on facebook are the people I see most often anyway, so I'm not sure it is much more than a mixture of an address book and a way to peek in on people's lives without them directly knowing. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I have found that it is easiest to stay in touch by telephone and email. Because these are direct point-to-point communication methods, it eliminates the vast majority of "frivolous" communications. Nimur (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I have, in the past, been subscribed to two polish social sites (one of them being nasza-klasa.pl), but have stopped using my accounts and/or blocked them, because it was just taking up too much of my time, looking at photos of strangers or what not. If anyone wants to contact me, my details have been unchanged for years now, and even if need be, they're easy to find online because of the business I'm in. Friends have been trying to coerce me to register with Facebook, but I just don't seem to be needing it. What for? Too colourful, floopy, pointless for me. Texting and e-mails are what I use, like Nimur. Cheers, --Ouro (blah blah) 06:58, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Ps. Another reason: anything mainstream is kind of off-putting for me. I choose my own paths. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything very useful there - it seems to be mostly yet another way to soak up my time. SteveBaker (talk) 21:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Where is the Bluetooth headset article?

I was hoping to read a lot about how people with these new headsets on appear to talk to themselves (like Autistics do) and how using them could lead to a world of hurt. Unfortunately, there's no such article, and making it would get it speedy-deleted because admins on WP nowadays have a hair-trigger-finger on the deletion button.

So will someone please create Bluetooth headset for me? --70.254.195.100 (talk) 00:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

We have Headset (telephone/computer)#Bluetooth wireless headsets, but it looks like it could use some tidying up — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 01:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I created the stub. Hopefully others can continue to add to it, and I'll add to it myself when I have time/resources available. Shadowjams (talk) 06:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Timelapse from a webcam

Is there software available that can take a photo every x seconds/minutes using a webcam, and save it to the hard drive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.122.55 (talk) 02:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You could probably write a bash script to do this fairly easily. Got any friends who know linux? --Shaggorama (talk) 03:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft has a program called "timershot" that does this. It's available as part of their Power Toys. Just google for "timershot power toys microsoft". There's also an open source webcam software out there called Dorgem at [3] that works well, and has a windows binary. It has been discontinued, but the old versions of the software should work. Shadowjams (talk) 06:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hm, that's too bad, the installer refuses to install on Vista, claiming it doesn't work on anything earlier or later than XP. Tempshill (talk) 06:26, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible to rip the dll/exe out of the package and just run it manually? That's worked on some drivers that refuse to work in Windows 7/Vista. Shadowjams (talk) 06:42, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Try running the installer in compatibility mode for Windows XP. (Right-click the installer-->Compatibility)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 14:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I tried the timershot program, but windows froze twoce when i right clicked on the exe to try and run it in compatibility mode(on vista)!. Dorgem seems like a good program, but it only saves 1 image, i.e. when it takes the next picture, it overwrites it, whereas i want a series of pictures. Anyone know how to get it to save each picture individually and not write over the previous one. Surely there must be some other programs out there to perform this sort of task! Edit: just found the store as avi setting!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.120.86 (talk) 15:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You can fix that by putting a flag in the filename. Typically the timestamp. Then it won't overwrite each set of pictures. It will do exactly what you're talking about with JPGs (and the AVI as you discovered). Shadowjams (talk) 21:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

How can i put a timestamp flag in the filename? Thanks. 86.177.120.86 (talk) 23:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It's been a while, but in the help there's a list of variables you can use in the captions and in the filenames. Things like %t. You can put that in your file name, so when you specify the path to write the output, put "picture%t.jpg" if I remember. Shadowjams (talk) 00:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Works Like charm! It's a shame the person who made dorgem stopped developing it, but it still pretty good for something that is unfinished! 86.177.122.74 (talk) 13:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

free (gratis) software for students

Which companies give their proprietary software for free for students? I know that Microsoft and Autodesk both do it, but are there any other companies? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 04:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't know about Autodesk but Microsoft generally don't give out software for free. They, along with almost all other software companies (Adobe comes to mind), do provide a heavily discounted version of their software for students though. --118.90.137.39 (talk) 05:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

They do. Exhibit A: DreamSpark -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Splus (statistical software) I think is available for students on a limited basis, maybe for free. Shadowjams (talk) 06:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

As the OP suggested, Microsoft does release Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express as free downloads. Although they have some built in limitations that make them unsuitable for large scale commercial application development, they are very much suited for student use. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Where I went to school there was a program where student licenses of many microsoft products (but not Windows or Office) could be gotten for free and you could borrow a "corporate" multi-install disk. I was under the impression that Microsoft sponsored this program, but I can't say for sure, I never took advantage of it. (I ran Linux.) I think this only applied to Comp. Sci. students. APL (talk) 06:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

That one is the MSDN Academic Alliance. It's cheaper, but the school still needs to pay some money, which is obviously coming out of your tuition. Much of the normal MSDNAA software is on Dreamspark as well now. I have no idea if schools need pay for that, but it doesn't seem to be restricted to students of certain departments/faculties. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't count because they are available for everyone. F (talk) 10:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Companies like Opera give away their proprietary software to anyone. But perhaps that's not what you have in mind. Systat gives away Mystat. -- Hoary (talk) 10:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Any more companies? I'm compliling a list. And yes, I knew about Dreamspark. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 17:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The free versions that Autodesk gives away are typically horribly crippled. My son (who is a student) needed a copy of Maya for his coursework - but the free version can't save in any file format other than it's own encrypted form that regular Maya can neither read nor write. All of the MEL-scripting stuff is disabled - plugins are not allowed - when you render something, it adds an ugly "watermark" across it - and so forth. Having said that, the $250 student bundle they are doing is an incredibly good deal - it comes with 4 of their other packages as well as a full version of Maya. There is a yet cheaper version out there - but it has a license that expires 14 months after you buy it. SteveBaker (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Open .desktop files (Linux)?

Does anyone how can I open .desktop (dot desktop) files from the command line? I needed to do it for a project I am working on... (a solution for GNOME or KDE was good enough).... does anyone know that? Thanks _ Hacktolive (talk) 09:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

kde-open works in KDE4. Probably xdg-open also does this, but I do not have Xfce, Gnome or Konqueror installed. MTM (talk) 11:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, kde-open works! (even on GNOME with KDE libraries), however... I still can't find the GNOME command to open .desktop files... gnome-open and xdg-open simply open the file on a text editior... Hacktolive (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The GNOME solution is gnome-open. --194.197.235.28 (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Damn, seems to be a bug. thanks anyway Hacktolive (talk) 20:18, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Two internet connections

On a Windows XP computer that is connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, is it possible to use a wireless network card to connect to a different internet connection at the same time, so that for example you could have Firefox using the ethernet connection and another browser using the wireless connection? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like ForceBindIP will do this. -- BenRG (talk) 13:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Windows XP will gladly create two internet connections and your computer can have two IP addresses. When a particular program makes a request, Windows will try to use the best network connection for that particular socket. This may mean the faster connection, or "something else" (simplest routing table, etc). If you want to explicitly choose the network connection that is used in Firefox, you can go to the Advanced Connection settings (Tools menu, Options Menu, Advanced Tab, Network Tab, Connection Settings option). Other programs may have similar control settings, but many will simply use the automatically detected "best" network connection. This can be a problem if the two network cards do not both connect to the same network (as in some setups with a slow internet connection and a fast LAN-only connection). Nimur (talk) 18:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

So what do I do in the Connection Settings? I have the options "no proxy", auto detect" and "manual proxy" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 04:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know Firefox doesn't actually have this option, nor does most other networking software. You could set one of your browsers to use an outside proxy, then set up routing such that all traffic to the proxy's IP address goes through the second interface, but that's probably not what you want. -- BenRG (talk) 09:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

So it's impossible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:25, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean what you asked for in the original question? I think it's possible, but you need to use ForceBindIP, not the browsers' built in connection settings. -- BenRG (talk) 20:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

add ons disabled.

Hi, I stupidly decided to install google chrome which I have now removed and I have installed IE8. However since installing chrome, and now still, every time I load a webpage a pop up bar appears saying "Internet Explorer is currently running with add-ons disabled. Click here to manage, disable or remove your add-ons"

What is going on as I have no idea what to do??? please please help.Scraggy4 (talk) 12:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It may be that you've accidentally set your default browser, or whatever icon you're using to launch IE, to run IE in "safe mode". How exactly are you launching IE? - IMSoP (talk) 16:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It's ok now I've just had the idea of googling "add-ons disabled" and came up with the answer. thanks anywya —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.20.197.104 (talk) 16:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

i-tunes

what is the filename for video clips that can be seen on i-tunes80.254.92.89 (talk) 13:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't you mean "file extension" (or, more precisely, "file format") rather than "file name"? I never use iTunes, though, so I do not know. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

MPEG-4? You could have a look at Itunes#File_format_support for more information. --Kateshortforbob 14:58, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

assigning new functions to keys in Linux

Hi, I would like to know if there is a way to assign a new function to a key? For example, I want a key on the numeric key pad to function as the tab key so that I don't have to use my left hand to tap tab to navigate to another field while entering numerical data. Is there a way to do this, say on Mandriva? --117.204.80.196 (talk) 14:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You can modify your keyboard layout directly too, but if you don't need that much control you can use xmodmap. Use the program xev to find out the keycode for the key you want to remap, then you can remap it to tab with 'xmodmap -e "keycode <your keycode> = Tab"'. Put the keycode <your keycode> = Tab part to ~/.xmodmap and it will automatically load in future sessions. --194.197.235.28 (talk) 15:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Getting rid of virus when you can't boot

Hey, I just received an old computer from a friend of mine. Problem is, it can't boot into Windows XP. Well, it can sort of, but as soon as you get to the login screen an error saying drwtsn32 failed to initialize appears, and upon clicking OK, the computer reboots. I suspect a virus of some kind. Question is, what tools (preferably free) would allow me to run a virus/spyware scan on the hard drive, without it having to boot into Windows? Are there any LiveCD versions of Linux that come built-in with antivirus tools I can use to scan a Windows partition? The computer doesn't have internet access, so I can't update definitions if I have an old .iso... I'd really prefer not to reformat the HDD, and that's why I'm looking into these other alternatives. Thanks for all the help I can get! 141.153.216.72 (talk) 18:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

One question: Have you tried booting Windows into Safe Mode? Tempshill (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I get a blue screen as a result. (OP) 141.153.215.48 (talk) 22:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I googled "antivirus boot cd free" and the first link was this list of free antivirus CDs. If you really think this is a virus rather than some configuration problem — you haven't mentioned why you think it's a virus, but let's say it's a significant probability — I would (a) go ahead and try one of those boot disks; but you could also (b) detach the hard disk and attach it to a working computer of yours that already has some antivirus software on it that can scan the drive. Tempshill (talk) 23:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You could run clamav from a boot CD. Googling turned up the clamav live CD, which allegedly is updated hourly with the latest virus definitions by an automated script. (Here's the script.) -- BenRG (talk) 23:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

ALternate DNS Server

I'm using Mac OS X 10.5.6 with Firefox v3.0.10 and I have two alternates set up, Public Root and OpenNIC. But when I try it after turn one on and turn off the main one all new pages just look a blank page and when i open a new tab and try to type in an address there it stays on google-toolbar page installed by the google toolbar. How can I fix this? --Melab±1 ☎ 19:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Also when I change it back to the main setup it works fine.

If I understand correctly, you are trying to use one of the public root servers (i.e. [a-m].root-servers.net) as "your" server. This won't work, as Mac OS X's resolver expects the DNS server it queries to provide recursive service (i.e. the DNS server does the research and replies with a final answer), and the root servers don't do this (their job is to act as authoritative servers for the root zone, not do your research for you).

If you want to see the difference, open up your terminal and try the following commands:

dig @4.2.2.1 www.apple.com.

This'll ask the name server at 4.2.2.1 (a Level 3/Verizon recursive server) to look up www.apple.com; if you look at the "ANSWER SECTION" it prints, you should see the www.apple.com is an alias of (CNAME record) www.apple.com.akadns.net, which has the address (A record) 17.112.152.32.

dig @198.41.0.4 www.apple.com.

This'll send the same query to 198.41.0.4 (aka a.root-servers.net); note that the response says "WARNING: recursion requested but not available", and contains no ANSWER SECTION, but it does have an AUTHORITY SECTION listing a bunch of NS records for "com." pointing to [a-m].gtld-servers.net. This is its way of saying that it doesn't have the answer, and isn't going to find it for you, but if you want to do the research yourself the next step is to send the same query to one of the authoritative servers for the "com." zone. If you were to send the query to one of them, they'd similarly refer you to Apple's name servers, which would finally answer the question. Or rather, they'd give you that CNAME record, telling you that you have to go through the process again to track down an authoritative server for www.apple.com.akadns.net... you can see why having a recursive server do this for you is handy. -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 21:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Security problems of "mount" on Linux?

Could someone please explain me if it is dangerous to give access to the mount command to non-root users? I am planning to do that on a project I am working on, but I was told that was insecure... is that true? If so, then why is it insecure? Thanks __ Hacktolive (talk) 20:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

A non root user could mount the physical device of the root partition with whatever umask he wanted, giving full access to whatever devices are on the system. There may be other ways to do it. Shadowjams (talk) 21:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I see... and that is the only security problem with "mount"? If so I will probably allow non-root users to use/launch my app as root, and then I make the app itself only mount filesystems in read-only mode... This should be safe, right? __ Hacktolive (talk) 23:43, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Use fstab to allow non-root users to mount the drives you want them to be able to access, with the permissions you pre-define. The fstab article should explain it, but if you have questions feel free to ask them here. Shadowjams (talk) 00:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually I've mispoken here. Your mount command typically will have permissions like this: -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root. You of course don't want to give non root users write access to it, but non-root users can execute it as root, that's the SUID (the s) part. Here is an explanation of SUID: [4]. If mount doesn't have any vulnerabilities, this shouldn't be a problem (because the command will control access itself, despite running with root permissions). But if the mount program could be changed, or has a vulnerability, this could be a problem and allow a user to run something with root permissions. So it can be ok to let a user run mount, but there could be problems.

Sorry for confusing the answer. I misunderstood your question to be asking what would happen if a non-root user could mount anything, not "use the mount command" as you actually said. Shadowjams (talk) 01:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't "mount" only allow non-root users to mount things that are already in the fstab file? Usually that's enough to mount a floppy disk, or a usb keychain drive, or whatever. APL (talk) 00:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

From the mount man page :

 (iii)  Normally,  only  the superuser can mount file systems.  However,
        when fstab contains the user option on a line, anybody  can  mount  the
        corresponding system.

APL (talk) 00:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you're completely right. I was misusing "mount" as an action and "mount" the command. Mount the command should impose the appropriate security. There have been vulnerabilities in the past (See this: [5]). Shadowjams (talk) 01:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks to all, I wll try to see if I can use the /etc/fstab thing. Thanks _ Hacktolive (talk) 23:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

CentralNic DNS records or Root Zone File or whatever

How can I get the dns record or root zone file or whatever is used by CentralNic for the operation of their subdomain registry? Content may look like this:

ns3.centralnic.net	a	62.197.40.234	
ns0.centralnic.net	a	213.146.149.169	
ns2.centralnic.net	a	72.3.240.16
ns1.centralnic.net	a	213.146.149.134	 	
ns5.centralnic.net	a	194.169.218.17
ns4.centralnic.net	a	194.169.218.16
ns6.centralnic.net	a	194.0.2.2
us.com	a	69.64.147.249	
us.com	mx	10 1498931680.pamx1.hotmail.com	
us.com	ns	ns4.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns6.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns5.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns2.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns0.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns3.centralnic.net
us.com	ns	ns1.centralnic.net

--Melab±1 ☎ 21:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

In general, you can't. You can request a copy of the zone file with an AXFR (zone transfer) query, like this:

dig -t AXFR @ns0.centralnic.net. us.com.

...but unless you run this command on one of their approved (/trusted) secondary servers (apparently ns[1-6].centralnic.net), the primary server will refuse the request. This is a standard security measure. -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 01:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

torbrowser download

hi, i'm posting from a country that censors its internet access. I was wondering if someone would be able to help me download the tor browser bundle installer from [6] and then post it to something like drop.io. Thanks in advance, the help is much appreciated. Asdflkjasdflkjasdflkjasdfl (talk) 02:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Here you go. If you need the PGP signature, it's:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iEYEABECAAYFAkniyuUACgkQO50JPzGwl0sACQCgkwagbyYCLYWzYZnJnzbTJaa8
JaEAn2aFEECgcEa//IP6tFbszrC3CXED
=uh52
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

— Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 02:18, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

May 26

text file to windows command prompt

Here's something I can't work out how to do: Suppose I have a simple text file eg

"Textfile.txt"

cd/ (newline)
dir (newline)

etc

In the command prompt on windows (cmd.exe) I would like to "execute" (eg MagicCommand Texfile.txt )that text file so that it performs the equivalent of typing cd/ and dir... Is there a way.?77.86.10.194 (talk) 00:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Rename the txt file so it ends with ".bat". Now you can run it like it is a program. APL (talk) 01:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Great.

Ouch - I accidentally typed cd\ instead of cd/ - and typed filename.bat into the command prompt - the computer made (literally) a beeping screeching sound, the screen flashed, and then went back to normal. Tried it again and it didn't.

Can you explain why it went crazy ?

Other than that - thanks - it totally did the trick - (for some reason the thing I'm using will let me create files, and execute them with a "sys insert string here" command, but ignores other requests, despite the documentation seeming to say that it executes windows commands, luckily I can create the bat file and execute it to get round this.

Thank you very much 5*77.86.10.194 (talk) 03:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

UAT test cases for IVR

Cany any one please tell some UAT test cases for testing IVR system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Itsmeanil6 (talk • contribs) 07:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I work with IVR systems all day long, and you might as well ask "How long is a piece of string?" What is the purpose of the system? What do the users want the system to do? By definition, UAT is User Acceptance Testing, so the users are the ones who have to decide what makes the system acceptable. --LarryMac | Talk 23:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

.NET Exception disassembly

I don't distribute the PDB debugging symbols with my .NET program, and it's very hard to tell where (on which line) a particular exception occurred in bug reports. Is there a way to show a disassembly or something instead of the useless stack traces .NET gives me? (Hint: I don't think it's even possible to get the address of the instruction that threw the exception...) --wj32 ^t/c 10:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Accesskeys in Chrome 2.0

I just upgraded Google Chrome to the new version 2.0, and was extremely disappointed when I realized that accesskeys (e.g. Alt+F, Alt+Z, Alt+L, Alt+R, and so on on Wikipedia) no longer works. Is this on purpose? Can you make them work again in Chrome, or do I have to switch to Firefox? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

As I recall, the use of access keys in HTML and CSS was not accepted as a standard because it introduced conflicts with some accessibility tools. Our article, Access key, states that W3C has deprecated access keys as a standard technology. Firefox is compliant for backwards-compatibility reasons with its browser audience, but is technically not in compliance with the standard (Ironically, this is the sort of insult lobbed against many proprietary browsers and technologies - keeping around old and outdated nonstandard technology - just because people like it!) Nimur (talk) 14:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

True, but people should still have an option to enable access keys. --wj32 ^t/c 07:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Building a game Finding headers using for id Tech 2 id Tech 3 engine

Alright, i want to build a simple game using the id Tech 2 engine (which runs Quake 2) but i have no idea where to start. Any help (like what i need to make) would be appreciated.

PS Yes, i know about all the other engines out there like IrrLicht and OGRE but i want to use id Tech 2 despite the crap graphics quality. so DONT suggest them to me please.  Buffered Input Output 12:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Start with a Quake 2 map editor. That will allow you to create the world for your game. Of course, you will fill it with Quake 2 creatures and items for now. Once that works, you need to get a Quake 2 object editor to alter the Quake 2 creatures and objects for your game. Then, place the new objects in your world. Then, create custom sounds to replace the Quake 2 sounds. Step by step, replace the Quake 2 game with your game. That is a starting point. As for "which" Quake 2 editor - it is up to you. Some are simple to use but limit what you can do. Others are very complicated, but allow you to do a lot of weird things. -- kainaw™ 12:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Kainaw's excellent reply, above, details the fundamental approach - incremental changes based on the original game and its assets. The trouble is that a game even of Quake2's age represents man-years of work producing all the assets; so you either have to replace stuff incrementally (which means your game will look very Quake2-ish for a long time) or take the drastic step of gutting all the game logic and assets, which means you're a long way from getting anything going (and in great danger of becoming disheartened and quitting). Now the order of the tasks Kainaw describes is more flexible; it depends on your interests, and skillset, and what you're hoping to achieve. As a programmer, if it were me, I'd leave the assets (maps, textures, character meshes and skins, sounds) well alone, and produce a different game with the same assets. On a basic game like Quake2 the game logic is incredibly simple, so even a very basic change can make for a different game. You'll pretty soon need to resort to the level editor, but only to manipulate entities (the descriptors which position objects and help them function in the game world). I'd bet with no more than a couple of dozen lines of code and adding a bunch of entities to a deathmatch map you could create a novel custom game (e.g. "Strogg Wars", where the map is filled with two ever-replenished armies of opposing Strogg battling each other and ignoring the player, and the player has to collect the heads of dead Strogg Tanks without getting accidentally blown up). Personally I think too many mods (and I suspect more than a few professional game development studios) start with (and over emphasise) the graphical assets and leave the game itself too late, and run out of steam under the weight of the work needed to produce assets of worthwhile quality. The nice thing about "code first" is that you get a new-ish, worthwhile game almost immediately (and you can tell, crucially, if what you're doing is fun as soon as possible). On the other hand if you start to create Pixie Apocalypse by designing ten new meshes for different kinds of pixie, you'll put in hundreds of hours of work and end up only with an intermediate product that replaces one kind of Quake 2 Strogg with a pixie that behaves just like a Strogg. 87.114.167.162 (talk) 17:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

One practical problem you may have is building Quake2; the id Software original sources depend on tools, headers, and libraries from a decade ago, and you may run into real difficulties in assembling what it needs, and then getting it to build. The linux version of Q2, for example, seems to depend on a bunch of libraries that aren't maintained any more, so porting it to a modern setting is a bunch of work. For that reason it's probably smarter to start with a Quake-tech derived platform like DarkPlaces or ioquake3, because they're still in active development, and so build with current tools and run on current OS distributions. ioQuake3 in particular seems to already be the ancestor of a number of free games - http://ioquake3.org/extras/derivative-games/ 87.114.167.162 (talk) 18:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Screw id Tech 2, i just found out that id Tech 3 is also GPLd and I downloaded that instead. BUT...i don't have the MFC headers and stuff that i think i need to compile it. Where can i get the MFC headers? PS I am using Visual C++ 2008 Express. Any more help? (Sorry for wasting your time, guys...)  Buffered Input Output 11:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You might consider checking out ioquake3. It's a "cleaned up" version of the Id Tech 3 engine. It's probably easier to get working. APL (talk) 14:46, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Strange 2D "barcode"

So I typed virtualpc.com to my browser, and instead of Microsoft Virtual PC (please no VMware/VirtualBox suggestions) I got this picture: (link). It has a 2D "barcode" in the bottom left corner. How do I decode it? (Just out of interest.) --grawity 16:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

See High Capacity Color Barcode. Nanonic (talk) 17:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

That site is nothing to do with Microsoft and for their Virtual PC software you need to go here. ZX81 ^talk 17:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

That I know, but thanks anyway. --grawity 19:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

google desktop and yahoo widget

can you compare? what are the pros and cons of each? which one makes the computer run slower? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.0.52.172 (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Since computers vary, it's hard to form an opinion. The only thing you can do is try both and determine which runs slower on your computer and use the faster one.  Buffered Input Output 11:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

VLC transcode settings for iPod/AppleTV compatible MP4?

If I want to convert some FLVs to iPod compatible .MP4s, what video bitrate do I need to use for h264 video? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:16, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Many bit rates will work. I have found that around 900 kbps is suitable for the video, and I prefer to encode my audio as an MP3, ranging between 64 kbps to 192kbps for music-videos and others where I want to preserve high fidelity audio. These settings produce a video which has no noticeable artifacts on an iPod Nano's tiny screen. Depending on your device and your preferences, you can boost or decrease the video bit rate. I have seen video with as low as 300 kbps which is "suitable" for viewing. Nimur (talk) 20:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

What's the maximum bitrate for iPod? for AppleTV? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:27, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This enthusiast website claims 768 kbps for x264 and 2500 kbps for MPEG-4 are the absolute maximum bit rates for iPod video, but I'm pretty sure I've got two or three exceptions to that currently loaded on my Nano. Numerous other forums seem to concur that these values are not actually hard upper-limits. My high-bitrate videos play fine. Perhaps they are being decoded at a lower bit-rate, although I am not sure if Scalable Video Coding is in use to select a sub-set of the full video file at a lower bit-rate (I don't believe the iPod implements this feature of either compression method). Nimur (talk) 23:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Is such a high bitrate useful? I use 800kbps for video on my Nokia 5800 which has more than double the resolution the Nano has, and I find it perfectly acceptable. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I could probably reduce the resolution without any significant quality loss. I don't like artifacts and I'm barely at 25% of full capacity, though, so there's no immediate need for more compression. Nimur (talk) 13:23, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You might want to consider HandBrake, which has built-in profiles for iPod videos and AppleTV. chocolateboy (talk) 09:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I have not been able to get Handbrake to accept FLVs to transcode. --68.92.139.62 (talk) 03:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

WAP Question

Dear Sir/Madam I would like to hear your opinion on this matter: One of the disadvantages of WAP is that content available for PDA`s is in text format only and also , no email attachment support exist for WAP technology, transmission rate is slower than a typical 56 Kbps modem and web designer do not take time to implement WML on their pages. I am wondering wether or not any of this statements are true.

Kind Regards.

Antonio Solinas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.50.113 (talk) 22:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I have moved your question to a new section to keep the responses separate from above questions, and formatted it properly. Nimur (talk) 22:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you have many misconceptions. First of all, WAP often refers to any wireless access point, including 802.11 access. I think you mean Wireless Application Protocol, is this correct? Maybe you should check that article out. More commonly, mobile devices are supporting full-fledged HTML and web applications, so it is not clear whether the future will hold a place for specialized technologies like Wireless Markup Language, especially as mobile device capabilities continue to increase at an accelerating rate. Nimur (talk) 22:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Amount of vi and/or emacs users

Are there any estimates on that? My guess would be from 5 thousand to 5 billion and it makes me feel a bit ignorant. --194.197.235.28 (talk) 23:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Uh, 5 billion? The world population is 6 billion and 5 out of 6 people are certainly not using any computers at all, much less those particularly geek-friendly programs. My guess is more like 1 to 10 million at most. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 23:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

It's estimated that Linux boxes are about 5% of the personal computers in the world (it's really hard to know for sure) - since there are about a billion personal computers in use around the world, there are probably around 50 million Linux boxes - plus some other UNIX/BSD varients. While other OS's can run both VI and EMACS - it's really rare to see a Windows user using either of those editors. So I think the upper limit is 50 million - but it's gotta be way less than that. Firstly, vi and emacs are really programmer tools - they're really user-hostile for the layperson. I would be surprised if there were more than 10 million serious programmer types out there using one or the other - and the split (in my experience) is close to 50/50. So if forced to make a guess - I'd say about 5 million each...bit the true answer could easily be 10x more or 10x less. SteveBaker (talk) 23:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

vi is a forced skill. Those who swear by it usually don't know there are a million easier ways to do the same thing in a proper user-friendly editor. vi was created during the same time unix was invented, when everyone was high on LSD and not thinking straight... ok just kidding, don't slam me for being un-encyclopedic! My guesstimate would be a few million hardcore C/unix type masochistic specialists who hate GUI operating systems. Sandman30s (talk)

I suppose vim is just about usable, no, aargh, go away, I don't want to see any of these editors anytime ever ever again. I hate them and started using something anything better as soon as I could. They really are for text oriented people and I'm more visually oriented. And did i mention I hate them? I doubt there really could be even one million people who use them often. I'm sure it must be possible to estimate the numbers, anyone new would be asking questions about perplexing behaviour or complaining about them or wanting changes so the usage of a forum might indicate the numbers. Dmcq (talk) 10:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The OP did ask the number of users, not experts. I, for one, am forced to use vi because I'm an Oracle specialist who has to work on unix systems and most of the time, there is no alternative. I would imagine there are a large number of IT systems running on unix and the support specialists would be forced to use vi etc. So a few million would be reasonable, given that there is a large number of IT staff and unix enthusiasts worldwide. Sandman30s (talk) 10:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I use vi on both Linux and Windows; actually I use Elvis on Windows. Why do I not use Notepad you ask? Simple! I can drive vi without thinking and when I'm programing in Perl, I automatically drop into vi mode. I am constantly erasing the vi commands that I enter while using Notepad. One thing for sure, after 20 years of using vi, I'm still no expert. Sometimes, colleagues will try and show me a "better" way to do something in vi. Like I said earlier, I can drive vi without thinking. If I thought about what I was doing, I could probably use all manner of advanced techniques. However, if I did that, I wouldn't have enough spare brain power to think about the pretty girl who sits across the room. --80.176.225.249 (talk) 22:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I've used vi (now vim) since about 1976. So I suppose I'd better take a shot at defending it. There is no other editor on the planet that runs on so many different systems and has been constantly available that entire time. If you only intend to spend your time on Windows - you probably shouldn't bother. But if (as I do) you switch between Linux and Windows - and have had to work on Irix and Solaris and half a dozen different Mac OS's - the ability to edit files without having to think which of them you are using - without EVER having to learn another editor has huge value. I had vi working on my AtariST and my Amiga. No matter what editor you use - there will come a time when you have to switch to something else because your preferred editor doesn't exist - and I utterly guarantee that vi or some varient will still be there when that happens.

Sure, I know that emacs is better - but every time I get up the enthusiasm to try to learn it - I get some actual work to do and I fall back to what I know. Furthermore - vim is surprisingly powerful - but it's not for people who reach for the mouse all the time. It's for people who type FAST - who want to bash out a file in the shortest possible time. That means touch typing. Every time you have to move your hand onto the mouse - you wasted two seconds - if you have to reach for the arrow keys or function keys - you've lost a second (and you're setting yourself up for RSI injuries about 30 years into your career!) You probably haven't noticed that all of the vi commands that you use the most are on the home-keys - and none of the common commands need control or alt. We don't use the cursor arrows for moving the cursor (although you can) - it's h,j,k,l - where the four fingers of most people's dominant hand should be resting. On your left home keys you have append, substitute, delete and find (a,s,d,f).

Sure, vi is a tool for command-line users - but that too is the route to becoming a power-user. To pick a crazy example: Quick! Zip up all of the files in the current directory that start with 'a' through 'f' or 'w' and have filenames exactly six characters long that are properly spelled English words...let's say that there are 40 of these files amonst 400 files in that directory. It took me about 4 seconds to do that using the Linux shell (or using Cygwin under Windows). You quite simply can't do that with point/click tools - you can't do it in an hour - you have to manually look through all of the files. As a professional programmer - I'm totally crippled in a world where the only things you can do with a program is what the guy who wrote it thought you might want to be able to do. vi comes from a world of power users who need that kind of speed. Sure - it's not for everyone - but for people who need it - there is no substitute...except perhaps emacs. SteveBaker (talk) 06:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Steve, thanks heaps. I used to like vi (on AIX) enough to get Elvis for Dos, when Windows was a baby and mouses were a new-fangled rarity. Then I got thrown into a Windows world and didn't know there was a version for Windows (but I've downloaded it now, as tomorrow's new toy). It is only for fast touch typists, but it saves reaching for the mouse or looking up from notes. Most Linux users with prior Windows experience would probably be using a GUI, so the count of Unix/Linux boxes in the world would not be very accurate except as the upper limit. I think 5000 would be a bit low, but 1,000,000 would be high.KoolerStill (talk) 21:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I use vi for several reasons. First, it was the first editor I learned to use. Why would I learn emacs or nano when I already know vi? I tried emacs in Windows, and it was pretty hard to learn, too. I also consider myself a minimalist, which is why I use Notepad in Windows as a replacement for Dreamweaver and Visual Studio. It's nice to start an editor and begin typing right away. Further, vi is installed by default in all UNIX-like systems.--95795n (talk) 23:42, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

May 27

issues watching fullscreen hulu with dual monitors

I'm trying to watch a movie with the "full screen" setting on hulu. I have a dual monitor set up running vista off a laptop. The video will display full screen as long as the browser is the active window: as soon as I make any other window active the video returns to default resolution. pretty frustrating. Anything I can do short of watching it via links of more dubious legality? --Shaggorama (talk) 02:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Depending on your operating system, you can use xmouse with auto-raise disabled. For example, on Windows XP, you can use the TweakUI powertoy to enable X-Mouse behavior with auto-raise disabled. This can give focus to other windows without clicking on them; (in technical terms, this means that the Hulu browser window will never receive a message that it has been de-focused), and you can provide keyboard input to the other windows on the other monitor. This is sort of a clumsy workaround but I have used it for a variety of similar tasks. If you are on Mac OS X or one of the *nixes, you can enable X Mouse behavior, but I'm not sure it will yield the same result. Nimur (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow...so I couldn't have picked a better time to have posted this question. Crazy coincidence, the DAY AFTER my OP, Hulu released the beta of their desktop app. Because it's a separate app, I can throw it up fullscreen on my alternate monitor super easily, and its a pretty sleek way to navigate hulu either way. I totally recommend it. --Shaggorama (talk) 02:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I got a "configuration settings file"

When I open it as a notepad, it contains the following text in three lines:

• [.ShellClassInfo]
• IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll
• IconIndex=121

What does this mean? Thanks.--63.227.51.66 (talk) 05:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a desktop.ini file which specifies the icon to display for a folder. In this case the icon is stored at index 121 in shell32.dll's resources. --wj32 ^t/c 07:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

OpenVPN tunnel...

Hi all.

I try to run OpenVPN with a Linux server and a windows client in bridged mode. The bridge itself works, I can access every computer in the "real" LAN from outside. But one thing does not work: Windows still routes web and other non-172.16.1.XXX traffic through the public WiFi network, despite push "redirect-gateway local def1" being set in server.conf according to the OpenVPN FAQ. My configs are server, client, ifconfig server (eth0 and tap1 are bridged to br0) and ipconfig client. Any idea what I forgot or did wrong?

Thanks,HardDisk (talk) 10:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Xbox 360 Issues (can't access 'game' sites from desk

I have the '2 red rings of death' problem with my 360. My understanding is that this is an overheating issue - i've cleared to ensure that the area is well ventilated but still have issues. The xbox is out of warranty (a few months over a year old) and i'm loathe to pay a repair-bill price (I assume this will be quite a lot). I understand there are way to fix this issue (and aware of the invalidating warranty etc.). My questions is...

• A) How difficult is the manual-fix
• B) Has anyone been through this fix and run into any issues/got any tips

As I say I can't access gaming-sites which is where i'd normally go to find this out so any help/guidance would be greatly appreciated. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You are covered under warrenty. Call XBox support and find your way to a person, tell them you have 2 red rings. They may ask for some basic troubleshooting, but they'll give you a UPS label and you'll send it off to texas (minus the HD, any controllers, the power brick, and anything else but the box). In 2 to 3 weeks (closer to 2), you'll get it back. It's free for that issue up to three years. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 14:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

And be persistent about it if (unlikely but who knows) you are stonewalled. 3 years for RROD problems. Tempshill (talk) 15:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, the E74 error is the same thing. You will be covered for 3 years. Assuming you haven't opened your xbox you should be able to file a claim. If the 360 is refurb, you'll need to contact phone support. If you bought the 360, go to xbox.com and you should be able to file a warrenty claim on the site with no hassle. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi - thanks for the info people. When I got to xbox.com/support (or whatever the address is) and register it only mentions the 3-lights/rings being included in the warranty extension not 2-rings/lights. Will I still be able to get the fix with it only being 2-lights on? Anybody know if this differs in the UK? The site suggests that if it is 3-lights there's a no problem fix (you send the machine in as detailed above) but doesn't mention that for 2-rings. ny156uk (talk) 19:59, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

If it's 2 red lights, it indicates overheating and not a total hardware failure. Make sure there's plenty of room for hot air to escape and that it's not sucking up its own exhaust (sometimes entertainment center cabinets can be particularly nasty to cooling electronics. This error should be recoverable and does not indicate a total hardware failure. You may need to put your console in a place where it gets better ventilation though (a hard flat surface with a clear place for hot air to escape and a clear area for it to suck in cool air from the top, bottom, and sides.) 206.131.39.6 (talk) 20:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

If it's an overheating issue then it should only overheat after it's been on a bit - is this the case- here's a few things to check

• see if the fans are still working.
• check for blockages - likely if you have a cat...

Also do you get an error code - what is it - one possibility (if it says overheating) is a broken thermistor - the heat sensor - the error code should reveal all to a knowledgeable person.77.86.10.194 (talk) 23:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

iPhone/iTunes

Hi. Some questions about getting music onto an iPhone.

I have 2 windows XP laptops, let's call them "1" and "2" at the risk of being conventional, both with iTunes installed and both with music files.

Q1) I synched my new iPhone to laptop 1, which has a larger library of songs. At the end of the synch, only about 5% of the songs had successfully transferred. I received some kind of failure message. I guess the song files need to be in a particular directory on the laptop hard drive. Which directory should I move them into?

Q2) Rather unhappy with that, I then tried to synch the phone with laptop 2. It grumpily said it would only synch with one version of iTunes... allowing me the "option" (!) of replacing the 5% of songs from laptop 1 with an unknown % of songs from laptop 2. This was annoying and I declined.

Advice for getting all the songs onto the phone (and onto one laptop - number 2 would be better) gratefully appreciated. Go gently with me - I'm far from being a techy. As you can probably tell. Thanks. --Dweller (talk) 15:56, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

In itunes, go to "dwellers iPhone" tab. check the box saying "manage the songs and music manually". you're done. HardDisk (talk) 18:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That helps with Q2 (which I now realise was an implied question)! So how do I manually "find" the music on my laptops and move it onto my iPhone? --Dweller (talk) 10:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The "easy" way is to select "consolidate library" from the File -> Library menu (at least that where it is on OS X). That will make a copy of all your library's music in the %MUSIC_DIR%/iTunes/iTunes Music/ folder. The problem is that you'll have two copies of your files in the same drive.

What you can also do is to view each music file's properties in the inspector (right click and select "Get info" or type Ctrl+I), and browse to each file, and copy it somewhere. This may or may not be painful, depending on the amount of files you have... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Number Formatting in Excel 2007

I'm trying to make an invoice for a client, and for some reason my bank account number is showing up without the first two digits, which are '00'. How can I get an eight digit number starting with two zeros to show up as an eight digit number starting with two zeros rather than a half-arsed six digit number with no zeros before it? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 17:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Right click on cell(s), choose "format cells", choose "Custom" and enter 00000000 in the box, press OK. (some people prefer to enter numbers like this with a ' sign first, which forces text formatting, an inferior solution in my opinion). Jørgen (talk) 18:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Perfect! Perfect! Thanks! That worked! It also made me think that people like '007' wouldn't be able to even put their names in an Excel document, as it would just appear as '7'. :) Thanks! --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 18:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

About the Future of IT industry

I want to know about the future oppurtunities for IT students all over the worldAnudeep574 (talk) 17:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Middle Mouse Button on Laptop Missing

I have a game - Codename: Panzers Cold War - which requires a middle mouse button so I can view the battlefield. However, I am using a laptop which has no middle mouse button. The 'control options' section only gives me the options of 'middle mouse button' or 'CTRL + middle mouse button' (can't see the point of that). Is there an alternative key that can be used instead of the missing middle mouse button? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 21:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Clicking both left and right buttons at the same time normally does it. Check the mouse options (in control panel) to see if you can press a modifier key when clicking to simulate a middle click (eg: On my Ubuntu, I can right click by Ctrl+Click and middle click by Ctrl+Alt+Click). --h2g2bob (talk) 23:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Blogs showing up in searches

I have a few things I want to write up, about which there isn't a lot of information on the internet. If I put them up as posts in Blogger, are they likely to turn up in Google searches performed by people who look for just the right terms? I have no interest in "promoting" the items I post, I just want them to be seen by people who happen to be looking for answers to the very narrow topics I want to write about. Or is it really necessary to have some 'inbound' links to the post for it to show up in searches? (p.s. I'm talking about regular searches, not 'blog searches') ike9898 (talk) 21:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

They will probably show up if, as you say, your readers input the right search terms. However, you may want to add your blog's URL to Google Search just to make sure. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 21:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Freezing after right-click

When i right click on an icon on the desktop or in a folder, the process freezes and i have to restart or close windows explorer. This has only recently started happening in the past couple of days, and i am unsure as to how i can stop it. I am using Windows Vista (32bit). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.122.65 (talk) 22:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you got a dead network drive mounted? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

No 86.177.121.39 (talk) 18:48, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

One possibility, although not the only one, is that you have installed a bad "context menu handler". This is a program that adds an item to the right-click menu. I assume that you don't want to start editing your Windows registry, so the next best thing is a program called ShellExView [7]. On the page I just linked to there is another link called "Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers". Follow that link to find out how to use ShellExView to disable the context menu handlers one by one to see if that fixes your problem. --Heron (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Pascal trivia?

Hello, can any experts tell me - what this program should do - ie is the behaviour defined under standard pascal behaviour, or are the results possibly compiler specific???

a:=4;
case a of
 4:begin
    writeln ('4');
    a:=a-1;
   end;
 3:writeln ('3','!');
 else writeln ('not 4 or 3!');
end;

writeln (a);

(obviously I've omitted the beginings and ends of the program, and the var declarations, hopefully that is obvious).

Should the case a=3 execute after a=4, or not, I half expected it to do so? Thanks in advance.77.86.10.194 (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Of course, you could write a compiler that handles it any way to like, but I think the normal behaviour is to only execute the "4" case; I belive that the compiler already has decided on what case to use when the "4" case is executed, so no more case can be considered. This is also the case in the Delphi 2009 compiler. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Pascal demands that only the "4" case is executed. Depending on the Pascal version, "otherwise" may be required instead of "else". PrimeHunter (talk) 00:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, the documentation I've got wasn't 100% clear, though I got the impression that only one would go, though the docs also suggest that some pascals (Turbo pascal maybe?) allow:

case x of
 5:do whatever
 1..10:do something (as well?)
end;  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.10.194 (talk) 02:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC) 

I suppose it depends on your compiler, but all the Pascals I have used do not support "fall through" like C does, and there is no Pascal equivalent to the "break" statement in C. I expect the code to execute the case where a=4 only, and therefore it will print "4" and then print " 3" on the next line (due to the final writeln) using whatever the default output format is for the data type of a. The cases where a=3 or "otherwise" (not "else") will not be executed. Astronaut (talk) 16:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

May 28

Another trivial pascal question

One tutorial I've been reading says that "Reciprocal calls wastes stacked much faster than recursive calls" - is this right ? I can't see why they would be different.

Also the statement

proceedure whatevername (variables etc here) ; forward ;

for setting up a later defined proceedure for reciprocal calls - this is just a directive to the compiler right - to prevent it getting confused - it has no major effect on the final compiled code?77.86.10.194 (talk) 02:37, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

See Tail recursion for why straight recursion can be much more efficient. And yes the forward declaration is just to make life easy for the first pass of the compiler, it shouldn't affect the code produced. Dmcq (talk) 08:02, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Tail recursion made sense of it. The tutotial just mentioned it in passing. I wasn't expecting any sort of optimisation on that sort of thing (as I'd never heard of tail recursion before).77.86.10.194 (talk) 11:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the tutorial is wrong. I'm not sure what "reciprocal calls" is supposed to mean but I guess it means mutual recursion, in which case it's wrong to contrast it with "recursive calls", since mutual recursion is recursion too. Tail recursion optimization is not limited to self-recursive functions. An implementation might optimize only the self-recursive case, but there's no reason to expect that, unless the tutorial is geared to a specific implementation that happens to behave that way. -- BenRG (talk) 10:36, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. In context the 'recursive calls' meant calls from procA to procA, and 'reciprocal calls' meant calls from A to B and also B to A, as you rightly infered/guessed. I would imagine that the writer is guessing that only self recursive calls are optimised - as you suggest...

(reply edited):Isn't it more difficult to tell if a mutually recursive call can be optimised - depending on whether the two calls use the same variables etc (I'm still trying to work it out).77.86.10.194 (talk) 11:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

What would normally happen is that one might be inlined in the other because it is small, and then the tail recursion optimisation is applied. It would not normally be considered worthwhile doing the optimisation where both are large routines. So yes a good optimising compiler would stick the two together in most of the important cases. Dmcq (talk) 15:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The tail recursion optimization is virtually always worthwhile when you can do it. It is touchier when calling a function other than yourself, that's true. You can't usually tail recurse if there's some local state like an exception frame that needs to be torn down before you return, but when you're calling yourself you might be able to arrange to reuse the same exception frame. If you're using a caller-popped calling convention (like the one normally called the "C" convention on x86) then you can't call a function that takes more stack arguments than you did, which might be a problem in the mutually recursive case. If it's callee-popped (like the one called "Pascal") then this isn't a problem. I don't actually know whether x86 Pascal implementations use the Pascal convention. According to x86 calling conventions, Delphi uses a (different) callee-popped convention, but a web search suggests that Delphi doesn't do any tail-call optimization anyway. -- BenRG (talk) 21:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Wrong search redirection

Whenever I click on anything at the search results page, I am taken to some different website. The websites taken are stubs and nothing but advertisers (ex. [8], [9],etc.). It isn't that I am taken to them everytime, but that's 7/10 times. It doesn't matter I do the search from live.com or google.com, anycase I wound up at some spam website. 218.248.80.114 (talk) 05:01, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like spyware. Shadowjams (talk) 06:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Run a virus scan on your computer. If you don't have a virus scanner see list of antivirus software which lists free as well as commercial products. 62.78.198.48 (talk) 07:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

my guess would be that your hosts file has been compromised, and your winsock corrupted. As mentioned above, an AV program is important. You may want to look for a fixwinsock, or winsockfix program if you have a way to do that as well. In some minor cases, I have seen the command: "netsh winsock reset" (without quotes) make things a bit more functional. You may find this site helpful in finding tools and information. — Ched :  ?  16:37, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure you're not just seeing search engine spam? APL (talk) 17:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I had this problem from clicking on two Wikipedia results, in Google. A third result (from the next page) seemingly identical to the first, came up with the correct Wikipedia page. Shortly afterwards I noticed the iexplore.exe process running (although I never use Internet Explorer) and it kept restarting after being forced to terminate, through Task Manager. A number of different virus scans showed nothing, but a scan with RootRepeal immediately showed various Trojans, and some .dll's with 35-character names beginning with UAC. Getting rid of these stopped both the site redirections and the background running of IE.KoolerStill (talk) 21:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Randomly named DLL files are signs of infection by a Trojan (Or Trojans). Scans by Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware are needed immediately. This infection falls under adware/redirection Trojans. (Unless there are even more infections) Hosts file modification and/or Winsock corruption are possible. If the hosts file has been modified; delete it then replace it with either the MVPS hosts file or the HpHosts file to help prevent future infections. There are fixes available if Winsock has been corrupted. Finally, an effective anti-virus is required to help keep your computer secure. If you want a free one, try avast! or Avira AntiVir. --Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Windows Sound Recorder

The Windows Sound Recorder (sndrec32.exe, if I remember correctly) in Windows XP had not changed much (if all) since Windows 95, or perhaps even since version 3.1. In Windows Vista, however, Microsoft improved it slightly when they removed the audio file duration limit (which was truly annoying!), and added support for WMA (with simple metadata, but at the same time they also removed support for all other formats, i.e. WAV files with different bitrates, channels etc.). However, all other changes were for the worse. Almost all additional features (such as effects, and simple merging of audio files) were removed. Now, the only button or menu item left is "Start/Stop recording"! Have Microsoft improved this extremely primitive sound recorder in Windows 7?--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:02, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Saving my favorites

If I'm getting a new PC and I have to transfer all data from the old one to the new one, can I do this with my 'favorites' from Windows Explorer? I guess there's a file somewhere that holds them all?Popcorn II (talk) 18:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

You probably mean "Windows Internet Explorer" (Windows Explorer is the name of the shell in Microsoft Windows, i.e. explorer.exe). If you use Windows Vista, this is very easy: all your favourites are located in the C:\Users\<User Name>\Favourites folder (just as documents are stored in ...\Documents, images in ...\Pictures, downloads in ...\Downloads and so on). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, yes I mean Internet Explorer and I use XP.Popcorn II (talk) 18:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

For me, the folder with the links is located at "C:\Documents and Settings\YourUsernameHere\Favorites". Just copy and paste those onto a flashs tick and then from there onto you new computer. Thanks, 99.224.117.66 (talk) 20:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Will do, thanksPopcorn II (talk) 20:45, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

error in installing

I have a pc with core 2 due processor and on it windows xp is installed.Now a days I have eperiened a problem with it .when i insert a flash derive and try to open it with double lick ,a message appear ," Error loading

 ,\RECYLER\S-5-3-42-28-------\jwgkvsq.vm.The speified module could not be found " But after  right clik menu appear has first option as  autoplay but it does not work ,but if click an other option " open " , it works.

More ever ,when i try to install some programmes it does not work ,but i have instlled some of these programmes already. but now they do not work . Also —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.35.156 (talk) 19:02, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Capturing video from a window

I want some software for my Windows XP machine that will capture what occurs in a game window on the screen, to a video file. Last time I looked into this a couple of years ago, Camtasia Studio 4 seemed to do most of what I wanted; but it seemed expensive. This YouTube video of Starcraft II is of very high quality, just what I'd like - assuming it's a capture of something that takes place in a window. What do other people use for video capturing what occurs in a window? Tempshill (talk) 22:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Check out Comparison_of_screencasting_software 161.222.160.8 (talk) 00:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

May 29

Right Align a Button

Hello. How do I right align a button in Java? I do not want it to occupy the whole right edge. Any leads are greatly appreciated. --Mayfare (talk) 02:00, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

ISP keeping record of MSN Messenger Conversations

Does your ISP keep a history/record of your MSN Messenger conversations? Hence, if both parties choose for their Messenger to not keep a history of their conversations, is there anyway that their conversation can be retrieved? Acceptable (talk) 02:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it's highly unlikely because of privacy issues, but you'd have to check their terms and conditions to be sure they don't have monitoring clause - The only exception would be if one of you is accessing the Internet via their work/VPN because it's quite possible they might have monitor clauses. If anything it'll be another node somewhere between yourself and the other person who's monitoring the communication but that's very unlikely - or at least it should be unlikely. I'd say the most likely problem would be someone recording their side (either intentionally or by accident) and that copy getting out. If you're really that worried about it then you may both wish to install something like SimpLite which will encrypt your conversation, it won't stop any local logging, but it'll stop any unauthorised snooping - Both sides have to have it running though! Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 02:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Image help - trying to upload to commons

I am trying to upload an image to the Commons but I'm having file extension problems. I don't have much experience with image editing programs. I downloaded an image (digitized newspaper page) to my computer. There's no problem with the original image which is a .png. Needing to crop it, I tried various programs (paint, Wimdows image and fax viewer) but they don't have cropping tools. I then found PhotoPlus 6 on my computer and was able to crop it fine. However, when I saved it, it became a an .ssp image, whatever that is, which the commons doesn't recognize. The only other option the PhotoPlus program gives you in "save as type" is "all files (*.*). I tried that but that too the commons upload form refused. I then tried to open it with paint and windows image viewer to see if I could then resave it as a proper extension using them, but they wouldn't open it either. Long and short of it, I'm stuck. Any way to use this version of the image--to convert it? And if not, can anyone suggest a free image program I can download to crop again that will allow me to save the cropped image in a supported file extension format?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:58, 29 May 2009 (UTC)