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June 26

MPEG-4 encoder?

Does anyone know of any free/open-source MPEG-4 encoders (as in the codec itself, not a conversion program)? I use video editing software from a couple years ago, before MPEG-4 was widespread, and it doesn't include any MPEG-4 codecs.

Thanks.

MPEG-4 isn't a single object, it's a collection of parts (see the article you linked to). My personal favourite for video encoding (MPEG-4 Part 2) is Xvid which is also quite a popular one, but there others in listed in the article. ZX81 ^talk 00:28, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have specified which part I meant (I was thinking part 2, as I doubt there's a free part 10 codec in existence). I wasn't previously aware that Xvid is open-source, so I'll have to try it out.

You doubt x264 exists? 69.245.227.37 (talk) 02:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Not any more! Thanks for the tips, everyone - it's good to have free solutions for encoding both MPEG-4 part 2 and part 10.

Resolved

Windows 7 Upgrade Option

[1]

Why is Microsoft avoiding the words "free" and/or "discount" on their Win7 Upgrade Option web page? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 00:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You are astute. If it does not say 'free' or 'discount' then the upgrade is probably not free or discounted. When Vista came out, there was a short time period before the debut when if you purchased a PC with XP, there was a coupon for a free Vista upgrade. Assuming Microsoft is going to run a similar promotion again this time, we evidently are not within that short time period yet. Tempshill (talk) 05:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I just got next week's Best Buy circular, and they are offering a "discount" (next week only) on Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade pre-order, for only $50. These may be related. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 13:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It looks like the free upgrade period began today, at least at Dell and Lenovo (the only two OEMs I checked). -- BenRG (talk) 14:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Diagonal lines/snow across display when running Windows 7 on iMac

I recently installed WIndows 7 on my Mac (20" iMac with 2.4GHz C2D "Penryn" processor and ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT video card) via Boot Camp, and I've noticed that the display has faint snow/diagonal lines running across it when booted into Windows 7. The display is fine when I'm running Leopard, so I'm guessing it must be a driver issue of some sort. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? I tried updating the drivers through Windows Update and it didn't help. (I also tried downloading the drivers from ATI's website, but the setup utility just doesn't seem to install the drivers). --CalusReyma (talk) 04:02, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

How are Push notification more battery saving?

How are Push notification more battery saving than regular polling? Specifically I'm talking about the iPhone. Isn't the phone constantly waiting to get a 'push'? How does this save power instead of regular polling? --69.148.26.115 (talk) 05:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Sending a radio signal so that the cell base station hears it takes much more power than having a radio receiver open, waiting for an incoming signal. A radio signal weakens according to the inverse-square law to distance between phone and base tower, so quite a bit of energy is needed so that the base tower antenna gets enough of it. A radio receiver needs much less power, especially as the cell tower doesn't operate on tiny batteries and can send a much more powerful signal than the phone can.

This is also why a cell phone battery lasts days in standby, waiting for incoming calls, but only has a couple of hours of talk time, when it needs to send the speech signal. 62.78.198.48 (talk) 06:59, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Extract each nth word of a string or text

Is there a website that easily lets you extract each nth word of a string of text to help crack codes? (Any places that allow you to try all potential orders for the discovered words would also be appreciated) - 131.211.210.114 (talk) 08:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about websites, but this Perl command will print all permutations of every 7th word in f.txt:

perl -MMath::Combinatorics -le 'print "@$_" for permute grep !($i++ % $ARGV[0]), map split, <STDIN>' 7 < f.txt

--Sean 18:42, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Handwritten notes

What is the best way of transferring handwritten notes into a computer? Tablet? Scan? Electronic stylus? Any other digitizing device?--Mr.K. (talk) 10:48, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Assuming the notes are already written, and you don't want to type them in yourself then some form of Handwriting recognition software seems to be the only option. Given the choice between a scanner and photograph the scanner might be a better choice for multiple pages.

The other option is called a secretary..83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Are secretaries digitizing devices? Anyway, the days in which secretaries would type a dictate are probably over and we all have to type/write our own texts. For a comparison among user-friendliness see [| here]. --Quest09 (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried using Microsoft Onenote? Alaphent (talk) 00:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Handwriting recognition software is usually pretty bad and requires a lot of cleanup. It's usually faster to just transcribe them or have someone else transcribe them. This is a situation where the software solution vastly underperforms the old-fashioned (e.g. typing) solution. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

This is definitely not the cheapest option, but if this is for work or school or you will be using it a lot, I would seriously consider a livescribe pulse smart pen. I had someone at my work demonstrate it to me and it is quite incredible. You can write stuff, draw stuff and says stuff to it and at the end it all just uploads to your computer. He said that there are a couple of hand writing quirks you have to get used to so it can recognise your writing better, but it's not nearly as bad as the old palms or anything like that, he said it was easy to get used to and now it hardly gets a letter wrong. If my job involved more writing I would love to have one, but I think they're over $200 so I can't really justify the spend. Vespine (talk) 01:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you have a microphone, you can try voice recognition and transciption software, although your mileage may vary. Livewireo (talk) 13:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Just type them the old fashioned way, and if you really want to preserve a record of the handwritten original, take a picture or a scan. Typing the notes while you still remember the event where you took them is a good time to expand the ideas and abbreviations in them to complete sentences, etc. That makes them much easier to understand later. 208.70.31.206 (talk) 08:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Portable laptop charged

I saw some portable solar laptop charged, but they only output 15V. Is that enough, if my laptop normally uses 17V?--Mr.K. (talk) 11:13, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

2V is a big difference - the answer is probably no - not enough volts.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Getting DSL and keeping screen name - how is it possible?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here; it wouldn't be the first time. But, Iwas told if I get DSL service with another provider, AT&T, I could keep the screen name from my old provider. I guess I was thinking each provider had sole ownership of the screennames, so I can't be x@aol.com if I'm not on AOL, for isntance.

Of course, I'm assuming that I could do this while also leaving AOL, and cancelling my service contract, and perhaps that's not possible.209.244.30.221 (talk) 12:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You're correct; if you cancel your AOL account then you'll lose your AOL screen name and e-mail address. But if you purchase DSL (or cable modem, or FiOS, or any other broadband service), you may keep paying AOL to maintain your AOL account, and log in to AOL through your broadband connection instead of by having your modem dial up. The disadvantage is that now you're paying for both DSL and for your AOL service. If you are comfortable with AOL and it's OK with you to spend for both services, then by all means you can do that; your AOL connection will certainly be faster. At this point AOL is just another service that your computer connects to, as it would with any other website when you launch a web browser like Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer or Apple Safari or whatever. Over time, while continuing to connect primarily to AOL, you can experiment with free e-mail services like GMail or Yahoo! Mail, or even POP3 e-mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook to replace AOL's mail functionality, and when you become comfortable with one of the latter choices and have set up a new e-mail address there, you can e-mail all your friends that your e-mail address has changed, and cancel your AOL service at that point. (Or don't, if there are services on AOL that you enjoy.) Tempshill (talk) 14:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for xplaining. Oh, one othe rthing - what about AIM? How do people in other countries access it? I'm just used to having it with AOL. WOuld I need to pay a fee for it, too, or would I be able to access it with DSl and with a free e-mail account?209.244.30.221 (talk) 18:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You can just download it from the AIM website; see the links at the bottom of our article AOL Instant Messenger. You don't need to be an AOL subscriber to use AIM. I don't use it myself but I believe it's free to use, though I assume you will have to change your "screen name" if you cancel your AOL account. Tempshill (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Web profit

How shock sites like Rotten.com generate profit? If these sites do not general profit, then how they operate? Does anyone fund these sites? Also how free video sharing websites like You tube generate profit? Google spent a lot of money to buy this site. But what they get in return? NewGeneticCode (talk) 13:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

In my limited experience, they are limited to advertising (and associated deals with regards to product placement, etc, etc) and paid backlinks. The youtube case generated a lot of stick at the time, I believe, for its monumentally large annual profit to valuation ratio. TO counter this google, has been developing ways to target in-video advertising. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 13:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that not all web sites generate profit, and many of them don't even try to. I think Rotten.com, for example, isn't a terribly high-maintenance site, all things considered; the site design is very simple, people send them most, if not all of the material they publish, and there's not all that much to do on a daily basis. At least on the face of it, a couple of people could easily run it as a hobby without feeling too overworked. Sure, they'd have to pay for the hosting, but what the hell, most hobbies tend to cost money. Of course, Rotten does have a store. At the very least I'd imagine it at least covers the expenses they incur from running the site. They get a lot of traffic, so perhaps their merchandise sells well -- but of course there's no way of knowing that. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 14:12, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I agree. I run a hobby site; the hosting is paid from advertising/backlinks and the occasion store sell, but the money doesn't really bother me. It doesn't make any profit really, but then again it didn't sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 15:14, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

YouTube is chock full of ads. You can't do anything without ads raining in. Rotten is probably just cheap hosting and a hobby. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

java

I'm setting up some java stuff and one of the instructions says startup the mbean browser of jconsole or jvisualvm". What's mbean browser?

We have a short article on mbean. It is a browser that connects you to jconsole (Java Monitoring and Management Console) or jvisualvm (Java Virtual Machine Monitoring). It helps you set up configurations or get statistics from a Java program. - KoolerStill (talk) 14:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Where do I download it?

I think if you have either the jconsole or the jvisualvm, the Mbean should be part of the package. Look in the folder your java stuff is in. There should be a file called help or readme. If you already have it partly set up, starting the browser might be on one of the menu items, possibly File or Tools.

Someone will come along who can help you more, especially if you put more details about what kind of package you are setting up.

Also please sign your posts with typing four tildes ~ (far left key on top row) because the sinebot seems to be on holiday so it can't sign it for you. - KoolerStill (talk) 17:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

problem

Hey,there! This C++ program gives the output that the selected room number is booked or in either case havent booked yet thus returning to back menue.Can someone sort out the problem so that it works properly,able to take the room number,customer id etc etc rather than giving the output as booked on entering any room number..Thanks

C++ program code

#include <iostream.h> #include <string.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <conio.h> #define MAX_ROOMS 100 #define SINGLE 5000 #define DOUBLE 8000 void Initialize(); void DisplayList(); void DisplayBilling(); void MakeReservation(); void EditReservation(); void DisplayRoomStatus(); int MainMenu(); int GetRoomNumber( const char * const ); char GetRoomType(); struct CUSTOMER { char name[50]; char id[15]; char address[100]; char phone[30]; }; struct ROOM { int number; char type; char booked; int days; CUSTOMER customer; }; ROOM rooms[MAX_ROOMS]; int main () { //clrscr(); int choice; while ((choice = MainMenu()) != 6) { switch (choice) { case 1: MakeReservation(); break; case 2: EditReservation(); break; case 3: DisplayBilling(); break; case 4: DisplayRoomStatus(); break; case 5: DisplayList(); break; default: cout << "Incorrect choice" << endl; break; } } return 0; } void MakeReservation() { int roomNumber; // clrscr(); cout << " ** New Reservation **\n" << endl; roomNumber = GetRoomNumber("\nEnter Room Number to be Reserved"); if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked == 'N') { cout<<"\nEnter Customer Name:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.name; cout<<"\nEnter Customer ID:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.id; cout<<"\nEnter Customer Address:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.address; cout<<"\nEnter Customer Phone:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.phone; rooms[roomNumber - 1].type = GetRoomType(); cout<<"\nEnter Booking Duration (Days):"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].days; rooms[roomNumber - 1].number = roomNumber; rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked = 'Y'; cout<<"\n\nRoom Reservation Completed!\n\nPress any key to continue..."<<endl; getch(); MainMenu(); } else { cout<<"\nRoom Number: "<<roomNumber<<" is already booked to: "<<rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.name<<endl; cout<<"\nPress any key to continue..."<<endl; getch(); } } int MainMenu() { // clrscr(); cout << "\n ** Main Menu ** \n" << endl << "\nEnter your choice" << endl << "1 - Reservation" << endl << "2 - Edit Reservation" << endl << "3 - Billing" << endl << "4 - Room Status" << endl << "5 - List All" << endl << "6 - Quit\n? "; int menuChoice; cin >> menuChoice; return menuChoice; } int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt ) { int roomNumber; do { cout << prompt << " (1 - "<<MAX_ROOMS<<"): "; cin >> roomNumber; } while ( roomNumber < 1 || roomNumber > MAX_ROOMS ); return roomNumber; } char GetRoomType() { char roomType; while (1) { cout << "\nEnter Room Type ('s' for single or 'd' for double): "; cin >> roomType; if (roomType == 's' || roomType == 'S' || roomType == 'd' || roomType == 'D') { break; } } return roomType; } void DisplayList() { // clrscr(); cout<<"\n ** List of Rooms **\n"<<endl; for (int i = 0; i < MAX_ROOMS; i++) { if (rooms[i].booked == 'Y') { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << rooms[i].number << " * Booked: " << rooms[i].booked << " * Room Type: " << rooms[i].type << " * Duration: " << rooms[i].days << endl; cout << "Customer: " << rooms[i].customer.name << " * ID: " << rooms[i].customer.id << " * Address: " << rooms[i].customer.address << " * Phone: "<< rooms[i].customer.phone << endl; } else { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << rooms[i].number << " * Booked: " << rooms[i].booked << endl; } if ((i + 1) % 20 == 0) { cout<<"\nPress any key to continue...\n"<<endl; getch(); } } } void Initialize() { for (int i = 0; i < MAX_ROOMS; i++) { rooms[i].number = i + 1; rooms[i].type = 'x'; rooms[i].booked = 'N'; rooms[i].days = 0; strcpy(rooms[i].customer.name,"\0"); strcpy(rooms[i].customer.id, "\0"); strcpy(rooms[i].customer.address, "\0"); strcpy(rooms[i].customer.phone, "\0"); } } void EditReservation() { int roomNumber; // clrscr(); cout << " ** Modify Reservation **\n" << endl; roomNumber = GetRoomNumber("\nEnter Room Number to be Modified"); if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked == 'Y') { cout<<"\nEnter Customer Name:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.name; cout<<"\nEnter Customer ID:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.id; cout<<"\nEnter Customer Address:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.address; cout<<"\nEnter Customer Phone:"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.phone; rooms[roomNumber - 1].type = GetRoomType(); cout<<"\nEnter Booking Duration (Days):"; cin>>rooms[roomNumber - 1].days; rooms[roomNumber - 1].number = roomNumber; rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked = 'Y'; cout<<"\n\nRoom Reservation Modified!\n\nPress any key to continue..."<<endl; getch(); } else { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << roomNumber<<" is not booked yet!" << endl; cout << "\nPress any key to continue..." << endl; getch(); } } void DisplayBilling() { int roomNumber; // clrscr(); cout << " ** Billing Information **\n\n" << endl; cout << "\n@single room = " << SINGLE << endl; cout << "\n@double room = " << DOUBLE << endl; roomNumber = GetRoomNumber("\n\nEnter Room Number whose billing is required:"); if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked == 'Y') { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].number << "\nBooked: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked << "\nRoom Type: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].type << "\nDuration: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << endl; cout << "\nCustomer: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.name << "\nID: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.id << "\nAddress: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.address << "\nPhone: "<< rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.phone << endl; if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].type == 's' || rooms[roomNumber - 1].type == 'S') { cout << "\n@single room * duration ( " << SINGLE << " x " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << " ) = " << SINGLE * rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << endl; } else { cout << "\n@double room * duration ( " << DOUBLE << " x " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << " ) = " << DOUBLE * rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << endl; } cout << "\n\nPress any key to continue..." << endl; getch(); } else { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << roomNumber << " is not booked yet!" << endl; cout << "\nPress any key to continue..." << endl; getch(); } } void DisplayRoomStatus() { int roomNumber; // clrscr(); cout << " ** Check Room Status **\n" << endl; roomNumber = GetRoomNumber("\nEnter Room Number whose status is required:"); if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked == 'Y') { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].number << "\nBooked: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked << "\nRoom Type: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].type << "\nDuration: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].days << endl; cout << "\nCustomer: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.name << "\nID: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.id << "\nAddress: " << rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.address << "\nPhone: "<< rooms[roomNumber - 1].customer.phone << endl; cout << "\n\nPress any key to continue..." << endl; getch(); } else { cout << "\nRoom Number: " << roomNumber << " is not booked yet!" << endl; cout << "\nPress any key to continue..." << endl; getch(); } }

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. --Sean 18:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I fixed the formatting of the program, for readability. To the original poster: note the <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp"> and </syntaxhighlight> tags that I added before and after your code. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:06, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I took the liberty of show/hiding it - it's quite a few pages of code on a small screen83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:08, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried debugging it? eg at points where it says

if (rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked == 'N')

try inserting a line of code that outputs (prints to the screen) the value of "(rooms[roomNumber - 1].booked" plus additional info that allows you to see what subroutine (proceedure or function) it's occuring in. At the same point check that the correct value of "roomnumber" has been passed.

It's not immediately obvious to me what is going wrong - perhaps a minor syntax or parsing error?

Clearly from your description something must be going wrong on the if then else conditions - so you can focus your attention there.

If in doubt, add more brackets to logical conditions to avoid any curious behaviour regarding operator precedence.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Also note that this isn't really what a C++ programmer would call a C++ program. It's a C program, with some elements from C++ (cout etc), but it's mostly PODS (plain old data structures), fixed size arrays etc. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

One thing that looked odd to me was in MakeReservation() there's a call to MainMenu at the end of the IF ... ==='N'

Not sure if that is necessary/right/wrong - but it seems an odd call - don't see how it would mess up the logical conditions though..?83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:47, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Also shouldn't there be a call to Initialize in main ?83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Lucky for him it IS just C or I couldn't help him. He's not a C++ programmer, he's a student apparently. - KoolerStill (talk) 20:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec)This is how you do it. Break your program down into simple sentences. Your main processing says "IF room is not booked, fill in booking details, then mark room as booked, ELSE display that it is already taken". If I understand you right, you are saying it is always showing every room as being booked? This means it is always falling through to the ELSE. So it is obviously never finding a room that == 'N'.

Start looking for why there is no such room. Where do you put 'N' on the rooms? You declare a function called void Initialize(), which seems to do just that. BUT WHERE do you actually RUN that function? Anything called 'initialize' should be the 'initial' (first) thing to do. Try calling it as the first thing in (main). I also suggest 'B' for Booked and 'V' for Vacant might be better status flags to use. - KoolerStill (talk) 20:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The call to MainMenu seems to be a GOTO to return to the menu of actions once a booking is taken; loop control must be next semester. - KoolerStill (talk) 20:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Well,basically I'm neither a programmer nor a student just an amateur..I'm not figuring out why the program is falling through to the ELSE.Why is it not finding the room=='N'? what i think if that

loop is working then it should not even go to ELSE for any room entry because ---rooms[i].booked = 'N';---It's kinda confused.Give me any suggestions please.

OKAY, we thought student because it looks like a course assignment. I guess you get the same in self-study textbooks.

I tried to step you through it before, up above. It is falling through because it finds no room that is 'N'. That is because you are not marking any room as 'N' to start with. You can initialise every room before you run the rest of the program. OR you can just blank out all details for a room when the people leave. I think your void Initialize() probably does that.

A simple solution would be to change .....roomNumber - 1].booked == 'N' to say ...roomNumber - 1].booked != 'Y'. So instead of looking for "no" you are looking for anything that is not "yes".This way you don't need to set them to 'N' when you start.

Oh and PLEASE sign your posts here. Just put four tildes ( ~ on the top left key just below Esc) - KoolerStill (talk) 11:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

As KoolerStill and others have suggested above, the problem is with the rooms[?].booked. It is only ever set to a value of "Y", but the program sometimes checks for a value "N". How does it ever get set to "N" (hint: the Initialize() function is never called and there is no other function to declare a room available for booking again). Don't believe me? - run the program as is, and choose "5 - List All" from the menu - the DisplayList() function will display the value of rooms[?].booked for every room. Astronaut (talk) 12:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I got the whole program and it's running properly except one thing.I didn't understand what the pointer const prompt is doing in the following function.

int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt )

{ int roomNumber;

do { cout << prompt << " (1 - "<<MAX_ROOMS<<"): "; cin >> roomNumber; } while ( roomNumber < 1 || roomNumber > MAX_ROOMS );

return roomNumber; }

what will be the alternative if we don't use pointer prompt?--121.52.148.13 (talk) 05:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

How can a question be contracted?

Like the question above this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.1.123.111 (talk • contribs)

Help:Collapsing. Algebraist 19:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Or take a look at the wiki-markup in the question above this, by clicking the "edit" link. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Like this:
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed"
text or whatever here
|}

June 27

Firefox Flash sound works only when running as root

I'm using Kubuntu. In Firefox, sound doesn't play in Flash videos/applets, although the video works fine. If I sudo Firefox, the sound works fine, so I suspect I need to chown or chmod a file or folder. Which one?

On a related note, is there any way to log what files a sudo application has accessed that it wouldn't be able to without sudo? NeonMerlin 00:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

How did you install Flash? If you just installed flashplugin-nonfree from the repo it should work out of the box. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:46, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Neon Merlin: you should not use sudo for graphical apps: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/graphicalsudo SF007 (talk) 14:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

More of an FYI for Japanese character help

Help:Installing Japanese character sets has been split from Help:Japanese in order to allow for more focus in each of them. For anyone knowledgeable on installation of Japanese fonts on various operating systems, please review the information there and make any necessary corrections, additions, or clarifications. Thanks! ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista color mod?

Is there such a thing out there as a modification or program for windows vista so that in the properties dialog of files and folders you can set color tags, so that when viewing the items in explorer or whatever application, they are surrounded by that color?

Thanks!

209.240.240.192 (talk) 08:14, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Ive looked around and found a few programs that seem to do what i want, like this one: Xyplorer, but it has way too much stuff. All i want is a little program that just has the added color functionality, or something that i can use to add a color tab to the properties dialog. Any ideas?

209.240.240.192 (talk) 12:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Add joliet extension to ISO: good idea?

Resolved

OK, I am working on a project that uses ISO (ISO9660) files, and I use the rock ridge extension, however, I have the option to also use joliet. My question is: adding the joliet extension to the ISO (in addition to rock ridge) will increase or decrease compatibility? My ultimate goal is to create an ISO as much future-proof as possible and also make it maximum compatible with other software and various OSes. My guess is that adding joliet will increase compatibility and features, but I am not sure. __ Hacktolive (talk) 13:46, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

This sounds a little like a homework question, but I doubt the question would be given as homework, so I'll bite. All common OS's of today can read Joliet discs, and there are an awful lot of these discs around, so I would expect the OS's of the future to be able to read them. That said, adding joliet doesn't increase compatibility; it adds a risk that some corner-case OS won't be able to read your disc. Obviously it adds features, as the article explains. Tempshill (talk) 16:13, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry - if memory serves, Joliet discs can be read fine by anything that can read ISO 9660 discs; the extra information will just be lost, so it wasn't accurate to say that the corner-case OS wouldn't be able to read the disc at all. Though without understanding Joliet filenames, the executable trying to read files off the disc might not work, for example. Tempshill (talk) 17:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I can assure you this is not homework, it is for my RUNZ software. Anyway, I added the joliet extension and it caused problems in at least one file... so i'll just stick to rock ridge, that should be enough. Thanks __ Hacktolive (talk) 00:40, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Name that diagram

What are these types of diagrams called? And where can I read more about them? --69.113.82.135 (talk) 15:36, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Syntax diagram. Algebraist 15:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

New PC Seems to Turn On...Screen in Black...

Hola! Yesterday I went out and bought all the ingredients to build my brand new PC! (Yay!) I got (IIRC) an Asus P6T Motherboard, and Intel Core i7 CPU, and 6GB (3x2GB) or Tri-Channel DDR3 RAM. (Yay Again!) So, I've put it all together (to the best of my ability), but here's my problem: When I hit the power button, the PC seems to turn on. The case fan works, the CPU fan works, the graphics card fan works. The only thing is, my monitor is getting "no input signal." This is frustrating because it's delaying my getting to use my new super-computer (Yay for a third time), but I can't help thinking there's, like, one simple thing that I forgot to do. Please help me diagnose this problem. Here's some (maybe) useful information:

The motherboard has 6 RAM slots. I have 3 sticks in the A1, B1, and C1 slots. I had 2 SATA hard-drives installed in the PC. One of them seemed to be working (I'm basing that assumption on the fact that it got hot after a while) and the other didn't (because it didn't get hot after a while.) Yes, my monitor is plugged in. At first I had my Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS installed in the PC, which gave no signal to the monitor. Then I tried putting in my old Geforce 7600GS, with the same result. Both are PCI Express cards, installed in the PCI Express x16 1 slot.

If you need more information, please ask. And thank you for answering my question (in the future). Digger3000 (talk) 16:57, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you get any beeps from the motherboard when turning it on? The number of them would help diagnose where the problem lies. If you get none at all there's probably something wrong with the CPU. --aktsu ^(t / c) 17:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Nope, no beeps at all... Digger3000 (talk) 17:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

That means it's not actually booting. Try disconnecting one thing at a time and starting it to see if you get any beeps. If you're down to the CPU and still no beeps you should check all the jumper settings before finally reseating the CPU. --aktsu ^(t / c) 17:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and of course: doublecheck the motherboard-speaker is properly installed if it's external! --aktsu ^(t / c) 17:30, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) There are many, many things that could have gone wrong. Fans running is no indication that any of the rest is working at all - it simply indicates that power is finding its way to the fans. I'm assuming that all the other components you've bought (ie. CPU, hard drives, Graphics cards, etc.) are all fully compatible with the motherboard and you took preautions against static when handling anything.

First of all read through the manual from cover to cover (download it from here if you don't have it), then double check every connection, re-seat all the cards and other peripherals, and check all the jumpers on the motherboard. Start it up and listen for any beep codes. After that, the worst-case scenario is that you damaged the motherboard, or one or more components during installation. Astronaut (talk) 17:35, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You say check the jumper settings...well, I really don't know much about jumpers, and I didn't change them from the configuration they were in when I got the motherboard...should I have? Digger3000 (talk) 17:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I would assume not, but they can be the problem if they're not set properly (the manual mentions there will be boot problems if the CLRTC-jumper is missing for instance). You should look at the manual and check everything is where it should, and also double check everything is placed properly (again, especially the speaker. It might be on the wrong way) on that white asus q-connector thing which is placed over the bottom-right pins. --aktsu ^(t / c) 18:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You said the speaker might be on the wrong way. Well I flipped it around, and still no beeping. Here's some additional information...don't know how useful it'll be: Once the PC is on, I can turn it off by holding down the power switch on the front panel, but only sometimes. Sometimes that doesn't work, and I have to turn off the power supply. Also, the hard drive, I guess, sounds like it's booting. Again, I don't know if that helps, but there you go. Oh, and also, if the CPU were damaged, is there any way I could tell by looking at it? Digger3000 (talk) 18:13, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried both graphics cards in your old PC (to make sure the new 8800GTS works and you haven't broken the old 7600GS)?

Should you have checked the jumpers? Absolutely YES. I know it is boring as hell, but please do read the manual and make sure you understand everything that needs to be done.

How can you tell if the CPU is dead? It is unlikely you could tell just by looking (unless there was a small fire :-). The best way to test it is try it in another (working) Core i7 based system. Astronaut (talk) 18:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Once you establish in another machine that a card is working, try it in every slot into which it fits. The black slot, closes to the CPU, is supposed to be the special graphics slot. but it MAY need enabling in the BIOS to work. Of course you can't get to the BIOS until you get it working. Remove the hard drive that does not seem to be working. If there's anything wrong with it that could be inhibiting the whole startup process. There is no reason at this stage to assume something wrong with the CPU, as long as you made sure to buy DDR of the right voltage, as per the label near the RAM slots on the board. Remove and reseat all the memory, too. - KoolerStill (talk) 20:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok I tried putting the graphics card in all 3 slots and still no signal. Someone told me its possible that if part of the motherboard is touching the case, it could short everything out. One corned of my MB was screwed a little tight to the case (touching it) so I unscrewed that, but it seemed to make it worse. Instead of the fans coming on and staying on (like they used to) they only come on for a second or two and then stop, then come on again and stop again. (Hope that makes sense.) Any ideas from this? Digger3000 (talk) 20:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Now it's only earthing to the case intermittently.There should be some kind of nylon spacer between the board and the case. I'd strongly suggest you stop turning it on until you've re-read the manual that should have come with the board. There is a download link just above, if you didn't get one. Step by step check that you've done everything as it tells you to.Don't just nod and say "I did that" but actually check. This is too good a machine to blow up from carelessness at this stage. Take out one hard drive and all but one memory stick. - KoolerStill (talk) 21:46, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

This is not the first PC I've built. I built another one about 5 years ago, and m dad claims he remembers there being some tpe of rubber washer or spacer between the case and the motherboard, but I don't remember anything like that, nor did my current motherboard come with anything like that. So...as it stands right now my motherboard is in contact with the case. Is that not how it's supposed to be? If not, should my motherboard have come with something like that, and could my motherboard (or any of my other components) now be damaged as a result of the MB being in direct contact with the case? Digger3000 (talk) 23:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It's difficult to know (not actually having the thing) - but - if the motherboard is supposed to make earth contact to the case through the screw holes then you should expect to see a ring of metal (copper or tin coloured) around the screw hole.

There's no reason why, or why not a particular motherboard shouldn't do this - however I don't know which is the case here..

I would expect a spacer - the entire bottom of the motherboard should not be touching the case - there should be a gap - even if the screw contacts connect to ground - in otherwords there should be spacers - not necessarily separate - could be built into the case, or prefixed to the board - can you describe what/how the bottom of the motherboard keeps off the case?

If the motherboard was in direct contact with the case and if the case electrically conducts the I would expect a short circuit (are there circuits on the base of the motherboard?) - so yes something could have been damaged - in the case of a short I'd expect sparks though - and the powersupply would (hopefully) detect that and put on a warning light etc..83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The motherboard says it supports PCI Express 2.0 Is it possible that my card (Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 640MB) is not PCI-E 2.0, and therefore wouldn't work with this motherboard? Digger3000 (talk) 00:35, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

PCI Express is backwards compatable - so that shouldn't be a problem.

There's a lot of sockets on that board - have you doubled checked for obvious mistakes like plugging the VGA linker into the right hole, and setting the dipswitches or whatever for that setup.?83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Obvious mistakes really aren't all that obvious to me...Could yo tell me what a VGA linker is? Digger3000 (talk) 01:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

oops - looks like this one doesn't have one - what about - have you put the graphics card in the default pci slot (assuming there is a default for single card?) - have you actually got a green power light on yet - basically nothings blown up - but there's not picture right?83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I have what I think is a green power light on my front panel. (A green light under what appears to be a picture of the sun.) But also a red light under what appears to be a picture of a cylinder. And you're right, no picture, but nothing blows up. Digger3000 (talk) 03:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

green light is good - this probably means you got everything powered up. red light might be a sign - cylinder usually means hard disk - you'll have to check the manual to see what it signifies exactly - but I'd start finding out if that red light means error.83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

PS3 Question

Hey I was wondering if anyone knew how to hide images/music/videos from other profiles on a PS3, as in making them private so that only I can use see them and no other profile can. Rgoodermote  18:44, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

rundll32.exe

For some reason I always have two of them running on my computer. I can't remeber when it started, but I can't remember not seeing them. Just wondering why I have two copies (which take out diff. amounts of memory) always running on my computer. I've used Panda scan and have Avira anti-vir, running on Windows Vista if that helps. I don't visit any websites that I think should give me a virus (mostly ESPN, SI, gmail, some random blogs). Thanks in advance 24.171.145.63 (talk) 19:58, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

That's normal. It's a system program that is used to run other things, so you just have two things being run via it. I have two versions of it running on my computer at the moment. See Dynamic-link library for more information, although that article doesn't seem to mention rundll32 itself. Google found me this page explaining it - I've only glanced at it, but it seems pretty good. --Tango (talk) 20:58, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

rundll32.exe runs functions from DLLs. Check out Process Explorer; it gives you a lot more information than Windows' Task Manager. Just mouse over the process in question, and the tooltip should tell you what it's running. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Bit of info on it here. BigDunc^Talk 21:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

More at [2]. As it says, it'll run anything you tell it to run (assuming it's possible), so simply that you see rundll32.exe in the task manager means nothing. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Windows: Shortcut to shortcut?

On WinXP, it appears to be "a nontrivial exercise" to create a shortcut which links to another shortcut, i.e. A.lnk points to B.lnk which points to C1, a file.

(Scenario: C1 will change to C2 will change to C3 etc on a regular basis. B.lnk I can easily manipulate, to point to the current C. A.lnk is on a remote machine, and needs access to the current version of C, but is NOT so easily manipulated. Trivial on *nix, I know, but that's not one of the variables I can change.)

I thought that -- through the Properties dialog -- I might be able to edit A.lnk, but Windows wants to resolve the indirection right away, and A.lnk always ends up pointing to Cx. So, does anyone have any clever way to out-clever Microsoft here? I'm wondering, for instance, if renaming one of the links to a .txt extension, editing it, then changing something back might work, but haven't come up with a workable scenario on that path yet.

One website suggests making A into a .bat file which accesses the correct target, but I haven't seen through that yet, either.

Suggestions? Remember, "A" is on a remote machine, so the goal is to set up something there that does NOT require ongoing maintenance. Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:10, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

bat file seems to work very simply. eg make a text file (notepad) that contains the descriptor of B (or C?). The indirection isn't resolved as with your original problem..

Issues are

Icon is not a shortcut, don't know if this can really be solved directly (except by putting the bat file somewhere safe, and creating a shortcut "D" to A.bat ie both D links to A, A is the bat file)

(Haven't checked for problems on a remote machine - but can't see an issue with it...)

83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The idea is that you only have to change the shortcut B on the local machine and no others? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:57, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. I can easily update the pointer to the correct version of C, but no other references should need to also be changed. Thanks, I think I see how the .bat file works now. --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Update

Just to test this on my home system, I created an Excel file well down in the innards of the file system; I created a shortcut to it on the desktop; and I created a bat file to run the shortcut.

• From a command prompt, I can see that the actual name of the shortcut on the file system ends with .xls.lnk. Thus, in Notepad I typed exactly one line, starting with C:\ and ending with .xls.lnk.
• That was dumb; because this is WinXP, part of the pathname is "Documents and Settings", so I then put the whole thing in quotes:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Me\Desktop\Link.xls.lnk"

• Excel launches, says it can't find the file, and HANGS! I can't terminate Excel, Windows enters "program is not responding" mode, which then tries to send an error report to Microsoft, and HANGS AGAIN doing that.

I seem to have zombie copy of Excel running, that Task Manager itself can't kill.

Should I have said "Run <filename>"?

Or, "Open <filename>"?

Or, "EXCEL.EXE <filename>"?

Or, should I have used DOCUME~1 in the pathname?

(I'll post this and then reboot, I guess...)

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 03:40, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

(edited - after many mistakes)

I tried a similar thing - with a shortcut to a .bat file to a shortcut to a spreadsheet file - which worked (all the links in different positions). Also worked when eventually just linking to the program. Any errors I made just caused a standard "file not found" error at the command line - no zombie programs. Also worked for different file/program types. One thing I couldn't try was excell - did work with .xlr spreadsheet for MS works though. No idea what went wrong for you.83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean when you say just linking to the program? Do you mean linking to the executable, .exe file? To me, this means launching the associated application, excel.exe, which would have to be full-pathed since its containing directory is not in %PATH%. I've been approaching this only from the data file side, maybe that's my problem.

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 18:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

yes, linking to the .exe file is what I meant - without specifying an extra file - it starts up and presents the "open file" dialog box.

(What I haven't tried is using "C:\ .... \program.exe filename.xls" - though in all the examples I've tried so far everything has functioned just as it would on the command line, so I'd expect it to work if the syntax is right). (all done in XP)

On the otherside I also tried linking via the .bat and .lnk files to the data file, and that worked too.

In all examples I used the full code path in the .bat file.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:46, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Surprisingly, the solution *may* have been changing the pathname to include DOCUME~1 and removing the quotes. I made that and one other change at the same time, and it worked -- the command prompt even goes away, and I was afraid that was going to stick around too after the previous negative experience. Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

June 28

bat files

Following no from the last question - if a create a bat file A that says

B.bat 
etc

and a file B.bat that says

A.bat
etc

and then click on either - will they just loop round and round until a stack overflow occurs, or is windows prepared for such foolishness; doing something else?

I'm too scared to actually try it :) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Why be scared to crash Windows? Back in the day, this kind of curiosity was the main reason computers existed.

I just tried it, and there was no ill effect, because when a batch file does "a.bat", the current batch file is discarded and forgotten. If you instead use call a.bat, however, it's remembered and the batch file resumes after a.bat has completed So after a lot of repetitions, under Vista, I got this cool error:

****** B A T C H R E C U R S I O N exceeds STACK limits ******

Recursion Count=599, Stack Usage=90 percent

****** B A T C H PROCESSING IS A B O R T E D ******

Tempshill (talk) 01:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - same thing. Didn't realise about call

Curiously (to me) when I try it without call, it still loops, but with no stack overflow message - but eventually just seems to give up - no error message - anyone know why this is? or doesn't do this, must have done something else83.100.250.79 (talk) 02:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

retrieving data from sites

1. Is there any site that gives RSS/ATOM type bare minimum data on stock market values of (induvidual) companies?.
2. Is it possible to retrieve that data/page using python (to feed another program written in C).
3. Is it possible with PHP? 59.93.6.7 (talk) 03:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If 1 is true than 2 and 3 are certainly true. It's not hard to get RSS data with any manner of programs, there are plenty of libraries written to do that. --140.247.10.133 (talk) 01:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

electronic devices that were commercial failures

what electronic devices were the hugest commercial failures?--Mr.K. (talk) 10:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Try the Sinclair C5 for size (a poor concept made even worse by working to a target price instead of a technological standard - pretty much finished Clive Sinclair). Or how about Betamax and HD DVD? Astronaut (talk) 11:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Surely the C5 doesn't count as an 'electronic device'. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Though there was the Black Watch, which was also a bad concept coupled with bad execution. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The original xbox made huge losses (though that is believed to have been expected as part of a bigger plan), Apple Bandai Pippin, 3DO, virtual boy - there are hundreds more, all forgotten. Don't know which was the 'most'.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The Dell/Sony/others battery recall in 2006- must have cost a lot of money see Product_recall#2006 also Sony#Batteries and http://www.infoworld.com/t/hardware/update-dell-recall-41-million-laptop-batteries-236 etc 83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The Apple Newton. Dismas|^(talk) 07:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Increase Upload Speed

Without contacting ISPs and all that, is it possible for an end user increase their upload speed on a fiberoptic cable modem? Currently I'm getting 700 KB/s download but only an average of 10 KB/s upload. Are there any software that could increase the speed, any techniques etc. Again I repeat contacting the ISP is not an option —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.90.6 (talk) 14:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

You could try compressing your upload, but then you would need to decompress it on the server. Why is contacting the ISP "not an option"? Surely, their tech support team are the first place you should ask (FWIW, 10K upload is damn slow). failing that, maybe it's time to look for a new ISP. Astronaut (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

There isn't a reason why the download speed should be so much less than the upload. I don't think there is much that an end user can do directly. Has the speeds always been like this - it could be a temporary server or website problem?

Have you checked that there the OS is not reporting any problems with the connections - such as 'limited connectivity' - it really sounds like something is fundamentally wrong in the setup you've got.83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like a usual speed, see for instance [3], it is usual for upload speed to be much slower than download but for that download speed I'd have expected at 30kB/s upload at the very least. Have you checked the speed with a local speed checker site? Dmcq (talk) 16:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help everyone :) I've tested on speedtest.net and get a upload reading of 0.13 Mb /s (I'm unsure what that is in KB/s) and download reading of 9.85 Mb /s. I'm pretty sure the speeds have always been like this, and it hasn't been a problem for normal browsing. It's just that I need to upload some large files to rapidshare and it's taking ages (400MB of files). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.90.6 (talk) 18:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I suspect the free service at Rapidshare is deliberately slowed (I've never uploaded but that's certainly true of downloading). It is done to encourage you to pay for a speedier service. Astronaut (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If you divide the Mb/s by 8 you'll get an absolute maximum MB/s. Your upload speed is quite slow compared to your download speed - I'd expect perhaps four times the speed. I'd start checking what your ISP says the upload speed should be. They should say on their website. If what they say disagrees by a very large factor from what speedtest said then there's all sorts of thnigs that could be wrong. Your modem will have a page which shows figures like noise to signal ratio and there's sites on the web to help with saying if the figures are okay.

Location of files on computer

Hi, I've just got a new computer (as the old one suffers from periodic hard drive failures) and I want to transfer over my old e-mail correspondence from outlook express onto the new machine which has windows live mail. Can someone tell me where the relevant files are stored, what they'd be called & where I'd move them to on the new machine? I'm presuming that simply copying them over is the easiest way. Same question for mozilla bookmarks. Thanks. AllanHainey (talk) 19:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

This seems rather comprehensive. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that tells me how to get the message files from outlook express, any idea where I'd add them to on Windows live mail?

And how I'd do the same thing with Mozilla bookmarks? AllanHainey (talk) 12:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

From the link above I recommend typing "file transfer" into MS's search box - if you got a new PC there should be a file transfer wizard - usually involves a network cable, or USB memory, and a downloadable program from MS which automates the transfer - such things do exist.

Also if you can transfer the outlook express data to the new computer then windows live has an import method that will get the data.

No idea about mozilla bookmarks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Also search for "file and settings" on your computer - there should be a "file and settings import wizard" on MS computers.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

About the Mozilla bookmarks, they are stored in your profile folder. See this page from MozillaZine knowledge base and you can click on the term "profile folder" to tell you where the profile folder can usually be found. --Mathew5000 (talk) 12:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Excel function/macro

I have an excel worksheet with four columns A, B, C and D. A and C are text columns and B and D contain numbers. A has more entries than C but there are no entries in C that are not present somewhere in A (I hope you are following this lol). Is there a function or macro I can use to make the entries in C move within the column to the same row number as the identical text while taking the D value with it (to the same row)?

I will be checking this question regularly so if there is anything you need to clarify, please say. Thank you. 90.200.240.61 (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify: you have a pair of text/data columns and want one set of them to be merged into the other, yes? This should be doable with a macro though I'm a little rusty on my Excel VBA. You need to just cycle over the text column-to-be-merged, check where its corresponding entry is in the merging-to column, and then just copy of the value over. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

No, Let me try to show it here:

A B C D

Apple 2 Carrot 3

Banana 5 Egg 7

Carrot 3 Fig 1

Doughnut 1 Grape 2

Egg 6

Fig 5

Grape 3

I want this to change to: (for example)

A B C D

Apple 2

Banana 5

Carrot 3 Carrot 3

Doughnut 1

Egg 6 Egg 7

Fig 5 Fig 1

Grape 3 Grape 2

I hope you understand this. Column A is text, B number, C text and D is a number. 90.200.240.61 (talk) 21:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I see. So all you want changed is where dataset two aligns respective to column 1. Hmm. That should be doable (I would have it again iterate over dataset 2, and then put a copy in a third dataset, to avoid worrying about reordering correctly within the columns. Then you could just delete the old dataset). Again, it's definitely a macro/VBA sort of solution, not a function. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I was afraid of that. Does anyone know how I could search for such a macro? 90.200.240.61 (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the VLOOKUP function might provide what you are looking for. Using the sample data above populated in columns A through D, add the formula =VLOOKUP(A:A,C:D,1,FALSE) in column E and the formula =VLOOKUP(A:A,C:D,2,FALSE) in column F, then copy the formula down the length of the table. This will populate columns E and F with data from columns C and D where columns C matches column A. For those cells that do not match, you will get an "N/A" value.

A	B	C	D	E	F
Apple	2	Carrot	3	#N/A	#N/A
Banana	5	Egg	7	#N/A	#N/A
Carrot	3	Fig	1	Carrot	3
Doughnut	1	Grape	2	#N/A	#N/A
Egg	6			Egg	7
Fig	5			Fig	1
Grape	3			Grape	2

Note that the lookup table (columns C and D) could be anywhere in the workbook, even in another sheet, see the VLOOKUP documentation for more information. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you only need to do this once, you can do it in under 5 minutes manually. Highlight columns C and D and sort them alphabetically on col C. Do the same for A and B. Then work down column C, and anywhere A has a label that C does not, just insert a cell into C and D, to push them down far enough to match the label in A. For example, the top word in C is Carrot, you move C and D down by 2 cells, so they line up with Carrot in A.

If for any reason you don't want them alphabetical, but want to maintain the original order of column A, insert a new column to the left of A and auto fill it with numbers, starting with 1. Include this column in your sort of the original A and B, but still use the original A as the field to sort on. Once you've done the lining up, highlight all 5 columns and sort them on the number column, to put them back into the original column A order.- KoolerStill (talk) 09:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

jpegs

I want to combine two jpeg images together in one jpeg image while still retaining the first two. I want to do this for lots of images. Is there a batch file I can use to do this more easily? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.240.61 (talk) 20:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean, specifically, by "combine"? Do you want to blend one into the other, or join the two so that they are side-by side, or one on top of the other, or what? And you need to tell us what operating system you are using. 87.115.99.208 (talk) 20:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I mean sit them side by side and/or one beside the other. I am using microsoft windows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.240.61 (talk) 21:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Use ImageMagick's "convert" function with the "+append" operator. Should be something like "convert image1.jpg image2.jpg +append image3.jpg". --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

psplimewire

on my psp phat is there anyway i can put limewire on the home menu or can i put anything on the psp home menu without getting on a pc thank u —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubbafrogs (talk • contribs) 21:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Disappearing free space

On my mac, I get frequent messages saying there is little space left (generally less than 400MB, when I check it out). I'm not running any strange or high performance programs that I can imagine would cause it; it is as if I have a tapeworm that keeps on eating digested dinner before I absorb it into my system. I have to keep moving stuff around, deleting, rebacking up, etc. Suggestions invited.78.144.110.113 (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Use a visualization program like Disk Inventory X and it will tell you where the space is going. If you have a small amount of RAM, it could be getting sucked up as virtual memory (something that could be fixed by upgrading your physical RAM, which isn't usually very expensive or difficult, depending on the make and model). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you are running short of memory, and you are using nightly builds of WebKit to run Safari, be aware that they fluctuate between being too loose and too tight on memory management. Some will fail to release substantial amounts of memory. Firefox also tends to be a memory hog, especially if you run multiple tabs with long tab histories. Restarting them will force them to let go.

Listen to the machine...can you hear a large amount of hard drive activity most of the time? when you are not saving a file? this would indicate a lot of paging is taking place.

Clear out your internet caches,cookies and temporary files-- these can take up huge amounts of space. Clear out other files you don't need. Make sure you are not running any logging services you don't need. There is little point backing up to the same hard drive -- the purpose of backups is to have a copy if the drive fails. Write them out to a DVD-RW. Then defragment the hard drive. - KoolerStill (talk) 13:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, wikipedia is good value for money! I'll check that out. I've only got 1.5GB RAM, and only a few apps running generally - the like of web browsers and Mail.app. I can almost see it counting down at times, when I Get Info on the boot disc. EyeTV could be the culprit, it turns out; it auto-records whatever is playing, for a live rewind. You can put that stuff in the RAM or HD at choice. Whatever it is, it's eating memory like Hummers do petrol.78.150.233.242 (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, 98. Disk Inventory X was handy, it turns out there is a secret folder in the root directory called "private" - invisible in Finder until Disc Inventory X revealed it. Private>Var>Log>Asl folder grows like a Chinese economy. File names imply a daily log. Today is only 8MB, yesterdays is 170MB. The whole "asl" folder is 24GB, the "private" folder is 27GB. I've tried quitting random apps and it could be anything, from what I gather. Any suggestions for what could possibly be feeding that folder?78.148.74.124 (talk) 20:59, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

And I ran the whole mac through ClamXav (virus checker). No problems, except a few unopened email attachments.78.148.94.163 (talk) 21:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Tracking cookies?

While running my antivirus scanner, I noticed that it picked up some tracking cookies; after reading the article on computer cookies, I'm still confused — why would the antivirus (AVG) catch those? Is it simply set to catch these things because of the potential of an invasion of privacy, or is there some better reason? I don't know too much about this program — it was installed on my computer by friends whom I trust, and it's worked well since I began using it, so I've not had a significant reason to learn its details. Nyttend (talk) 23:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Imagine that ad company X runs banner ads on a a hundred totally different sites. If each ad puts a unique ID for you in the same tracking cookie, then ad company X knows something of your browsing habits and can construct a profile of what kind of person you are (and maybe even who exactly you are). But that's all. It's a privacy thing, that's all. Not a big deal, as far as things go. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

June 29

vista webpage

hello is there a webpage that looks like windows vista or xp is there a flash game for psp like vista —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubbafrogs (talk • contribs) 01:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand your question. Adding some punctuation might help. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

You can take a screenshot, upload it to somewhere like imageshack, and view it in a browser - that would make a "webpage that looks like Vista or XP". But there's no need to upload anything, there are plenty of images of Vista/XP desktops that people have uploaded to various forums. Astronaut (talk) 01:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Vista desktops

Answering the above question led me to see several Windows Vista/XP desktops which appeared to have a Mac OsX-like docking bar (see this guy's desktop for an example). Where can I get that kind of docking bar utility from? Astronaut (talk) 02:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the one in the image is RocketDock. :-) There are other ones available including ObjectDock--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 20:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Another option that I use is Gizmos. The toolbar is highly customizable and can launch stuff besides programs (such as Webpages, custom scripts you write). It also comes with some other cool features such as Virtual Drives and a color coded text editor for writing in C, C++, and other stuff I don't really use such as databases —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.171.145.63 (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

CPUs

What is the fastest commercial CPU currently on the market? --128.12.77.85 (talk) 04:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Commercially I'm going to guess *probably* the Intel Core i7 975 3.33Ghz Extreme Edition, but I'll happily be proved wrong! ZX81 ^talk 06:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

for x86.64 [4] - I'm willing to prove you right.

Not quite what you asked, but in May, Fujitsu said one of their SPARC64 prototypes is the fastest CPU, at 128 gigaflops. That same link says Intel's top-of-the-line Nehalem Xeon is at 76 gigaflops. Tempshill (talk) 06:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

At the same time IBM's POWER range is rated at the highest MHz/GHz commercially available ~5GHz, whilst NEC's SX9 is the fastest vector processor at ~100Gflops. It looks like every company has the fasters by some measure (except ARM)83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

A related question that should be asked is "What is the fastest motherboard on the market?" Placing a fast CPU on a slow motherboard will kill most of the benefit of the fast CPU. -- kainaw™ 13:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Internet Radio Recorder

There used to be a program in Ubuntu that let you record internet radio. Do you know of any for Windows Vista, or should I just stick to a program that records my computers audio output? 24.171.145.63 (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Orbit Downloader records internet radio I believe and it comes with browser plug-ins that introduce context menus that make downloading a snap. They have a tutorial here. -ankØku- (talk) 19:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Who uses Java servlets?

I'm having a hard time finding any well-known companies that use Java servlets or JSPs. I'm sure Sun and IBM do, but are they're developers of the technology. Most of the sites I see use PHP, Perl, and ASP/ASP.NET. Can any one give me some examples? Come to think of it, I'm having a hard time thinking of many examples of applets out there! Most of the RIAs nowadays seem to be in Flash or AJAX.--Dfnggcb (talk) 08:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There aren't many around because so many end-users have been warned to turn off Java support in their browser for security reasons that big-name web sites don't want to touch Java if they can possibly avoid it because it's a tech-support nightmare. For small niche sites, you have a choice between Java and JavaScript - but Java can't do much that JavaScript can't do unless you use a "signed" server - that process is painful and incurs a significant annual fee to the web site owner. There are a bunch of cool things I wanted to do on my web site - but in the end, I'm not paying the signing fees - and if I have to restrict myself to the Java subset that can run unsigned - then I might as well just use JavaScript, PHP, Flash(Yuk!), etc. SteveBaker (talk) 14:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with Flash? I use Flash on most of my sites. As you just said, Java is hard to use. And I doubt you could make a Java applet that looks like this: [5]. That's not even taking into account problems with debugging across platforms.--Dfnggcb (talk) 22:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

SteveBaker, you are thinking of applets (which run on the browser) not servlets (which run on the server). A lot of companies use servlets or JSPs, though not all directly. We use struts/stxx for example, which is implemented as a servlet. I would go as far as saying almost all companies with websites running on Java will use servlets - the alternatives are either very low level (code using sockets) or niche like restlets. That is all companies using Weblogic, Websphere, Tomcat, Glassfish, JBOSS, and many more. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

To find some try googling for those advertising for "Java Web Developer", a couple I found were Barclays, General Motors, and British Airways. Of course I don't know if these are for niche sites or intranet only. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, SteveBaker's answer is way, way off here. There are important differences between server side and client side java. Server side java is very very widely deployed, but you can't necessarily tell who is using them just from seeing the website. Friday (talk) 14:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I ended up using Career Builder to search for the words J2EE and then servlet to find companies looking for servlet developers. It turns out that there are many well-known companies using them.--Dfnggcb (talk) 18:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There's also Tomcat (software)'s list of companies using their popular JSP server: [6]. Indeterminate (talk) 20:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Madden 07 Xbox 360 Controls

I got this game at the weekend at a bargain price but it came with no instructions. Whilst I can get the controls from the in-game menu does anybody know of any resource that has a full list of the controls so that I can print them out for quicker reference? A pdf of the booklet, or anything like that would be great. I couldn't find anything when I looked. Is there a site that's dedicated to game-controls or online (free) PDFs of game-booklets? (oh and I know the game is ancient but as a non NFL follower I just thought i'd give the game a go as I used to enjoy the old Madden games back in the day). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Found it (http://www.gamesegment.com/XBOX360/instructions.cfm/id/9110375) ny156uk (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Good find! I wasn't turning up anything. Tempshill (talk) 16:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

My Computer is gone

On windows vista I accidentally selected "My Computer" or whatever it's called now and deleted it. I can't find it in the recycle bin, and I can't find any options to bring it back. How do I get it back? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 11:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I cannot be deleted because it doesn't exist. It is just a convenience link. By "deleting", you just removed the convenience. To replace it, click the Start button. You will see an entry called "Computer". Right-click on it and select "Show on desktop". -- kainaw™ 11:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't have "computer" on the start menu, all I have is shut down, run, help and support, search, settings, documents, programs, windows update, default programs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 16:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you right click on an empty area of the 'taskbar' - that's the bar at the bottom where the running programs and open files appear - you should see a dialog box. Press properties, then 'start menu', here you might need to change between different formats eg classic etc. Then select 'customise', then 'advanced' - this should get you to a box that shows a list of "start menu items" - from this list check the box for "display My Computer" or equivalent. Then press apply/ok. This should make the MyComputer icon appear when you press the 'Start' button. You can then get the link as described above. (Note this is for XP, though Vista should be very similar or identical method).

Once you've got the link you can go back and change 'start menu' to the way it was. Whilst you are there you might as well take some time to customise the start menu to show all the things you want - It's often useful, and you'll get familiar with the method. Hope this works for you.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

That worked perfectly! Thank you :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Spoke too soon, it only works if I say on vista start menu, but as soon as I switch back to classic start menu My Computer icon is gone again —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 17:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Mmh, once you've got the icon on the desktop, right click on it, and select "create shortcut" - that should make a shortcut copy, probably named "shortcut to My Computer" on the desktop. Then you can switch back to classic view. The shortcut icon will definately not dissapear (I hope), then all you have to do is rename the shortcut icon to "My Computer" or whatever you want (another right click) - that should fix it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thats worked, thanks. The icon is slightly different now, it's got a shortcut arrow on it. But it works so I'm happy :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 20:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to get rid of that arrow - if you find out - let me know :)

83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Just had the chance to look at Vista. Try this: Right-click on the desktop. Choose personalize. Do you have a Change Desktop Icons on the left menu? If so, click it. The possible desktop icons will appear and you can place a check next to those that you want to show up on your desktop. -- kainaw™ 21:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

THANK YOU :D Worked perfectly :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 21:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

IBM POWER6 Decimal floating point

According to POWER6 the processor has a decimal floating point unit. Outside the azure confines of IBM does this make any sense - I mean does anything actually use decimal floating point, and why? Thanks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, one of the things IBM made it's money on is backwards compatibility. The POWER6 is an enhanced POWER5 which is an enhanced...POWER. The POWER uses the 801 architecture - which is backwards compatible with the IBM System/370 - which is compatible with the 360...which was designed to emulate the 1400 - which was around in 1964! There is quite a lot of software that was written in the late 1960's and early 1970's on 'lumbering giants' that people still run. Very often, they don't even own the source code anymore - or the binaries have been patched so many times that the sources are no longer reliable. (This is one reason why concern over the Millenium Bug was such a big deal.) Being able to buy machines that still run that old junk is evidently still a good business model. Binary Coded Decimal arithmetic is still popular in financial processing because accounting systems have to be able to guarantee accuracy down to the last penny - even in calculations that might require millions or even billions of dollars/pounds/euro's. In a modern programming language, there are much better ways to deal with that - but so much of that old stuff is written in Cobol - so there you go. SteveBaker (talk) 13:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose they can convert the BCD to decimal floating point and use the floating point units then.

I'm still trying to come to terms with mending the binaries and not the source . ouch . Thanks for your answer - made me feel young (that doesn't happen so often nowadays!)83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

At SteveBaker: Surely the POWER6 cannot be compatible with the S/370... My understanding is that the POWER6 a new implementation of the Power ISA (formerly PowerPC); the POWER5 was an enhanced POWER4, itself a new implementation of the PowerPC architecture; the POWER1 was an implementation of the POWER architecture, which was based on ideas from the IBM 801, a RISC machine instead of a CISC machine like the S/370. The only microprocessor from IBM that has decimal floating-point and is compatible with the S/370 that I know is the z10, which is used in the IBM System z10 mainframe. Rilak (talk) 11:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Decimal floating point isn't just binary floating point with the base changed, it's more like a collection of numeric operations that are useful in finance. I don't think it's dying. A new standard came out just last year (IEEE 754r), and was incorporated into the C++ standard by a technical report. Intel published a high-speed software implementation of it for x86. Sure, you can use a fixed-point library, but every fixed-point library is different. How many digits should it allow after the decimal point? Are you sure? Can it calculate 1.0825ⁿ to within 0.5 ulp? The point of standardizing decimal floating point is the same as the point of standardizing anything else: it justifies putting extra effort into well-tested high-quality implementations, including hardware implementations for people who need the speed.

Binary floating point is unacceptable for financial calculations even if they involve small amounts of money. Try running the following program:

   #include <stdio.h>
   
   volatile float f = 0;  /* force rounding to single precision at each step */
   
   int main() {
       int i;
       for (i = 0; i < 20000; ++i)
           f += 0.01;
       printf("%f\n", f);
       return 0;
   }

My machine prints 199.969376. That's off by 3¢ after only 20,000 additions of amounts under $200. -- BenRG (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Of course you could make cents (or hundreths of centswhy) equivalent to 1 instead of counting in dollars - which solves that problem. Maybe I should email my CV to IBM :) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:11, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

More seriously, this brings me back to my original question which was why "decimal floats" - at my limited level of understanding it seems to me that only the mantissa is useful - eg if I have 10googlegooglebucks and spend 1 dollar then in a float representation it seems likely that the 1 dollar won't even register on the float representation. Wouldn't a fixed point decimal representation make much more sense?83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

It was precisely that type of "only 3 cents" fraction that was syphoned into another account to make the programmer very rich, in a famous early computer fraud case. If the program cannot be out by anything, nobody can steal the "mistake" and nobody has to account for it (either in the books or in a court). - KoolerStill (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed point is like floating point with a constant exponent. The trouble is what exponent to choose. Some financial calculations are required by law to be done in mills and I think some are done in tenths of mills. You also have to work with multiple currencies and I don't know how the conversions are specified to work. Most likely a single program-global exponent wouldn't be good enough. Your other options are (a) work with bare integers and use variable names and comments to distinguish the formats, (b) distinguish them in the type system (if your language has a type system) or (c) distinguish them dynamically by bundling format specifiers with the numbers. Option (a) is horribly bug-prone. Option (b) is probably not flexible enough in general. Option (c) is decimal floating point by a different name. With any numeric format of bounded size you are going to have cases where the output isn't exactly representable; $1 googol + $1 is one such case for floating point, but in a fixed-width fixed-point format $1 googol wouldn't have been representable to begin with. The computation that produced it might even have wrapped around, which would be even worse. IEEE 754 provides inexact-result and overflow exceptions that will catch these cases. A well-written financial library would presumably check these flags and redo the calculation in arbitrary precision where necessary. I suppose I should mention at some point that I've never written any financial software... -- BenRG (talk) 21:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, my example about 1google$ was meant roughly as an example.. (obviously) though from my reading of Decimal floating point it looks like the format includes expressions for number that have an accuracy of less than 1 integer: eg ~33 decimal places and an exponent that has more than 12bits (14 I think) that's > 2^4000 or ~>10^1200 --- way more than 33 decimal - It looks like massive overkill - the exponent would never be used ??

These number formats are just for accounting (not engineering) ??

I suppose the solution is as you describe - make it easier on the programmers (and harder on the chip designers) - it would/does minimise possible errors if there is only really a single (hardware) implementation of the numbers, rather than 100s of program specific implementations. I suppose that's the real answer then. Thanks.

Still I didn't think financial calculations would ever be extensive enough to require hardware acceleration - even if I had 2billion employees (literally) it wouldn't take a modern desktop PC long to calculate their end of week interest, wages, and taxes (10 seconds?) Maybe someone could shed some light on this, and answer my additional supplementery questions?83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Windows graphing program for excel spreadsheets

We have data in excel spreadsheets. We want graphs that excel is not capable of producing. What is available to produce good graphics from the excel data? -- kainaw™ 13:55, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you want a stand alone visualisation program? It's easy to output as CSV and then import into your favorite programming language (assuming it has graphics support for the output) - using that method gives you as much flexibility as you could wish for the graphs, and is probably quicker (and cheaper) than finding a special program.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sigmaplot comes with a 30 day trial, which you'd expect before forking out around $800. Probably more affordable is Dplot, an Excel add-on for $60. This too comes with a free trial.- KoolerStill (talk) 14:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, we're debating Sigma and Delta. Perhaps using the evaluations will let the users decide which one they like. The problem with evaluations is that they assume the users know how to use the programs. In reality, you lose most of the evaluation time just trying to make the program function properly. -- kainaw™ 14:47, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Crystal Reports is excellent at graphs, but run it stand-alone. It's horrendously slow in a multi-user datawarehouse or similar environment. Sandman30s (talk) 22:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There are graphing tools in Adobe Illustrator that will accept data from Excel. If you click with one of the graphing tools, a spreadsheet will pop up where you can paste data. After the graph is drawn, you can rotate it in 3D space, add shadows, reflections, and so on.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:48, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Replacing PS3 HDD... clone first?

I want to install a larger hard drive into my PS3 (it makes a great media hub. Game? meh.) How can I copy all my game saves and DLC to my new drive? Some game saves (like Rock Band) don't allow copying to a memory stick. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 15:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

You have to use the backup utility to an external harddrive. You can't just copy the files. -- kainaw™ 15:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Solaris 10 and open Solaris

I was going to try using solaris, but Sun gave me two options - I don't need to see the source code, but I can't distinguish between the two otherwise from the description on Sun's website. Can anyone describe what the difference is? Thanks83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Open Solaris is free to download and use. But you can't update it. If you pay for Solaris, then you can download updates. In either case, keep in mind that Sun will be releasing version 11 in mid 2010. So, you might be better off waiting a year if you want to get Solaris.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC).

OpenSolaris is free and you can get updates for free. Regular Solaris is free, and security updates are free, but any patches that add additional features require a service contract. Regular Solaris also is commercially supported by ISVs, so the software developers of any programs you may be specially running on Solaris will officially support your software - they may laugh at you if you tell them you're running on OpenSolaris, even if the program works as advertised. Solaris is better suited for commercial environments, and OpenSolaris is better for hobbyists. One is not necessarily better than the other. Alex (talk) 12:45, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I sort of had guessed. Apart from the updates - are there any major differences between the two distributions that are obvious and important - such as compatability issues (general use) - also are both ok with the javabeans ide + c/fortran development kit (on experience) - or would one be a better match. (I fall into the amateur category, not major server vendor , obviously) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu - still free after 18 months?

From the Ubuntu website "Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge." But elsewhere it says: ""....with the benefit of free updates for 18 months." What happens after the 18 months are up? 78.144.242.64 (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The ordinary releases are supported for 18 months, after which time Canonical stop making updates available for it. The LTS ones are updated for 3 years (5 for servers). All that happens after these times is that they don't send you any more updates. Almost everyone will, before those periods are up, update to a later version. Ubuntu also contains a distribution-update program which keeps your install at the latest version (unless you tell it not to). 87.115.103.157 (talk) 20:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

(In case somebody doesn't know Ubuntu aims to make a new release every 6 months.) --194.197.235.36 (talk) 21:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The information could be worded less ambiguously. Does it mean "we give you free updates for 18 months, but after that you've got to pay for them!" or does it mean "We do updates for 18 months, and then don't do any more. All the updates are free."? 92.27.159.22 (talk) 23:15, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The latter. It should be made more clear, but it does say it is and always will be free at the top, so that gives you a bit of a hint. Thanks, gENIUS101 23:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear you can keep using any version of Ubuntu free of charge for as long as you want. After a certain time you will no longer receive updates and security releases. It is probably in your interest to upgrade but you are perfectly entitled to stick with the old version. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Windows or Linux - which is technically better?

Collapsed archived discussion due to request for debate

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hand on heart, which is the better operating system? All things considered, but ignoring the cost. Personally, Linux appeals to me because it does not require such a high spec computer. 92.27.159.22 (talk) 23:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The ref desk isn't really meant for debates. Friday (talk) 23:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I personally prefer Windows. Linux and UNIX seem more complicated than they need to be. The directory tree is very confusing in Linux, with over a dozen root folders, some of which should be merged, whereas Windows organizes files by drive with three root folders each. You also have issues with root access and having to run certain processes as root from the command line, whereas both Mac OS X and Windows allow you to authenticate graphically. You also have problems with multiple distributions that are often incompatible with one another. Then you have the issue of a lack of software available for Linux. Then there is the issue of text configuration files scattered across the hard drive, whereas Windows lets you manage settings from the Control Panel.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 23:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This can't go well. Neither is 'better', because that's far too ambiguous. It depends on your exact requirements and preferences. This isn't really the place to hold a debate either. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

No debate required, just want to know the answer. 92.27.159.22 (talk) 01:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The point is that judgments of "better"/"worst" depend on value judgments. Linux is harder for a novice to use. Does that make it worse? Windows can run 90% of all software. Does that make it better? That's the where the "debate" comes in. There isn't a straightforward, factual answer to this, as it depends on particular value judgments. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:55, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm a big time Linux enthusiast - I spent about 15 years 100% Windows-free at work and at home. But even I have to agree that Linux isn't for everyone. If you want to walk into a store, buy a game, toss it onto your machine and play it - then you don't want Linux. If you want to stop worrying about virusses and other malware - you do want Linux. If you want absolutely any modern hardware to "just work" without messing around - get Windows - if you want modern software to run on older hardware - get Linux. If you are setting up a web server or a firewall or a file server...get Linux. There isn't a single answer that applies to everyone. Simply demanding that you want a clear answer doesn't change that. SteveBaker (talk) 02:40, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

...Or you could get a Mac and half about 50/50 of each benefit/problem with a lot of hardware overhead. :-) (I have a Mac, incidentally, and I love that I get about half the benefits of Linux with about half the benefits of Windows. And half the deficits of each, plus a few more unique to the system, of course. To each their own.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the NT kernel is much better designed than Linux - object manager, IRQLs, ACLs for kernel objects, etc. Not that it matters in practice, though. Linux is much more secure because it's free/open source, it has fewer users and its default security configuration doesn't suck like in Windows XP. That's changing with UAC, though. --wj32 ^t/c 07:39, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Or, if you're just an enthusiast, go dual-boot on your computer to get the benefits of both. Personally, I've used linux many years ago but couldn't be bothered with fiddling with drivers etc. just to get something to work. I still have the dual boot but hardly ever go into linux. Windows is here to stay for me unless google can come up with an alternative including an emulator that can run the huge amount of windows software out there... you see where I'm going with this? Sandman30s (talk) 13:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The answer is simple. Linux is better for some people. Windows is better for some people. They are the same for some people. They are both terrible for some people. This is not a question for the reference desk. Trying (twice) to start a debate is simple trolling and is heavily frowned upon here. -- kainaw™ 13:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a very unfair comment, and not based on fact. I'm trying to decide if its worth paying for a Windows computer or converting an old computer to Linux for free. 78.146.98.182 (talk) 14:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

IN which case you asked the wrong question. An old computer running Linux will be better than an old computer running a newer version of Windows. A new computer running windows or Linux will be better tan an old computer though. if I were you I would try running linux on your old computer first (because its free) then see if it is worth getting a new one. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It is not unfair at all and your continued refusal to comprehend the simple fact that "Which is better?" is a request for opinions, not facts, is trollish. You can ask "Which takes up less hard drive space?" "Which runs Sims 3 faster?" "Which has free math graphing tools?" ... and many more questions. Asking "Which is better?" is not allowed on the reference desk. Asking again after being told not to is ignorant. Asking again is plain trollish. -- kainaw™ 14:22, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Take a look in the mirror. 89.240.105.155 (talk) 20:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

June 30

Need help with chess

I want to play both sides. I want an AI to help me out by advising what moves White should take, then I move the black pieces on my own. That way, I can simulate playing against a human (myself) that doesn't always take the best moves. Any help is appreciated.--12.48.220.130 (talk) 00:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most chess programs allow you to set up the board any way you want and tell the AI to play from there so you could play black(human)vs white(AI) - but when the AI makes it's move, if you decide not to take it's suggestion then just move the piece where you want to play it - play your black move and then tell the AI to "play from this position". But many chess programs have a "suggest a move" feature. So I don't think that's a hard thing to do. SteveBaker (talk) 02:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most GUI programs also have a "kibitzer" functionality that allows you to add one or more engines to observe the game without interfering. Almost all engines are capable of displaying the principal variation. Some may also be configured to display multiple variations. decltype (talk) 06:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Webmail and wifi security

Using Yahoo! Mail, I log in to my account through a https page, but then viewing and sending messages are done at regular http pages. Suppose I use my webmail from a laptop over wifi at a coffee shop, where I do not necessarily trust the owners. I assume the owners can easily see any messages I view, as well as the content of messages I send, while I am there. But can they do more than that? For example, can they call up messages in my inbox that I do not view while I am there? Can they send messages from my account unbeknownst to me? And can they continue to do this after I leave the coffee shop? --Mathew5000 (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

They can intercept traffic but your login credentials are encrypted when you use HTTPS to log-in. Assuming the Yahoo! Mail is designed even semi-competently, they should only be able to read unencrypted traffic, which would not give them the ability to actually influence the account. Presumably when you log-in to Yahoo! Mail, whatever authentication it uses is hashed with your IP address. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

After I log in, Yahoo must give me a cookie (over https) confirming that I’ve given the correct password. Then when I compose and send a message (over http), you are saying that my web browser does not send back the cookie itself, but rather a hash of the cookie combined with the message I’ve composed? That would make sense I guess. Thanks. --Mathew5000 (talk) 02:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know specifically, but either way, the browser identifies itself as having logged in with some sort of hash value. That hash value probably has the IP and other identifying data encoded in it. That means that even if you had the hash value, logging in would not work if the other data did not match up. (Hypothetically. Some of that data can be spoofed. Your IP, though, needs to match up correctly, or else the server won't know where to send the response.) That's all I mean. There are probably even more complicated and clever things going on; all I've described is the bare minimum for using an encrypted/unencrypted arrangement that doesn't let a man-in-the-middle issue arbitrary commands. I am sure others will have more elaborate and learned explanations, though! --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yahoo mail services check your IP, your browser make, your OS make and version, your Mail software version and WebService version, all down to the minor version numbers. The session cookie would include some or all of these. If you try accessing the mail from another browser on the same machine, it will normally require you (or the nefarious cafe owners)to sign in again. - KoolerStill (talk) 06:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

KoolerStill, all that can be spoofed, since the café owners can get my OS version and so forth from the http data going through the wireless router. --Mathew5000 (talk) 11:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, now that you mention it, that's right. The router itself manages the IP to your individual machine. So obviously it could do all that. Bleh. Brain not working. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The real question is, why does Yahoo use HTTP instead of HTTPS for the email data? The contents of your email should be protected as strongly as the session login authentication data. Perhaps you should consider switching to a different service provider, or see if there is an option in the Yahoo mail settings to enable HTTPS for everything. Also, sometimes (for reasons I do not understand) a web page will choose to load some data with HTTPS and other data with HTTP (e.g. by using HTML iframes, or AJAX or similar "web 2.0" technical methods). In that case, it is possible that your email contents are securely transmitted with HTTPS even though the URL you access is prefaced with http:// . If Yahoo allows raw access to its IMAP server, you can use a client-side email program (like Alpine (e-mail client)) which will use strong protection for the entire session, unlike the web interface version seems to be doing. Nimur (talk) 16:09, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I often wonder about this too. All e-mail services should use HTTPS, really. It's an obvious and glaring problem to just send people's private e-mail in the clear. GMail can be told to use HTTPS for everything, though that is not the default option. Tempshill (talk) 18:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If you want an actual reason, it's just money. Serving emails over a SSL connection is more intensive, computationally and bandwidth-wise, than plain-text HTTP. The mail provider can have less sessions per server, so switching to HTTPS would require them to buy more servers just to keep their current client base. Basically, it would cost them a lot of money for a feature that most of their clients don't care about. Indeterminate (talk) 20:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

And if you really care about e-mail security you don't use Yahoo! Mail. (I'm talking to you, Sarah Palin.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

See this from the archives: HTTPS and Hotmail. Jay (talk) 10:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem

With reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#problem: Thanks a lot! I got the whole program and it's running properly except one thing.I didn't understand what the pointer const prompt is doing in the following function.

int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt ) { int roomNumber;

do { cout << prompt << " (1 - "<<MAX_ROOMS<<"): "; cin >> roomNumber; } while ( roomNumber < 1 || roomNumber > MAX_ROOMS );

return roomNumber; }

what will be the alternative if we don't use pointer prompt?--121.52.148.13 (talk) 05:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.52.148.13 (talk)

It appears that you are using the function like this:

GetRoomNumber("\nEnter Room Number to be Reserved");

That is, you pass a string literal to the function. The string literal has type "array of const char". The function call is valid because an array of const char can be converted to a pointer to its first element, that is, a "pointer to const char". Thus, inside the function, prompt is used to refer to the address of the first element in "\nEnter room...".

cout << prompt ...

will cause the program to write characters from this location until it encounters a null character.

a (const) pointer to const char is a perfectly reasonable way to pass a literal to a function. Alternatives include using basic_string, a reference to the array, or passing the array by value. decltype (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The second "const" is completely pointless, and should probably not be there. All it says is that in that the pointer variable won't be changed inside the function. But there is no point in declaring that, as since the variable is local to the function anyway, it will never matter to anyone outside the function. It's like if you declared one of your arguments "const int x"; well the const does not matter to anyone outside, so there is no point in declaring it. --Spoon! (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I considered commenting on that. It does not matter to the caller, but it might matter inside (in this case it doesn't), since it prevents you from inadvertently modifying it. While I myself prefer dropping the const, I don't mind the alternative approach:

// foo.h 
int GetRoomNumber( const char * prompt );
// foo.cpp
int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt ) { /* ... */ }

decltype (talk) 10:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

How to replace an old url with the new url globally in all pages

Hai,

I need to replace old url with new url in each page. I dont want to do it manually. I want to change globally in all pages whereever the old one is there. i.e for example : Replace http://www.doc.com with http://www.docum.com

With Regards, Chaitanya.

Since this is a question about links within Wikipedia, my advice to bring the question here was wrong: we'll discuss it back over on the new contributors' help page (though anyone from this refdesk who knows the answer is very welcome to contribute). Gonzonoir (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure the question is about links within Wikipedia? That's not clear to me from the question. -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The original question was specifically about a "wiki" - we can assume it is a MediaWiki install. This is just a repeat of the question in a different area. -- kainaw™ 20:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

What product is this ?

This is bugging me I cannot remember what this product is called

1) think that microsoft is involved

2) User takes a picture of a nine by nine grid with their phone - the grid has black dots on it - phones with the right software then turn this into a URL and take the user to the relevant website. The idea is that those grids can be used on posters, packaging and so on - allow mobile phone users to quickly access content.

Anyone know what this is called? --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Something like a QR Code? -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Spot-on! thanks chum. --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft is more heavily involved in their own competing format High Capacity Color Barcode. APL (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3.5

Just tried out Firefox 3.5 today. It's HTML5 stuff rocks! The <audio> and <video> tags work without a hitch to deliver seamless streaming media right inside web pages.

I'm wondering, since Wikipedia uses ogg exclusively, is there any plan at the present time for WP to incorporate HTML5 tags in some way?

70.31.154.75 (talk) 18:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a question about the direction of Wikipedia, it should be asked over at the Village Pump, probably in the "Technical" section. The reason: The people who help out over there are actually working on the software and configuration that Wikipedia uses. Tempshill (talk) 18:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ask over there then. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.154.75 (talk) 19:37, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

machine code question

Is this doable in x86 or Power/PC machine code (not ARM) without involving a jump ? :

flag:=(x<y) !ie flag(boolean) is set of reset on the condition x<y
if flag=true z:=a ! ie a is some constant
if flag=false z:=b ! b is a constant like a

I'm trying to avoid a jump on condition instruction - is this easily done - a formula like z:=b+g(a-b) seems to be the answer so I guess I need to get g (integer?) as either 1 or 0 dependant on the result of (x<y) - ie convert a flag to either integer 1 or 0 for use in a maths expression. I'm not very familiar with either ISA so please excuse if this question is somewhow fundamentally ignorant. Thanks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

There's conditional move instructions on modern x86's, they were put in with Pentium II I believe. In the past one could use a much longer sequence of logical instructions after using one of the SETcc instructions. I don't believe the PowerPC has anything comparable but it isn't such a problem because it can separate a test and a jump much better. Dmcq (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! both setcc and move on condition were exactly what the sort of thing I was hoping for.

83.100.250.79 (talk) 23:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The PowerPC can copy a condition code to a register so it can do the work without a jump. And in fact I think people do this when assigning a boolean 0 or 1 but it isn't worth it in general. The original POWER architecture had a conditional move but it was removed as not worth the effort. Dmcq (talk) 12:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. (going through IBM's pdf's is hard work for me I can never find anything) . Found the handle mfcr (introduced in POWER4 according to wikipedia). Now I know what I'm looking for, thanks again.

Resolved

google question

ive noticed that google is indenting all my search results by about 3 cm. i find this very annoying but dont know how to fix it. any help?--24.109.201.127 (talk) 21:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Is this a new problem? and what browser are you using, that's probably relevent too.83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

yeah its new. firefox 3 on vista. --24.109.201.127 (talk) 21:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps click "Hide options" at the top? "Show options" indents the results. If it's really chapping your hide you could fix it with Greasemonkey. --Sean 13:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

This just started happening to me too. Firefox 3.0.11 on XP. Thanks, gENIUS101 19:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

B/W

I'm looking for a JavaScript/Flash/C soucecode/GIF/APNG file that swapping black screen to white screen as fast as possible over and over again so I can use it on Full Screen. If possible I want to control the parameters (time, colors, monitor Hz) Same thing about RGB. Something like This, but it's way too slow. Thanks. 85.250.88.35 (talk) 21:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Ogg

How is Ogg pronounced? Is it similar to the pirate-ish exclamation of "Argh!" just without the 'r'? Or like the first part of the word 'auger'? Dismas|^(talk) 23:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I pronounce it simply /ɒg/. Wiktionary agrees. Algebraist 23:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone actually say it out loud? The only time I've ever even read about it has been on Wikipedia. There can't be a "right" (i.e., common) way to say something until people actually talk about it offline.--24.8.176.112 (talk) 00:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Believe it or not, some people in the internet age are still communicating with each other via speech. Algebraist 00:05, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Why? Are you trying to impress all your "friends" while you talk about OGG? I bet all the girls love you.--24.8.176.112 (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I have often had occasion to describe aloud files encoded with the Ogg Vorbis codec. I have always said "Ogg files". (Rhymes with "Dog Files") I have no idea if this is the 'official' way to describe a .ogg file, but everyone knows what I'm talking about and no one has ever corrected me. Neither the vorbis.com website, or the official format descriptions[7] contain a pronunciation key, or even a etymology, I figure we should just pronounce it phonetically. .APL (talk) 01:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Hah. The article says that it comes from Netrek slang. In a Netrek "ogging" refers to a kamikaze attack. Usually against an enemy starbase. I don't think that helps, though. APL (talk) 02:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just weird, but I've always pronounced it "oh-gee-gee." Whichever is more aurally pleasing to you! -ankØku- (talk) 04:25, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

A somewhat related question: what do we call acronyms that look unpronounceable but that a significant number of people have figured out how to pronounce? (Example: SCSI interface pronounced "scuzzy interface"). --Goodmorningworld (talk) 15:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I remember a very early Macintosh-enthusiast magazine claiming that for SCSI, PC users pronounced it "scuzzy" whereas Mac users pronounced it "sexy". Because that was how Mac users rolled, you see. Tempshill (talk) 04:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

July 1

Computer beep when notebook is off

Notebook unplugged, battery out, yet the notebook beeps every hour or so? I have never heard of this so I am asking help here. Does the cmos battery give off some type of alarm or something to cause this? is this even possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivtv (talk • contribs) 02:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That's the tracking feature so they can find you. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:33, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Is the computer situated near a smoke detector by any chance? The smoke detector could be signaling a low-battery condition. --Mathew5000 (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Player which can play with maximum Sound

Picture this - You're in a room with a group of friends, and you want to watch a movie on your Laptop. Problem is, you don't have any external speakers, and the headphones just won't do. So you've got this movie file which is just about audible. My question is, which player do you use in this situation ? Which player can give you the maximum sound on any media file ? I know VLC player is able to give a higher volume than Real Player or Windows Media player, but which player gives you the maximum ? Rkr1991 (talk) 10:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

You will most likely blow the speakers in the laptop if you turn the volume too high. Get some external speakers, preferably with amplification and externally powered - decent ones are about £20 or more. Astronaut (talk) 11:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Rrk1991 is referring to a video or sound file that has been encoded with a very low sound volume, so that putting the volume to max everywhere would only produce, say, half of what the speakers are capable of. So I do not think there's any risk of blowing the speakers. I've been having this problem too, so I'd be interested in hearing some answers. decltype (talk) 11:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

In that sort of situation, I think Media Player Classic has settings in its options menu to boost the audio. (the "Normalize" setting might also work.) APL (talk) 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep, Decltype is spot on, that's the problem I'm referring to... I would love some answers...Rkr1991 (talk) 15:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

<video>

Are there any webpages using this markup currently? —SpaceFlight89 (talk) 16:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, here's one. --Sean 19:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks —SpaceFlight89 (talk) 07:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

intermittent monitor problem

My (HP) monitor is failing to display when I turn on the system. I can get it to recover by unplugging the power cord for a moment. What might be happening? Just curious. I have another monitor to replace it with when needed. --Halcatalyst (talk) 18:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the problem, but I had an old crt monitor that did the same thing. It would take up to 5 mins to turn on some times. Turning it off and on again usually did the trick after a couple of times, as did banging it with my fist. Very curious to know what causes this too —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 18:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Excel IF/AND problem

Right. I'm having one of "those days" and can't get my head around something.

I have a spreadsheet in which one cell is a university mark percentage (0-100%). Using an if/and statement, how could I have another cell display – in my case – the mark classification?

Example:

If the total is >70, the display will be "1st class"

but

If the total is >60 but <70 , the display will be "Upper second class"

but

If the total is >50 but <60 , the display will be "Lower second class"

but

If the total is >40 but <50 , the display will be "Third class"

but

If the total is <40, the display will be "Fail"

Thanks, I'm sure someone will nail this straight away – I'm just not in gear today! Fribbulus Xax (talk) 18:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

=IF(A1<40, "EPIC FAIL", IF(A1<50, "Third class", IF(A1<60, "Lower second class", IF(A1<70, "Upper second class", "1st class"))))

Just be careful in case they should be <= signs; your request wasn't specific about (for example) someone scoring exactly 60. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, it works fine (with a bit of tinkering!). Fribbulus Xax (talk) 19:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that sometimes nested IFs have funny behavior (they seem to be bad with any kind of rounding?), and there is a maximum number of nestings you can do before it will just give up (however you can use multiple columns to extend it a bit). It's a pain that Excel doesn't, after all these years, have more flexible comparison operators for its functions (other than complicated nesting or slow/problematic VBA macros), but such is how it is... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft.com windows support

My hard disc crashed and I was told by a guy in a computing store that if I go to the microsoft windows website I can request a new installation disc and that this is free. Is this true? Where on the website can I find this? thanks in advance 79.191.22.69 (talk) 19:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

No, not true. If you bought your computer new, your copy of Windows was sold to you by your computer manufacturer (maybe it was Dell, or HP, or Gateway, or Lenovo, or whoever). In the old days, the manufacturer would include Windows installation discs in the box when you bought the computer. More recently, they charge $10 for this "service", or sometimes they have disc images included on the hard disk, and you are supposed to have the foresight to burn the images to physical discs right when you get the computer. In any case, the place to get a Windows installation disc is your computer manufacturer. The cost should be low - when you bought your computer, part of what you paid for was your copy of Windows (licensed to be used on that particular computer), so all you're buying now is a disc with a copy of that version of Windows. You're not required to go spend $150 for a fresh new version or whatever. Tempshill (talk) 20:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Am I able to use someone else's burned disc with my product key? I mean, I've already paid for the license.79.191.22.69 (talk) 20:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Generally not. What Tempshill describes above is an OEM-specific restore disk, and that goes with your OEM Windows licence. If you have access to another computer of the same model (not just from the same manufacturer) then its restore disks should work. Otherwise you'll need to follow Tempshill's advice and get a disk from the manufacturer. 87.115.71.220 (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say before that I have put in a new hard disc since. Does this change anything you have said? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.191.22.69 (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe so. Large-scale changes to the hardware might make a system restore disk fail, changing the hard disk shouldn't. 87.115.71.220 (talk) 21:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Look at your computer case for a serial number. It's usually on a yellow sticker from Microsoft. Then, you can download a copy of Windows, burn it to a disk, and install Windows using the product key on the case. It's perfectly legal to do, even if you download a pirated copy, because the license is still valid.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I certainly don't recommend this course of action because of the likelihood of trojans. Just call the manufacturer and see if they'll ship you the disc. It may even be free. Tempshill (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Trojans are found in keygens. If he already has a key, then how would he get a trojan? He wouldn't even run the keygen.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If he gets a "pirated copy" there is a little issue. --194.197.235.36 (talk) 22:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Trojans can be found in any software, including key generators, disc images, and just about anything else which you can execute. In extreme cases, they can even be found in non-executable files, (like media files), and can only cause an infection if there is a security vulnerability in the system which accesses those files. Nimur (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm a computer repairman, I know. But, I also download a lot of warez, and 99.99% of the time, it's just the keygen (or crack). If you're worried about it, you can scan the download with a virus scanner, or just read the comments on the download site. Attaching viruses to PEs is pretty rare because the programmers usually add code to the program that will warn you if it's been tampered with. I know this from experience.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 05:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Rrrriiiight, because it's unheard of to crack the executable to avoid the selfcheck. Tempshill (talk) 06:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess you're just too afraid to handle this kind of stuff. I, on the other hand, have complete confidence in my ability to detect viruses and disinfect my computer. I also have complete confidence in the OP, even though he's new to this. But, if you lack confidence in yourself, then there's nothing I can do to convince you.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 07:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

What you are calling "confidence", I call reckless blind faith, or wishful thinking. There are bad guys in this world who are slightly smarter than you, you know. Trojans or keyloggers embedded in a pirated version of Windows are not necessarily detectable by any of the software you have installed, especially if the trojan writer rolled his own. If you choose to put all your personal data at the mercy of an OS that you downloaded from a warez torrent — well, that's just foolhardy. Tempshill (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No amount of expertise, experience, or L337 computer skillx0rz can allow you to look at a windows .exe file and know what it does. These files can contain megabytes of binary code - even if you open it with a hex editor and are proficient in reading machine code, it will take you hours to scan the entire file. Anodeeven, are you claiming that you can, via sheer force of will and expertise/experience, decipher the execution path of a large binary file? It's hard enough to follow execution paths if you have documented source-code, let alone if you are trying to reverse-engineer something. Merely "trusting" an executable is not a matter of skill; it is a risk, every time; you must trust the originator of the program. If you are willing to trust every pirated source on "the internet at large", then you are not instilling a lot of confidence in your own critical-thinking. Nimur (talk) 19:18, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Take it easy guys, thanks for all the responses lol

July 2

Boolean as tinyint(1)

Why does MySQL make columns specified as "Boolean" tinyint(1)s when bit(1) is available? Is there any way to have a group of Boolean columns stored internally as a bit field rather than giving each one its own byte? NeonMerlin 04:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

400 bad request

I get a 400 bad request while attempting to access YouTube with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer works fine for the site. Has anyone else noticed this? --Blue387 (talk) 05:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Worked for me just now with Windows XP. Tempshill (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Chrome works now. --Blue387 (talk) 03:56, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

New tab problems in IE8

Hi, whenever I open a new tab in Internet Explorer 8, I get a page that says

"The webpage cannot be displayed

  Most likely cause:

•Some content or files on this webpage require a program that you don't have installed.

  What you can try: 
    Search online for a program you can use to view this web content.  

    Retype the address.  

    Go back to the previous page. "

and instead if "about:Tabs" being in the address bar, it says: "tbr:res?id=tabs&rep=1"

I'm running Windows XP SP3.

How can I fix this?

Thanks 144.138.21.100 (talk) 06:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a default homepage set up? It may be that the default home page is not loading properly. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 07:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Even if I had a default home page set up, it wouldn't open if I clicked new tab, as a new tab goes to "about:Tabs". 144.138.21.92 (talk) 21:45, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Internet Connections and Topology

Hi friends, can u please describe for me the various methods in which intrnet connections are made possible? (2) what is network Topology? Bye. Kvees. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.178.188.221 (talk) 08:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that you can search Wikipedia to find your answers. In addition, you could try to search the reference desk archives. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

From Network topology: "the study of the arrangement or mapping of the elements (links, nodes, etc.) of a network, especially the physical (real) and logical (virtual) interconnections between nodes." Hope this helps! Please try to use the reference desk search box at the top of this page or the Wikipedia search next time.-ankØku- (talk) 18:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 19:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

USB flash drive/pen drive/stick drive failures

I have a number of pen drives which I use to transfer data from one computer to another. Typical use would be to fill one up for a week with data from one computer, then move it to the other computer, copy all the data to that computer, then delete everything on the pen drive. So, I figure that's one read/write cycle per week, so it should last for years at that low usage rate. However, they don't last for years, but only months.

At first I thought I just had a defective drive, but now it's happened again. So, why might this be happening ? One theory I have is that while the data area only gets one read/write cycle per week, the index area is being updated every time I write a new sector. Since these are 32 Gb pen drives, that would mean there are some 64 million sectors at 512 bytes per sector. So, if there's an index that keeps track of the "highest occupied sector address" (or "lowest unoccupied sector address"), this might update 64 million times a week. In that case I could certainly understand why they would fail after a few months.

So, is this how they work ? If so, this seems to be a major flaw in their design. Is there any way to prevent them from doing this (say by having them only update that index after the copy operation is completed, instead of when each sector is written). Are there some brands that don't do this ? Are there some brands that include a small portion of more stable memory for this type of index space ? Any other solutions would be welcomed (I'm considering using a portable hard drive if I can't get the pen drives to last longer). StuRat (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

What file system did you use for the drive? I'd guess fat16/32 are the best for flash drives. --12:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.197.235.36 (talk)

FAT32. Note that when you follow that link you get to a paragraph that says "...the boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count...". If that "sector count" is updated every time a sector is written, then the low bit would be changed millions of times a week, and that may be the bit that wears out first. So, would some other file system be better ? I prefer a format that's usable by both Windows and Linux. Or maybe there's a way to periodically change where the "sector count" is stored so it can wear out other bits ? StuRat (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Most modern flash memory controllers incorporate wear levelling into the flash controller, wherein there is a lookup table that maps logical block addresses with physical block addresses, and the PBA for a given LBA is shuffled around (on erase)(example(pdf)). So even a dumb filesystem that beats constantly on the same blocks will result in levelled wear. Now if you were using a unix filesystem with atime enabled, I could speculate that you'd be reading a lot, and updating those atimes would cause a large amount of writes you weren't immediately cognisant of. It seems FAT32 does store atime of a sort, one that (at least on linux) is honoured by the vfat driver (ref); so if I were planning on doing tons of reads on a flash drive on linux, it would make sense to make sure that it was mounted noatime.87.113.26.43 (talk) 13:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I did some experiments: by default Ubuntu does mount fat32 volumes with vfat with atime enabled, and it shows a proper atime (ls -lu) for files, down to the second - but remount the disk and the atime is shown with the HH:MM back to (UTC) zero. It's like the ref I gave above says, FAT32 only stores the day part of access-time stamps. So whether repeatedly accessing a file on a vfat volume actually causes a torrent of writes to the disk depends on how smart the vfat driver is (and I guess the same is true for its counterpart in Windows). If the update_atime() logic checks that the file's current atime(.date) is the same as that which we propose to write, and doesn't bother writing, then the wear from reading is trivial. If the driver is dumb, then what I wrote above is a real concern for read-heavy write-light flash devices. 87.113.26.43 (talk) 14:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

But, in my case, the use isn't really read-heavy or write-heavy. I write maybe 100 files containing perhaps 32 Gb of data over the course of a week, then read them perhaps a few times each, then delete them. How can I find out if a given flash drive has the wear leveling feature, and does this apply to the index space/"sector count", as well as the data area ? StuRat (talk) 17:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Open it up, figure out which usb<->flash controller chip it has, find its datasheet on the website of the semiconductor company that made it (lsusb -v might help, particularly for a sealed drive). As a simple block-structured device, it doesn't have any concept of the index or the fat or the data area; it's all just blocks of bytes. Failing that, I can't think of an easy way to figure it out only in software; much of the point of these controller chips is to hide the complexities of LBA<->PBA, wear levelling, and NAND flash's vexing rewrite characteristics. 87.113.26.43 (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I'm willing to "open it up" quite yet, as I imagine them being even more fragile than a laptop, and I managed to sever a paper cable (yes, paper !) the last time I tried that. My Puppy Linux doesn't recognize the "lsusb" command at all. Under Windows XP I looked for "scandisk" and the help informed me that it's no longer supported and I should run "chkdsk" instead. I'm running that now. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

quote "One theory I have is that while the data area only gets one read/cycle per week, the index area is being updated every time I write a new sector." - that would explain your problem - but would be a massively shortshighted way fo doing things - I doubt flash would have ever made it to market with algorhthyms like that - I give a better way below - but it is a guess - I'd like to know the answer too.. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I can easily imagine it happening, say if the manufacturers only concerned themselves with hardware issues and those that set the standards for the FAT32 file system didn't think about it's use on flash drives. In such a case, there may not be anyone who actually worried about the implications of having a FAT32 file system on a flash drive. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

As a related question - a perhaps close to what the OP was asking: The wear levelling of the LBA (the data) is I think easy to understand - but what of the PBA (the pointers or references to the actual data) - how are they wear leveled ? (I understand that a PBA will point to a relatively large block of data)

My guess: linked lists with several pointer fields per PBA that can be 'crossed out' as used seems like one option - (coupled with a binary tree referencing the PBAto prevent the flash chip turning into a vast tape drive - also with 'cross outable fields') - but how exactly in practice - that was a guess - could someone give a simple(ified) example? Thanks?83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood what a PBA is, and you're conflating how flash works and how fat works. An LBA is just the linear block address of a hypothetical block; all the data on the drive is addressed using LBAs. LBAs are the chief part of the interface between drives (over SCSI,USB,SATA, or IDE), and really they're a bit abstract - you think about them actually being blocks in a row on the surface of a disk, but there's no guarantee that they are (and sometimes they aren't). IN the case of wear-levelling flash controllers, the controller device (I really mean the device, not the device driver, and certainly not the filesystem layer or OS block layer) has a translation table that maps 1-1 LBAs to addresses on the physical flash chips that only it can see. The OS/fs/blockdriver doesn't know anything about PBAs, and it can't see or manipulate that table. When filesystems manipulate storage, they do so solely by dealing with logical blocks, and they don't care if those are blocks of ram or flash or areas on a magnetic disk or blocks in a storage-area-network (wherein blocks get translated a bunch of times). So the fat driver doesn't know anything about flash (and doesn't do anything special for it) and the flash device doesn't know anything about FAT (and doesn't have any special support for it). 87.113.26.43 (talk) 20:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Not at all - I was taking about the underlying(overlying?) structure of the data+extra stuff for wear leveliing in the flash - independent of the data structure imposed on it by the OS. You prompted me to point out that there is more than one way to do this - including a method that doesn't included separate pointers (an index) - one which springs to mind would be a doubly linked list, containing blocks of data. In either case the idea of having more than one pointer field (ie the pointer to previous and next data items in the doubly linked list case) is still valid, maybe even more so.

ie the idea of having more than one slot for a specific pointer per data block so that as the pointer slots are used, they can be marked 'dirty', and the next slot used - preventing the movement of whole blocks because of the change of a single pointer (particularily necessary if a doubly linked list were used).

I get the feeling I haven't explained my response to the OP very well - maybe someone else could give it clearer. (Did I mix up LBA and PBA in what I said - it's summer - the heat may be affecting my clarity) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

All the above doesn't explain why you are getting such poor value from your drives - you should expect that say for a 1GB drive with 10,000 average time to failure that you can write 10,000GB to it before your expectation of failure becomes 50/50. One possibility is that you are immensly unlucky. Another is failure due to static (maybe) - they have static protection built in (not sure about USB)- but if you work in a high static enviroment eg lots of polyester seat covers and carpets - that might affect the lifespan - I've no data on this - it's a unlikely explanation - unless you are constantly getting staic elctricity shocks every time you touch an earthed object.

Some devices do contain some normal ram that can be used to store acceleration data (either cache or lookup tables) - but that won't(shouldn't) be related to the lifetime. Are you doing standard read/write to large files eg documents/pictures - I doubt the standard thumb stick is configured for bitwise access?83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No static electricity problems around here, as it's usually quite humid. The typical usage is to use Windows XP File Manager (or, as they call it, "Windows Explorer") to copy large files (maybe 500 Mb each) to the flash drive, and then later off the flash drive to another Windows XP computer, followed by using Windows XP to delete the files. Puppy Linux may also sometimes be used to copy or delete files. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

In case it will help, let me describe some of the errors I get. On one flash drive I can write to about half of it, then it says "Device is write protected" and won't write any further. On another it says "File not found" when I try to write to it or read from it at all. I assumed these errors were the typical nonsense errors you get and that the actual problem is bad sectors on the flash drive. But how could I actually confirm that this is the real problem ? StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, "chkdsk" completed on the "file not found" flash drive, after a very long time (good flash drives are usually very quick). No errors were found except that it said "Cannot write boot sector". I take that to mean that the boot sector is bad. What would cause the boot sector to fail before the rest of the flash drive ? Is there any way to designate a new sector to be used as the boot sector ? StuRat (talk) 01:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ajax with Scripted Content

Is there a "standard" method for handling the following problem: Going modern, you decide to pull page content using Ajax. You place the content in some div's innerHTML. The content you pull is dependent on some JavaScript. However, the page is loaded. So, the browser won't load anymore scripts automatically. The content fails unless you load the script when the page loads, before the Ajax-pulled content is loaded. In other words, if you have 30 content pages, each with a unique script, you have to load all 30 scripts on page load just in case the user requests to pull one of the content pages. -- kainaw™ 12:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess I should point out what I am doing... I'm using regex to locate instances of the script src=.... tag. Then, I have an array of scripts I've loaded in the past. If the script in script tag is not in the array, I create a script node, set the src, and insert it into the head element. This functions but has the problem that once you hit a page with a script, the script is permanently loaded until you close the website. -- kainaw™ 14:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

When the user clicks to pull a page, set the head element and auto-refresh the page to run that script, whether it's a separate one or in the array. Each call for a new page should overwrite the src in the head; perhaps a graceful closing of the previous script would also be in order. - KoolerStill (talk) 15:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, this project is doomed to failure. The scripts, it turns out, are not all in separate files. Some is embedded in the HTML. Also, some of it must be run when the page loads (body onload option) to function at all. So, Ajax appears to be a bad tool. I'm suggesting they just load the whole page (content and all) per link instead of just trying to load the content. -- kainaw™ 19:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Data transmission speeds

I've been trying to understand how data is transmitted via modulation. Am I right in thinking that for short-distance transfer as in computers and USB (and ISDN for some reason), data are transmitted by serial/parallel digital communication - simply on-off-off-on etc.? But telephones, DSL, cable, optical fibres and radio all use modulation?

Am I then right in saying that DSL, for example, uses Discrete Multi-Tone Modulation and that this works in a way similar to that mentioned under Modulation#Digital_modulation_methods?

Why then is this not much faster than serial communication? Why is USB2 so much faster than ADSL (and even Fibre-to-the-home) when each symbol in ADSL can represent many bits compared to one bit in serial? And this is without going into the complexities of Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing and Quadrature amplitude modulation. Why not have a serial internet given that USB3 is 5Gbit/s and presumably a robust signal as it is only binary? ASmartKid (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The trick is, you can send data as fast as you want - but if the signal gets corrupted, you can't receive it. USB can make some assumptions about the signal integrity - the cable will only be a few meters long, and the wire will be inside a house with reasonable, homogeneous temperature; etc. etc. All these mean that there is an implicit "guarantee" that a certain quality of signal will be received on the other end. (Specifically, high frequencies will not be attenuated). DSL, however, must travel for kilometers over an uncontrolled, outdoor cable. Along this signal path, the analog details start to matter, and the signal will become distorted. (It's going to get distorted; the only question is - how much?) So, the engineers must be a little more conservative with the amount of data that they put on the long-distance cables, given that they have an expected signal integrity. Depending on the particular transmission method, the signal degradation might be quantified as a total power loss ("dB of attenuation") or it may be a particular frequency-response. This analog error creates a loss of digital information. One option is to slow the amount of data so it is always below the distortion threshold. This severely throttles the network speed, though. Another option is to push data as fast as possible, right on the edge of the "lossy" part - so that there's a particular statistical likelihood that the data gets through undistorted. If there is an error, the network controlling software and hardware must request re-transmissions (which of course slows things down a little). If properly designed, based on a realistic bit error rate, this is the fastest way to transmit data over an analog channel with a known amount of expected distortion. This is the reason for the OSI model of networks - where a variety of interoperating abstraction layers all have certain understandings and assumptions about the end-to-end connection. Nimur (talk) 16:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

SQL Server 2000 & 2005 Residing on the same server

Does anyone know if it's possible to run two different versions of SQL Server on the same physical server if they are installed in different directories? Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes it'll work just fine (you shouldn't even need to specify a different directory as the default locations are already slightly different). Install the 2000 server first AND updating it to service pack 4, but after that just install 2005 as normal. From memory it'll either ask you if you want to upgrade the 2000 server (if it can) or if you want to install a new instance and you just want the new instance option. ZX81 ^talk 19:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm currently running both versions on the same machine at the same time. Yes, they are installed in different directories. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Linux keyboard issue

I have a Linux home computer (not sure about details) and the backspace key has started making this symbol ( ç ) but the keyboard configuration says it should be backspace... If anyone could shed some light on the matter that would be greatly appreciated. 83.50.42.15 (talk) 21:59, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

It sounds to me like Linux may think you have a foreign language keyboard, perhaps Spanish or Portuguese. Hopefully others can provide details of how to check and change that setting. StuRat (talk) 00:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah it is set in Spanish (I live in Spain) but it used to be absolutely fine and it just decided to go haywire with the backspace key for unknown reason 81.32.39.224 (talk) 11:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

July 3

Does anyone know of a good macro program?

I would like a simple program thats free and accurate. The program should be able to record and play back macros for keyboard and mouse. Im looking for something with a low file size, but its not a neccessity. Does anyone have any good programs for this?

I use Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit version, if that helps.

209.240.240.230 (talk) 00:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Morphing

I just purchased morpheus morphing software because I want to take two pictures and ad the nose or eyes of one person and replace the nose and eyes on another person and make it look like another person as a picture. But so far all I can do is make a movie of the two pictures transitioning one after the other. How do I change the features of a person's face and body and make it look like another person without looking all cut nd pasty? Is this called something else besides morphing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.137.242.85 (talk) 00:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Attempts to access TCP port 445 and 135

Today, someone with a residential DSL IP kept trying to connect to ports 445 and 135 on my network for an hour or longer, and I'm not running any kind of peer 2 peer software. My router's firewall continued to block the attempts to access the ports. I've had my IP address for a couple of months. Apparently ports 445 and 135 are commonly abused by hackers. What are the chances that the IP was trying to hack in? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 02:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, 100% or so. See the ShieldsUP 445 page for some information/ranting about it. I'm glad to see you have a router; keep it between your computers and the wall port, and you have nothing to worry about. Tempshill (talk) 04:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That IP address isn't necessarily owned by a hacker. It could well be a PC that is infected with a virus or worm that tries to infect other computers at random IP addresses. Lots of worms out there that do that. E.g. the somewhat famous Blaster worm spread through port 135. 62.78.198.48 (talk) 09:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

editing firefox add-ons

How do I edit the .xpi files? -- penubag  (talk) 07:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Change the extension from .xpi to .zip, then you can open the file in a program like WinRAR or 7zip. 8I.24.07.715 (talk) 08:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

help regarding the asteganography project

i want to do my project on "steganography on vedio containers" can i get any source code for image container steganography —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandeepborra (talk • contribs) 10:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Facebook's insides

Sites like Youtube have the videos "available" for download (if you know where to look) in formats resembling the original formats (though probably converted and compressed to a certain degree). Is anything known of this for Facebook? I'm mainly wondering about the images, which I sometimes want to download from a profile but the visible resolution is incredibly small, even when the upload was quite large (images are resized after upload, though obviously the originals might be deleted). Any help is appreciated, thanks! 210.254.117.186 (talk) 10:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)