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October 7

Search terms highlighted on incoming link from Google

Hi all,

When I use Google to search for "Twisted", and then click on the first link (NOT the "cached" link, but the link itself), twistedmatrix.com comes up with the word "Twisted" highlighted everywhere. When I just type twistedmatrix.com into my browser (FF 3.5.3 on OS X 10.5), it doesn't.

Is it the website that is doing this, or is it Google? Does Google's incoming link supply the search terms so that the site knows what the user searched for automatically, or is that a part of Google Analytics or something? And, a secondary question, why the h*ll would a website programmer put that in when probably the most common way to reach a site is to type in the name in Google? Do they actually want their carefully-designed UI to have the most common search term highlighted everywhere?

Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.238 (talk) 14:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the how. I have no idea of the why. --Sean 15:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The website is doing it, not Google. Google's incoming link supplies a referrer link (the link that was clicked to get there), like most sites do. The site itself is then parsing that for the search terms, and highlighting them. I find it pretty annoying, personally, totally unhelpful in 99% of all situations, really ugly, and a bad design pattern anyway (especially since it is becoming common for browsers to allow you to highlight on the fly as part of searching, anyway). It's a trick you use when trying to impress people with your 1337 Javascript and PHP but is not actually a good idea (especially if there's no way to turn it off!). File under "stupid programmer tricks." --Mr.98 (talk) 16:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just a clarification: providing the referrer link is done by the browser, not by the referring site. --Sean 16:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's correct. My bad! --Mr.98 (talk) 00:40, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your answers. — Sam 63.138.152.238 (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Embedding Videos In Word 2007

How is it possible, if at all, to embed a video into a Word 2007 document. What I wish to do is embed a video from a video site such as YouTube and have it playable without leaving the document (not auto-play, though - the video must be clicked in order to play it). Also, is then then exportable 'as-is' to PDF? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You should be able to embed a video, yes. I don't know Word 2007 but in previous versions it was Insert > Movie. Word and Powerpoint are sort of picky about what formats they will accept... on a PC that's usually WMV, on a Mac it's MOV. (It's tricky because it depends on the particular codecs installed on the system, which makes it hard to be portable. What works on your system will often not work on even a very similar system. I do a lot of work with videos in Powerpoint and it is a major pain.) I think it defaults to needing to be clicked to play. But NO, not exportable to PDF—I think it just comes out as the first frame, as if you were printing it.

I should point out, I guess, that there is almost no situation where distributing a movie in a Word document is a good idea—you're better off just distributing the video by itself, or a link to the video (which you CAN embed in Word and as a PDF). Or, if you are worried about formats, etc., putting it on a website in Flash Video format (with a little player), and distributing the link (though this has its own downsides—need to know how to use Flash, need bandwidth, need to highly compress the video). Word is a pretty clunky container for movies. You CAN embed videos in PDFs (Google it), but it's not the simplest operation in the world, and STILL not an ideal way of distributing a video. Just saying, is all! --Mr.98 (talk) 16:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Just to clarify, what I want to do is exactly what you have described: place a link on the Word 2007 document, which then shows the video as the first frame, but after clicking on the video it will start - but the actual video itself is not part of the document. Lots of websites manage to do this, and I am wondering if it is possible to do this in Word 2007, then the same in a PDF? You have told me that, yes, it is possible. Now, how do I do that? TIA! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it's going to be a kludgey approach, I fear. If you can, try to keep it web-like—the web is much better at dealing with movies than Word. And I don't think that you're going to be able to export video from Word to PDF. Putting video in PDF entails other sorts of work (again, Google "embed video PDF" for instructions). --Mr.98 (talk) 00:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, you are a tease! :) Joking aside, can anyone tell me how to do this, now, rather than just telling me it is possible (which is not my question, if read properly). --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 07:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop, USB GPS, and an iPhone 2G

Okay, so check it out, i got a laptop, iphone 2G (the one wihput a builtin gps) and a usb gps thing. My laptop is running ubuntu 9.04. (the iphone has been jailbroken). I can connect my iphone to my laptop thru wifi. Is there a way i can have my iphone grab the info from the gps connected to my laptop thru wifi? Thxbai. 64.172.159.131 (talk) 17:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I may have found something that might work. I dont know if it would work in realtime. You would have to have an active internet connection for this to work. Get 2 Loopt accounts (free). Log in to one on your iphone and the other your laptop. Allow your laptop to share it's location. Use the iphone to get said location. I hope this helped. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 19:27, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

that wont work. i would not have a internet connection. but could i mka a fake lootp server on my laptop? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 19:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

i hase given up on this.

Offline private Mediawiki

Hello there -

Is there any way to make an offline MediaWiki? My father is rather taken by the idea of documenting family history with a media-wiki style wiki, but would much rather that it be offline rather than on a website, and then distributed via USB. Is this feasible? If so, how does one go about it?

Elke —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.202.142.42 (talk) 17:21, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can do it, but it's not what the MediaWiki developers had in mind, so the share-via-USB-key thing will be cumbersome. MediaWiki needs a web server (usually Apache) that runs PHP scripts, which is what MediaWiki was written in, and will also want to have a MySQL database. Installations of this sort are complicated and if you're distributing this USB key to "normals", you won't want to instruct family members on how to do an Apache and MySQL installation. The solution I think of is that you would set up your USB key as an Ubuntu boot device, and set it up with all the MediaWiki components; then make copies of the USB key and instruct the family members how to boot up their computer using the USB key. This has large and obvious disadvantages.

A much easier way for the family members to get to the information would be to set up your MediaWiki server with any web hosting service, and put it all in a password-protected directory so nobody else can get in without the username and password. Have you considered this alternative? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ seems interesting. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:09, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MoWeS is a portable web server designed to run from usb stick, and it offers MediaWiki as one of it's additional software download options. The whole thing should be very self contained, and it's portable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .avril-avril (talk • contribs) 18:27, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I second MoWeS. I use it myself, and love it. Thanks, gENIUS 101 22:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) An important question arises - do you plan to edit the content collaboratively? Or would the USB distribution be strictly read-only? That would be much easier - you could run a private MediaWiki (and handle the technical details); and then distribute either PDFs or static HTML (or some other method of dumping the wiki to read-only, non-wiki format). Nimur (talk) 18:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My Brother once installed it on our Linux computer and made me a sysop. It will start by going to http://127.0.0.1/ --64.15.147.70 (talk) 19:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

weakly equivalent

Left recursion says: "A formal grammar that contains left recursion cannot be parsed by a naive recursive descent parser unless it is converted to a weakly equivalent right-recursive form..." How is the equivalence 'weakly equivalent'? RJFJR (talk) 17:34, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's referring to the fact that they accept the same language but give you different parse trees. -- BenRG (talk) 17:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct. The weak equivalence article has this blurb: In formal languages, weak equivalence of two grammars means they generate the same class of strings. If the derivation trees of the languages are also the same, the two grammars are called strongly equivalent. --Sean 20:00, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Excel question

Hello everyone, I was wondering if you could help me with an Excel question I have. In my spreadsheet I have a list of coordinates of the globe (for example, 18.26°N and 108.55°W). I want to average two coordinates "109.14°W" and "108.55°W", where the numbers after the decimal are in minutes. When I try to average the two, I get "108.85°W", which is wrong; as you know, the minutes go from 1-60, not 1-99. How do i get Excel to only use 1-60 instead of 1-99? I am using Excel 2003. Thanks. -- 149.169.78.248 (talk) 19:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This page on a software consulting site seems to describe what you want to do in a fair amount of detail. Caltsar (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that your coordinates are in degrees & minutes? The normal format is either decimal degrees nnn.dd or degrees, minmutes, (seconds) ddd:mmm:sss. -- SGBailey (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Degrees/Minutes is usually written as 18°26'N (18°26'03" if you also have seconds). 18.26° would be understood as decimal degrees. Also: averaging the coordinates will not give you the coordinates of the midpoint (if that's what you are after). As long as these are in mid-latitudes and the points are fairly close to each other averaging may give a reasonable approximation of the mid-point, for points far away it is way out.195.128.251.165 (talk) 21:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Security Tool" is it bogus or is it part of the antivirus software

that comes with Lenovo laptops? I saw some things on Google about security tool spyware, are they right that it is spyware? Security Tool says we need to click on some stuff to get rid of viruses. Can you give me information or direct me to a reliable site? Thanks again. Rich (talk) 22:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't specifically know what "Security Tool" is or does, but I can categorically state that I would not use it. Does that mean that you shouldn't use it? No... I just would make sure I know exactly what it is first. I recommend AVG free for a virus scanner; it has worked well for me. Falconus^{p t c} 04:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does it open up a window when you run it? The Help>About menu should give the details of which company it comes from. Jay (talk) 10:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it's antivirus software (and it's certainly not spyware). Here's a list of T400 bundled software. Are you talking about "ThinkVantage Client Security Solution"? If so, it's support software for the Trusted Platform Module. You can almost certainly ignore it (and uninstall it) if you're not using the laptop in a corporate environment. -- BenRG (talk) 10:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Old dot-com bubble company

I recall back in the late 90's that there was some company, WebCo or something (yes, as vague as it seems) where you could actually buy groceries online. They would have trucks everywhere. My dad used it occasionally around 1999, and I think in 2002 or 2003 it just disappeared. 99.20.133.159 (talk) 22:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Webvan. Here in the UK, Tesco offers pretty much the same service; unlike Webvan, they're making money. -- 87.113.39.157 (talk) 23:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon Fresh in certain parts of Seattle, too. Tempshill (talk) 04:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Peapod was bought out by a grocery store company in 2001 and cancelled a bunch of contracts in a few cities. Livewireo (talk) 13:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are still a few companies doing this - but it's way more expensive and way limited in coverage area. There is a company here in Austin, Texas, for example - but what they are really doing is sending some guy out to a normal store - he buys what you ask for, drives to your house and drops it off. You pay by the hour for his time. They also offer a service for the elderly with weekly deliveries for $170 a month...plus the cost of whatever you buy. In effect, you're just paying someone by the hour to do your regular shopping run.

There is still at least one company working in small areas of New York city who do it the old "Webvan" way - they have free delivery. But it's clear that the business model only works in very small, densely populated areas.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:03, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, hold on, you're saying that the US in general doesn't have online grocery shopping? Wow, that surprises me. I mean, obviously I realise that the wilds of Montana aren't going to have seamless coverage, but I kind of assumed that normal, suburban America would mostly have delivery available like we do in basically all of the UK (highlands and islands of Scotland excepted). 93.97.184.230 (talk) 19:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

October 8

Question by IP user

a. How should we change the global alignment algorithm to compute the hamming distance between two strings?

b. How should we change the global alignment algorithm to compute the longest common subsequence of two strings?

c. How should we change the global alignment algorithm to compute the best approximate match between a given pattern and a text? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.188.120 (talk) 00:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

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

Facebook wall post

In facebook when a link is posted to my wall to (for example) a photo album from one of my friends, even people that don't know that person are able to view the album (and if I am tagged they will have access to the whole album even if it is set on "friends only"). It's not exactly a security hole, but I don't want to promote this "exploit", so I regularly delete such links on my wall.

But... when I make comments on peoples albums and posts, it always leaves a link, and deleting every single one of those is a real pain. Besides, I don't really want everybody to know where every single comment I make is.

Is there a way to stop posting these "own comment" links on the wall? Thanks! 210.254.117.186 (talk) 02:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Look at your privacy settings. I have made it nearly impossible for people to find me on FB, and when I comment on a friend's post, all their friends see is black text bearing my name - no link unless you are already my friend. As for tagging photos, I don't know if that's in the security settings or if you have to manually undo that. Falconus^{p t c} 04:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm aware that you can make it really hard to do anything, but I really only have problems with this specific issue: I don't want to be completely detached. 124.154.253.31 (talk) 02:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Under "Privacy Settings" select "News Feed and Wall" and from there you can untick the options you don't want it to show, specifically comment on a photo in your case. Regarding what you said about the exploit for viewing someones whole album, that's not actually a bug. The default permissions when creating an album are "Everyone" (it's on the main page when creating the album) and the person can choose to change it to "Only friends" or whatever, but by default literally anyone who can access any picture in the album can access the whole album - It's up to the user themselves to restrict the album if they want to. ZX81 ^talk 02:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh wow I missed a whole menu! Thanks that's exactly what I was looking for! Yeah I'm aware that it's not really a bug, it's more like a silly setting that people aren't really aware of how open it is! Thanks a lot! 210.254.117.186 (talk) 14:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Restoring default settings of Windows XP so programs can be viewed

I accidentally changed my computer to make all programs hidden or something. I've got an HP running Windows XP. When I go to Start at the lower left, only AOL shows up, not MS Word or the other programs thta I had recently accessed. There are almost no programs appearing under "All Programs" where once there were a few dozen. The folder marked "Startup" is empty.

I'm pretty sure they're just invisible. How do I restore them?

Signing off for tonight, I figure there will be an answer by morning. I have another query below, that's unrelated.4.68.248.130 (talk) 02:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Um... What exactly did you do? Falconus^{p t c} 04:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you deleted the Windows/Start Menu folder. Check the Recycle Bin. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not in the Recycle Bin Also, sorry, but this crazy computer changed IPs on me. Weird.209.244.187.155 (talk) 12:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked on "hidden," then clicked aply, thinking it wouldn't hide things, I guess, i don't know. Then I unclicked "hidden," so the box was blank again, and pressed "apply" again. But, nothing happened.209.244.187.155 (talk) 12:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed and Gadet850, you kind of gave me a hint, anyway.

I searched for the Start Menu folder int he Search function under the start menu, saying to look for hidden folders. It was pale (i.e.: not full color) showing it was hidden. So, I right clucked to get its properties, then unchecked the hidden box and told it to aply that to all subfolders, too. I did that in a couple other places, as well.

Thanks to all who tried to help.209.244.187.155 (talk) 12:33, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Settings" on AOL not viewable

Why would "Settings" on AOL not be viewable when i'm online? I can't access it to clear my browser window, which is really annoying me, though I can clear my footprints. Thanks.4.68.248.130 (talk) 02:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't used AOL browser in years, so I can't say; I honestly suggest downloading another browser if you want to clear your tracks, or use the IE that's preinstalled on your computer (unless you happen to have a recently purchased copy of the EU version of Windows). Magog the Ogre (talk) 14:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - the problem has been solved. Apparently I opened a really old version of it by mistake.209.244.187.155 (talk) 12:14, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

speed of ARM Cortex

I see Ti has announced a 2 ghz, dual core ARM Cortex processor. How fast is that in x86 or SPEC-like terms? I'm having trouble finding any general purchase benchmark results. Thanks. 67.119.3.190 (talk) 07:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There hasn't been much competition that way so far as most ARM users have been more concerned about power consumption and cost and have a central application they can benchmark to see if it goes fast enough They might have narrow memory or a slow ROM. They might be using floating point or multimedia instructions. They might buy in specially crafted code for important bits or hand code a central loop. Interrupt latency may be an important consideration. It all depends and it isn't as easy as just comparing one PC to another -and you know how they can vary depending on if you're a gamer or a commercial enterprise wanting a database server. ARM do support the EEMBC coremark though and according to that it competes very successfully in ~~performance/MIP~~ performance/Mhz per core terms with the latest x86 processors. Dmcq (talk) 09:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Motion Flight Simulator Synchronization

Hello. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've hit a wall and am unsure what to do.

I am in the process of building a motion simulator (2DOF). I am currently running Flight Simulator X as the simulation software. The base is fully hydraulic and the cockpit sits on top of a bidirectional plate. The hydraulics are linked to the yoke so pull/push will move the cockpit up/down and twisting the yoke provides movement side to side.

Potentiometers are installed on each axis and hooked up to a Leo Bodnar Interface board which is recognized in FSX as a controller.

My issue is that the cockpit movement is NOT synchronous with the visual display, especially on the ailerons axis. There is a significant delay between me moving the yoke (cockpit) and it's visual representation on screen.

Note this simulator is entirely active. There is no feedback from the simulator back into the cockpit to control motion. The pilot dictates every move. I've been through the aircraft config and .AIR file a countless times. Some settings help but it is not exact.

So my question is, is there a way to sync my control movement with what displays on screen? I appreciate any help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.83.86.98 (talk) 13:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This project sounds sufficiently complex that it is unlikely your description is complete enough for us to answer it. Certain prominent Reference Desk contributors have worked on commercial flight simulators - but I expect they will tell you the same thing. Can you narrow down the trouble? Really, this sounds like it needs a lot of engineering expertise and time - I don't think you'll get a useful answer from a bunch of reference desk responses. At the core of the issue is that the simulator response-time is not equal to the physical response time of the hydraulics - so you can reprogram the software simulator to match your custom hardware; or you can modify your custom hardware to match the simulation. Nimur (talk) 18:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why you don't want the software to control the platform. Microsoft's Flight Simulator can be used to control things like this I believe, at least that's how I understand how a system like yours I know about is controlled. I couldn't find the links to that system, they seem to have disappeared, but here are a couple of others to enthusiasts I found while looking [1] and [2]. There are a number of home brew systems around ranging from the simple to the downright amazing so you should be able to find others to talk to about your system. Dmcq (talk) 22:38, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry didn't understand, you do have it connected up properly. I guess what you mean by "Note this simulator is entirely active. There is no feedback from the simulator back into the cockpit to control motion." is that flight simulator just says where the platform should be but doesn't adjust the motion of the plane to cope with any delay problems in the hydraulics. Dmcq (talk) 22:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What I should have done first is point to Microsoft Flight Simulator which lists some organizations which include people doing this sort of thing. The system I was thinking of has two very clever people who together have designed and built two quite different and very good simulators and getting help from people like them is the thing to do. Dmcq (talk) 11:10, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First let me say that I used to design flight simulators for a living (at Rediffusion, Hughes aircraft, Link, L3) - so I actually know what I'm talking about here!

You will never get the right motion response by connecting the joystick/yoke to the hydraulics. It's an impossibility because the plane doesn't move only in response to the stick. To take an extreme example - if the plane is taxiing at 10mph and you wiggle the yoke, precisely nothing will happen in the real world - but as I understand it, your system will dutifully roll or pitch the cockpit! OK - you may say that you don't care about taxiing - but that's just the simplest example to explain here. You absolutely need to get into the flight dynamics software and read the body-relative accelerations and velocities of the aircraft.

Furthermore - the roll and pitch of the cockpit should emphatically NOT track the roll and pitch of the aircraft in the virtual world. You cannot possibly reproduce the true feel of flight - so you have to produce "cartoon motion" - so that the key cues that the pilot would feel are conveyed in at least some fashion in the motion.

When (for example) you are flying straight and level and you open the throttle or kick in the after-burners - the pilot will expect to be pushed back in his seat. This is amazingly easy to do! It just requires you to tilt the cockpit backwards to allow the real-world gravity to take the place of the acceleration of the real plane. Trust me - if you shut out the view of the outside world so all you can see is the inside of the cockpit and the graphics display - and tip the cockpit very gently backwards (10 or 20 degrees is plenty) while the graphics show you going faster - it's a total rush! You'll be blown away by how cool that feels! Alternatively - if you put the plane into a steep dive - it's pretty much in free-fall - so the pilot doesn't FEEL like the plane is pitched forwards at all - you aren't pushed forwards into your seatbelts when the plane dives - that feels totally wrong!! In that situation, the best you can do is to keep the cab dead flat and let the graphics convey the 'falling' impression. The LACK of motion input is what best conveys that floaty pit-of-stomach feeling because when the graphics show you falling but you aren't being pushed forwards, you realize that the plane is not slowing down but actually speeding up. In a properly balanced turn - the plane could easily be banked over at 45 degrees - yet the pilot will feel no horizontal forces whatever...so the simulator cab emphatically shouldn't be rolled over 45 degrees! That would give the pilot the incorrect impression that he's rolled but not turning...in fact, experienced pilots will get rather extreme "simulator sickness" from that kind of incorrect cab motion.

I'm betting that you don't have enough motion on your hydraulics to roll the plane inverted or pitch it completely nose down. That's pretty much standard for hydraulic flight simulators - and the solution is to use the motion you DO have to hint to the user that the motion of the plane has changed.

It's almost true to say that you translate acceleration in the virtual world into position in the real world...constant rotational velocity or constant angular position in the virtual world has to be subtly and gradually 'washed out' so that the simulator slowly returns to the horizontal position. You also need to use your motion capability to do turbulance and other vibrations and such...that adds FAR more to the feeling of really flying than simply tipping the cab in response to joystick input.

The lag problem you're seeing probably means that your motion system is not sufficiently powerful for the loads you're giving it - but you have enough other problems that could be adding to that - calibrating the roll rate to the amount of joystick input would be really hard because the amount of stick input you need to produce some specific roll rate of the aircraft depends on the speed you're travelling (for example) - and I presume your stick-driven motion has no clue what the speed of the plane is.

So you're doomed to never having it match up even if you choose to accept the many limitations I've described above - you're simply beating your head against a brick wall - this is a problem you can't solve this way.

But with the best software imaginable, you need some pretty serious hydraulic pumps and fast proportional control valves to get the high rates of acceleration you need - and you need feedback because the hydraulic performance varies dramatically under load and depending on the hydraulic pressure you have. The last super-cheap, minimally useful 3-axis system I worked on could accelerate the ends of the hydraulic jacks at about a half-g under full load with a maximum displacement of about a meter. Because it was impossible to maintain that degree of flow from a sensible sized pump, we had a high pressure reservoir that the pump topped up during gentle flight - then, when you did something violent, the reservoir would provide the necessary "oomph". The software had to track the amount of high pressure oil remaining and 'tone down' the amount of motion it used - so if the pilot was doing violent aerobatics for long periods, the motion would gradually become less and less effective - but for "normal" uses, it was plenty good enough.

But there are any number of other possible causes for lag. I would also strongly suggest that you consider going to a THREE axis motion base - you really need the "Heave" (up/down) axis as well as roll and pitch. Heave gives you better ways to handle vibration than roll/pitch shake - and you can also drop the cab dramatically when you pitch over to really get that brief "negative g" feeling (even though it's only reducing the gravity the pilot's feeling by at most 50% - that's enough to give you the right feeling).

Bottom line is that until you're driving the motion from the flight dynamics software - you are totally doomed to failure.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unable to delete a folder in C:/Programe Files

Resolved

I am using Vista (for my sins) and I am trying to delete a folder that is in Program Files. I have given myself full permissions but it still wont let me delete the folder any ideas. BigDunc 18:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's the error message? My bet is that a program is using it, still. Usually you can fix this by rebooting. At worst, reboot in safe mode. But make sure it's something you really don't need, if something is trying to still use it! --Mr.98 (talk) 18:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The error is you need permissions to perform this action, I am the administrator and as I said I have changed the permissions but still no joy. Also it is not being used and I have rebooted before I posted just in case. BigDunc 18:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that, in Windows, the directory separator character is "\", not "/". But unless you use a command-line utility, this should not matter. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have solved the problem, I found a piece of software here that does it for you. BigDunc 19:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Windows Defender reports your ccollomb website as unsafe. Does anyone know why? Is it just Microsoft being over-cautious? Dbfirs 08:18, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because you can do lots of fun things with a utility that can force lots of files/directories to become unlocked. I've used Unlocker Assistant for a long time, their website is fine. Washii (talk) 02:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Beginner C++ graphics examples

I'm looking for examples of what others have done for including graphics in beginner C++ courses. The problem is that often the students have either Windows or Mac machines. The servers at the university/school run some form of *nix. So, cross-platform graphics that are monstrously simple for the students becomes a problem. I've even considered having a separate, highly complex, graphics engine class that the students do nothing more than instantiate and start up with their classes providing the logic for whatever is running again, cross-platform simple graphics is an issue. -- kainaw ™ 20:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

2D OpenGL is easy. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not the type of advice you're looking for, but the easiest solution is to standardize on a single platform. Since Unix machines are what all students are guaranteed to have access to, that seems like the normal decision. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean graphics like drawing on the screen, or like GUI toolkits? --Sean 20:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SDLucid and SDLmm are both basic C++ wrappers over Simple Directmedia Layer, and should work without issue on all the platforms you discuss. I'm not aware of what people have used these, or SDL in general, in introductory programming courses (it's rather hard to google for that, it turns out); perhaps if you contact the maintainers of those two wrappers (or the SDL mailing list) someone may know of what use has been made of them in education. It'd be tempting to have them code a simple game (space invaders has lots of objects flying around, which makes an OO implementation seem like a sensible path), but you have the problem (and I think you'll have this with whatever toolkit you use) that you're shifting from the strightforward in-dostuff-out program structure to an event-driven paradigm, which might be a big cognitive jump for a brand new programmer. Alternatively you could skip the interactivity, and replace the screen/file output stuff they've been doing with an image or pdf generator library like libharu or GD. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked on a modified version of Turbo c++ graphics.h header file and created my own original version of "Paint" with most of the features + mouse interaction as well.

If you would like to see that,i've uploaded it to fileden.com as a RAR archive which includes the code and the executable for the program.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/7/1/2495952/paint.rar

As a student i realised this was the easiest graphics to understand and the easiest to use ,to produce some stunning results like my paint if you're creative enough.

Hope it helps.If you want the modified graphics.h header file for the mouse interaction functions ,don't hesitate to ask.

Oh PS: I'm a college freshmen and made this code in high school on my own with the internet as reference for learning the turbo c++ graphics commands,and i'm sure others would understand it as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.211.237.33 (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Neon Helium Productions" has some nice beginner level OpenGL tutorials. APL (talk) 22:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestions. Due to limitations of the systems at the University (no X on the programming machines), I cannot use OpenGL - which I would prefer to use. I've been googling and googling. I found some simple examples in which the instructor wrote most of the graphics in curses and the students just added the logic. I believe that curses will run both on Windows and Linux/BSD without a problem. I'm going to experiment tomorrow. -- kainaw ™ 22:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should teach them using DirectX, which will be more useful than any alternative upon graduation. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or graphics fundamentals, which will be more useful than any alternative long after graduation. --Sean 19:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm teaching "what is a function" now and nearing discussion of arrays. I don't plan to teach DirectX or any other specific graphics programming right now. I was looking for assignments where the instructor uses graphics and the students write non-graphics code. The point is to make the display a bit more interesting that just console in/out. -- kainaw ™ 01:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Kainaw: You're saying the Windows machines don't have X? Doesn't matter - OpenGL will run just fine on an X-less Windows system. If you're saying that these are Linux machines without X then you're doomed. Without X, just about no graphics will work under Linux. There used to be 'framebuffer' graphics - but they sucked really badly and probably don't work anymore. SteveBaker (talk) 02:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OpenGL is almost entirely cross-platform portable. The problem is that the mechanisms to open a window, read a keystroke, track the mouse, etc - are not. Most simple applications - and almost all example programs in OpenGL manuals use a library called "GLUT" (The GL Utility Toolkit) to hide those differences. GLUT can deal with the underlying horrors of these things with just a couple of function calls. It is entirely possible to write a program using GLUT and OpenGL that runs 100% identically under Windows, Mac and Linux. You might like to check out the "freeglut" library - which is a fully OpenSourced plug-compatible version of GLUT - which I happen to be the project owner of. DirectX is the only serious rival to OpenGL - but it runs only on Windows machines - and (in a somewhat messed up form) on the Xbox and Xbox360. For every other platform (including the Mac, Linux, Wii, iPhone, Android phone and (soon) for 3D graphics in a browser window) you need OpenGL or OpenGL-ES (which is a cut-down dialect used in 'embedded systems' like phones). The Playstation-3 supports a kinda-sorta OpenGL dialect - but most games programmers dump the graphics API and program directly on the 'bare metal'.

Sure - there is a place for DirectX - but with many MANY graphics applications showing up on phones - it's not as cut-and-dried as it once was. Phone manufacturers can't affort to pay the Microsoft tax - so DirectX is useless for phones. OpenGL-ES was specifically designed to be suitable for those teeny-tiny platforms - and is rapidly becoming the main dialect of OpenGL used in other places.

With the announcement that every browser on the planet will soon support OpenGL-ES (except, inevitably, Internet Explorer...unless you get the Chrome plugin) - you can even write full-scale OpenGL-ES applications with shaders and all of that cool stuff in JavaScript that'll run in a browser window! That is so amazingly, astoundingly COOL - and DirectX will never be able to do that because of it's appalling lack of portability.

I've been using OpenGL since the very beginning of 3D graphics - and when I recently needed to switch to DirectX (because I write computer games for a living and needed to be able to write for the Xbox-360), it took me about a week to get switched over. With modern graphics being 99.9% a matter of setting up shaders and textures, then splatting a big pile of triangles at the GPU, 99% of the 'stuff' in both of those graphics API's is utterly obsolete. You need to learn the efficient ways to arrange your big piles of triangles - then you need to learn a shader programming language. If you learn 'Cg' - you can use the identical shader language under Windows, Linux and Mac. If you learn HLSL - then you're kinda stuck with Windows. If you learn GLSL, then you're stuck with OpenGL and you'll be OK on almost every platform that runs OpenGL. Fortunately, Cg, HLSL and GLSL are very similar indeed.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I find it a bit odd that when I say "graphics", I mean "anything more than console-based text." However, it appears that most people here read "graphics" and think "3D graphics engines." All I want to do is add a little color and perhaps a little cursor control to these student's programming assignments. For example, the next assignment is "Liar's Dice". It would be nice if I could show something that looks like dice instead of just numbers. But, in a console-only environment, it appears to be more trouble than it is worth. -- kainaw ™ 02:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your meaning - but that doesn't change the answer. Teaching the ad-hoc graphics interfaces that things like Java provide will be a dead-end for your students. They'll get to some point - want to do something that that interface can't handle - and be faced with starting again from scratch. Using something like GLUT and OpenGL (or DirectX if you really have to) will give them the ability to progress from the simple things you want, gradually up to full scale 3D (or whatever). Drawing boxes in solid colors isn't hard in API's like OpenGL and DirectX. SteveBaker (talk) 03:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with new HP printer

I work in a small office, and our (really) old HP InkJet finally died. We've purchased a new A800-something, are having trouble with it, and HP tech support has been worthless so far. Perhaps some among you have seen this problem and can offer a solution.

CONFIGURATION: We have two WinXP boxes -- "PC1" and "PC2", say -- and two printers. The Laser (B&W) printer is connected to PC2 via USB, and the new color printer is connected to PC1 in the same way. Each of us can print on either printer, as each is shared through the usual Windows mechanism.

There is a building-wide "intranet", that each (of about 30) PCs plug into. Our two PCs are not directly wired to each other, nor do we have a router of our own. In other words, we have a perfectly standard small-office configuration.

THE PROBLEM: Documents printed from PC2 to the A800 print their CONTENT correctly, but do not always print in the proper CONFIGURATION. Examples, sometimes the document will print duplexed (even when told not to), or tumbled (flipped up rather than L-to-R), or 2-up on a page. Each individual page's CONTENT is correct -- proving there is no connectivity problem -- but the configuration or metadata or properties or whateveryoucallit doesn't make it or is ignored.

THE ISSUE: HP support insists that the ONLY way to share two printers is to purchase a router, and install a Lan-on-a-lan (as I understand it). I can't believe this is really the case, but I suppose anything's possible -- perhaps Windows Printer Sharing caused HP more problems than it was worth or something.

N.B. A previous poster's claim that "all of his HP problems were solved by buying a Dell box" is not an option for us, so please don't suggest that.

Thanks in advance, --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One idea: MS Office programs (pretty much uniquely) store some printer settings (the printer's own page prefs) inside the document, and those changes apply when someone else prints the document. This has weird effects like person1 likes to print on colour, person2 in black, but if person1 edits the document, sets it to colour, prints it, saves it, then hands the document to person2 (on say a network or a usb stick), and person2 prints it, it'll come out in colour. Perhaps in your case, the problem is that person1 normally prints on one printer, person2 on the other, and the document is ending up with the settings for one printer embedded in it (which is ignored by the other printer). While this is sometimes helpful behaviour on Office's part (it allows you to do stuff like page1-on-letterhead, subsequent pages on regular paper, and the document itself remembers this printer-specific setting) it can do weird things when the printers aren't the same (and I don't know how to turn this feature off). As some printer properties are copied into the document, and some aren't, this can seem like a perplexing issue. Second idea: when you install a windows-networked printer, it offers to get the driver from the host machine for you; if you did this, try instead downloading and installing the driver manually (rather than getting it from the printer host); and in general make sure everyone is running the latest (and ideally the same) version of the printer driver. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To see whether Office is the culprit, install CutePDF Writer, which is a free PDF creator that acts like a printer; and also install Acrobat Reader. Using PC2, first print to the CutePDF "printer"; it will ask you what filename to save the PDF file as; save it accordingly; then open and print that PDF file with Acrobat Reader. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thought I'd mentioned everything that could possibly be of interest, but I was mistaken! In this case, we are printing PDF files from within Acrobat Reader.

It's probably also worth mentioning that I always check/reset printer settings via the Properties dialog -- it's just that sometimes those settings are ignored.

Any other suggestions? I'm willing to try just about anything that has an outside chance of working. (Terminating and restarting Acrobat is such a solution; I'd like to avoid that as the "production workaround" if possible.) --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:30, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you set the Printing Preferences the way you want them in Control Panel? That would be my first step. My second would be to set the preferences the same on the machine that is sharing the printer - it may be that some documents inherit those by mistake. The other thing just to be aware of (though I think this doesn't apply to you since you're only using one commercial piece of software) is that some software ignores what the user asks for in terms of printer preferences and prints the document how it wants to. At the Small Office where I volunteer, we have an application that always prints to the default tray, no matter where you tell it to print. --Phil Holmes (talk) 13:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ATI GRAPHICS DRIVER FOR UBUNTU 9.04 - HD 4570

I can't seem to get my ATI 4570 set up on ubuntu 9.04. Any/all help is appreciated. P.S. does anyone have invites to Google Wave? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.211.237.33 (talk) 21:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using the driver that X.org installs, or the fglrx proprietary driver? If using the former, try the latter (you should be getting an offer to install the proprietary driver, if ubuntu has detected it properly. Unfortunately, as the fglrx article notes, even ATI's own driver has been very poor (orders of magnitude slower than the Windows equivalent for the same card); I don't know the current status (the fglrx article's references are mostly rather old). I confess that the last time I tried to use Ubuntu on a Radeon machine I gave up and bought the cheapest nVidia card the shop had; nVidia's Linux driver is very good indeed. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI is relevant reading. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 21:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Foxit Reader in Google Chrome

Hi. I was wondering if it is possible to open Foxit Reader in Google Chrome when opening PDF files on the web. Right now, PDF files are opening in Adobe Reader by default in Chrome but I can't find any setting in Google Chrome to open PDF files using Foxit Reader rather than Adobe Reader. I want to do that because I hate using Adobe Reader which is very slow and has become very user-unfriendly. This may sound funny but I read somewhere on the web that Larry Page had the same problem, lol. 41.136.73.187 (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chrome just open files with using Windows's default program for that kind of file. Change the windows default (which you do by right-clicking a PDF-file, selecting "Open With", then "Choose program", select Foxit Reader, and make sure that the box is checked that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file") and it should work fine. 83.250.236.212 (talk) 01:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sort files into Folders based on creation date

Resolved

Hi All,

This is on a CentOS system running Asterisk. We seem to have accumulated so many recordings that I am having trouble compacting and moving them all (ie 'mv * someDir' and even 'mv *part-of-file-name(extension)* someDir' fails with too many arguments).

I was thinking the way to go would be to loop through the files based on creation date (in the filename, but maybe better if uses the filesystem's records or something), but don't know where to start. I think know what I want to do but dunno how to write it in shell script (and there's prolly more elegant algorithms out there):

(file format is usually xxxx-(date in yyyymmdd)-xxxx-xxxx.wav)

1.) get a list of files in the folder
2.) get the date of the oldest, in yyyymmdd format set that as '$date'
--- loop ---
3.) create the folder '$date' if does not exist (I think is supposed to be like if [-d yyyymmdd] ?)
4.) issue mv *-$date-* to $date/; get next date
--- /loop ---
5.) done

Thanks in advance for any help! PrinzPH (talk) 22:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Test it first, but this should do it:

ls | perl -MDate::Format -lne '$d=time2str "%Y%m%d", (stat)[9]; mkdir $d; rename $_, "$d/$_"'

--Sean 00:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Worked perfectly Sean! Thanks! PrinzPH (talk) 01:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic web page/html generator

I want to create an FAQ web page in which normally only the questions are visible, but when you click on a question, it expands and shows the answer with it. Clicking on a new question expands the answer for the new question and collapses the previous one. Is there any online html generator that can do it for me? Thanks. ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 23:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What are you editing the page with? It's not hard to do with Javascript/CSS, but if you're not editing the page by hand (e.g. in Notepad), then us posting a bunch of code is not going to be super helpful. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found the code online. Now the only hitch is actual coding. Can you suggest a good free html editor? ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 01:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aptana is awesome! It doesn't have any wysiwyg (it does allow previews though), but the other features more than make up for it (has full javascript support, built in php testing deamon, as well as support for various js libraries like mootools, prototype -- havent used those features yet but i plan to). HTH PrinzPH (talk) 01:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but the webpage isn't loading. Anyway I found a very good free WYSIWYG editor that has greatly accelerated my work :] ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WHOIS queries on an IP

What does "allocated PA" mean in the context of a WHOIS query? Is that the same as "direct allocation" or is it something different? SpinningSpark 23:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PA means "Provider Aggregatable", meaning that this particular range is a subset of a larger block that the provider owns. They issue the smaller blocks, but advertise a single larger (aggregated) network out to the rest of the world. Keeps routing tables small which is always nice. (The other one you see a lot in Whois is PI: "Provider Independent" which usually means the company owns that IP range rather than the provider, so it requires its own routing table entry). Arakunem^Talk 00:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- And Allocated of course means that the IP range being queried has in fact been issued to a subscriber as opposed to being unused. Arakunem^Talk 00:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the answer, people so rarely thank their answerers here, questioners - please be more grateful. SpinningSpark 11:16, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Direct X 10 for XP

I have just installed unofficial version direct x 10 in XP 32 bit OS. Both "dxdiag" (from "RUN" option) and PC Wizard is showing Direct X version is 10.0. But whenever I open Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager, it shows Direct X 9.0. Is there any problem?

Why this is happening?

I am using XFX 750i SLI Mobo and XFX Geforce 9800 GT 512 MB. Thanks--119.30.36.33 (talk) 23:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd guess the app is showing what version of DirectX it was compiled against. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 00:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the above, the sound card drivers probably don't know how to use DirectX 10 (since as you know it's not officially supported in XP). Likewise I would think the same thing would probably happen with the display drivers as the XP drivers likely don't support DirectX 10. So although you've got it "installed", if the hardware drivers don't support it then it's really not doing much. ZX81 ^talk 02:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is reinstalling Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager will solve that issue? I have some images of Direct X 10 where the uploader of this software was successful to install and use it in Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager, His mobo is Asus.--119.30.36.53 (talk) 08:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

October 9

Weird

I have my cell phone right next to my wireless optical mouse and whenever I receive a phone call or text message, the mouse doesn't work for like a few seconds before the phone call. I wonder what's causing this. -- penubag (talk) 01:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've answered your own question? :) It sounds literally like the wireless data transmission to your phone is interfering with the wireless mouse and really the only options are to get a Bluetooth mouse (I'd be very surprised if that didn't work!) or switch to a cellphone provider that uses a different frequency to what you have now (althought that may not help). You could try it a different phone and see if that fixes it, but that seems unlikely. ZX81 ^talk 03:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really a problem :) I just thought it was interesting. Why does the interference last several seconds before I receive the call/text? Is the interference just hanging in the air...but that doesn't make since. -- penubag (talk) 08:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The cell tower begins talking to your phone, establishing a firm connection, a couple of seconds before your phone rings. If you keep your phone beside an FM radio you'll hear a pattern of thumps before the call or text message nominally arrives, and occasionally when the phone checks in with the cell tower for routine reasons. -- 87.113.39.157 (talk) 09:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So THAT's what those noises are! Thanks for the answer ZX81 (again) and anon. -- penubag (talk) 09:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, my alarm clock / radio makes all kinds of random static when my cell phone is charging on top of it. I had wondered why the static started before the phone starting ringing, but that "firm connection" thing makes sense. Useight (talk) 00:26, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But why is it that when I am currently talking on the phone and transmitting and receiving that these side effects don't occur?-- penubag (talk) 01:00, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is an excellent question. I'm not an expert in EM propagation or cell phone technology, but I can offer a plausible speculative explanation. Each tower in a cell phone network uses slightly different frequencies to avoid interfering with other towers. Also, once you're connected to the tower, it uses some sort of beamforming (probably SDMA) to remember and transmit to the physical location of your phone (it used to resolve down to less than a meter; these days it probably knows the location of your phone to within inches).

But in between calls, your phone probably goes into a power-saving mode where it only contacts the tower once an hour or something. So when you get an incoming call, the tower has to find your phone again. It probably broadcasts on all frequencies with relatively high power, because it doesn't know how far away your phone is. Or maybe your phone responds with high power to give a precise location and distance to the tower. Either way, once the connection is established, the RF spectrum should quiet down a bit.

BTW, this happens to me sometimes with speakers. I've heard that a ferrite bead around the cable to the speaker will cut down on the noise, but I've never tried it. I've also heard of people successfully using aluminum foil to make little shields between their phone and their other devices.Indeterminate (talk) 06:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Unindent). Standard cell phone aerials do not use beam forming - this requires multiple element aerials (see MIMO) which are not used by current cell technologies - we need to wait for WiMAX and LTE for that. The noise you hear is signalling traffic. Once the call has been set up, the signalling subsides and the voice traffic has a less "noisy" pattern. --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple iTunes accounts on one computer?

In my household we have now 2 iPods and only one computer. Can we have 2 iTunes accounts on one computer? Is this possible?Dieselsmamma (talk) 01:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although I haven't tried this personally, if you are using separate user profiles then I don't see any reason why not. iTunes stores it's database and settings in your "My Music" directory and the location of that on the disk changes per user profile. ZX81 ^talk 03:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you Google "two itunes accounts on one computer" you get some very useful hits, like this one from Apple. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both, this looks promising! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dieselsmamma (talk • contribs) 01:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update on my Yahoo situation

The last question I asked was here. [3]

If User:Comet Tuttle can't be bothered to come here, fine. If User:Zunaid doesn't want to laugh at my postings any more, then don't read them.

At least User:KoolerStill is providing me with helpful information. And Yahoo is too (the names have been removed to protect the innocent; the details about how to take a screenshot may be useful to others with my type of computer who are reading the reference desk questions):

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Mail Customer Care.

I understand you are experiencing an 'Error Code 21' loop.

Before I go into addressing your concern, I'd like to first apologize for the delay in my responding to your inquiry. Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and accurately as possible. However, we are currently receiving unusually high volumes that caused the delayed response.

Regarding your issue, I've tested your account, but wasn't able to duplicate the behavior you've described. To help me troubleshoot and assess the issue, please take a screenshot of the entire page when the issue occurs next. You may then include this file as an attachment in your next reply.

To take a screenshot, simply do the following:

1. Press the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard. 2. Click the Windows "Start" menu and select "Programs", then "Accessories", then "Paint". 3. Once the Microsoft Paint application is open, click the "Edit" menu then select "Paste." If you're prompted that the "image in the clipboard is larger than the bitmap", click the "Yes" button. 4. Click the "File" menu in the upper left-hand corner of the Paint application then select "Save As". 5. Enter a name for the "File name" field. 6. Choose "JPEG" as the "Save as type" option. 7. Save the file to an easy to remember location like your computer then close the Paint application. 8. Attach the file to your email response and include any other relevant information.

It would be very helpful if you could send it via the Yahoo! account you are having trouble with, and also leave a copy in your Sent folder. Once we have this information, we will be happy to help investigate the issue further.

I appreciate your patience and understanding while we troubleshoot this issue for you.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail Customer Care.

Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a question for the Reference Desk? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html --93.106.239.206 (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Vchimpanzee... sorry you are having trouble. I assume you have tried accessing it on different browsers? What you want to help the tech support do is narrowly define the problem. Screenshots can help, but trying out different options (browsers, settings, etc.) will help narrow down what exactly the difficulty is. Good luck and let us know if we can help. Ignore the ones who give you grief. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to change browsers, but one day I might use Yahoo on another computer which has Firefox and see what that does.

The endless loop happened today, but I saw nothing that a screenshot could help with. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, I went to Yahoo email a second time while trying to find some information, and not only can I not go back, but the list of folders disappeared. I tried following the directions, and I got a screenshot and supposedly saved it but when I try to attach the file, I click on "Browse" and there's no such file.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:12, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, those are all documents. Okay, when I click on "picture" it works.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I still haven't heard back since I sent the screenshots. The one worthwhile result of this question being here is the information on how to send one. I also haven't tried Yahoo on another computer but I plan to tomorrow since I'm going to a Yahoo group and that would give me the opportunity. I know it wouldn't hurt anything to use my various email addresses here, but I only use three--one that came from my Internet service provider, and one which delivers messages from my other Yahoo group.

Most of the email addresses have problems of their own, and this inability to use the back button seems to be a feature of Hotmail and Lycos Mail as well.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I've been told to do: A) Disable Internet Browser Add-ons/Plug-ins

Each Internet browser comes with optional upgrades or enhancements commonly known as "add-ons" or "plug-ins." These features make your Internet browser more useful & certain add-ons or plug-ins can potentially cause issues with Yahoo! Mail.

To find out if this is the case, please try one of the following tasks for your specific browser: common uses include (but aren't limited to) Toolbars, News or Stock Tickers, Instant Messaging, Weather alerts, Email alerts, Anti-virus/Anti-spy or Games

If you're running Internet Explorer 6.0:

1. Close out of all instances of the Internet Explorer Internet browser. 2. Select "Start". 3. Select "Settings". 4. Click "Control Panel". 5. Double-click "Internet Options". 6. Select the "Advanced" tab. 7. Under "Browsing", clear the "Enable third-party Internet browser extensions (requires restart)" check box. 8. Relaunch your Internet browser.

If you're running Internet Explorer 7.0:

1. Close out of all instances of the Internet Explorer internet browser. 2. Select "Start", "Settings", then click "Control Panel". 3. Double-click on "Internet Options". 4. Select the "Advanced" tab. 5. Under "Browsing", remove the "Enable third-party internet browser extensions" check box. 6. Relaunch the Internet Explorer internet browser.

If you're running Internet Explorer 8.0:

1. Click "Tools" and select "Internet Options". 2. Click the "Advanced" tab on the right. 3. Under "Browsing", remove the "Enable third-party browser extensions" check box. 4. Click "OK" and close out of all instances of Internet Explorer. 5. Relaunch Internet Explorer.

B) Clearing your Cookies and Cache

We've found that clearing your cookies and cache usually takes care of a lot of issues. When you need to clear your cache, follow the instructions below for your browser and version.

Internet Explorer 6.x for Windows:

1. Choose "Internet Options" from IE's Tools menu. 2. Click the "Delete Cookies" button, and choose "OK" when prompted. 3. Click the "Delete Files" button, and select to "Delete all offline content". 4. Click "OK" when prompted. 5. In the bottom right-hand corner of the Internet Options page, click the "Clear History" button, and choose "OK" when prompted. 6. Click the OK button at the bottom of the Internet Options window. 7. Close and re-start your browser.

Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows:

1. Choose "Internet Options..." from IE's Tools menu. 2. Click on "Delete" under "Browsing History". 3. Click on "Delete All" at the bottom, and choose "OK" if prompted. 4. Click the OK button at the bottom of the Internet Options window. 5. Close and re-start your browser.

Internet Explorer 8.0 for Windows:

1. Choose "Internet Options..." from IE's Tools menu. 2. Click on "Delete" under "Browsing History". 3. Place a check in the "Temporary Internet Files", "Cookies" and "History" checkboxes 4. Click the OK button at the bottom of the Internet Options window. 5. Close and re-start your browser.

C) Temporarily disable Anti-virus/Anti-spy and Firewall Products

Maybe one of your security applications, such as your ant-virus, anti-spyware, or firewall products, is causing a problem with your Yahoo! Mail. To see if this is the problem, please temporarily disable your security software.

1. For most security software products, you can right-click on the security software icon in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, by the system clock. This will usually pop up a menu with "Preferences" or "disable" as an option. 2. Try to change one of those options to see if the issue goes away.

PLEASE NOTE: In some cases, you might not be able to disable the security software. The directions for each security software package differ from vendor to vendor. If you need help, please get in touch with your security software vendor or computer help desk.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cyrillic fonts

I would image that, just as with the Roman alphabet, which has tons of different fonts, there are also Cyrillic alphabet fonts. Can someone point me to some free downloadable Cyrillic fonts? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you Google "cyrillic font" then many links will be displayed that in turn have links to Cyrillic fonts. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:37, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And it's of note that many unicode fonts that you probably have (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.) already have Cyrillic character sets. (And I assume you are looking for "real" Cyrillic and not Faux Cyrillic.) The difficulty in Googling for them, of course, is that most of those that you'll find on English pages will be Faux Cyrillic. The word for "font" in Russian is Шрифт (shrift). But even that is of limited help... sites like those listed at the Russian Wikipedia "font" page, like, ifont.ru, which you'd think would have Cyrillic fonts, are as far as I can tell almost exclusively Roman fonts... (with the exception of a page of Old Church Slavoic fonts...).. hmm. You might ask on the Language Desk, actually, as this will probably require someone who is used to using Cyrillic character sets more regularly. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:27, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK... playing around some of those pages led me to paratype.com, who are apparently the biggest producers of Cyrillic versions of fonts in Russia, so says one site. They appear to have made Cyrillic versions of many other fonts. Not for free, though. Their samples show up as Roman when you visit the .com version, but if you visit paratype.ru you can see them in their Cyrillic glory. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thank you. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello world

So here's a simple "Hello world" program I wrote. It doesn't work. What's wrong with it ? (Not homework, just trying to learn C on my own.) 68.79.112.163 (talk) 23:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 #include <iostream>

 using namspace std;

 int main(int argc, char* argv[])
 {
         // Without "using" statement, this would be std::cout
         cout << "Hello world!" << endl;    // "endl"  = next line
 return 0;
 }

Telling is it "doesn't work" isn't telling us anything; you need to tell us exactly what you did, with what compiler, on what operating system, and what precisely happened. Anyway, this is a C++ program not a C program, so you need to tell your compiler that you're compiling C++; a C compiler will complain about that "using" statement (and probably will find stuff in iostream that it doesn't like either). 87.113.39.157 (talk) 00:06, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You misspelled "namespace". Aside from that it looks fine. -- BenRG (talk) 01:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The compiler will normally be told it is C++ instead of C by the file name ending in .c++, .cpp, or .cxx or some such extension rather than a .c extension. When compiling a C program the compiler wouldn't normally even find iostream never mind not know what to do with it. Dmcq (talk) 08:43, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Correcting the obvious typo ("namspace" -> "namespace"), your program works perfectly as C++. I think the problem here is that you're trying to compile it as C, in which case it would most likely fail at the very beginning. Despite what many people would have you think, C and C++ are very different things. JIP | Talk 22:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

October 10

Any free voice analysis tool for vocal training?

Are there free tools that will graphically show the pitch of one's voice to allow a singer to know where he/she is relative to the note he/she is trying to hit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.148.134 (talk) 03:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would instrument (guitar, piano) tuning tools work? Most of those show the pitch of the sound you play into the mic. I don't know anything about it, but here's a FOSS one and plenty more show up on a google search for free pitch tuner. Indeterminate (talk) 06:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Filmstrip to DVD

I have a number of c. 1975 educational filmstrips I would like to transfer to DVD. Currently I'm running them through a scanner turning each frame into an image file, copying the soundtrack to mp3 via a modified turntable, then combining the sound and images with iMovie. As you might imagine, this takes a LONG time. Is there an easier way? Horselover Frost (talk) 04:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about DIY applications, but the Yellow Pages (if you're in the U.S.) are full of companies that will quickly do that for you, for a fee of course. Considering the time required by your current method, I recommend seriously considering just paying a professional. EDIT TO ADD - you might also consider just checking to see if the original publishing company has already done all the work for you and rereleased the materials on DVD... if they're mainstream teaching materials, that is. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 06:14, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Internet growth & size // IPv4 & IPv6

Question 1: Where can I find an estimation of historical data regarding the internet's size and growth? The internet article here on Wiki doesn't go into details as far as I can tell...

Question 2: Excuse my stupidity, but why is the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 so difficult? Isn't it just changing ONE datapoint - the length of the IP data? Why would the fundamental hardware of the internet need to be changed other than extending the length & characters of address strings?

Thank you.218.25.32.210 (talk) 08:12, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

History of the Internet and IPv4 address exhaustion talk about internet growth. For the second perhaps I better send along the BOFH with a clawhammer :) Seriously web sites aren't keen on the idea of losing visitors and sales because some customers haven't upgraded their system so they see no reason to upgrade. Dmcq (talk) 08:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also see 'IPv6 readiness' in the IPv6 article. Dmcq (talk) 12:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In brief: There's more to IPv6 than just longer addresses. But just that alone explains why ISPs sometimes need to deploy new hardware to support it: the addresses are four times as long, meaning that the routing tables occupy more memory and require more processing power to manage. So an older router can't always handle as big of a routing table, or handle as many packets per second, of IPv6 as it can of IPv4.

In some cases, routers and firewalls were built with ASICs (specialized chips) built to handle IPv4 traffic, but handle other protocols on the main CPU. This design made sense when almost all of the traffic on a network was IPv4, with a small amount of other protocols such as IPX or AppleTalk. But when you try to handle traffic that is majority non-IPv4 with such hardware, it bogs down because it can't use the ASIC to accelerate processing ... and the CPU isn't fast enough. --FOo (talk) 20:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. If you try to go to http://ipv6.google.com, you'll see what I mean. If you're using the latest version of your operating system, then it can understand IP v. 6 addresses, but there are many routers out there that can't.--Drknkn (talk) 21:22, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IPv6 is supposed to make routing tables smaller, not larger. With the extra bits you can set up enough hierarchical levels that every router only has to inspect a small part of the address to make its decision. That's why the addresses are 128 bits long even though 64 would be far more than enough to give a unique number to every device in existence. -- BenRG (talk) 21:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Programming/developing a graphical based designer - where do I start?

My third year project at university is programming a graphical based designer. The program will have boxes, boxes within boxes, lines connecting them, highlighting, drag/drop functionality, right click menus, etc. etc. Very similar to making UML diagram editors.

I don't know where to start technology wise. Which language should I use? I'd like to use an OO language to make things easier. I'm leaning towards Java or C#. Are there advanced 2d graphics packages/frameworks out there that have this kind of functioanlity already built in? Will I be doing low(ish)-level graphics progamming to make the shapes I want? I just need some ideas of where to start really. 94.193.253.249 (talk) 12:37, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It really shouldn't matter as to the language—any language worth its snuff (including those you mentioned) will have the ability to do 2-D graphics without too much difficulty, and dragging/dropping, right clicking, etc., similarly. You should not have to do lowish-level graphics programming if you are just drawing shapes with any of those languages. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an example, you could peruse the Sun Java Tutorial that deals with 2d graphics to get a feel for drawing in Java. You can also check out Processing, a Java derivative which makes 2d drawing really, really easy (although it might not be great for a hugely advanced app). 83.250.236.212 (talk) 01:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Commodore 64 games restoration project, part trois

I was suggested on the OpenCBM mailing list to see what happens if I attach my 1541 through an XM1541 cable to my parallel port replicator and power up the system, and see the output in /var/log/messages. Well, what happened is this: The 1541 starts up normally. When the Linux kernel has loaded, the access led lits up, and stays lit up the entire time. Issuing the command "cbmctrl reset" has no effect. Here is what /var/log/messages has to say:

Oct  8 21:22:55 localhost kernel: cbm_init: using passive (XM1541) cable
(auto), irq 7
Oct  8 21:22:55 localhost kernel: cbm: resetting devices
Oct  8 21:22:55 localhost kernel: cbm: waiting for free bus...
Oct  8 21:22:58 localhost kernel: Quiting because of timeoutcbm:
resetting devices
Oct  8 21:22:58 localhost kernel: cbm: waiting for free bus...

I take it the system has recognised the 1541 through tbe XM1541 cable, but can't actually access it, because it has no free bus, or something. My knowledge about PCI peripheral technology stops at "plug the device in the PCI slot, and plug the cable in its socket". Anything related to bus or IRQ configurations is outside my scope. Can anyone help me here? JIP | Talk 22:48, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm interested in your project, but I've never used OpenCBM before. Your OpenCBM mailing list friends can confirm, but here's my initial impression. After a quick look at OpenCBM documentation, the term bus seems to refer to the IEC bus, the original Commodore disk and printer serial bus communication protocol. In other words, I suspect it's not a PC bus, but the 1541 bus that's busy. If that's correct, then the 1541's red light and the log's "waiting" messages both seem to agree that the IEC bus is busy, but then we're still not sure what's causing that. --Bavi H (talk) 04:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sharing files wirelessly with this setup.

My setup is the internet goes right to a router, and two PCs, and whatever other wireless device, get their internet wirelessly. How would I go about sharing files from one PC to another? I think it would be easier if one computer is directly attached to the router, but since I don't have that setup, wondering how to get around it. Here is a link to an image I made in case it is not too clear, link. Thanks! Infiniteuniverse (talk) 22:55, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that you are using a recent version of Windows (XP, Vista), the built-in file sharing should have no problem with that kind of setup. (Window XP File Sharing Guide) There should also be no difference whether the PC be connected with wireless or wired. As long as the PCs can "see" each other on the same network, they will be able to share files WikiY ^Talk 23:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC).[reply]

October 11

Templates in wiki

Unresolved

– Benp123456789 (talk) 03:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stuck

– Helpers haven't arrived, please come! --Benp123456789 (talk) 03:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using MediaWiki Appliance from Turnkey Linux, and I can't use the templates in Wikipedia. How do I get them to work? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benp123456789 (talk • contribs) 01:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing that what you get is a clean installation, I guess you want to use the templates from the ENGLISH wikipedia, if so you have to copy them to your wiki. Either by hand if you only need a few, or maybe you can use a database dump. --Stefan ^talk 13:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I tried by hand... Too hard... How would I do a database dump? Benp123456789 (talk) 21:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You should read and carefully understand Help:Template and Wikipedia:Transclusion. The technical details of copying every template are daunting, to say the least. Many templates rely on other templates. Many templates rely on MediaWiki extensions. If you understand the complexity, see Wikipedia:Database download for help with the database download. It seems unlikely that you need every template on Wikipedia - the complete list seems to be around ~20,000 templates. Nimur (talk) 14:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I just want the ones on the page Wikipedia:Template Messages. Is there any XML file that has all those that I could import? Could you link to it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.104.158.220 (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Template Messages ? It seems you've already found that one. You can compile that into a list suitable for a database dump, but it may be more programming effort than manually copying the dozen or so templates that you really want. Nimur (talk) 04:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Youtube

Why doesn't Youtube listen to what its users say to them? Most other sites do. jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 10:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you believe they don't? Nil Einne (talk) 13:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for one thing, we *begged* them not to force-change us to the Beta Channels, but they did anyway. And for another, they changed the comment system (it used to have pages of comments, but now, we have to click "Show More Comments", making more comments appear and having to scroll away from the video to see the comments; if done in excess, this could crash your browser [not that anyone would do it in excess, but in the case that they did, it would be annoying]). We begged them to have that changed back as well, but again, they wouldn't listen! jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 00:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It depends what you have to say; and where you choose to say it. Youtube has millions of subscribers; there are billions of comments left on videos. At best, these are systematically archived and processed by machine to locate trends. At worst, they are systematically ignored except for the (non-scientifically sampled) few comments which are viewed by Youtube developers when they use the site. Probably, in reality, comments left on video are sampled statistically for feedback. Needless to say, this is a terrible method to communicate your views to the Youtube decision-makers. Instead, have you considered the Contact Page? They will pre-sort your issue into a variety of categories based on what you want to say and who should hear it (e.g. regarding advertisements, regarding technical issues, regarding security, and so on). The chance that your comment will impact a decision is much greater if you help the large organization by writing your comment clearly and sending it to the appropriate place. (This applies to all large organizations, not just Youtube). Nimur (talk) 14:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nimur's first point I think is quite important point. Who's we? I use Youtube. I didn't beg them anything. Do you even have evidence a majority of comments to Youtube* were opposed to the change? Even if this is true, any company worth their salt knows that just because most people commenting say 'I don't like it' doesn't mean a majority of users don't like it. It's well accepted people are mostly likely to voice their opinions when they are dissatisfied. Companies have a variety of ways of assessing market demands including user feedback. Some are more successful at successful determining market demands then others and most companies fail sometimes but it's also clear just relying on people saying 'I don't like it' doesn't work either. In fact, most companies likely accept that sometimes even a change which even a majority of users don't initially like may be beneficial. I'm not aware BTW of any major site (or company) that hasn't been accused of not listening to their users. *Note I said comments to Youtube for a reason. I presumed we were referring to comments addresses to Youtube (whether by email, feedback forms or whatever) in ways intended to communicate with them. Random comments left in random places is not a good way to communicate with any party, particularly not big companies. If you haven't contacted Youtube in a way intended to communicate with them, then IMHO you haven't communicate your feelings about these issues to them so you should be complaining to anyone that they aren't listening. Many companies do have ways of monitoring external feedback not directed at them, but as Nimur says it's not a good way to communicate with them. Nil Einne (talk) 02:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

YouTube and their parent Google are first and foremost about having a cash cow, second about appeasing every customer. If they weren't like that they'd be taken over by some entity that was. Vranak (talk) 17:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia

Why is the Wikimedia Incubator so-called? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 10:47, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's intended to incubate new projects? None of those are directly related but it seems fairly obvious to me from an understanding of what incubation means and how it is normally used. Business incubator is I guess the most relevant of that long list although they're mostly all related Nil Einne (talk) 10:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yahoo stand for what?

what is yahoo full form? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.173.78.149 (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, according to the Yahoo! article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also "Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, which comes from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated and uncouth" Nil Einne (talk) 13:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

History in IE8 WinXP has stopped working and other issues

My IE8 browser has stopped recording its History. Previously visited pages are shown in the drop-down menu at the top-left of the browser, but do not show in history. Any ideas how to fix this please? Including backing up the History. Whereabouts is the History kept on the computer? I recall that when another computer did this in the past, clearing the History fixed it. However, I would like to copy the History before I try this. Unlike some people I would like to keep a record of my History for ever - are there any free software tools that help with this please? I have found that Windows/IE seems to have an undocumented limit on the amount of History it can keep without problems. Thanks 78.147.28.172 (talk) 13:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Windows XP SP3 and Internet Explorer 8, I found the History to be in C:\Documents and Settings\Chukkagoat\Local Settings\History (substitute your account login name for "Chukkagoat" in the path). The "Local Settings" and "History" directories are marked as hidden, so if you don't see them, go to Control Panel->Folder Options, click the View tab, and choose "Show hidden files and folders". As for why IE isn't keeping track of your history, could it be that you have configured the privacy settings to not do so, or that you have turned on private browsing? Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In Mediawiki, what's the best way to create a survey that preserves all data

I need to create a survey that has:

A series of questions
Participants have to respond with a 1-5 (or skip)
Must preserve all data-- we need each response to each question by each participant.
All results must be easily exportable to .csv (or similar format)
About 100-500 questions, needs to be able to hand thousands of participants

All things being equal, we'd prefer to do this in Mediawiki itself, for maximum transparency. But expedience is import too.

Should I use MediaWiki for this? If so, how? I know there are some poll, quiz, and survey extensions, but what would be easy, stable, and quickly get the job done?

If Mediawiki isn't a good fit, what should I use instead? Any standard cgi software to use in a case like this? Or a free web service, provided it can really do what's necessary. --Alecmconroy (talk) 13:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki doesn't sound like a good fit at all—collaborative editing is NOT the right paradigm for surveys. Why not use professional survey software (like SurveyMonkey)? And it should be noted that "maximum transparency" is a dubious notion when you are talking about surveys—you will get dishonest responses if people think others will be able to read their responses. This is why most surveying, etc., is done in a way that anonymizes the participants to one degree or another. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps survey is the wrong term. Maybe poll or even voting would be a better description. The questions are of the form: "Do you vote "Yes" or "No" on City Council Resolution 251?"-- the answers are inherently public already, they just aren't automatically tallied. Hence why an onwiki automatically recorded survey/voting system would be preferable. --Alecmconroy (talk) 15:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could try mw:Extension:Poll. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Windows XP service pack level?

A friend is visiting here with an Acer netbook running Windows XP. It connects ok to my wifi router but the connection drops after a few minutes. The router's troubleshooting guide says such connection drops can be because of some bug in Windows XP SP1 and the cure is to upgrade to SP2. I also notice on the Acer's networking screen that it thinks it's in wifi ad hoc mod instead of connecting to an access point. My questions:

How can I tell if the netbook is running SP1, SP2, ... ?
1. Press Windows+Pause/Break.
Are there a lot of hazards of breaking stuff from attempting an upgrade? I get the impression that there might be.
1. Service packs are usually safe, but better be safe than sorry - backup the important stuff anyway.
Should I care about the ad-hoc vs. access point distinction?
1. Yes - maybe the friend's laptop connected to a different network? MaxVT (talk) 18:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a windows user and am pretty clueless about it. Thanks. 75.57.240.131 (talk) 15:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Run (Win+R) "winver".
I have never seen any problem when installing a Service Pack from Microsoft. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help, we ended up setting up an ethernet connection, will look into the remaining wifi issues later. 75.57.240.131 (talk) 22:54, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

October 12

"Wireless-G" vs. "Wireless-N" routers

If I have a 3Mpbs cable modem Internet connection and a small apartment, do I have any need for a "Wireless-N" router, or will a "Wireless-G" router suffice? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A wireless-G router (capable of 54mbps at a maximum and in a small apartment should easily get well over 3Mbps in all areas) should suffice. Bear in mind it's no direct benefit having a wireless-N router if all the wireless modems in laptops/whatever are 802.11G. If you have multiple computers and are likely to use LAN to transfer files or whatever having a wireless-N router along with 802.11N modems would generally be beneficial. I'm presuming of course you'll use the wireless-N router as the only wireless access point in your apartment. Also if your cable modem is capable of bursting above 3Mbps (I believe this is reasonable common but don't know much since cable is very rare in NZ) then there may be advantages for the internet side having the wireless-N router although even then I somewhat doubt it. Nil Einne (talk) 02:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You also need to consider whether the only use for the wireless is communicating with the internet. If there's any communication between devices on the local network (e.g. printing, file sharing) then a faster network will bring benefits. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:49, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The transition to 802.11N is also tricky in the fact that you have three types of Wireless-N equipment: N only, Dual Band (b/g OR n), and Simultaneous Dual Band (b/g AND n). If you are running a wireless network that will have old and new devices on it, invest in a router that says "Simultaneous Dual Band" on the packaging unless you are absolutely sure that the "Dual Band" router can do b/g and n at the same time. That said, aside from speed considerations, 802.11n also tends to have a longer range so take that into consideration if your 802.11g router has a weak (and subsequently slow) signal in certain areas, the signal strength and speed will be greater with most 802.11n equipment. Also keep in mind that in order to use 802.11b/g/n, you will need the cooresponding wireless card in your laptop/computer/wireless device. You won't need the same brand, but look for the same letter on the wireless technology it uses. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 19:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Word Spanish Thesaurus embarrassment?

Ran across a random uncited sentence in a corporate training manual: Microsoft, for example, suffered a great deal of embarrassment when the thesaurus for Word was too rigidly translated into Spanish. The result was a number of inappropriate synonyms that offended cultural, ethnic, and gender groups. Never heard of this and the wiki article on MS Word doesn't mention it. Is this documented anywhere? Can't openly search the big G from my workstation... 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With a little bit of web-sleuthing, I found some old articles from newspapers that confirm that this did indeed happen, like this article from the Seattle Times, published in 1996:

Microsoft is taking steps to remove offensive translations from its Spanish-language word-processing software, while cranking up a public-relations campaign from Mexico to Spain to apologize.

The steps came as Mexican officials responded with outrage at news reports that the thesaurus in the Spanish-language edition of Microsoft Word lists such words as "man-eater" and "savage" as synonyms for "Indian." Mexico and other Latin American countries have large populations descended from native Indians.

For the word "lesbian," meanwhile, the thesaurus listed "pervert" and "depraved person." The word "Western," by contrast, drew synonyms such as "Aryan," "white" and "civilized."

Now, that's an oopsie. 83.250.236.212 (talk) 03:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Picture priview while uploding

i am trying to find a code that make me the pictures appear in a list after uploading —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhoola Pakistani (talk • contribs) 15:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We can't help answer this question unless you explain where you are uploading to (i.e. which website), and what tool you are using to upload (e.g. is the uploader built in to your web browser as a plugin, or are you using a separate piece of software like an FTP client?) If you can answer these questions, we might be able to help. Nimur (talk) 15:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IE7 Link Icons query

Just setting up a corporate laptop which doesn't permit Firefox (boo hiss). I have a liking for a links toolbar composed of a set of favicons each with with no additional description. IE appears to be a bit dense, and does not permit me to rename the link to "", such that I'm left only with the perfectly informative icon. Nor will it accept " ". Stupid IE. Any suggestions for a solution? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right click on the toolbar to choose between "Show icons and text", "Show only selective text," or "show only icons." Depending on some details, this may be under the sub-context-menu "Customize" or elsewhere in your preferences. This forum illustrates for IE7; your version may vary slightly. (Note that the link name will still show up as a mouse-over tooltip - so it's helpful to have a descriptive name, as opposed to "" or " " ). Nimur (talk) 15:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Nimur. The option, in my case, is found under Customize Command Bar. Sadly ticking "Show only icons" seems to have no effect - the link name still shows up. Have double & triple checked that "Show only icons" is ticked, and have bounced IE just in case. Most odd. Experimenting, the verious options appear to affect the Home, Print, Tools type icons, but not link icons :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:45, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. I can't confirm at the moment. It is possible that there are separate text/icon-only settings for the main toolbar and the links/bookmarks toolbar... can you try right-clicking on the links-bar itself? Nimur (talk) 20:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll crank it up again in the morning - 8 hours or so from now. I'm pretty certain I was right-clicking on the links bar, which would imply a one-size-fits-all text/icon-only settings not encompassing the ability to have favicons sans descriptive text :( BUt thanks for your continued interest, N. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GMAIL redirecting to a particular folder messages coming from a particular sender

Hi. I've just subscribed to the mailing list wireshark-users and it's interesting but it's also clogging up my Gmail account. I'd like to redirect all messages coming from the mailing list to a folder in my Inbox, so that I can tidy it up a little. Is that possible? Thank you very much! --Belchman (talk) 16:07, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike other e-mail services, GMail uses search rather than folders. The closest thing GMail has to folders is "labels". Find the "Create new label" link and create a "wireshark-users" label. You're going to order GMail to automatically put this label on all e-mails from the Wireshark mailbot. After creating the label, click "Create a filter" toward the top of the screen, then in the "From" field, enter the e-mail address of the mailbot that sends you the e-mails; then click "Next". Then you can choose what to do with all these messages. If you want to shove them out of your inbox you can have them all put directly into your archive without ever touching the Inbox. You should also choose to put your new "wireshark-users" label on such e-mails. Now on the main GMail screen you can click the "wireshark-users" link on the left and GMail will show all the e-mails (both in your Inbox and in the Archive) with that label. Alternatively, you can avoid the whole "labels" thing, and just use the filter to shove to the Archive all e-mails that come in from that address; and when you want to see all the wireshark-users e-mails, just type "wireshark-users" in the Search field Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're awesome. Thank you very much. --Belchman (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Computer programming job

This may be a humanities question - if so, please move it. Is computer programmer normally listed as a trade profession or skilled labor profession? -- kainaw ™ 19:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A profession is neither skilled labour nor a trade - I think you mean "job" or "career". 92.24.128.70 (talk) 19:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For some time, Stanford University considered Computer Science a "vocational trade" - and so it did not form a department until 1965 (it was still considered a bit of a black-sheep in an otherwise "academic" institution). Ironically, this department founded much of the modern field we now know as computer science and computer engineering. This article, What Is Computer Science, Anyway?, discusses the categorization of Computer Science as a vocational or professional track (in the context of race and socioeconomic factors in education). In general, it depends who you ask, and in what context. A computer programming job can run the gamut from "technician" to "master designer" - so it's hard to make a total generalization. I would consider a programmer career track that requires a four-year degree a "professional career track", and anything that accepts less than a four-year degree as a "vocational career track" (without passing any judgement on the merits of either career track - we need both types of individuals to make good software). (Also note the important distinction between computer science and computer programming). Nimur (talk) 20:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is in agreement with me: see Computer Control Programmers and Operators (vocational) or Computer Support Specialists and Systems Administrators; and Computer Programmer (professional) - although their cutoff is at the two-year degree level, with some caveats. Nimur (talk) 20:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That is a much better answer than mine. This is why I think it is acceptable (and good) to forward questions from my class to the RD here. The students will get much more than "What I think is..." answers. -- kainaw ™ 23:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

October 13

(beginner questions) PHP, MySQL, and multiple checkboxes // also, Smarty templates

I'm learning PHP & MySQL via Robin Nixon's O'Reilly book and seem to have been left out on a limb of sorts. The book describes how to use multiple checkboxes for a given value and pass the data for all of them by setting the value as an array like name="ingredient[]" -- ok, but I'm confused when it comes to how this data returned from a form would be placed into a database and the book moves on without explaining it. Would the table be named ingredient and each row a recipe, each column thereby being a possible checkbox value?

My second question is more general - the book advocates the use of Smarty templates to separate code from design. I understand the wisdom of the principle, but was wondering if Smarty itself offers functionality that Dreamweaver CS4 does not? Has anyone here used it?

Thank you! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 01:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the first one: Well, I don't know about ingredients and recipes. But you'd get back data that looked like this:

ingredient[0] = "checked";
ingredient[2] = "checked";
ingredient[5] = "checked";

Which isn't necessarily useful, unless you know that "0" means "Apples" or "2" means "Sugar" or whatever. And note that it won't return empty values—only checked ones. If I remember correctly.

If you had a large, fixed list of ingredients, and every row was a recipe that included these ingredients, then yes, each column could be an ingredient, each row a recipe. It would be a weird table design, in my opinion, unless the total number of ingredients was for some reason both small and totally fixed (not changing). This is more of a database design question than a specific PHP/MySQL question. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for trying to help. Let me try and clarify with a limited example:

I would like to know how to structure a form & dbase where I've got 5 recipes, and each recipe requires from one to five ingredients. With my limited understanding I though that checkboxes would be the best way to query that data: by checking 3 of 5 ingredients I could extract all the recipes that could be made with the materials at hand. From the way the book presents the checkbox information, I thought using arrays as mentioned above would be the way to do it. But now I'm starting to think that a single checkbox for each ingredient (need / notneed = essentially TRUE/FALSE) would be enough, along with a WHERE ___ AND ___ AND etc. query on a table with each recipe as a row and every possible ingredient as a column. (seems like a nightmare for a large list of possible ingredients though... :-/)

Am I on the right track? I've only been learning all this for about a week! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Computer recommendations

I am looking to buy a reliable Desktop PC that will last pretty well (quality). Not much gaming so I don't need crazy graphics capability. I will need room to store many video and music files, but I don't think that's much of a concern anymore is it? My current PC is over four years old and I've strained its memory a bit but the new standard memory is much larger. What I really hate is lagging. I want, when I open up Windows Movie Player or Adobe or Wordperfect/Word or whatever, for the thing to just open up. I also don't want to wait literally 8 minutes for all my programs to boot when I restart. Anyway, I can talk a bit of skin deep jargon but I really know very little about the nitty gritty of computers. I was hoping someone could recommend where I could go in the New York Metropolitan area to buy a computer (or can I get it by mail, like the old Gateway computers gig?) and 1) not get hustled and 2) maybe get a pretty good deal. Can you guys and gals maybe recommend some specific models and suggest where to get them? I have a maximum budget of $1,000 and have all the accoutrements (monitor/printer/speakers etc.). A few people have told me definitely get a Pentium brand chip but I don't think they know much more than me. Looking for a bit of direction here. Thanks. John in Brooklyn.--141.155.144.177 (talk) 02:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. last week I went to Best Buy and no one knew anything and they only had three models for sale (said everyone's stock is low awaiting Windows 7 bundled) but I could have gone there with 50 models and wouldn't have known what to do and would have been easy prey without any way to know if I'd been had or not.--141.155.144.177 (talk) 02:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have been partial to Hewlett-Packard PCs for the last several years. They have a particularly great Pavilion for about $1200 with an i7 CPU and 8GB RAM. You can probably find a model with fewer goodies (I'd lose the Blu-ray player, for example) for $999. If there is a Costco near you, they should have several models, though those probably all include a monitor. Tempshill (talk) 04:52, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Even though I know nothing about your computer, I bet that it's slow because of accumulated junk running in the background. Windows XP isn't a resource hog, so you might consider just re-installing Windows. There's also fragmentation, and so on. If you still want faster hardware, then you can save about $500 by upgrading the parts yourself. They'd be higher-quality parts, too. Or, you could get on Craig's List and find a technician who'd make you one. You'd order new parts off of Newegg, and he'd put them together. The cost depends on what parts you can re-use in your computer, and how fast you want the new computer to be. If you have to get a pre-built computer, then keep in mind that Gateways, Dells, HPs, and Compaqs are built from the ground up to save the manufacturer money. They're generally designed to be thrown away after five years. So, they're a pain to upgrade, and if you pick a cheaper model from any of the above manufacturers, you will get what you pay for. For example, you might notice after a week that the cheap LCD screen that came with the computer looks really bad. In the store, you don't notice, but once you get it home, you do.--Drknkn (talk) 06:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give us the specs of your current PC? What speed processor, how much RAM, how big is your hard-drive? Windows XP came out a LONG time ago and was designed for PCs of that era. It is by no means a resource hog. I've got a 2002 PC with 1gig of RAM that runs it perfectly fine. You probably need to get rid of some junk that runs on startup every time you boot. I bet that you only need a MASSIVE hard drive to store your videos (very cheap) and perhaps more RAM if you have less than 1gig (difficult to get if your PC is quite old). Zunaid 08:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Free lightweight bookkeeping software

Archive and Google search gave me no answers. In brief: I belong to a small community-based non-profit organisation that issues interest-free loan bursaries for tertiary education. Previously our accounting burden was not much, basically reporting the financials each year to members at our annual general meeting. We just used to keep track of payments and expenses manually in Excel and/or using paper receipts. The applicable legislation (in South Africa) has recently been tightened and we have officially registered as both an NPO and a "public benefit organisation". This means we have to submit tax returns and financial statements to SARS and issue proper invoices to donors and for membership fees etc. Is there a free accounting/bookkeeping package which can do all this? It needs to be able to issue numbered invoices, keep track of each bursar's debt and repayments in their own "accounts", draw up separate income statements per fund-raising event for the year, and finally tie all the above together to produce the annual income statement and balance sheet. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone in a non-profit/small-scale environment that can speak from experience. Windows XP. Thanks for your help. Zunaid 07:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does warcraft 3 work on vista?

Especially the expansion. --Mudupie (talk) 10:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]