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December 28

IE and absolute positioning divs

I have a div that I place with absolute position using top:1em; left:1em; right:1em; bottom:1em;. So, it should be centered in the window with a 1em margin all the way around. If I set overflow:auto, it will have scrollbars inside the div if the contents overflow. It works fine in Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, etc... I checked it in IE and it vertically expands the div. Instead of placing "bottom:1em" at the bottom of the window, it places it at the bottom of the virtual window that has been expanded to fit all of the content. Is there some bastardized trick to convince IE that by "bottom" you mean "bottom of the damn window" instead of "bottom of the stretched out crap you just did"? -- kainaw ™ 00:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a z-index & nested DIVs problem to me. Can you post some code? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:40, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't much to post...

<html>
<body>
<div style='position:absolute;left:1em;right:1em;top:1em;bottom:1em;overflow:auto;'>
Put more than a full screen of text in here.  It *should* create a scroll inside the div.
In IE, it stretches the div out vertically.
</div>
</body>
</html>

What is expected is that this code will make a div in the center of the screen with a scroll down the right. -- kainaw ™ 03:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well I can reproduce your problem and can't come up with a way to fix it. I suggest you post the question & code at Stackoverflow.com - they should set you straight within 30min. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 04:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Readyboost

I have a computer with 2 GB of ram running Windows Vista and was wondering about Readyboost. I have a 1 GB flash drive, USB 2.0, that I am not using so I just hooked it up and set it up to do Readyboost. My question, I guess, is how much will this help? I also saw a 2 GB flash drive at Walmart for $6 so I thought about buying it. Would it make the amount of help noticeably better? I know my hard drive runs at 7200 rpms. I know you can't say with 100% certainty and you'd probably need more information, but in general do you think this would help and how much? I read the Wiki article Readyboost and it says things such as Windows recommends you use a flash drive 1 to 3 times as large as your ram. I didn't do this obviously. I also read some article that said Readyboost can actually slow your computer down in Vista, but the problem is fixed in Windows 7. So, with things like this, I just want to know more. Thanks for any help. StatisticsMan (talk) 04:22, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Have to admit I'm not expert here as I still use XP!. 2 GB isn't all that much RAM nowadays. I think you are always better of having more RAM, (which is comparitively dirt cheap to what it was a few years ago) up to a certain point as 2x ram will NOT give you 2x PC 'performance'. But I suppose flash drives are even cheaper. To measure 'help' I think you would need a HDD benchmarking utility. According to the article Readyboost only helps with HDD caching. 7200 rpm drive sounds a bit old, is it SATA (Serial ATA interface)? If you are using older Parallel ATA interface, it's possible you may get better results from a small SATA HDD. Though BIG drives are much cheaper per giga-byte. Theoretically I don't think you would get much difference for a 2GB over 1 Gb flash drive. The particular drives seek time, as per the Readyboost article are probably more important. It appears also that the flash drive must be marked as "ReadyBoost-capable". --220.101.28.25 (talk) 06:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My recommendation would be to take out a stopwatch and time how long it takes for your computer to start up with and without ReadyBoost enabled. I enabled ReadyBoost on someone else's computer that was running Vista and noticed a significant improvement. He had 1 GB of RAM. There are different types of flash drives, though. Some are fast enough to use ReadyBoost, and others are not. Windows will not let you use a slow USB flash drive for ReadyBoost. Here are some drives that support ReadyBoost: [1]. Also, although you can never have enough RAM, Windows will always write some temporary files (virtual memory) to the disk drive. This is where ReadyBoost comes into play. It writes that data to the flash drive, instead. Thus, your hard drive won't be tied up while Windows writes data to virtual memory. If your USB flash drive is fast enough, I bet you will notice an improvement.--Drknkn (talk) 06:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Events based on UI elements or on functions?

In Visual Studio programs, when multiple events (e.g. selecting a menu item, clicking a toolbar button and pressing a keyboard shortcut) all have the same effect and are handled by the same method that doesn't distinguish among them, is it considered better to replace them with one event? If so, does this remain true even when not all of them are directly caused by the user interface (e.g. a display that refreshes once per minute and can also be manually refreshed)? Neon Merlin 04:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Array-of-functions declaration

Would the following be a valid way in any programming language to create the functions operation[0](), operation[1](), operation[2]() and operation[3]()? If not, what is the closest construction in an existing high-level language?

void operation[](int& x) = {
  {x++;},
  {x--;},
  {x*=5;},
  {x/=5;}
};

Neon Merlin 04:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Once a function is created in the normal fashion in most languages, you can refer to it by reference or callback or name (depending on the language). I will just call it a hook here to keep the confusion down. So, you make a function in your language and you have a hook to refer to it. Make an array of hooks and you have an array of functions. You just have to define the functions separately from defining the array. If you have a language of preference, I can give example code. These "hooks" are rather different from language to language. -- kainaw ™ 04:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's not valid in any language I know, but this Perl does something like it:

my @ops = (
 sub { $_[0]++ },
 sub { $_[0]-- },
 sub { $_[0] *= 5 },
 sub { $_[0] /= 5 } );

my $x = 10;
foreach my $func (@ops) {
  $func->($x); 
  print $x;    # prints 11, 10, 50, 10
}

--Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.94.172 (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In C++0x, you should be able to write

#include <std>
typedef std::function<void(int&)> func;
func operation[4] = { 
   [](int& x){++x;},
   [](int& x){--x;},
   [](int& x){x*=5;},
   [](int& x){x/=5;}
};

Which is relatively close to the original example. decltype (talk) 01:44, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are any number of functional programming languages that treats functions as first-class objects and in most of them you should be able to some version of what you are proposing. This is a slightly modified version in Python (the modification is that the variable isn't passed by reference, it just returns a new value, it doesn't modify the old one):

operations = [
lambda x:x+1,
lambda x:x-1,
lambda x:x*5,
lambda x:x/5]

x = 10

x = operations[0](x)
print x
x = operations[1](x)
print x
x = operations[2](x)
print x
x = operations[3](x)
print x

This prints 11,10,50,10, just like you'd expect. Belisarius (talk) 07:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

.Mac

I have 'lost' the .Mac icon from my Desktop . How can I recover it please? With thanks in anticipation.--85.210.188.64 (talk) 08:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What version of OS X are you running? .Mac ceased to exist in 2008 and was replaced by MobileMe. It's likely that if you recently performed a software update, anything related to .Mac was replaced by MobileMe information probably after this update. Casey (talk) 23:51, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this I was begining to wonder if anybody had ideas! You are probably right as I do update fairly frequently and had forgotton that .Mac had been changed to MobileMe. I would however expected there to be a desktop icon. I did had an on screen "chat" with an Apple Advisor who was no help at all and did not mention this aspect. Unfortunately the page you refer me to does not apply to my System X 10.4. Thanks for your help never the less. Regards--85.210.170.108 (talk) 08:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Disc won't leave drive, although computer thinks it has

When I try to eject a CD from my Macbook drive, it shows up on the computer as if it's left but although it makes the usual whirring noises before the CD leaves the drive, the physical disc doesn't come out of the slot but it goes away on iTunes as if the disc has left the drive's sensor but hasn't come through the drive slot. Please help! Chevymontecarlo (talk) 11:17, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you're brave...try this http://www.silvermac.com/2006/dvd-stuck-in-macbook-pro/ and good luck. ny156uk (talk) 14:03, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some less-brave options: [2]. If the drive is just confused, it is easy to get the disk out. If it is truly mechanically stuck in the slotless drive, that is a lot harder to deal with. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ENIAC described in modern terms

What would the CPU speed and memory be for the ENIAC computer described as modern computers are? I read that ENIAC took seventy hours to compute pi to 2037 decimal places in 1949. I was curious to find out how long it would take on my old home PC with a CPU speed of 1.8GHz, memory 1GB. Using PiFast, it calculated 2037 decimal places in 0.03 seconds - that's over eight million times faster. And I wonder how much time the world's most advanced computer now in December 2009 would take? 89.242.213.201 (talk) 13:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't found any specifics yet but this from the ENIAC article may give an indication: "As of 2004, a square chip of silicon measuring 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) on a side holds the same capacity as the ENIAC, which occupied a large room" --220.101.28.25 (talk) 14:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From History of Computing Hardware: "It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes)" So 2 Gb RAM ≈25,000,000 times ENIACS memory in bytes. If we assume one tick of the computers clock per operation (probably took several) a typical PC(Several years old!) might run at 2Ghz+. 2,000,000,000 / 5000=400,000xfaster (conservatively) on clock speed alone. And todays computers can carry out more than one operation per 'tick'. These are very rough & quick calculations, but in the ballpark(I hope)--220.101.28.25 (talk) 14:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So ENIAC was about 0.0000005GHz and 0.00000008Gb RAM? 89.242.213.201 (talk) 22:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the commas that someone put in my remark about - for one thing I do not think it is customary to put commas in decimal places, for another it is a breach of etiquette to alter someone elses writing. So the more correct figures are 0.00000005GHz and 0.00000008Gb RAM. 92.24.98.128 (talk) 12:17, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Very close!. On Clock speed you're 10x too fast actually. 0.000,005 GHz = 0.005 Mhz =5 Khz. The memory is right though!.

As for the Supercomputer question "And I wonder how much time the world's most advanced computer now in December 2009 would take?". Not very long! These things are running at Peta Flops (

10^{15}

FLOPS-FLoating point Operations Per Second), which is about 1,000,000 GHz! The time the answer takes to reach the display from the computer is probably longer than the time spent calculating it!

According to Supercomputer the current fastest is the Cray Jaguar (1.759 PetaFlops) at DoE-Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA. (Jaguar has 224,256 Opteron processor cores) For a general comparison the same article says, "Moore's Law and economies of scale are the dominant factors in supercomputer design: a single modern desktop PC is now more powerful than a ten-year-old supercomputer". I would guess that ENIAC was not even as 'powerful' as a simple $A 5 calculator. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 01:43, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think I have an answer to "And I wonder how much time the world's most advanced computer now in December 2009 would take?"

"The new value of pi is 2,576,980,370,000 decimal places long, the result of a computation on T2K-Tsukuba in April of this year that took 73 hours and 36 minutes. The time included verification. The T2K-Tsukuba consists of 640 nodes with peak calculation of 95.4 trillion floating point operations per second." Full story HERE. Interesting that the time taken is similar, but the calculation is to about 100,000,000 more decimal places! Also this was 4 months ago, and this is (apparently) NOT "the world's most advanced computer" so the time taken could be reduced signifcantly.--220.101.28.25 (talk) 02:33, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

there is any gaming website that has a recommender system

There is any gaming website (other than gamespot) that has some recommender system? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.151.130 (talk) 17:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Googling "video game recommender system" gave a number of results. One of the first results was this. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 20:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.207.222 (talk) 21:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible...

To have a computer with the best of both worlds or what? Mean with closed source and open source. Have been wondering about this as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicaabruno (talk • contribs) 18:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Even within the same project, there are ways to multi-license code that allow different licensing/sourcing schemes to coexist. Much less in general on a computer.

Recommended reading: The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an interesting read about what the "best" of the different development models are. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is very likely that your current computer has both closed-source and open-source software. My Windows Vista machine, for example, has on it closed-source software like Microsoft Outlook as well as open-source software like Mozilla Firefox. My Ubuntu machine has mostly open-source software on it, but also has closed-source NVIDIA video drivers on it. There will always be both types of software, and many (I'd say probably most) computer enthusiasts work with both types daily. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

programming for beginner

I'm a complete newbie, so what is the best tools or programming language to use for making extremely simple little programs that can do things like download urls and stuff? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.127 (talk) 18:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perl or Python are both good languages to start with for that sort of programming. Just jump on in! I recommend working through one of the many "tutorials" you'll find on the web for either, just to get a sense of how the grammar works, and then jump right in to specific programming tasks, looking up functions and asking for help whenever you hit a brick wall. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For simple tasks, scripting languages (like Perl and Python suggested above, along with PHP, Ruby, and many many others) is nice. There's no compile time. Just script and run. Of course, you can even do shell scripting (even on DOS - or whatever Windows calls their CLI now). Learning any language for a "newbie" is tough. Just pick up a book on whatever language seems of interest and start. Once you learn one language rather well, jumping to other languages is rather easy. I started with assembly language and since then I've only had to struggle with one language, Mumps. Every other language has been very easy to pick up. -- kainaw ™ 20:26, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is Visual Basic a good thing to start with? I heard it has a gui which makes building programs very easy for beginners —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.127 (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My impression of Visual Basic and other Microsoft programming products is that they keep their developers on a never-ending technology treadmill that causes one's skills to become obsolete faster than they should. I would stick with an open and public project like Perl or Python, which (book sales aside) do not have a vested interest in getting you off the old thing and on to purchasing the new new thing. --Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.94.172 (talk) 20:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, the simplest coding language is HTML. If you're completely new, this will help you learn how tags work (even if commands are different in other languages). However, you cannot build a program in HTML. It seems like you want to learn how to develop programs moreso than web applications, so visual basic may be a good start, even though it is considered somewhat nontraditional. Be wary that Visual Basic only runs on Windows (or possibly in Wine_(software) if you want to get technical...), so if you want to be cross-platform, maybe you should try C or related languages. If you do wish to try Visual Basic, Microsoft always has a free download of their latest beta, which would currently be Visual Studio 2010. --EpicCyndaquil (talk) 21:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HTML isn't actually a programming language. It is a markup language. It doesn't let you do anything except format documents. To do anything more than that, you have to learn a real language—like Javascript, or PHP, or whatever. HTML just structures the output and makes it pretty. You can't do any real programming with it, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot to be said for Perl and Python, although of the two I strongly suggest students pick up Python, as it is less of a "free form" language, and forces programmers to pick up good layout practices. I know a few universities - mine included - that teach Python as a first language before moving on to something like Java. That said, Visual Basic is quite a good choice, given that historically Basic was a teaching language as the syntax is a tad closer to English than some other languages, and Visual Studio.Net is a very nice tool, as you have heard. I've taught VB.Net (the current version of Visual Basic, more or less) to beginning students, and generally they've argued that it was a bit easier to learn than the alternatives we offered (mostly C# and Java). However, if your intent is to pick up other languages, the difficulty with learning VB is that it doesn't really prepare you for moving into other popular ones, such as Java, C++ and C#, due to the syntax. This is fine if you don't want to move into them, of course, and I've known many a dedicated VB programmer, but it can make changing languages a tad more difficult. :) As a compromise, I generally recommend C# - the syntax is a tad more difficult than VB.Net, so it isn't as easy, but in return you're learning a syntax that is (basically) common with Java, C++, C, PHP and Perl, and you still get to use the same GUI as with VB.Net. - Bilby (talk) 21:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Visual Basic, as in old-school, Visual Basic 6.0, was pretty straightforward for a new programmer but had some limits. New, VB.NET, is less bounded by what it can do but is really a pain to get into—it is no longer as straightforward and simple as VB6 was. I wouldn't recommend VB.NET as a learning language, personally. It has a much higher learning curve than VB6 had.

If you're interested in an interface, I would personally go with learning PHP or some kind of web scripting. It's much easier to make a simple interface with web languages (because the interface controls are handled by the browser) then it is with a GUI language.

Once you understand the basics of programming, jumping into new languages is not so hard. The first one is the one that gives you real work—just making sense of how to structure a program, and learning how to look up the kinds of solutions you need to continue. Just pick a language, stick with it for a little while, and in not too long you'll be able to pick up all sorts of things if you want. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd second that VB6 was much easier to learn than VB.Net. Thus VB6's reputation as a teaching language doesn't translate well to VB.Net. We used to teach VB6 as a first language to the business students. It was fine, but we had to make the change to VB.Net when Microsoft moved the emphasis over to it, which meant that the students had to learn Object Oriented programming. This made it a much more difficult language, so the question emerged (after teaching it for a couple of years) as to whether or not VB.Net, with the easier syntax but retaining the complex OO elements, had enough of an advantage over Java and C#. The answer was generally no, although I'm aware of other universities which stuck with it. - Bilby (talk) 22:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Much of the decision by a university on a "beginning language" has to do with the nature of the university. I've taught at three very different universities. At a strongly liberal arts one, Java was chosen because it was deemed to be "easy". At a military one, Ada was chosen because many of the programmers will go on to the military and be required to use Ada. At an engineering university, C++ was chosen because it is the base language for most real-world projects. Due to the difficult nature of C++, "beginning" programming is three different classes. One is for people who need to know what programming is, but don't need to know how to program. Another is for people who have never programmed. The third is the actual beginning class that requires you to either know how to program in some language or have taken the pre-beginner course. I personally don't see what is hard about C++. I mentioned that Mumps is the hardest language I've learned. After that, Visual Basic was the hardest. It is so unintuitive that I spent most of my time looking through books and searching the Internet to try and figure out how to do the simplest things. When I found out a proper function name for something, it was simply painful to force myself to use a function name that in no way implied what the function was supposed to do - or often did the exact opposite of what the function name implied it would do. Then, when I complained to VB programmers, they said that it was just my backwards C++ thinking that was causing all the problems. -- kainaw ™ 22:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I like the look of Rebol, which can do the things the OP described with one-line programs. The Rebol article is off-puttingly technical, but see the links to a tutorial and its very short programs at the base of the page. 89.242.213.201 (talk) 00:04, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some programmer-Luddite keeps removing the tutorial and other links from the Rebol page, so here they are: http://www.rebol.com/ http://re-bol.com/rebol.html http://www.rebol.com/what-rebol.html "REBOL rebels against software complexity. Do it in 1MB, not 200MB."78.149.161.55 (talk) 11:45, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want to do some simple stuff, like getting web-pages, read the manpages on wget and curl. That'll probably answer you pretty directly. If you need to do more, grep and, god forbid, perl will stitch those two together. Shadowjams (talk) 09:56, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When I knew nothing about programming I started with HTML. After a year I started with php and css. now 4 years later I am a web developer and can make some pretty optimized sites. If I knew how long and agrivating it would be to learn I would have taken a course. it will come naturally with time142.176.13.22 (talk) 01:35, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

December 29

downloading a video clip from a computer to a FLIP camera

Is it possible to download a video clip from my computer to my FLIP camera? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cgreenwood5 (talk • contribs) 04:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a Flip, but theoretically yes. It would have to be in the right format, which is apparently MP4. "Video Format: H.264 video compression, AAC audio compression, saves as MP4 file" for the Flip ULTRA HD. You might need conversion software if your original video is in MPEG, AVI, WMV or other formats. What does your user manual say? That's always a good place to start. Support site Flip Support --220.101.28.25 (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actual amount of electricity utilized in sleep mode

I just wanted to ask how much electricity is actually utilized when the computer is in sleep mode or when it is switched off or hibernating. Can this portion of electricity be routed through a renewable source of energy. If yes, then what is the technological progress of the same in INDIAProject1985 (talk) 07:23, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of how much electricity it requires, it is possible to generate it with renewable energy. Just because it is possible does not mean it is cost effective. Nothing is keeping you from getting solar panels, wind-powered generators, or even a small hydroelectric dam if you live near a river. It doesn't matter if you are in India or not. If you want a more useful answer, you must refine your question to what you are willing to do. Are you willing to replace your roof with solar panels? Are you willing to put a huge windmill in your backyard? Are you willing to put a nuclear reactor in your basement (yes - many people consider nuclear energy a "renewable" resource)? -- kainaw ™ 08:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are devices that will tell you exactly how much energy a load is using on the electrical outlet. I've found laptops are about 30-80 watts (that could change a lot). Don't know what sleep mode is, but trust it's a lot lower. Shadowjams (talk) 09:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have my meter here to measure at the moment, so this note is going to be very general and you may already know this, but I'll note that a hibernating computer consumes exactly as much electricity as the computer does when it is off, since hibernation just means the computer's state has been saved to disk and then the computer switched itself off. I believe that most computers these days do consume a trickle of electricity while they are ostensibly off, whether it's to monitor a soft power switch or light up an orange LED on the case. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After writing that, I troubled to google the matter, and this Microsoft article, though I think it contains many errors, claims that a hibernating monitor consumes 5 watts and a hibernating computer consumes 2.3 watts, whereas a computer in 'sleep' mode consumes 3.1 watts. (Why the precision? The amount surely varies a ton between computer types.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IT question

please tell me latest techlogy that has come out in 2009 in the field of IT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.80.132 (talk) 14:04, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See this. -- kainaw ™ 15:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How does this happen?

As of right now http://www.wheels24.co.za does not point to the Wheels24 site but instead diverts to a search portal http:// searchportal.information.com/?a_id=86034&domainname=www.wheels24.co.za My question is, how does this situation come about in general? Wheels24 is a large, popular site and is part of the News24 group. Are they simply down for some reason (all the other "24" group sites seem to be up, including www.news24.co.za). Or have they somehow been hijacked? Or have they been careless enough to let their domain registration expire (this sounds unbelievable but has it happened to large corporates before?)? Regards. Zunaid 15:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It points to the right site for me, at the moment. There are a couple of possibilities, though. Do you end up at the searchportal.information.com site whenever you type in a dead domain (e.g. [3])? If so, then that just means Wheels24 was temporality down and your browser or ISP uses that site whenever you put in a bad domain. If not, then it just might have to with their DNS information being either incorrect or tampered with or something along those lines. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:32, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is still pointing to searchportal.com for me as of now. Your fake link leads me to the Firefox "Server not found" standard warning. So 2 new question: why does that specific link redirect to searchportal but not your fake link? And how come the site was up for you but not for me? I also neglected to check earlier but I have done so now: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.wheels24.co.za reports that the site is indeed down. Is it on their side that the page is being redirected to searchportal.com? (Good luck to them getting tech support during Christmas week!) Zunaid 18:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I just clicked your link and did end up at the wheels24 website. I wonder if your ISP's DNS servers are having trouble with it, and are redirecting you to the search portal of their choice as a result of the trouble. Is it possible to try their backup DNS server? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) It points to the right site for me too. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.wheels24.co.za tells me the site is up. Could you tell us, if the problem still exists for you, some details on your ISP and network settings? and your computer? Do you have anti-spyware software? Is it up to date? Could it be a "toolbar" in firefox that just is a hidden addon? I think it could be 1. your computer 2. (less likely) the network system in your building or 3. (least likely) the ISP. Kushal (talk) 18:38, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You obviously have a virus that is redirecting you to that page for ad money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.127 (talk) 19:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly...to answer Kushal...I'm using a MTN 3G USB modem (I'll check at work tomorrow on the corporate LAN if it gives the same issue). I don't have any new add-ons or toolbars installed since last week when everything was working. Question is, how can I fix it if it is my computer that's the problem? Delete the hosts file? When it comes to PC's, networking is really my kryptonite so please explain slowly :P I'm on WinXP, busy running anti-virus and anti-spyware scans right now... Zunaid 21:19, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like the work of malware to me, probably replacing your ISP's DNS settings with the malware's DNS to deliberately send some sites via their paymasters' site in the hope that you will click on something else and earn them a fraction of a cent. Unfortunately, in my recent experience, this type of malware is making increasing use of rootkits, sometimes making it very hard to remove. Astronaut (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I've got the same issue going through our corporate LAN this morning. Any advice as to how to fix it? Zunaid 06:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it's XP, try downloading Hijackthis to take a look at your registry settings. [4] (It's a Trend Micro free product now, so pretty safe BUT be careful when you click the "Fix this" button, best to back up your registry first) Look for entries that mention DNS, particularly entries after the IP address(es) of your correct DNS servers. This is a favourite way to take over (as Astronaut says too), just change the preferred DNS server in the registry. Also, you can find the man page for the "nslookup" command-line utility - look up the host name using your default DNS server, then change over to use (say) register.com's DNS server and see if the host still resolves to the same IP address. Franamax (talk) 07:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For instance, when I run my HijackThis v. 1.98.2, my entry O17 is "HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip...<weird crap>: NameServer = <redacted, but they are my legitimate nameserver addresses>". If you see further NameServer= entries in the listing after the ones you know are right, you have been hijacked. Investigate the IP addresses using whois etc. just to be sure, then delete the bogus entries. (Back up your registry first if you're not sure on this, maybe do one of those "system copy" things too, an emergency recovery CD never hurts) Franamax (talk) 07:41, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys. After running HiJackThis I found a suspicious R1 entry for 196.9.207.23 amongst the list of other corporate LAN-looking stuff. Specifically this entry was in Firefox's Network --> Connection Settings --> "No proxy for:" field. It was absent from Internet Explorer's similar field but I assume it somehow hooked into IE in a different way because I had the same problem in IE. I deleted the entire entry via HiJackThis and re-input the proxy exceptions for the corporate LAN, which has now fixed the problem in both IE and Firefox. I've also run virus and spyware scans which have found nothing suspicious...can something still be lurking on my PC waiting to pounce at the next restart? One last question...if anyone would like to browse to the given IP address, what is at that site? Zunaid 14:42, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It belongs to AfriNIC, which apparently has control over all IP addresses beginning with 41, 196, and 197. Here's WHOIS. Geolocation tells me that the address is served by MTN and located in Sandton, South Africa - a "wealthy suburb of Johannesburg". Do any of those names or locations sound familiar - for example, the place where the site is based? The IP address in question does not host a website and does not respond to an HTTP request. Xenon54 / talk / 15:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oddly, the IP address also doesn't respond to a connection on port 53, which one would expect to happen if it was a DNS redirector. Franamax (talk) 20:04, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yep yep, all very plausible. If you know the geography Sandton is close to Johannesburg which is the commercial capital of the country where the headquarters of all the major companies are. Not a surprise at all that the site is based there. So how come this entry was causing the problem though? Zunaid 17:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Installing XP Pro x64 on a new partition

I want to be able to dual boot Win7 and XP (both x64). I already have Win7 installed on my C drive. I added a new 10 GB partition with the disk management tool in Win7 (D drive), which is where I will install XP. When I boot from the XP disk, I hit a 0x7B BSOD after the setup files load. I looked it up and found this page: 324103. It seems like I'm running into the problem listed under #Device Driver Issues, where I need to install a mass-storage device driver with F6. When I do that, setup tells me that there are no drivers that were loaded automatically or something. According to 314859, I guess that means I need the driver on a floppy. If I am wrong so far let me know.

At this point I'm not exactly sure what I need to do. First of all, I don't have a floppy drive, as it is my laptop. Second of all, I don't really understand where to get the drivers, and what the deal is with the boot disks that are mentioned in that second article. Also, I have no idea how to use the link given in 314062 for the hardware compatibility list. I end up here, then here, which is absolutely no help to me, with what I know. So I just need some advice on where to go from here. I have an Intel Core2 Duo T6500 64bit processor. Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 21:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would go into BIOS and change the HDD access mode from AHCI to IDE. After installation, you can then install the SATA drivers and re-enable AHCI. I'm speaking from experience, by the way.--Drknkn (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I changed it to IDE, and the XP installation was successful. However, I was expecting some screen like this to show up when I boot up, but it just automatically boots up XP. The partition with Win7 is untouched. Did I miss something? I don't see in the boot options in the bios how to change this. Also, could you explain SATA drivers? I'm completely unfamiliar with the term. Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 15:47, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That screen only appears if you install Windows XP first and then Windows 7. Windows XP wrote a new master boot record to your hard drive. If Windows 7 were installed second, then it would install its own boot loader and the master boot record would load it first instead of the XP boot loader.

Did you get your Windows 7 DVD from Microsoft? If so, then you can boot from it and run a tool to repair it. It cannot be a DVD from a computer manufacturer. It must be from Microsoft. If you do not have a DVD from MS, then you can install EasyBCD and repair the boot loader.

Windows XP came out before SATA hard drives were on the market. It was designed to work with IDE drives. All new computers come with SATA hard drives. Windows 7 might work with the access mode set to IDE, by the way. Try it just like that and you might not have to install any SATA drivers.

As for the phrase SATA drivers, all parts in your computer need a driver (a piece of software) to receive commands from Windows. This includes your disk drives.--Drknkn (talk) 16:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, thanks, I'm back on Win7. The repair worked, but it crashed until I switched it back to AHCI. Now, what can I do to force a boot screen, now that Win7 is booting automatically? The repair program didn't recognize XP on D:\, only Win7 on C:\. —Akrabbim^talk 17:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try changing the system configuration (type msconfig in run). The "boot" tab should list available operating systems. If it isn't showing up, then something is wrong. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 17:58, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it isn't there either. Is there a way that I can get it to detect it, or will I have to reinstall XP? If I have to reinstall, how can I get the XP setup to not write a whole new master boot record? —Akrabbim^talk 18:10, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No. You're making progress. Now you just install EasyBCD inside Windows 7 to add XP to the Windows 7's boot list. There's also a command called bcdedit you can use from the command prompt, but EasyBCD is much easier to use.--Drknkn (talk) 18:18, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic, it's working great now. I haven't found the hard drive drivers yet, but I'll use the Seagate support for that. Thanks for the help. Of course, I now know that the program that I had in mind that I needed XP for is completely x64 incompatible, not just Vista/7 incompatible, so I'll have to reinstall with a XP x86. Figures. (:P + XD = XP) —Akrabbim^talk 19:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

December 30

Blackberry PIN

If I know someone's PIN on their Blackberry, is there a way from that I can find out which model of Blackberry they have? Thanks 81.157.54.103 (talk) 00:42, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This link and this link may be of use to you. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 01:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, It was of help. :) 81.157.54.103 (talk) 13:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Connecting an XBOX 360 to the internet (XBOX live)

Hello... My cousin gave me a broken XBOX which I am in the process of sending to Microsoft to repair the three rings of death. When I get it back, I would like to play my XBOX online. What will I need? I don't know much about 'puters or XBOX for that matter, so here is all the info I have... I will gladly answer/research any questions about my set-up and I appreciate everyone who is able to help me out or contribute to this query. I have wireless internet throughout my apartment. As in, my landlord has an open internet connection and allows us (me, my roommate and other tenants) to use the connection. It is password protected, but I have the password. I purchased a wireless-G USB adapter for my computer to connect to the net. I do not pay for the internet so I do not know what HER connection speed is, but its relatively fast. Will I just need to buy the XBOX wireless router? Will I need some other contraption? Or can I do this a cheaper way - if so, where can I buy this online? Will I have to pay for my own internet source?? I'm sorry if I am missing any bullet points, but if there is any information I have not provided, I will be glad to research. Thanks!!!--24.187.98.157 (talk) 01:01, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I know I will need to buy an XBOX live card to connect. --24.187.98.157 (talk) 01:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to that Xbox Live card — it's US$50 per year in the US — you'll need to connect the Xbox to the Internet, either by wire or by wireless. Our article Xbox 360 accessories#Wireless Network Adapter mentions the Microsoft-manufactured adapter that is your easiest solution. You plug it into the Xbox's Ethernet port and configure it with your landlord's password, and you are go. Unfortunately it's US$100 or so which is really expensive. (That article has footnotes to a couple alternatives.) A cheaper alternative is to run an Ethernet cable from your 360 to your PC and, depending on the PC's Windows version, you can set up the PC to "Share Internet connection". The only disadvantage to this is the hassle of configuring your PC; and you need the PC to be on in order to play on Xbox Live. Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Think of your xbox360 as a computer. To have your computer access the internet you either plug a cable in or go wireless with an adapter. same for the 360. In order to play games on xbox live you need to pay for a subscription. If you do not you will still be connected to the internet to get 360 updates and record your acheivements. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.176.13.22 (talk) 01:39, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wireless networking using a USB adapter

In order to get the internet upstairs with the minimum amount of hassle, I am considering getting a USB Wireless adapter similar to this one. The wireless signal from the IEEE 802.11n access point is particularly weak in the bedroom, so rather than hide the USB adapter in a fixed location behind the PC (a desktop), I would like the flexibility to place the adapter elsewhere in the room. Is it possible to use it with a USB extension cable like this one and is there a maximum length of extension beyond which the network connection won't work? Astronaut (talk) 01:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you are plugging into a USB2 port, the distance at which it is supposed to work without any slowdown or signal loss is 7m. Obviously, it can go longer. I saw a page a while back in which a guy claimed to have a usb connection from his basement to his attic without any problem and estimated it to be 120m of twisting and turning around his house. He claimed that he didn't use a repeater (you are supposed to be able to get 30m with 5 repeaters and 6 cables). -- kainaw ™ 02:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you want the least amount of hassle, consider getting a wireless PCI card that you put inside your computer. USB wireless devices are notoriously buggy. Plus, with a PCB in your computer, you can screw off the antenna that would stick out of the back of the PC and screw on a coax cable that you can connect to an antenna in another room. You could screw it onto a Pringles can and point it at the router, for example. If you have to get one of those USB devices, then at least get one with an antenna that you can screw off. You could then hook up a coax cable to an antenna that way.--Drknkn (talk) 08:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We already have a PCI card with an external antenna at the end of a coax cable. It was useless with the old 802.11g access point (dropping the connection every few seconds), and it is just as useless with the new 802.11n access point. The weak signal upstairs was one reason for upgrading to the new access point (the other was the good deal from the ISP). That said, the Pringles can sounds interesting. I remember readin an online article about it somewhere a couple of year ago but have forgotten the details. Do you have a link to a suitable design I could try? Astronaut (talk) 11:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cantenna. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:20, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's also WokFi that does away the with the coax cable/connector stuff. What I did to improve wireless quality in my house is to connect a directional yagi antenna to my router (40NZD, 9dbi, made by TP-Link) and point it to the centre of my house (since the router is at a corner). Seems to work well. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:22, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the original question, yes you can use the USB extension cable with a USB network adapter. The first wireless USB adapter I owned several years ago actually came with such a cable, which allowed me to experiment with the position and orientation of the adapter to get the best reception from my (then) G router located about 20 meters away. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 18:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd go with a PCI card. USB adapter reliability is very poor right now in the market, and I'd wait a bit until manufacturers improve. I have one and it disconnects (by itself) randomly. My PCI based laptop works fine, so its not a router issue. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 19:51, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

E-mailing tips

Is there any way to send e-mail to many receipents, at the same time nobody knows it is sent to others also.The recipient should be at 'TO' field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.138.47 (talk) 05:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Blind carbon copy may be of interest to you. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 05:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But do experiment first with yourself and a trusted recipient or two. Some email clients do Bcc in such a way that it's fairly obvious it's a mass mailing, like sending the mail but leaving the "To:" header blank. Franamax (talk) 07:53, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well if you don't put anything in the To: field then it should be blank... Note that BCC is primarily intended to hide the addresses of recipients, it may also hide the fact that the email was BCCed to the To: and CC: recepients but it's not guaranteed. It's not intended to hide the fact a BCC was sent to the people who are BCCed and is evidentally not even guaranteed to hide the addresses of other people who are BCCed to people who are BCCed (although from my experience it usually does). It's possible some servers may put the BCC recepient into the To: field but this isn't 1 of the ways that is specified as acceptable in the RFC, and I'm not aware of any servers which do this (I'm sure there are some but I don't think they're common). Also look in the article for more. Anyway in reply to the original question, you should also be aware to avoid them being used for spam, some SMTP servers may limit the number of simulataneous recipients. On the same point, you'll want to make sure you have the permission to e-mail each recepient otherwise you might find yourself in trouble with your SMTP service provider and/or the law Nil Einne (talk) 11:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Usually the sender of a BCC'd mailing that is legit puts their own address in the "to" field. E-mails with empty "to" fields often get treated as spam, incidentally. And I really don't think you have to "have the permission to e-mail" each recipient—if you are not a hard-core spammer, you are not going to run into any trouble, legal or otherwise. Even if you are a spammer, the chances of getting prosecuted are tiny. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Mail merge. manya (talk) 10:36, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using Microsoft Word and Outlook, you can create a 'mail merge' document in Word and send it by email. Each individual will get a personalised email. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.113.194.10 (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be so sure. I have reported people who I received spam from before. I know in at least on case the person must have received some sort of a warning from their ISP, since they complained to me when they found out. Nowadays I've signed up for so many things that I usually don't bother since I don't know if I ever signed up for something unless it's obviously spam, e.g. to a message board. However there are almost definitely many other people who do keep track of what they sign up for (or don't sign up for anything) who will report you if they feel your mail service provider or whatever may do something. And if you aren't a hard-core spammer, then there's a good chance they will.

Spam is rather detested and many ISP and mail services providers particularly in the developed world take a rather hard line. Even those which may not care that much themselves, which is likely a minority know that if they get a reputation for not properly dealing with spam they're liable to be blacklisted, some of the blacklists are known for their controversy hardline tactics. E.g. the Spam and Open Relay Blocking System and the non defunct Spam Prevention Early Warning System although I guess the Anonymous Postmaster Early Warning System is similar and DNSBL has some more generic info.

Note a key point here. As with so many things, those who aren't hard core spammers but are simply foolish with their policies are probably at far greater risk of having bad things happening (may be not getting prosecuted but getting a bad reputation & losing their mail service or at least getting warnings). Hard core spammers already know how to get around such things (or rather consider it part of their business) and clearly don't care about their reputation. Also if you're spamming people locally you're likely at a greater risk.

In particular, do not assume that having had contact with someone before means it's okay to spam them (and spam would likely count as any largely unrelated message, particularly if your intending to advertise something), unless they clearly signed up for something it may not be so (as the person who I complained about found out).

And as I hinted at, even if you don't get any warnings etc, many people do detest spammers so it could do rather bad things for your reputation if you come across as one. Also although as I've said prosecutions are probably not that likely, you should take care. Here in NZ for example there's a law requiring much of what I've said and many people do threaten to report those who don't follow it and there have been a small number of prosecutions. Just before the law was starting, I received many e-mails from the businesses who wanted to make sure they obeyed the law. As with many things their focus for those who spam accidentally would probably be education so you most likely won't get prosecuted unless you're a real spammer but receiving a warning from a government department is surely not something many people want... You can see more info on the NZ law here [5]. The OP may be from Nepal who do have some sort of cyberlaw [6] but I'm not sure whether it specifically bans spam or what their enforcement is like.

Obviously if you're just planning to send chain letters to a bunch of your friends, things are fairly different but you should be aware many people find those sort of things annoying too. P.S. Although I concentrated on mail service providers, the websites that are spammed can be at risk as well since some people do block anyone who hosts websites that are spammed.

Nil Einne (talk) 09:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Torrents

OK, I'm new to this so please bear with me =P I just downloaded a "torrent" for a video from some website. Now I have a small file with the .torrents extension. But how do I get the actual thing from that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.129.234.196 (talk) 09:45, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You open it with a program like μTorrent.--Drknkn (talk) 10:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And then you wait for it to download the actual file(s). -- kainaw ™ 15:14, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lost product Key Windows XP Pro

Hi I have found an old copy of Win WP Pro that I had but the product key is missing, is there any way I can find it again, is it stored on the disk anywhere? Thanks. BigDunc 13:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If Windows XP copy in question is installed on the computer, then the answer is yes. The key is stored in the registry, but it is encrypted. Use one of these to find and decrypt the key.

If the copy is not installed, call Microsoft's main support number and ask for a replacement key. They will determine if the copy you have is genuine, then after you pay a small fee the replacement key will be sent. In the US, I believe this number is 1-800-Microsoft; in the UK, it's 0844 800 2400 (5p per minute, 6p "set-up fee"); for other countries, check the website. Xenon54 / talk / 14:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So the key is not stored on the disk? BigDunc 14:13, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe so, because the product key is not tied to a particular disc. Your hardware manufacturer (or Microsoft) ships out eleventy million identical Windows CD's, but each customer gets a unique product key. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ahem... you could always.... google for product Key crackers..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 10:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's true, but they generally won't work with any the more modern service pack updates, Windows Update, etc. So unless you are doing something rather trivial with this (e.g. using it in a VM machine for something small) I wouldn't do that for your primary OS. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can copy the verified key from your old version into the new one. [7]. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 19:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

simultaneously wired and wireless

When I have my laptop at home, I plug it directly into an ethernet cable that goes into my wireless router (I find it is a lot faster using the wired connection than the wireless one), but I leave the wireless network on. The computer knows to use the ethernet as the main connection when it is plugged in. When I am plugged in, my router sends the information to 192.1.1.2 (or something like that), and on wireless it goes to 192.1.1.4.

Here's the odd bit. I was downloading a torrented file the other day, and my router was port forwarding to 192.1.1.4 (wireless), while the main torrent connection was operating out of the ethernet (192.1.1.2). I was sort of surprised by this, because rarely does the ethernet and the wireless connection operate simultaneously, yet it was doing a pretty good job of it.

My question: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to being able to use both connection types on the same machine simultaneously? --Mr.98 (talk) 17:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It could be an advantage if they were going through separate routers. Back in the stone age, the fastest modem I could get was 1200bd. To get a fast connection, I made a box of four 1200bd modems. Each went to a separate phone line (Major drawback - had to get 4 phone numbers from the phone company. Got a good deal: $15 per extra line with no long distance on them). Then, I could dial in each modem separately and get 1200+1200+1200+1200bd. Then, I learned about Amdahl's law. However, you can see that having different sources of network traffic will speed up your connection. Running multiple connections to the same router limits you to the speed of the router. -- kainaw ™ 18:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quick SQL Question

Hi All,

I have a table with the following fields: Refnumber and PostingDate. My problem is that Refnumber has duplicates (1 dup per ref number) with a different PostingDate (difference is just a couple of seconds). What would be the easiest way of returning just the older (based of postdate) refnumbers?

Thanks in advance PrinzPH (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC) EDIT: What I meant to say was most recent, so I guess that means the latest based on postedate[reply]

select refnumber, max(postingdate) from yourtable group by refnumber. -- kainaw ™ 19:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You mean you want all refnumbers with the most recent postingdate? select refnumber from yourtable where postingdate = (select max(postingdate) from yourtable) -- depending on the flavor of SQL, you may need to use "in" instead of "=" and/or name the subquery. -- kainaw ™ 19:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Kainaw! Happy New Year to all! :D PrinzPH (talk) 23:48, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Self install of a cable modem

I am changing my internet service from DSL to cable. The cable company has given me a "do it yourself kit" (basically a splitter and some cable) and also a cable modem. I already own a wireless box for a lap top and I will also have a desk top plugged in. The last time I had cable internet service I had the company come out and install it. So my question is : Will simply hooking everything together be the major part of the project, or will I need to perform any extensive actions within the operating systems of my two computers to get everything configured properly? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks, 10draftsdeep (talk) 21:03, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming your "wireless box" is actually a wireless router, all you need to do is place the cable modem in the same location in the connection chain your DSL modem was originally. So the LAN ethernet output from the cable modem plugs into the WAN ethernet input on your wireless router. You will then probably have to enter the correct username and password in your router's settings to access the cable connection. 61.189.63.130 (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've done this on both side of the Atlantic, and in both cases it has at most required an "ipconfig/release, ipconfig/renew" from the computer (or equivalently, a reboot of my wireless router). In some cases, a CD has come with the modem, but I've never had any use for it. It is often a good idea to connect the computer directly first, using a network cable and skipping the wireless box, and then if that works, insert the wireless box in between. Jørgen (talk) 16:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice! 10draftsdeep (talk) 15:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

****

Follow-Up: Last night I installed the modem to my desktop and everything was working fine...until I tried to get the wireless router working to supply service to my laptop. I could not get the wireless working, so I uninstalled the cable modem software and started over....now I cannot even get my desktop to recognize the modem even after reinstalling the software. Any ideas what i need to do next? I suppose the answer I will get is "call the cable company!" 10draftsdeep (talk) 14:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

December 31

Sending data to a website from within a program.

My son and I are trying to write a complete PC computer game over the week between Xmas and New Year - and we're doing pretty good. I've done almost all of the coding except the high score table, the art is 99% complete and the game is playable & fun.

However, I've run into a problem - we need to store the high-score table on a web site. So I need to figure out how to send the high score data to a web page on a remote computer. I know how to to it under Linux - but I also need to have this work under Windows. So what I want is to be able to have my Windows/C++ program send something like:

 http://www.sjbaker.com/mygame.html?score=1234&player=Steve&securitycode=0x123456

...to the web - where a PHP script on the game's web site can grab it and update an online database that anyone can view in a browser. I know how to do all of the server-side stuff - and I have the string coded up in the game - so all I need to know is how to make an HTTP request from within C++ under Windows. The security code should prevent vandals and cheating (it's a mildly encrypted hash of the score and the player's name).

Is there an easy way to do this in Windows/VisualStudio C++ code?

SteveBaker (talk) 02:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the easiest way is to use ShellExecute with the URL above, but this will open the web browser, and that you do not want. You want the data to be sent in the background. This is not too hard using Windows API. I believe you should use InternetOpen and InternetConnect followed by some other calls to the WinINet functions. (Well, a few years ago I did write a small FTP client using the WinINet API, but I have never used any other "parts" of it.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 02:32, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can try WinINet. Here is a simple example. manya (talk) 03:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The sample example I mentioned above is for sending post request. Since your request is "GET", you can pass second parameter of HttpOpenRequest as null or "GET". If you are interested in writing your own socket code, then you need to connect to the server and once connected send "GET http://www.sjbaker.com/mygame.html?score=1234&player=Steve&securitycode=0x123456 HTTP/1.0" followed by two newline characters. And server will respond "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" if everything is fine. It may be required to send HEADER information also. You need to study HTTP protocol to understand HEADERS. Also, since users may be using proxy servers, you need code to handle that too. Then it becomes complex, and you end up developing your own network library. I think it is best to try out WinINet first, which provides all functionality for calling web server from application. manya (talk) 04:21, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Psst... it sounds like the request you're making should really be a POST, not a GET. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it needs to be cross-platform, the easiest thing will be to either get some library like libcurl or else just write a very simplistic bit of socket code. You could also just include a copy of wget or whatever in the game's Windows distribution. --Sean 14:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would be very fun to try your game! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:05, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

help me

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/sis.html?ssPageName=VINS:SIM&_kw=REMOTE+UNLOCK+CODE+Huawei+E160+E160G+by+IMEI+Number&_fis=1&_id=380187543101&_isid=3&_sibeleafcat=50197

i'm planning to start a remote unlocking service. i'm in Kenya and basically i want modems to be able to support all networks. I was doing some research and currently Ebay seem to giving the cheapest option. i tried Nextgen servers i was recommended by a friend that they offer cheaper rates but from their site they charge nearly 10 times what ebay is charging.. http://www.nextgenserver.com/broadband_dongle_unlock.htm

question--what's the cheapest way to unlock modems? Anybody who's been down this path kindly assist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 08:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You might find some information here BigDunc 13:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

modern trends and technologies in processor

i wand t get information related to modern trends and technologies in processor (including processors used in desktop,laptop,nettop,supercom,pc,servers,custom made,mobile,and other procssors made my intel amd , cyrix etc) with fig.

include time chart of processors
tabulated comparison of technologies used in processors by various manufatures
perfomence facter and grafical represntation
draw backs of each technologies
details regarding forth coming technologies and recherch going on to invent new technologies

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikimon (talk • contribs) 11:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The reference desk volunteers won't do your homework for you. However, you might find the following articles helpful: Microprocessor, VLSI, Intel, AMD, Cyrix and the other articles linked on CPU technologies. You could also follow some of the external links on those articles for more detailed information. Astronaut (talk) 13:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. SteveBaker (talk) 13:11, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

define the scope of it

define the scope of it —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikimon (talk • contribs) 11:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The scope of what? Do you have a question? Astronaut (talk) 13:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Mikmon's keyboard is malfunctioning, and he wants to know the scope of IT. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. SteveBaker (talk) 17:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

computer memory

Until recently I used a computer which was about the best available in the shops when I got it in I think 2003. I was wondering roughly how much RAM that would have on it. Is it possible for a computer of that age to have 2GB?

80.47.223.218 (talk) 13:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you running Windows? If so, right-click on "My Computer" and select "Properties". The dialog box that pops up will tell you how much memory (RAM) is installed. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Win+Pause. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As it happens, I no longer have access to that computer. I thought I had made that clear in the question, but apparently not. 80.47.223.218 (talk) 14:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had a laptop in 2003 with 250MB ram, so a desktop probably had a little more. I'm guessing around 500MB - 1GB —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is very possible, indeed. In fact I think that you very well could put in - say - 8 GB in a very high-end computer. But you need a mainboard able to handle so much memory, and each module needs to be quite large (in GBs). And you would need a 64 bit OS to utilize the memory. But most regular computers, such as the ones found in stores, probably did not have more than around 1 GB at that time. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moore's law applies to RAM densities fairly well - so we would expect RAM sizes to have doubled three times since 2003. On that basis, I'd bet that your PC back then had about 1/8th the amount of RAM of a modern PC. Most off-the-shelf desktop PC's have either 2Gb or 4Gb this year - so 256Mb to 512Mb seems most likely. However, I'm not sure that Moore's law is going to be 100% right in this case. We're currently stuck in an annoying little rut - because Windows users have been so slow to adopt 64 bit technology, (I've been running 64 bit Linux for YEARS) - on 32 bit hardware there is an essentially hard limit of 4Gb for addressable memory - and good reasons (related to how virtual memory is addressed) why extending RAM beyond 2Gb is not as fruitful as you might hope. Had we not been slow in adopting 64 architectures, we'd probably be seeing 'typical' computers having more like 8Gb - and on that basis, I'd probably revise my 2003 estimate to say that you probably had 512Mb and may possibly have had 1Gb if it was a really high end machine. SteveBaker (talk) 17:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SteveBaker is correct here regarding size of available SIMMs, but I was thinking 6 years ago a major limiting factor could have been the high cost compared to now. I remember paying ≈$Aus95 for 64Mb of RAM, ≈$A80 for 128Mb & ≈$A60 for 256Mb over about 12 months! (At that price 2Gb would cost $A480!) Later still, $A130 for 2x512Mb(DDR). Started 1998-99 with 64Mb, then 384Mb, Currently 2.5 Gb! (a few years old, about 40 x more RAM.) It's so cheap that I am using a 1Gb DDR SIMM that someone threw away! (working fine!) Currently 2Gb(DDR2) is only $A65. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 07:21, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I remember very clearly that my computer had 1G in 2004, and 2G was regarded as high end back then (nothing except very specialized software required 2G back in 2003/2004). So it's possible but not likely. Sandman30s (talk) 08:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

rss

I need a simple program that can scan an rss feed for a keyword, and only alert if that keyword is found. (currently all the ones I've tried have alerted any update and don't have keyword scanner.) Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to use the original feed as input to something like Yahoo! Pipes, configure the pipe to do the keyword filtering, and subscribe to the pipe's output in your RSS reader. -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, yahoo pipes would be ideal for this. You don't even need to know any programming. It will be simple: Input Feed ==> Operations:Filter ==> Output. Then you can subscribe to that output as an RSS feed yourself, or you can set it up to do email or even text message alerts. Shadowjams (talk) 00:37, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feedreader is good, it allows creation of "smartfeeds" that only alert when certain conditions are met —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kv7sW9bIr8 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a second hard drive to Win XP computer, don't want another drive letter.

Is it possible to add a second physical hard drive to be considered a continuation of the first one? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no. You can add the second disk as a Volume Mount Point so that it maps to a directory (i.e. C:\NewDisk is your new disk and anything stored in that directory or beneath it is on the new disk), but it's not possible to just add it to your drives free space. If your motherboard supports it then you might be able to create a RAID-0 volume across both disks which would turn both disks into one massive disk, however this would involve wiping all the data already on the disk as well as RAID-0 has major redundancy issues (if either disk fails, general speaking you lose everything). Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 19:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I read that you can create spanned volumes inside Windows. I don't think you need to have a RAID card or RAID-capable mobo for spanned volumes. I think it fills up the first disk, then the second disk, and treats them as one. It's not striped like a RAID-0 or mirrored like RAID-1. You use the disk-management snap in. Right-click on My Computer and go to Manage --> Disk Management.--Drknkn (talk) 00:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure you're talking about the Logical Disk Manager.Indeterminate (talk) 02:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah ... What else would I be talking about?--Drknkn (talk) 02:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Converting .flv files to .avi

I got a new MP3 player for Christmas, and it wants its video files to be in .avi format. All of the videos I have stored on my computer are in .flv format (I play them on the PC with Real Player). What free conversion program is there available to convert .flv files to .avi? The MP3 player came with a conversion program, but, of all of the file formats that it will convert, .flv is not one of them. Woogee (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SUPER is pretty good at this kind of thing. Unfortunately the website is ridiculously, purposefully impossible to navigate, so download it here instead. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some more programs; ffmpeg, mencoder, handbrake (before version 0.9.4), avidemux --kv7sW9bIr8 (talk) 10:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Component HD to USB converter?

I'm trying to record some game footage from PS3/XBOX360. I've been looking for a device that can take Component HD and record the footage onto a computer as I play. I can't seem to find any current products that can do this. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can connect the output of the game console to a DVD recorder, and make a DVD of the game. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:49, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He requested HD, though. This PC HDMI capture card appears to be worth looking at, though it uses an HDMI cable and not component cables. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I've seen the HDMI ones. But I need component. I swear I saw a USB product marketed specifically for videogame console users. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 21:21, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It was probably not HD, and whether or not it was, I expect the quality to be crap — USB 2.0 can't support anywhere near the bandwidth needed to pipe an HD video signal, meaning the device itself is doing video compression, of one sort or another, before any of the 'signal' gets to your PC. My expectations are low. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:44, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the OP is thinking of the Hauppauge HD PVR. It does do compression but uses H.264 and from the little I've heard does have decent quality. The maximum bitrate is evidentally 13.5mbps which may seem low compared to BluRays but isn't bad comparing to broadcast TV for example which achieves decent quality or even some of the websources you can get. (In any case, aren't people in the US usually limited to some crappy MPEG2 HDTV with not much better bitrate then most other places are using for their H.264 HD broadcasts?) Note that it is limited to a maximum of 1080i since it's primarily intended to capture HD video from STBs which are usually limited to 1080i. You can get some samples here [8] and [9] not from game consoles but still should give you an idea of what to expect. I'm pretty sure I came across some others somewhere once I suspect there's a lot out there. You may want to try a more specific place like AVS Forum, AV Forum and may be even something like Green Button or Doom9 or the MythTV forums if you want more samples and/or to see how it works with consoles and/or if you still think there's something else out there (I don't think so since if you search you'll find many discussions most only talk about the HD PVR and or the BlackMagic HDMI thing). You can also do a simple search for something like Bing 'record component hd' Google 'record component hd' or Bing 'component hd capture' Google 'component hd capture' which easily (big HINT, HINT to the OP here) finds the HD PVR but does not find anything else that I've noticed. (At least nothing of interest to the ordinary consumer.) Nil Einne (talk) 09:01, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

January 1

LaTeX Graphics cut off at the side of the page

Hi all,

I'm trying to format a piece of coursework in latex, using MacTeX(TeXshop), and I have the following code and image: (I think it would be a breach of my plagiarism declaration to upload the whole document, so here's the start of the page and the offending bit of code in question, with a printscreen (since I don't know what's relevant):

\documentclass[12pt]{amsart} \usepackage{geometry} \geometry{letterpaper} %\geometry{landscape} %\usepackage[parfill]{parskip} \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{epstopdf} \DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png} \usepackage{float} \title{...} \begin{document} \maketitle

...

\begin{figure}[H] \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=10in]{graph1} \end{center} \end{figure}

Now I was wondering if anyone could help me get the rest of my graph onto the page! I don't care what the code for it looks like, since I'm the only one seeing it, but I'm fairly sure that graph isn't actually centered, since I don't think it was so wide it'd be that far off the page, and I really can't afford to make it much smaller! (I'd really prefer it stay on this same page as the table above though, if possible). Is there any way I can shift it leftwards so it all fits on one page? I may have to redo the graph, but it should be the same size so that won't be a problem hopefully.

Many thanks, Spamalert101 (talk) 00:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is a long while since I tried any LaTeX. There is plenty of documentation on the LaTeX homepage. In particular, I think you should take a look at this PDF about graphics. However, I did notice you appear to set the papersize to "letter" and the width of your image to 10 inches (which is too wide for letter paper), while the line to set landscape paper is commented out. Maybe you could try:

\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{graph1}

Astronaut (talk) 02:09, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Make that \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{graph1}. Another possible problem is that your PDF original may not be cropped well, and may have too much white space on either or both sides. Use a PDF tool to recrop it. Preview can do this (Activate the select tool, select the right area, then Edit->Copy and File->New from Clipboard), or get Skim. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Simpson Animation

In wich software is "The Simpsons" made in? --81.227.69.141 (talk) 01:03, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A quick google search got this as one of the first results. If you are referring to the movie, this article and this article will probably be of interest to you. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 05:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

antivirus

I have a program scheduled to start with windows task scheduler. When I run the program right now it works fine, with no problems whatsoever, but come morning after the scheduled was supposed to happen, I find that avira anti-virus has blocked it from starting and is awaiting me to decide if I should let it start or block the process. Obviously this is extremely frustrating. I've tried adding exceptions to avira anti-virus but it only allows you to exempt one file at a time, and there are literally thousands of files in this program. What do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 10:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

disable the firewall on that security program and use windows 142.176.13.22 (talk) 00:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am using windows, and what does the firewall have to do with a virus scanner making false detections on local files?

processors

modern trends and technologies in processor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.88.143 (talk) 12:34, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This question is way too vague for anyone here to begin to answer it. It does sound like a homework question; Wikipedia's Reference Desks will not do your homework for you. Xenon54 / talk / 14:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, we are not a search engine. Technically, I'm not so sure. The Central Processing Unit article may be of interest to you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Norton Internet Security

Does any one know if this works at all once your subscription is up? I have never paid for Norton but most computers come with a free trial. A computer I bought 2 years ago, so maybe using version 2008, came with it. The free trial is long gone and I can not update it but the firewall and virus scans still work. With a computer I just bought 30+ days ago, it seems as if the software does nothing at all now that my free trial is up. I can not figure out how to do anything at least, so I just assume I can not. Does any one know more about this? I read the Wiki article on the software mostly and looked around on Norton's website a bit but I find nothing about what happens when the free trial is up. Thanks. StatisticsMan (talk) 14:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the subscription only entitles you to receive updates. You can use the program if you don't have a subscription, but it will use the last definitions before the subscription expired. If it's newly installed, then obviously it won't work at all, as there are no definitions to go by.

I assume you know that it's a bad idea to not run Windows without antivirus. There are free programs out there (Avast!, Microsoft Security Essentials and Clam Antivirus are examples) that are as good as - or better than - paid programs, so if you don't want to pay for antivirus, you don't have to. Just be prepared to deal with worse support and, in some cases, slower updates than a paid program. Xenon54 / talk / 14:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm saying is that's how it used to be. When my subscription ran out, I could still use the program. I could open it and run a scan and I can turn on the Norton firewall and change settings and lots of other things. But, I could not update the definitions and that's about all the expiration meant. But, with this newer version, I open the program and there is nothing at all that I can do except "Subscribe now" and a few things like "Leave Feedback". I have no option of running a scan and I can not change settings. As far as the program itself, I seem to be able to do nothing. Also, the day it expired, I got a message in the lower right hand corner that said the firewall was turned off and such things. So, it seems to me that the program does nothing at all now except bother me and tell me to subscribe, but I want to know for sure.

Yes, I know I should use virus protection... sort of. Honestly, the computer I have had for over 2 years has never had a virus. The worst thing I have ever found was a tracking cookie. And, virus software slows down the computer at all times (the Wiki article says the newest version of Norton makes everything take 5% longer and that is an improvement over previous versions). So, I have a slower computer 100% of the time and I have been protected from nothing because if you don't go to weird websites and open obviously dumb emails (which I don't even get any way), then you probably won't get a virus. I still use AVG Free just in case and have Windows firewall turned on, but the point I am making here is anti-virus software may not be as important as people make it out to be if you're not an idiot and the costs of it probably outweight the benefits most of the time. By costs, I mean both the money and the slowing down of your computer. I would certainly never pay for such a thing. StatisticsMan (talk) 16:01, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is certainly no reason to pay for it. You should probably have it if you have a Windows machine, even if you are savvy about such things—there are a lot of ways to get Windows viruses other than just downloading and running bad content. "If you're not an idiot" it's easy to avoid most of them but most of us aren't quite as clear as to whether we're computer idiots or not until it is too late. ;-) Most dangerous are people who don't think they're idiots but know a lot less than they think they do! So having AV is probably a good idea, as "idiot insurance." But AVG Free seems to be about as good as anything for-pay. So why pay? --Mr.98 (talk) 16:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, I agree. The fact is, no one is 100% safe and it'd be a huge pain if I lost everything. I have my files backed up but even if I just had to reinstall all my programs and uninstall all the stuff that comes on the computer when you get it that is not useful, that'd take hours and hours and I'd hate that. StatisticsMan (talk) 18:20, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this hits on a key point: a rigorous backup regime is probably better security than a rigorous anti-virus regime. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that a mirror backup which backs up all the sectors of your hard disk will avoid the problem of having to waste a day reinstalling everything. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:38, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

EMI shield needed for installing internal HD in external case?

I recently upgraded my MacBook's 2.5" SATA internal hard drive. During installation, I was surprised to learn that I needed to take the EMI shield (which I didn't know existed) from my old drive and put it on my new drive. Now I want to put my old drive in a cheap external enclosure I bought off eBay. Do I need a new EMI shield for that? This Lifehacker article doesn't mention it, but I'm worried that it might be assumed. Thanks! --Allen (talk) 17:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of having to do this, no. Presumably it's to avoid interference with some part of the Macbook's motherboard, which won't be an issue for you because the external enclosure will be far from the motherboard. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ebay

i want to buy this gadget. http://www.cellcorner.com/xshp/unlock-phone-codes/data-card-unlocker-option-merlin-html... On ebay it's almost 100 dollars cheaper but i hear i can easily get ripped off . who knows the cheapest place to buy the unlocker - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 20:54, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In general on ebay, if you buy it from someone who has high seller ratings, you are probably going to be OK. The reason for this is that high seller ratings are hard to come by legitimately, and it only takes a few complaints to sink you. Now the only seller I see on ebay selling this cheaper is a "top rated seller" with over 500 reviews, 100% positive. That guy's probably not going to rip you off—he has put a lot of time into looking legit (especially since he works out of Hong Kong and most Americans are going to have their "scam alert" visors on when they see foreign sellers). So if it were me, I'd probably go with the ebay guy, knowing that since it is HK it will take forever to arrive, though. (I've ordered a lot of cheap stuff from HK before. It arrives, but it is very slow, if you are in the US, anyway.) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:10, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although - [10] (check the alt text)--Jac16888 ^Talk 22:12, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

January 2

Facebook and private friends lists, how?

I've noticed some people on Facebook have their friend list only available to people they know. How is this done? In the profile and privacy settings there's many things you can make public or private, but the friends list isn't listed as one of them. There must be some way to do this. Squidfryerchef (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Go to your facebook public page by clicking your name at the top of the facebook website, click on the pencil icon on your friend box and use the options there to restrict its display. Nanonic (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That pencil icon's the sort of thing one might look at a thousand times without wondering what it does. Squidfryerchef (talk) 03:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

web hosting?

I'm afraid I don't understand what Web hosting is from the article, and it isn't referenced, so whatever that says might not even be accurate. I'm wondering if someone can please explain what its qualifications are, or perhaps direct me to a better source? Thank you.--Neptunerover (talk) 00:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. A "web hosting service" is a service that runs a web server that is connected to the internet. Every site you visit on the internet is "hosted" somewhere. Is there a more specific piece that maybe you're referring to? Shadowjams (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whenever you load a web site in your browser, your computer sends a signal that says, "hey, send me this web page." In amazing quickness, it makes its way across the country or globe or whatever to another computer that says, "okay, here it is," and sends the data along. That computer that sends you the page is the server, and it hosts the page. Now, you can host a website from your own computer—your computer can be the one that other computers talk to when they want websites—but it requires you to have the computer running 24/7, and can use up a lot of bandwidth, and can be a pain to manage. But you can do it—you can be your own "web host". But more often people rent space on dedicated computers that are set up to do nothing other than host websites. This is a web hosting service. You pay them money (though some are free), and they make sure that when someone says, "hey, I want your web page," they get it. Does that make sense? If not, please specify what is confusing for you. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Working with JLabels

Hello! In Java, I want to display a vertical list of JLabels in a JScrollPane. All the JLabels contain different amounts of text (from a few characters to several sentences). I want to set all the JLabels to have the same width, but variable height, so that they are just tall enough to fit in their rows of text. Could someone please give me some tips or some example code for how to do this? I've been trying BoxLayout, but what's problematic is for the JLabel's setPreferredSize() method, I can't just specify a width, and I can't be sure of the height. Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 02:04, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

World's Sillest CSS question

Hello!

I'm trying to write a simple table in CSS for my girlfriend's blogger page. But its driving me nuts! It keeps randomly "stepping down" certain div elements, especially in the first row.

The code itself seems to work independently if i test it in IE or firefox, but when I put into blogger it goes all nuts. The first row of elements will "step down" as if there's an imaginary line break after each element. Then, after the first row, everything is in perfect alignment.

If I put in a Clear:both command on the second element, it will shift everybox after the first one down a full-sized row and then the table will be perfectly aligned (Except the first box will be alone on the top). Display inline doesnt do anything.

Honestly, I'm going nuts doing this. Please help.

Here is the code:

<div style="width:495px; " align="center">
<div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;">
</div><div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;">
</div>
<div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;">
</div><div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;">
</div>
<div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;">
</div><div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;">
</div>
<div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;">
</div><div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;">
</div>
</div>

Thanks for your help.... I'm desperate!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cacofonie (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)) 03:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've actually uploaded a picture of what it renders as here.

--Cacofonie (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]