Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

January 30

Cannot delete user accounts

I'm trying to delete a user account on Windows XP, but each time I click on the "Delete Account" button, the program freezes, I have to end the process, and as a result the account is never deleted. What do I do about this? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I hate it when I am told to try this, but without knowledge of any known bugs in this area, I have to suggest re-booting the PC. In other words, shut it down and turn it OFF.(maybe even at the power point) Wait a minute, turn it on and try gain. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 04:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You can try removing it from the command line. For example, simply typing net user bob /delete will delete the account named bob. -^Avicenna_sis @@09:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

All I get is: NET USER

             
[username [password: *] [options]] [/DOMAIN] 
              username {password: *} /ADD [options] [/DOMAIN]
              username [/DELETE] [/DOMAIN]
 

And the account isn't password protected. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, never mind the above, I found a way to delete the account through Computer Management with no problem, but thanks for the suggestions anyway. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Java bytecode vs. machine bytecode

I've always heard that compiled-then-interpreted languages like Java run slower than machine code, but I've never heard by how much. I know it probably depends on many factors, but I'm just interested in an estimate of how many times faster machine language would perform a task, say, repeated manipulation of a large text file, over Java. Does using the Java Native Interface to do work-intensive operations make a big difference, or to truly utilize the sped-up benefits of machine code, do you have to avoid a Java implementation altogether? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The traditional rule of thumb was that a bytecode interpreter cost you a factor-of-ten slowdown. But if the bottleneck is the network or the disk rather than the CPU then using bytecode makes no difference, and if the bottleneck is loading or caching code (which it actually can be in some large applications) then bytecode may be faster than native code because it tends to be more compact.

In any case, Java bytecode is usually compiled (JITted) to native code before being run these days, though possibly with less aggressive optimization than modern C++ compilers employ. There are also compilers that compile Java directly to native code, like gcj, which uses the same optimizing backend as gcc. I think performance problems with Java have less to do with the bytecode than with features of the language itself, like those I mentioned here. -- BenRG (talk) 06:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

As always, you have to benchmark in order to be sure of a particular speedup or slowdown - and it is highly situation-dependent. I can't tell you how many "super-optimized" FORTRAN codes I've seen that used unbuffered disk I/O. This particular detail, which entails less than a half of a line of Java code, could give break the execution bottleneck of a huge class of computer programs. But if you are comparing direct implementations and execution time of native code vs. Java bytecode that are otherwise implementing identical operations, the native code will mostly execute faster. Nowadays, even this is not necessarily accurate - more instructions is not equivalent to longer execute time, because the CPU can do intelligent prefetching and branch prediction if the instructions are well-ordered; various instructions and operations of the x86 pipeline have different execution times; and as always, memory locality and cache performance will dramatically affect execution - probably more so than instruction count. So, I'd go for a compiler that is cache-aware, and a language which permits the user to ignore those details and let the compiler optimize them. Lately I've been mixing FORTRAN90, C, and Java with JNI. All I can say is, I wish the F90 would disappear. (Disappear__(), rather). I'm unconvinced by my benchmarks that it provides a comparative speedup at all. Nimur (talk) 18:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

As to "possibly with less aggressive optimization than modern C++ compilers employ", Sun's Java compiler, called HotSpot, is a very aggressive modern optimizing compiler. Java code routinely runs at speeds comparable to statically compiled languages - sometimes a few percent slower, sometimes a few percent faster (artificial benchmarks will inflate to NN% slower to NN% faster). JIT compilation really works; writing out machine code to a disk file before executing it does not make it faster!

Static compilers like gcj typically produce less performant code as they can't do things like inline most methods -- rather an important optimization in object oriented code with many small methods. Dynamic compilers can do that, giving HotSpot an edge over static Java compilers as well as statically compiled other languages. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 04:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that bytecode makes Java slower. Any given optimizing backend will produce pretty much the same machine code from bytecode as from the source code "directly". But when you're JITting, the compilation time counts as part of the run time, which makes some expensive optimizations less desirable. That's why I thought that JITters tended to dial down the optimization a bit. I know there's academic research on deciding (quickly!) which methods are likely to benefit from extra optimization, but I don't know what the commonly used VMs actually do.

JITters benefit from having access to the whole program and to runtime call traces, but so do modern C++ compilers. Since VS.NET (2002), Microsoft C++ has supported link-time code generation, in which the .obj files contain not machine code but a serialized intermediate representation—bytecode!—which is then optimized at the whole-program level. Microsoft C++ also supports profile-guided optimization. Intel C++ has supported whole-program optimization for even longer. I don't know the status of whole-program optimization in gcc. I think it has been delayed by licensing/political problems: defining an on-disk format for the intermediate code makes it possible for third parties to add passes to the compiler that don't fall under the GPL. I would expect that to hurt Java more than C++, because in C++ the functions most suitable for inlining are often placed in header files where they're available for cross-module inlining even when separately compiling. -- BenRG (talk) 09:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

(addendum) One factor that isn't stated often enough is that java (and many others) do more error checking a runtime than C - (of course you really should know how big your arrays are anyway..) - this puts most languages at a disadvantage in the computer language benchmarks game with respect to C (OCAML allegedly also does well).87.102.67.84 (talk) 09:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, all, for the interesting and thorough information!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 17:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Getting Office 2007 Student on my eeepc

Hey all. I recently bought (well, won actually) an Asus eeepc, which, as you will know, does not have a CD/DVD drive. I'm looking to buy a copy of Office 2007 Student edition to put onto it, but I'm worried that I'll just get a disk through the post. On the other hand, it came pre-installed with a trial edition - can I just buy a licence key somewhere online? What's the easiest way of doing this? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 11:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Upon further research (putting my problem into words helped), I think it may come down to cost. I live in the UK, and can get a legit copy presumably on disc for £36 (approx $57) thanks to an RM/Windows partnership thing. Download sources seem vastly more expensive e.g. $150. Maybe I should just go ask the £36 source about getting a download version... - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 11:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I must be going mad. Surely I can just buy the CD/DVD version, look at the packaging, grab the licence key and chuck it into my trial? Yes, that sounds sensible. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 11:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You can only do that with the same EXACT version of office that the trial is (I believe it should be Home and Student? I'm typing on an eeePC right now.) If you get a Basic or Ultimate key, it will not plug in. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 23:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

If it comes on a CD, just make an image file on a computer with a CD drive, copy the image file to usb drive then on your ASUS Eee PC mount it with magic disk or similar software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kv7sW9bIr8 (talk • contribs) 12:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

In Australia, I recall seeing a version that actually came on a thumbdrive! (My memory may need defragging! ;-) ) Otherwise an external USB DVD drive? The Student version DVD was available for A$99. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 12:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

MHTML VS HTML

When I save a web page, I have the option to save as normal html with images etc in a separate folder, or save as a single mhtml file. If I'm saving thousands of web pages, which is the better option for long term storage, viewing, searching etc etc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.14 (talk) 12:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that a MHTML file is much more convinient. Then you get one file for the entire web page. I would definitely use this format if I were to save and archive a large number of web pages. But I suppose that the compatibility is slightly better for HTML + folder of images; I do not know if all major browsers can read .mhtml files. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Not all can, but MHTML indicates that the big ones (Firefox, IE) can. I don't think it really matters either way. The upside of MHTML is that it results in fewer files to keep track of. But that's it. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:57, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

CSS question

I'm trying to whip myself up a simplified speed-dial type page. Using CSS, is there a simple way I can divide the window into four quadrants, with text centered inside each, both horizontally and vertically? I could try positioning text links, but I want the entire upper-right area to serve as a link, the lower-right area to serve as a link, etc -- the entire area, not just the text. I know I described it poorly, but yeah -- is there a way to do that using plain CSS? 202.10.95.36 (talk) 15:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Here is kind of a crude way. The difficulty (and crudeness) comes from the browser trying to figure out whether you've hit the limit for needing a scrollbar or not. (You could put this off if you had this code launched by Javascript in a window with no scrollbars.) This also kind of breaks official HTML DOM order—you aren't supposed to put DIVs inside of A HREFs, I don't think, even though it works (and is the only solution for certain types of things, unless you want to use javascript OnClick's, which I think are worse).

<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

.box {
	text-align: center;
	height: 49.9%;
	width: 49.9%;
	vertical-align: middle;
}

#topleft {
	border: 1px solid blue;
	position: absolute;
}

#topright {
	border: 1px solid red;
	position: absolute;
	left: 50%;
}

#bottomleft {
	border: 1px solid green;
	position: absolute;
	top: 50%;
}

#bottomright {
	border: 1px solid yellow;
	position: absolute;
	left: 50%;
	top: 50%;
}

.innertext {
	position: absolute; 
	top: 50%;
	width: 100%;
	text-align: center;
}

a:hover .box {
	background-color: silver;
	color: white;
}

a:link {
	text-decoration: none;
}

//-->
</style>
</head>
<body>

<div id="holder">
	<a href="#"><div class="box" id="topleft"><div class="innertext">topleft</div></div></a>
	<a href="#"><div class="box" id="topright"><div class="innertext">topright</div></div></a>
	<a href="#"><div class="box" id="bottomleft"><div class="innertext">bottomleft</div></div></a>
	<a href="#"><div class="box" id="bottomright"><div class="innertext">bottomright</div></div></a>
</div>

</body>
</html>

Hope that helps. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The big problem right now is that CSS doesn't properly support vertical centering. If you omit the requirement for vertical centering, just make four divs. Make each one 50% height and 50% width in CSS. Set position to absolute. Set left and top for them using 0% and 50% as necessary. Set text-alignment to center to center vertically inside the div. For vertical alignment, you have to place a div inside each div. Then, set the top and bottom margin to auto. Then, hope that the user isn't using an old version of IE. Then, hope that new versions of IE don't break all the code you just spent days working on. Then, give up on CSS and just use a table with heigh/width at 100% and 4 data cells. -- kainaw™ 21:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

http://reisio.com/temp/speed-dial.html
This will work in all relevant browsers, uses standardized code, and is semantically correct. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:55, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

how does an Intel Atom compare to an old Pentium III?

I can't for the life of me seem to get even the performance out of this netbook that I had on my old Pentium III, so my question is:

• how does an Intel Atom N280 @1.66 GHz compare with a Pentiumn III @ 999 MHz in terms of performance?

Thanks. 84.153.221.224 (talk) 18:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What performance do you mean? For your reference, here's the direct specs for N280 and Pentium 3. Most of the way through, the Atom is at or above the specification for a Pentium 3. Perhaps the performance bottleneck is somewhere else (e.g. a slower hard-disk, or comparing wireless network to wired network?) It seems unlikely that the netbook has less RAM than the original P3 computer, but this could also contribute to performance issues. Perhaps you had a better graphics card in your previous computer - netbooks tend to have flaky, bottom-of-the-barrel graphics chips because they are intended only for 2D graphics and "web surfing". Finally, check if SpeedStep is enabled - the Atom may be scaling back its performance intentionally in order to preserve battery life. You can disable that option in the power management control interface. In closing, I would just ask that you perform a side-by-side comparison to verify your claim - a lot of performance issues are subject to user-bias. If you actually measure load or execution times with a stopwatch, do you actually see that the P3 is outperforming your Atom N280? Nimur (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I do mean ACTUAL processing performance. I heard like fourth-hand that the Atom architecture is about as well-performing as a celeron at half the speed. Now, is a Pentium III @ 999 MHz markedly better than a celeron at 833 MhZ (half of 1.66 GHz)? Was what I heard even correct? Thanks for anyhting like that you might know, I'd hate to actually have to go through the trouble of doing a benchmark myself... 84.153.221.224 (talk) 18:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

They probably meant an Atom at 1.66 GHz is comparable to a Celeron (the original?) at 3.32 GHz, which seems plausible to me. -- BenRG (talk) 08:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There's some benchmarks here http://www.cpubenchmark.net/low_end_cpus.html

• Atom 280 @ 1.6GHz scores 316

There's so many pentium III's I don't know which to choose - there's Pentium III mobile @ ~1GHz scoring 193 up to about 228 . Higher figures are better. - it's not clear how they make the numbers - so I'm not sure if double = twice as fast..87.102.67.84 (talk) 20:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh - your atom is dual threaded - I assume the old pentium was single core - for some applications the threading doesn't work very well - ie CPU activity doesn't get above 50-70% - if this is the case then this may cause the pentium III to appear better. Try a comparison in the task managers - and see if this is the case.87.102.67.84 (talk) 20:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A dual-core CPU may peg at 50% instead of 100%, but a single-core hyperthreaded CPU like the Atom N280 can only peg at 100%. If the CPU usage is less than that then the CPU is not the bottleneck. -- BenRG (talk) 08:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Is the N270 same as the N280? On a N270 I've seen various applications (eg ffmpeg) top out at 50% - opening a second instance increases this to 100% - As I understand it the atoms use hyperthreading to present 2 virtual cores to the machine.? Also the likely other factors preventing cpu over 50% include memory bandwith as well for anything with more than 1 (virtual) core?87.102.67.84 (talk) 09:04, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, admittedly my claim was not based on experience. Now that I think about it, a hyperthreaded CPU might well peg at 50% depending on how the OS measures things. But it's not actually half-idle in that situation like a dual-core CPU running a single execution thread. -- BenRG (talk) 09:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Task manager isn't the best measuring stick. For a simple interpreted 'round robin' program a single instance takes 60s, two instances take ~85s each, beyond that (3 or 4 instance) the average times increase (slightly better than) roughly linearly with number (~10% base load) (ie as expected).

So the hyperthreading works ok - but might be a reason why single threaded programs (1 of) make the atoms seem slow compared to an old pentium III.87.102.67.84 (talk) 10:55, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I remember similar complaints when the first core 2 duo's came out (@1.8 to 2.6GHz) - that they weren't as fast as a proper desktop pentium @+3GHz (despite being intrinsically faster in general) - nowadays standard core 2 duo parts run between 2.2 and 33 GHz so even applications that don't take advantage of the extra core work just as well or better.87.102.67.84 (talk) 11:03, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

This site is good in that it provides individual benchmark data (and a lot of it) - if you look closely you can see the effects of cache, processor speed, pipeline, and general architecture by comparing the individually listed benchmarks. This http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/cpuspeed.htm is the best way in. You can get classic benchmarks to run as well from the same site if you wish87.102.67.84 (talk) 20:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

some of you said you didn't know which Pentium to compare with: it was a non-mobile normal Pentium III @ 933 MhZ (I had misremembered the 999 MHz). Now, that PIII scores 228 compare with my netbook's Atom at 316. Should be about a 38% speed improvement. Far from it. This thing is way, way, way slower.

There are two HUGE differences I can think of to explain this:\ 1) this is running Windows 7 whereas the PIII was running Windows 2000. 2) this thing has a Mobile Intel 945 Express Graphics Card, versus a dedicated NVidia in the old PIII desktop. Now this 945 Express is such a piece of junk, it's depressing. can anyone find benchmarks comparing this mobile graphics chip to old real graphics cards?

But this netbook is realy awful. It can't even play an MP3 while I browse without sometimes getting huge stuttering (I mean about 1000 milliseconds of it - that's 1 second of awful screeching) and other incredibly ugly artifacts. It's a total piece of shit! 84.153.221.224 (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The 945 is about as low as you can go nowadays - but people have still compared it's performance with other things - http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHNG_en-GBGB363GB363&q=intel+945+graphics+benchmark&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= it'll run Neverwinter Nights (medium). However you shouldn't be getting stuttering on mp3 no matter what.. Might be something wrong - (or maybe you have something like norton antivirus installed or some other performance hog). What does windows task manager tell you? I'm not sure about win7 but it might be a problem if you try to run the full aero thing. or maybe flash on browser sites is killing it? A usual atom+945 can just about do 720p video and doesn't have a problem with mp3 at all. Here's two of many places you can find 945 vs other video card numbers [1] [2] ~85fps on Quake3 (high).87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:31, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Increasing the program priority of the mp3 program might fix it - all (single core) cpus will peak briefly to 100% utilisation when opening a web page - just right click on the process and select, not sure how or if this makes it permanently higher priority. If that helps there are ways to make the priority permanently increase.87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:45, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The same site as before has a big list of video cards http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php 87.102.67.84 (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Another possible explanation (for audio problems) in win7 drivers - this page http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-xp,2339.html from a while ago suggests issues - I know that XP is fine on notebooks. New audio drivers?87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

AnandTech compared Atom N270 with Pentium M (see [[3]]) and concluded that depending on task, the Atom is equivalent to a Pentium M at 800 to 1200 MHz. Atom N280 is a more advanced variant of a N270 and a Pentium M is a further developed version of Pentium III. Thus, a Pentium III at 999 MHz should be even at its best equivalent to an Atom N280, and more often slower. The conclusion is that something is probably wrong with your Atom system. Is there any chance that it has a solid state disk? Bad performance of budget SSD's was an industry-wide problem until very recently, and stuttering is a possible symptom. 85.156.64.233 (talk) 21:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ubuntu Dual Boot

I have an HP Mini 1000, Running Windows XP Home Edition. I have 3.63 GB of free disk space, and I'm not sure how much RAM I have. I want to dual boot it with Ubuntu 9.10. This will be the first time I have ever tried something like this, and need help. Thanks. MMS2013 19:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• 3.63 GB disk space may not be enough; even wubi requires ~5GB. ----Zvn (talk) 19:57, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No, you certainly don't have enough diskspace. The system requirements lists 4 GB for "bare minimum" operation and 8 GB for comfortable operation. The installer should allow you to resize your Windows partition if it has a lot of space that you aren't using. Just make sure you shut down Windows properly before fiddling with its partition, otherwise Ubuntu will refuse to touch it. Consider using Xubuntu (1.5 GB minimum, 6 GB recommended) or, if applicable, Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Xenon54 / talk / 20:05, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

And if you're not set on Ubuntu, there are a number of low-diskspace linuxes, such as Damn small linux and Puppy linux. See Mini Linux for more (or List of Linux distributions). However, depending on which one you choose, it may have less user-friendliness/community support than Ubuntu. -- 174.21.224.109 (talk) 20:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It might be a bad idea to fill your free disk space with another OS - where would XP put new programs, documents, photos, etc.? Astronaut (talk) 13:57, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It might be prudent to ask yourself whether you really really really need two OSes. I actually have Zenwalk and XP, but don't really use XP, because, y'know... ;) --Ouro (blah blah) 08:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There is something you can do; Get a 4 gig usb drive, and install Ubuntu on that. The installation might replace your MBR/boot loader on your main HDD so it might be prudent to pull it out first. I have used this exact thing on my carputer. I have also used my flash drive to help me fix and recover virus infected windows computers for friends and coworkers. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  14:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Is an ATX psu suitable for 24vdc supply?

Resolved

I need at 24vdc power supply for a stepper motor I'm testing. I do not have anything here that can push 24v. If I used an old ATX psu and used the +12 as positive and -12 as ground, would I be able to get 24v out of this setup?

A quick googling yeilded this site showing a 17v supply created from +5 and -12. Before I blow anything up, I just wanted a second set of eyes to tell me go/no go before I start splicing. Thanks aszymanik speak! 20:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Usually you'd be ok - one obvious mistake I can think of would be to use +12 and -12V lines rated at different currents (or Watts) - if you do this the lower powered one is likely to overheat (or something) under load.. There probably are other things that can go wrong as well but I can't think of them.87.102.67.84 (talk) 20:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

An ATX power supply is designed to be controlled by a computer motherboard. So, you will have to rig up some controls to make it work. I think it would be much easier and safer to simply purchase a 24vdc power supply. Depending on amp requirement, you can get them for under $10. -- kainaw™ 21:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Kainaw. I'd definitely go for a cheap AC/DC power supply, or string up a couple of 6 or 12-volt lantern batteries. This will be generally safer and less likely to cause hardware damage. Your ATX power supply is designed to supply power to a motherboard, and your unusual, out-of-spec usage may result in undefined behavior, potentially dangerously. Really, what you want is one of these, a variable DC power supply (unfortunately, the cheapest I could find was $99). However, if you're seriously experimenting with electronics, you really can't live without one or two of those (or even better models). Nimur (talk) 01:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)[4] page 21 table 9 - the -12V rail is usually rated at about 0.1 A (whereas the +12V rails can take/give over 1A) - so you can't use more than a fraction of an amp without overloading the -12V rail - ie don't take much more than 1-2Watts for a ~300W powersupply. [5] suggests a limit of about 0.5 A for the -12V rail - your powersupply probably has similar figures on the side - or you can look it up on the web - summary - try to take 1Amp of current (24W) and there will probably be smoke!87.102.67.84 (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. That is some wise advice. I hadn't considered the likeliness of overloading the bus and definately dont want any smoke ;). I've been debating on getting a proper benchtop power supply. Maybe now is the time. aszymanik speak! 06:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I would point out it's actually quite easy to start an ATX PSU without connecting it to a motherboard. People do it all the time when testing them for example. You just have to short the power on wire to any of the ground wires. The article has more details However ATX PSUs are generally designed with the expectation they will have resonably loading on the 3.3V, 5V and 12V and the regulation may be poor if you are only drawing a few watts. So even if you are trying to use them for the 3.3V, 5V or 12V I would use caution when using them as a generic PSU Nil Einne (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

While there certainly is no substitute for a good variable output power supply, I can say from experience that a well made switching-regulated ATX power supply can be a *very* cost competitive way to do some basic electronics work. The nameplate limitations are good to follow but on major brand units these values are rated based on full output and high heat. I can suggest Antec as a brand that routinely outperforms it's nameplate (I have used them in this exact setting). Also, a well made unit will voltage limit itself before melting down, so its relatively safe to experiment with as long as you are mindful of the voltage and cut off the load quickly when the supply is overloaded. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Accidental forks?

Are there any known cases where a branch of a software project became a fork only because attempts to reintegrate it with the trunk failed? (If the trunk was then abandoned, that doesn't count, because then the branch has become the trunk.) NeonMerlin 22:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Mmmh (interesting) Microsoft's version of Java might count - though it wasn't exactly reintegrated (or supposed to be a branch) - more 'kicked out' - did that become c# I wonder? via Microsoft Java Virtual Machine Visual J++ and J# - dunno - I give up what's the answer? :) 87.102.67.84 (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A rough approximation of the Unix lineage. Nimur (talk) 01:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

How about Unix? This has got to be the most well-known example of forks that become entirely new projects. You can also count the Linuxes, too, which are technically not a "fork" as the original kernel never shared a codebase with any Unix. At this point, it's best to think of a modern *nix operating system as a "mesh" which includes pieces of code from a lot of historical lineages. Aside from key utilities like the core kernel, the X server, and certain well-demarcated system utilities, it's very hard to say exactly where any particular component actually came from on any particular distribution. Often, the manpage or the source-code will document the lineage, and you can perform some technology archaeology of your own to trace back the versions. Nimur (talk) 01:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that any of those forks were "accidental" in the sense that there was an intent to keep a unified codebase and then that attempt failed. APL (talk) 05:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

January 31

Connecting wirelessly

Or rather, not. I have a router which is working fine and connecting to computer #1. But #2 is not connecting. A bar chart bottom right is green and says things are excellent. 2 little tvs bottom right say there is a wireless connection albeit at a low strength. Clicking on it suggests mighty little contact has passed through it. Typing 192.168.0.100 into the url bar does not bring up the router start page on #2. What have I missed and what should I try next? Kittybrewster ☎ 20:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried connecting on #2 (what OS) (ie wireless connection wizard or something similar) - does it fail (how) or succeed?

• If fail is it possible to bring #2 closer to the router (or the router closer to #2) and try again - if this works it might be a simple problem of signal strength - there are solutions for this.
• If succeed then - how does it not connect - what error messages? 87.102.67.84 (talk) 21:51, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

do I have to do something with my complex printer to turn it off, or just flick the switch?

I have a complex HP networked printer, it has a big LCD display and everything. Should |I try to shut it down in some special way, as with a PC, or should I just flick the on/off switch. I can't seem to find any shutdown in the menu system. THanks... 84.153.232.162 (talk) 22:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The Power (On/Off) button/switch should do it (unless it is a physical switch on the back of the printer, in which case there probably is a more "soft" way of powering it down). A model number would help. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

February 1

What file compression format has the smallest minimum size?

What file compression format has the smallest minimum size file? I'm not asking about the efficiency of compression, but rather the minimum "footprint" of an archive. For example, (these are made up numbers) a ZIP archive of a 100B file would still need 20KB of disk space just to create the ZIP container. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 00:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Does it include the size of the program needed to de-compress the files as well?Shortfatlad (talk) 00:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

A trivial compression algorithm could be extremely small. For instance, converting any run of 3 or more words (words being whatever unit you're using in the algorithm, such as hex words) into some code of word plus repeat count.

I think what you want is what widely available useful compression algorithm would have a small footprint. This post might help you [6] for a practical example. From that discussion it looks like zlib family compression algorithms have good overhead properties. Shadowjams (talk) 00:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There are compression programs with no overhead at all, such as bicom. It compresses a file of length zero to a file of length zero. -- BenRG (talk) 02:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

minimum qualification for post of lecturer in degree colleges

hi,

wheather it is mandatory for a person with M.C.A degree to become lecturer in degree colleges to pass NET/SLET/PHD ?

thanking u

bye Nagendra R —Preceding unsigned comment added by Siranagendra (talk • contribs) 05:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

This question has come up multiple times. It depends on the country. In the United States, a Masters Degree is all that is usually necessary, but most universities want PhDs. -- kainaw™ 05:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

DjVu file download

1) I would like to save a copy of the DjVu file from this page http://www.archive.org/details/tenacresenoughpr00morriala but right clicking and saving the DjVu link does nopt work, and the DjVu reader itself does not offer any means of saving it to HD. How could I save it please? I have tried using CacheViewer and PageInfo from Firefox, but neither of them show a DjVu file. 2) Why is the DjVu file so much smaller than the Pdf file? Thanks 84.13.23.254 (talk) 13:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Click on "All Files: HTTP", then right-click, save-as the DjVu file at the top of the list. I don't know why, but the regular DjVu link is only set up to "stream", whereas the "All files" link lets you just download the individual files, no questions asked. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Java to retrieve webpage source

Resolved

Hello again! Could someone please give me a Java code example that retrieves a source of a webpage given a web address, so that I can apply a Scanner to it to look for certain words? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 17:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

See the archives, where I did this (mostly for fun). --Tardis (talk) 18:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This page shows how to open a internet connection (for reading etc) http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/networking/urls/readingWriting.html as used in the above example, this one http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/networking/urls/readingURL.html is all you need if you aren't writing back.

This page (about 1/2 way down for the code) [7]- has another example of the same thing, and uses scanner class too - with emphasis on reading the whole page at once.

More info http://weblogs.java.net/blog/2004/10/24/stupid-scanner-tricks - this is probably the clearest and most concise. (though it's not clear to me why they use the \A instead of \Z regex to find the end of file.)

(or just save the web page as a .txt file to the hard disk and do as normal?) - do you want more glue? 87.102.67.84 (talk) 18:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Good stuff—just what I needed. Thank you both!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Scan cancelled; no items to scan

I recently had error messages when I tried to visit Norton tech support, so I copied those messages and asked about them as a separate issue. I was told the exisitng software was corrupted and that I should download Norton's latest version. After I did, it wouldn't automatically do a full system scan like the old software did. I got a message worded essentially the same as the title of this section. If I clicked on the Norton logo and clicked on "scan", though, I could select a full system scan (the old software made that option harder to find) and it would do it. I asked Norton and couldn't get a straight answer or an obvious reason for this. There were no virus defintions when I first downloaded, and when I clicked on the Norton logo I got a red message saying I needed to take action, and over the next few hours I downloaded the virus definitions. That has not solved the problem of the scan not happening automatically, though the message telling me the scan was cancelled does pop up at the scheduled time to remind me to manually do the scan, which serves the purpose. It just seems strange.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like the new norton has inherited an issue from the old norton - maybe because the old norton wasn't fully uninstalled when you uploaded the new norton. (I believe norton has tools to fully uninstall an old version - did you use anything like that? eg[8] )87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I uninstalled the old version when it told me to. I have a couple of other Norton products that I downloaded free to help me with the problem I contacted them about (which most people say was a fake virus message anyway), but I think they operate independently. The one that does the scan is operating continuously, while the others just run when I tell them to.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If you want to start afresh there's a guide here - [9] - what it says is right - in that after uninstalling norton there's still a lot left. Is it right that you are getting the same (erroneous) popup from the old norton even though you've got new norton - if so I would recommend the total uninstall - both two links above, restart and then reinstall. (it's just a minor bug though isn't it?)87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I never saw a message saying "Scan cancelled" until I got the new software. I'm not aware the error messages I reported had any effect on Norton's performance.

This is a copy of the message I sent to Norton that led to the downloading of updated software. I've replaced my real name with my name on Wikipedia.

I clicked on "Help and Support". At the end of the first step I got this message: "Autofix did not find any issues that affect your Norton Internet security and performance". But before that, a box popped up with the following error messages (my computer has no backslash key so I used the forward slash)

(01)6947=No Smartissue template file specified.

(02)6961=Invalid Smartissue template [10] -Parsing XML Error: no element found File C:/Users/Vchimpanzee/AppData/local/Temp/siA0B4.tmp Line: 1 Column: 0

(03) 536870914=Unable to copy file C;/Users/Vchimpanzee/AppData/Local/Temp_tf1E7.tmp->C:/Users/Vchimpanzee/AppData/Local/Temp/siF604.tmp

(04)2=The system cannot find the file specified.

When I clicked on "OK" and the first box disappeared, there was a new one: Function:startXMLIO.js.cfm Name: Error Message: (01)6951=Failed to open file []. Description: (01)6951: Failed to open file[].Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I misunderstood - obviously your version of norton has a bug. You could try the clean install method anyway - but it may not help.

I's suggest re-contacting norton support and ask them for a version that actually works as intended. I don't think it will be possible for anyone here to debug the whole thing, and it's probably restricted to do so in the terms of service.87.102.67.84 (talk) 09:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Without wanting to panic you, it's said that attacking (and disabling) norton is one thing some viruses will try to do. (It still may be norton's incompetence that is causing your problem).

Whilst you wait for them to fix it you could use Microsoft Security Essentials or something else free in the interim period.87.102.67.84 (talk) 10:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

A minor remark: the directory separator character on the Microsoft Windows platform is "\", not "/" as on the Internet. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't know how to make a backslash and I made a point of mentioning that, but maybe some will miss this. I've already informed Norton that when my subscription is up, I'll go with my Internet provider's McAfee software. I'm sure the scans are working but they just won't start automatically, though while I went to a funeral I noticed it was doing an idle time scan, so I guess it can start on its own.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I am sorry; I did not see that (try charmap.exe). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Mac Program Similar to Notepad++ (Not XCode)

Is there anything for the Mac OS X that is similar to Notepad++ that is not Xcode, which I view as too complicated. I like the former because it highlights similar tags and also colors tags red when invalid. I am only trying to do HTML, XHTML, CSS, and maybe JavaScript, so I don't want something too complicated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.54.237.250 (talk) 21:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I really enjoy TextWrangler. It is in that wonderful sweet spot of light-weight but feature-rich (and free). Syntax highlighting, but it doesn't tell you when things are wrong, I don't think. (But it doesn't highlight them, which is an indication.) Here is a list of a few other Mac-specific text editors. (Of course, the cross-platform ones should work too in some cases.) Of those, the others that look like they might fit the bill (though I haven't myself used them) are TextMate and skEdit, both of which cost money. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I love Komodo Edit. It has all kinds of languages that it supports natively, and anything you can jury rig too. Oh, and it's free and free Quintusπ ^talk 23:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Emacs, of course. Your Mac actually is a useful Unix computer under all that glitter (typed on a MacBook Pro ;-). And, of course Ed is the standard text editor. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How about Notepad++? The article mentions that it runs on Wine on OS X. (OS X, incidentally, is not Unix. It's Mach with a Posix layer on top. Might as well have a Win32 layer too.) -- BenRG (talk) 09:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, MacOS-X officially is a UNIX. See Single_UNIX_Specification#Mac_OS_X_and_Mac_OS_X_Server. It's not genetically UNIX at the kernel level, but much of the Userland is BSD-derived. It's certainly more UNIX than Linux (let the flames begin). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realize that the Open Group had rebranded POSIX compliance as "real UNIX". I think that Windows 7 is real UNIX by that definition too, since it ships with Interix. I'm not sure why it's not on the list. But neither OS has much in common with UNIX, the operating system from AT&T. They just provide enough kernel support to implement POSIX (or Win32) in user mode libraries. Linux, despite being less POSIX-compliant than NT or Mach, at least has a UNIX-like system call interface. -- BenRG (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

No, POSIX is only a subset of the various UNIX specifications (UNIX98, UNIX03,...). And the Mach microkernel in MacOS-X does have a "BSD personality" (i.e. a system call interface that mimics FreeBSD fairly closely). You might want to argue that BSD is not a real UNIX, but that might lead to lengthy flamewars - see Ship of Theseus. Moreover, in contrast to Win7 (I think), MacOS-X actually ships with a fairly complete UNIX userland - sh, grep, awk, find, the works. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:01, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I used Taco HTML Edit when I did HTML stuff. Not sure if it does JavaScript. I also think it's now shareware, which is a pain. Brammers (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I went with TextWrangler for various reasons. I like it except for one aspect... Is there any way to open a browser from within the program?--128.54.237.250 (talk) 06:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The only two OS X text editors I can think of with site preview features are Coda and Taco HTML Edit. Both have built in preview functionality. Both are not free though being $100 and $25 respectively. Caltsar (talk) 21:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I need the freeware though. I think I made a good simple decision. --128.54.237.250 (talk) 23:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You can set it up to do this with a little Applescript: [11]. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

February 2

Removing an overlay

I'm led to believe for the most part that if something is on your computer, you have viewing access to it. For example on this one site, it requires that you pay a subscription in order to view the content, but the way it hides the information is by overlaying a black screen over it, but the text is still there. What I do is use my HTML editor and edit the black overlay out and I have full access to the text. Another example is online streaming music. All that needs to be done is download the source of the music using lovely Firefox addons and you don't have to pay a dime. Other methods include downloading the shockwave flash and decompiling it using your favorite flash decompiler. But the only one that is stumping me (and I hope you can help me) is this one here: http://www.cramster.com/discrete-math-and-its-applications-6th-problem-9-894932.aspx click view solution. What it is, is text being partially hid behind a white overlay (I can clearly see the text as the overlay isn't the same width as the text). But unfortunatly, it's embedded in a flash player. When I download it, I can only download the flash player and not the content it's retrieving from this site: http://www.cramster.com/solution-player.aspx?solution_problem_id=678347. Is there anyway this content can be accessed, I mean, the content is right on your computer. 198.188.150.134 (talk) 06:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure. Run your web browser under a suitable supervisor or debugger, and extract the binary content. Alternatively, replace the Flash plug-in by your own clone that gives you full access. It's probably not worth the effort, though, except as a demonstration that it is pointless to protect content once you delivered it to the customer. If you want someone to make them pay for access, make them pay for actual access. The business model is a bit like giving away canned food and trying to make it up by selling can openers... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(comment - partial display of the content lets the person with the cash know that the content is there - probably psychologically better than showing a blank page..)

(edit conflict)Yes the text you seek is almost certainly stored on the computer somewhere - probably somewhere in the flash players equivalent of a 'temp folder' I don't know enough about flash to say more. It's possibly also encrypted which would make it difficult to find.

However the site's terms of use [12] section 2, Restrictions on Use of Web site, second paragraph state:

You agree not to reverse engineer, reverse assemble, reverse compile, decompile, disassemble, translate or otherwise alter any executable code, tool or Content on the Web Site. Further, you agree not to attempt to reproduce the Cramster database of links in whole or in part or to extract, data mine or otherwise copy the Content of the Web Site, or any part thereof, including the proprietary Content of Cramster, either manually or automatically.

This means amongst other things, that wikipedia can't help you directly. If it was an answer to a question you wanted we might be able to help anyway, but if you wanted out of curiosity the exact hidden text from the site that is probably not an option.

The page data is probably dynamic - so the flash you download is just the wrapper, someone else with more flash knowledge should be able to explain how flash gets data from websites.87.102.67.84 (talk) 11:00, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Eh, I don't think we're necessarily bound by some site's arbitrary EULA, which may or may not be legally enforceable in any of our current jurisdictions. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the code, what the site does is have one SWF file that then compiles a list of other SWF files for its overlay and content. If you could extract those component SWFs separately you probably would have the answer. But the SWFs that are overlaid seem to check whether they are being called by the site in question. I suspect that for someone who is serious about their Flash work, they could extract it pretty easily with a little spoofing and all that. IMO an easier way to get around it (if you are interested in breaking the rules) would be to just pool with your friends/study mates, buy a single subscription, then take screenshots to distribute the content. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You could try using the Firefox browser and see Tools/PageInfo, also install its CacheViewer add-on. 78.146.183.98 (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help but nothing seems to work or I don't know how to do it. I checked my cache and I didn't see it in there, I don't know about temp files but I'm guessing that it isn't there either, but I may be wrong. Mr.98, could you be a little more specific in your instructions? And Stephan Schulz, how do I replace the existing player with my own flash player? And once I have the binary content, how to I make heads or tails of it? Thanks a lot guys! 198.188.150.134 (talk) 00:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You could also try the freeware VideoCacheView by Nirsoft. It can find swf and other things in the cache also. 84.13.191.178 (talk) 00:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to open or work on my computer 198.188.150.134 (talk) 04:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

As with 87.102.67.84, I find this question dubious since it's not entirely clear if the OP is merely doing this for personal interest/to prove it can be done, or actually wants to use the content but doesn't want to pay. However stupid it may be for the site to make the content available and try to hide it, I wouldn't personally consider that a valid reason to use content you're supposed to pay for (some may consider a software provider who gives a free trial with all the features available and no nagware but the condition you're supposed to pay if you regularly use the software or otherwise find it useful stupid and a valid reason to abuse these terms, others may not).

However I didn't come here to complain. While I'm not willing to offer direct help, I will say I'm looking at part of what appears to be the solution (it's in multiple steps/parts) right now and it took me less time then it probably took to write out this message so it isn't very hard. As Mr. 98 mentions the solutions are basically made up of several SWF files which contains the steps/solution along with several other SWF files to compile the content and make it look all nice. Downloading all the SWF files, including the ones you want (i.e. the steps/solution) is actually fairly trivial.

I initially used a tool to find them (there are plenty of tools which are able to monitor links/files visiting a page opens, commonly used to download flash video files and the like) but upon further analysis I found you don't even need to do that. The site doesn't even bother to obscure the links (as a number of flash video sites do for example) so finding them is trivial if you have any understanding of how HTML works and a decent browser (both FF3.5 and IE8 were fine for me). The site hosting the files doesn't appear to care much about cookies or referrers or anything of that sort so downloading the SWF files is also trivial (presuming you know how to download files) once you have the links. Once you have the SWF files it sounds like working out what to do with them shouldn't be too hard for the OP.

And before anyone complains, if you are doing this as a proof of concept/for personal interest, hopefully you'd welcome the challenge of working out how to do it partly on your own, I feel the info I've provided is more then enough. If you're doing this because you want to view the content you may just be annoyed, but as I said, in such a case I don't care.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Windows 2000 Virtual Machine

I have just installed Windows 2000 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. The problem is, I do not know how to connect it to the Internet, at least not to the same connection as my main computer. When I open up Internet Explorer, I get a box asking whether to sign up for a new Internet account, transfer my existing account to the virtual machine, or set up a connection manually/to a LAN. I have Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME virtual machines connected to the same connection as my main PC (they were already connected when I installed them), so how can I do it with my 2000 VM? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 06:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Make sure your VM program has given the machine access to your real machine's proper connection, then try a direct LAN connection from inside the VM. Hope that helps. CompuHacker (talk) 06:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How to export/import a specific Windows 7 firewall rule?

Typing

C:\Windows\system32>netsh advfirewall firewall show rule rsync

at a Windows 7 command prompt gives me a textual description of the firewall rule(s) in question. That's rather neat, but how can I export this rule in a way that I can import it on another Windows 7 machine?

• I would like to import only this specific rule, not the entire ruleset present on the source computer.
• The command

  netsh advfirewall dump

  returns empty.
• The command

  netsh advfirewall export c:\foobar.txt

  saves a file that isn't exactly human-readable, and probably contains the entire ruleset of the source computer.

Any hints? -- 78.43.93.25 (talk) 12:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I know this works in Server 2008 and Vista, so I would think Windows 7 also has this..

netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=all

to show all of the rules. Alternitively, if you know the name of the rule you are trying to see, you could just do

netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=bob

(if you named the rule bob.) From there, adding ">>filename.txt" will pipe that output into the chosen file name. I would run the commands without this first, to see the outputs, then when you find what you want to capture, add the above to send it to a text file. -^Avic_ennasis @ {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}, {{subst:#time: xjj xjF xjY }} /@17:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello, original poster here.

netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=bob

is exactly what I'm doing (only with rsync instead of bob, as that's the name of the rule in question), and it outputs a plain text display (which I could send to a file as you described) - which is totally useless for me.

What I'm looking for is a file I can import on another Windows 7 machine so that the particular ruleset is *added* to the machine's existing ruleset - as opposed to the "export" command, which pulls the entire firewall configuration and would replace every rule on the target computer upon import.

This means that the file generated would either have to contain the

net advfirewall add <blahblah>

lines needed to recreate the rule, or a binary snippet that can be *added* with a command like

net advfirewall import ruleset.txt

*instead of replacing* the entire firewall configuration. -- 78.43.93.25 (talk) 19:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah. Forgive me. I failed to fully comprehend what you had tried already, and was making an educated guess (mebbe more of a SWAG) as to a solution. Since I don't have a vitural machine to test it one, futher research should have been done on my part. I accept the trout. ^Avic_ennasis @ {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}, {{subst:#time: xjj xjF xjY }} /@19:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

a gimp question

I want to print as many passport size photos as possible on an A4 page. How can I multiply images on a canvas using GIMP? When I use Filters>Map>Tile, what I get is a couple of images with a few truncated. 117.204.88.89 (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The "Print Photo" wizard in Windows Vista/7 is quite good for this, I believe. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Use Filters>Map>Tile, set the units to millimetres, and tile it to 210 × 297. Marnanel (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

an unexpected error is keeping you from deleting the folder

Resolved

I have a folder on my computer which I cannot delete. Every time I try is gives the error "an unexpected error is keeping you from deleting the folder. Error 0x80070091 the directory is not empty". The folder IS empty, I've tried various third party unlockers, I've tried safe mode, I've tried deleting it from the command prompt, I've tried booting a linux live cd but it just gives some error about not reading the source. The OS is Windows 7. Any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.14 (talk) 19:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried a full DiskCheck on that volume; sometimes inexplicable problems are caused by a corruption in the filesystem (such as bad reference counts). Try that, and then try to delete the folder (and any contents that the check might have magically resurrected). 87.115.47.188 (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I tried checkdisk, scandisk, a third party disk checker and none of them have fixed the problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.14 (talk) 21:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Is the path length very deep, or does it contain non-ascii characters? Try moving the affected folder to c:/ and then deleting it. Try renaming the affected folder to something super simple and then deleting it. Try putting a few trivial files in the folder, then deleting them, then the folder. Of course none of this should be necessary, but clearly you're in weird city, so we need to fight weird with weird. 87.115.47.188 (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions. I couldn't move or rename it, or paste files into the folder without errors. But trying to do those things must have unlocked whatever the problem was because it just successfully deleted! Thank you!

Free file sharing service needed: Multiple uploads AND downloads at once

Hi. I know that there are many long lists of file sharing sites - and this is part of the problem: I am overwhelmed with the huge variety. What I need:

• Upload multiple files at once
  • I don't want to upload each file separately but I want to select multiple files or a whole folder at once
• Let people download all uploaded files at once
  • People should not have to download each file separately
  • There has to be a "download all" button
• The limit for the size of one individual file should be
  • either bigger than 10MB (for one purpose)
  • or bigger than 200MB (for another purpose) -- this is not so important but nice if possible
• The total amount of space should be at least 1GB.
• The service has to be for FREE!
  • I do not want to pay anything
  • Premium paid services are not what I want
  • The service can of course have other features for what you have to pay but all above-mentioned features have to be for free.

Hoping to get some answers as soon as possible... Thanks for your help! --Tilmanb (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Oh I forgot to mention that most of the times I would be sharing pictures! I HAVE considered photo sharing sites (such as Picasa or Flickr) but they don't let you download all pictures at once! Generally speaking, however, a photo sharing site would be ok, too.

Have you considered a plugin, such as DownThemAll for Firefox, that allows the user to download all items (without modifying the server/host configuration)? Have you considered hosting an FTP server instead of a website? Have you considered posting an archive file such as a .ZIP or .tar file, in addition to the individual files, to allow easy downloading? Your quest for a free service that satisfies all of your needs is probably futile; maybe you can consider hosting the server on your own personal computer. This doesn't account for the overhead of electricity and internet connection that you will require. Nimur (talk) 20:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How would DropBox fit your needs? I can't recall right now if it does simultaneous up/downloads but otherwise I think it fits what you want. Dismas|^(talk) 23:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer! Yes, I have considered all of those options but they are either too complicated (like setting up an ftp server) or require too many steps either for me or the receiver (like installing downthemall). However, in the meantime I found Fileai! It fulfills all the requirements I mentioned above. Unfortunately there is just one problem with it: It does not work for my client who is behind a firewall to whom I need to send files :( Anyway, I think I am now much more able to define what I am looking for, so I will start a new question. In case you have any other ideas (for example how to host a server on my own computer), please do let me know :) Thanks! --Tilmanb (talk) 01:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)s

MediaFire

Mediafire would be otherwise good but bulk download is possible only if you pay :( I need something like that but for free! --Tilmanb (talk) 15:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I wanna e-book. But which one?

e-books, e-readers, ipods, iliads, kindles, nooks, etc.

I want it cheap--like less than $300 Canadian.
I want it to operate in minus 40 degree temp, or in a closed car on a hot summer's day, with long lasting charge.
I want to be able to read it under the blazing sun and in otherwise total darkness.
I want the page turn to occur in 0.25 sec or less, and it to have a fast search.
I want it to be able to read most text file formats including WORD and OpenOffice,
and take USB.

For all of this, I will accept a monochrome screen and an absence of all that app frufru:
just let me down load text stuff from, say, Wikisurce or Limewire.

Any and all comments and help would be appreciated. Thanks.192.30.202.21 (talk) 21:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I doubt there is such a miraculous device, sorry. If there was (cheap, does everything you could want, works everywhere, lasts forever!) don't you think you'd have heard about it? I suspect you'll get further in this inquiry by looking at what e-readers are actually out there (of which there are less than a dozen) and figuring out which balance of features/price will actually work for you. Making an arbitrary list of things ("I want it all, and I want it now!") in such a comparatively small and new market is kind of fruitless. (The question immediately preceding this one sets up a similarly impossible task.) In any case, most e-book readers these days seem to use e-ink technology, because it works well in high-glare situations (i.e. outside), and has low power drain. But it won't work in the dark, so that rules out most of them right away. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:47, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The old IPAQ's do this and more with the right free reader software. Nanonic (talk) 21:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(Mr.98) Hmmmmm,
Traditional books, broad sheets, and printouts seem to be able to do most of the above. You mean that techno-revolutionaries like Steve Jobbs, Bill Gates, et al can't?
:-D
192.30.202.21 (talk) 22:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I'm fine with the old-fashioned book... haven't run into any problems with them, yet, other than the apparent failure of their publishing model... (sigh) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

For most of the above meaning about 50% of the points listed, yes books can do. Taemyr (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

As Mr 98 said, I don't think any product on the market today fills all those criteria. I gave my mum a Kindle for Christmas and I thought it was great. It fills all your requirements except these: be able to read it at night (it's not backlit, although you can buy a reading light for it) and opening word or open office files (it can read .mobi or pdf files, and it's usually pretty simple to convert your documents into one of these formats). You can, for example, download any of the books here and read them on the Kindle (26000 books from Project Gutenberg). However, it seems to be general consensus that the price of the Kindle and other similar eReaders will have to come down if they want to compete with the iPad. So if you can, you'll probably save a lot of money and probably have a wider choice by waiting for a few months, or maybe a year. TastyCakes (talk) 23:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

While not really answering the OP's question, as TasyCakes raised the issue of prices it's something I looked into recently perhaps this may be of interest. I see the Kindle is now at US$259 but as TC says that's still quite expensive.

Looking at the situation in China, which should I think give you an idea of where the state of the market is atm and it's something I did recently after I came across something of interest. Looking at Taobao there's the Dr. Yi M218C reader for around (CNY)￥930 (US$136) (depending on seller of course) and Dr. M218A+ for around ￥1150 (US$168) (well there's one seller for 970 and another for 1100 but they don't appear to have much feedback so I'm a bit sceptical of their reliability, and not understanding Mandarin or even bothering a machine translation there may be something in the description). There's also the M218B with wifi but I didn't really pay much attention to that.

[13] tells us these are sold as rebranded models in the US and elsewhere as for example the Jetbook lite US$149 [14] and Jetbook US$179 or the Aluratek Libre reader [15] which kind of tallies with what we would expect given the price in China. However they use some sort of reflective LCD rather the e-ink and are therefore rather think so may not be to everyone's taste although they do have decent batteries lives.

Then there's the Hanvon/Hanwang/汉王 N510 for ￥1100 (US$161) or ￥1200 (US$176) (again a few cheaper e.g. [16] but the sellers didn't look particularly reliable and I there may be info in the description I missed). They also have some newer or different models like the N515, N516, N517, N518 (possibly more) that I didn't look at but they all seem more expensive.

This is perhaps a more interest device as it's an e-ink reader and 5 inch 600x800 although it's a bit thick at 12mm. It's also supported by the Linux based Openinkpot distro.

And in fact you can even buy a N516 in/from? the Ukraine with it preloaded (couldn't workout the price from the website) although this says $230 I presume that means USD. I also did find the Hanvon N516 (I presume with standard firmware) sold by someone on Amazon UK for £150 (US$239) (including VAT I guess) and considering it's ￥1650 (US$ 242) from a reliable looking seller that's cheaper then in China, I presume either because it's new or because the difference between the N510 and N516 is small enough that the N510 remains far more popular. Also Hanwang seems to be fairly heavily pushing the N516 to the overseas market.

Considering the Kindle is US$259 with mobile connectivity this is fairly expensive however although at least Hanwang don't stop me buying the N516 in NZ or Malaysia and doesn't go around deleting my books randomly. Incidentally there's a review in English of tne N510 here. There should be a fair amount of stuff on the mobileread forums too I guess. Supposedly the N510 was supposedly used by the astronauts of the Shenzhou 7 space mission.

Next we get to the Teclast (台电) TL K3 which is what first interested me in this, This is fairly new but appears to be a 6 inch e-ink reader with 600x800 display and it's also fairly thin (8.9mm) [17]. Already it seems to be available for ￥1239 (US$181).

So around ￥1100-￥1200 (US$161-US$176) at the current time for a 5 or 6 inch e-ink reader. Still expensive IMHO, ￥500-￥600 would seem a more resonable price range to me at least for the developed world. The question of how prices will respond to the iPad is obviously speculation so not something the RD can really answer. However I will say mention that considering the Teclast is fairly new it wouldn't surprise me if it'll fall to under ￥1000 in a few months. This would create similar pricing pressuare on the Hanwang devices. So ￥800 within say 6 months to 1 year seems plausible to me even ignoring the iPad.

P.S. I doubt Mr 98's figure or 'less then a dozen' is particularly accurate. Even if you think the Hanwang devices I listed are similar enough to be considered one and the Dr. Yu devices too, we still have 3 here, add the Kindle and Kindle DX (given the different sizes doesn't make much sense to count them the same), Sony, Hanlin (翰林) 7, and there are more here [18]. In fact possibly for the Sony or Hanlin devices some of them are different enough it makes little sense to count them the same, e.g. I see they're making some with SiPix. Of course I'm ignoring the rebranded readers which may make sense in some cases but not always (with different firmware which some of them have they can obviously behave quite differently). I'm not of course saying that there is a device which can met the OPs requirements. The temperature ranges for example seem a bit extreme.

P.P.S. For the OP, as with a number of fairly specialised questions, I would suggest a more specialised forum may be better. [19] seems a good bet to me from what I've seen on it although I don't use it personally.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I would think that operating at -40° would be the most difficult requirement. If you just want one that won't be destroyed at those temps, that's one thing, but actually operating it at those temps is out. For one thing, you'd need to wear thick gloves, so how are you going to operate the controls ? StuRat (talk) 16:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

After playing with a wide variety of eBook Readers, I'd say the Barnes & Noble nook comes closest to what you're looking for right now. That said, there's nothing out there as mind blowing as what you describe currently, but maybe in a year or three a good eBook reader will come out like that. With the exception of the operating temperature range... -40 to 50C is a good way to destroy any electronic device. Caltsar (talk) 16:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Those operating tempratures alone will kill your dream. eInk has a Operating Temperature Range: 0º—50º C [20]. APL (talk) 19:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I know a little bit about operating electronics in cold temperatures - and I have to say, -40 is pushing it. Even military and aerospace requirements, such as these Altera devices rated to "-55°C to 125°C", rarely operate well at those kinds of conditions. Even at 0 Celsius, batteries cease to function. At -20, other stuff begins to happen - things your average circuit designer really wasn't prepared to handle - things like failure of temperature-compensated voltage regulators; diodes; semiconductors become conductors; LCD screens are just plain off of table. At -40 C, well, more stuff starts to happen. Sometimes, batteries start working again - at high efficiency! All your conductors become awesome conductors - you might short out the system just like that! Thermal contraction of your solder joints against FR4 printed circuit board starts tearing components out of their sockets. Metal pins deform. Wirebonds inside of ASICs break down. And this hasn't even begun to address what happens when you thermal cycle - i.e. cool down to those temperatures and then back up! The biggest problem is thermal expansion-related stress, and condensation (especially inside "hermetically sealed packages"). I recognize you might be in the far north, but outdoor-ready electronics for such low temperatures are very hard to design. The consequence is that you either pay a premium for custom engineering jobs, or you severely limit the technology options you can use. Surprisingly, a lot of non-integrated circuits (think wire-wrap and tubes!) work extremely well in the deep sub-zero range - if you can keep your batteries warm. The best solution is to put the device in a controlled environment - say, inside a heated environment or at least a well-insulated case that you can keep closer to 0 C. If you really, really need deep sub-zero temperatures for your electronics - not just a label that says so - then you're gonna pay a lot more than $300. Nimur (talk) 02:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Automatically updating chart in OpenOffice Calc

Background: I'm attempting to track sales and I am making a chart of this in OpenOffice Calc. I am running OpenOffice 3.1.1, which I believe is the latest released version, since 3.2 is still in the RC stage. My chart has two columns; the first is a list of dates, the second is a list of income values for each day. I've made a graph of this in a second sheet.

Here's my problem: when I add a new entry, the graph does not automatically update. I have to edit it, select the new row, and only then does the graph update. Is there any way to make it automatically update?

I've found some solutions for Excel, but they don't seem to work. I used the ideas from This page, but ran into issues because OpenOffice does not display a "series" item in the formula bar when you select the graph.

Searching with Google did not help much either. I also tried making the changes in Excel on another computer and then opening the file back up in Calc. This, however, just causes Calc to display a blank graph.

Irish Souffle (talk) 22:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Try searching for "open office dynamic chart" - which I think is what you want - for inserting in other OO programs use [21] insert the chart as an OLE object (OLE object is an option when inserting) - and select the 'link' box when going through the insertion wizard - I'll come back in a bit when I've tried it out myself.

(also does 'refresh' F5 ? help?) 87.102.67.84 (talk) 13:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

[22] - it automatically updates when in the same spreadsheet - I assume the absence of info for when the chart is in a separate spreadsheet means that it doesn't work.87.102.67.84 (talk) 13:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

In calc to update an embedded chart (from another spreadsheet) one method is to link to a chart in a spreadsheet as a spreadsheet object... then use 'edit'>'links'>select the source>then press update

-if the source was not linked then it is just a copy of the data when it was created.

-if the source was linked when created then it will update to give the most recent data, annoyingly though you have to close the data source (due to over enthusiastic editing protection)87.102.67.84 (talk) 14:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

So to try to clarify this mess - it doesn't seem possibly to have a linked chart - but the work around is to insert a link to a spreadsheet containing the chart (needs to be the same spreadsheet as the data) - insert that as an OLE object with 'link' turned on. The content including the chart will change as the data changes.87.102.67.84 (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The chart is in the same spreadsheet as the data, just on a different page. If I change the data, the chart does update. The issue is that when I add new data (new rows), the chart does not update, because it has been given only a certain range of cells to include as part of the chart. For instance, right now I have 14 rows of data. If I change anything in any of those rows, the chart will update. However, if I add data in the 15th row, it will not. I tried including all the cells up to the 65,536th row as a workaround, but it ends up interpreting empty cells as zeros, which ruins everything.

this covers what I want. I'm hoping there's a way to do it now that we are in OpenOffice 3.x. I may try installing OpenOffice 3.2 RC4 just to see what happens. Irish Souffle (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

February 3

Tux Picture Vs Windows Logo

I was once saw this image of a computer generated Tux holding a gun up to the Windows logo. Does anybody know where on the internet I can find it? --Melab±1 ☎ 02:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Like this? Strangely, I found many (MANY) pics of Tux pissing on the Windows logo. -- kainaw™ 05:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Automatic Logoff at Login in Vista

On one of my administrative accounts, every time I log in the account, I get immediately logged off. A temporary workaround was to log in in safe mode and create another administrative account (because I can't use the web and anti-virus in safe mode). So I scanned the other user account and there are no viruses, this seems to be a configuration error. This problem started right after I installed php environment and restarted the computer. I have a vista64 os, anyone here know what could be causing this.

72.188.46.220 (talk) 02:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)PHPNoob

In my experience (twice now, unfortunately) that would be one of the signature "features" of Vundo. Try another virus scanner, and soon. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It is not a virus, I scanned the hard drive already. Anyone know how to find the start up scripts for the broken account from the working account?

72.188.44.11 (talk) 13:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)PHPNoob

How about uninstalling the PHP tools? It seems pretty bizarre that any software, in the course of normal operation, would force an auto log-off of the admin user. Checking the event viewer for any additional clues is a good place to start. Also, check the startup folder of the affected user. Finally, it might be worth checking the computer with a virus scanning boot CD, such as the one available from BitDefender, since this will even detect viruses that have protection mechanisms. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 14:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

"Also, check the startup folder of the affected user" - I can't seem to find this folder. Also mscofig does not show the other account's start up configuration.

72.188.44.11 (talk) 14:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)PHPNoob

In the user folder, look in the start menu for the Startup folder. The PHP tool kit may have stuck something in there that is causing an unintended error and leading to the log off. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 15:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And some viruses interfere with known virus scanners, so use more than one virus scanner. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have a spare blank CD-R, make an ISO image of the BitDefender rescue disk, it is an absolute wonder. It boots a completely separate OS (linux), applies current virus definitions, and scans any attached drive. Many viruses can hide from or otherwise inhibit the operation of any virus scanner out there, if given the chance. Running the scan off-line is the only way to be sure. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 17:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

How to use HD video in flash, or put flash animation over HD

(I've moved this question from the Miscellanous desk. There were no answers there yet. --Anonymous, 06:50 UTC, February 3, 2010.)

I use flash and have begun shooting HD video, using primarily imovie to edit. How do I use my flash animation IN or OVER my video without importing it to flash and totally losing the quality? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.175.86.29 (talk) 05:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

For IN: Export the Flash to something that you can import into iMovie, e.g. MOV. There is an option to do this under the File menu, I believe. For OVER: Hmm, much trickier, I assume you mean as some sort of transparent overlay. I'm not sure you can do that with iMovie unless you import the iMovie segment into Flash (you can adjust the quality settings when you do so, of course), and then re-export the whole thing as MOV. You will lose some quality in the transcoding, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Choosing a "Favorites" Link Opens a New Window

Morning,

I know there's likely an easy fix to this, but I looked for it and couldn't find it. I didn't want to bother our IT guys if I didn't have to.

I am running IE7 on Vista, on a Dell 630. Whenever I choose anything from the "Favorites" menu, rather than just going to that website, the browser opens the favorite in a new window. I have tried unchecking the "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts (when tabbed browsing is off)" checkbox in the advanced tab of the properties, but that's not what I need. Anyway. Thanks for your help. Sorry if this was resolved elsewhere. Kingsfold (talk) 15:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

IE does this for me if my Shift key is held down while I click the Favorite. Hammer on your Shift keys a few times to make sure they are not stuck? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Good thought (I thought the same thing), but I'm typing just fine.... Kingsfold (talk) 16:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Quad core Q

I replaced my really slow 500 MHz computer with a much faster 2800 MHz quad core, but it doesn't seem any faster. I'm running Windows XP SP3. Is it possible it's only using one of the 4 cores ? If so, is there any way to get it to use them all under XP, or do I need to go to another O/S ? StuRat (talk) 16:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

As you probably know, the major performance issue of a computer is the HDD. When you load a program, for instance, the CPU is probably just waiting for the HDD to give it some data to process. If you want to see the increase of performance, you need to do something CPU intensive, such as ray-tracing, or some other mathematical computation. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And: a quad-core CPU @ 2.8 GHz is not equivalent to a single-core CPU of 11.2 GHz. A single thread (such as simple-threaded process) will only be able to utilize one of the cores. The true benefit of a multi-core CPU is that you can do may things at the same time, such as one ray-tracing operation, one TV recording, one download, one music streaming process, and one prime factorisation, at the same time that you run an intensive 3D game. But some programs (not too many though), such as Blender, will automaticaly create many threads to really use all four cores, which should be rather close to (but not quite) an effective 11.2 GHz core, I guess. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think it had four 2.8Ghz cores, I thought it had four 0.7GHz cores. StuRat (talk) 19:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Sun microsystems used to measure GHz like that on their sparc machines - but for a AMD or Intel processor 2.8 GHz quad core means 2.8 each, not total.87.102.67.84 (talk) 13:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, putting more RAM in a machine will often give more of a performance boost than a new CPU or hard drive ever will. Since you're using Windows XP, chances are that 4GB of RAM is the maximum the OS can use. I recently "fixed" a computer that was having problems by upgrading the RAM from 512MB to 2GB. This was more than enough to avoid swapping out to virtual memory during normal daily tasks which in my own experience is one of the biggest causes of people complaining about slow computers. Caltsar (talk) 16:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Quibble: The 4GB number is a theoretical maximum on 32-bit XP, but the actual maximum is always less. A 32-bit XP machine with 4GB of RAM installed will show less than 4GB, depending on the I/O devices. Here is a good discussion of same. My 4GB XP machine, which has a 512MB video card, correspondingly only shows 3582MB of physical RAM available. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Very true, I left that out to avoid complicating things further as 4GB of RAM (as in physical sticks of the stuff) is the maximum a 32-bit OS can address before taking into account other overhead in addressing space. And to add to my previous comment before anyone points this out, I was referring to RAM speeding up a system most significantly in the way a user perceives the speed and not the actual benchmarks. RAM tends to be the bottleneck in this sort of scenerio. Of course, if StuRat (edited, put the wrong name here!) already has plenty of RAM, the Hard drive or general OS bloat could also be culprits. Caltsar (talk) 17:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the remarks above (and my 64-bit Windows 7 machine has 6 GB of RAM). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not the OS; it's the applications you run. To view your four cores' workload, hit ctrl-alt-del to bring up the Windows Task Manager, and then click the "Performance" tab to look at the pretty graphs. Depending on what applications you use, it's likely that only one core will be highly tasked, but, as Andreas Rejbrand notes, some applications do use them all — when Adobe Premiere renders video, for example. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, since this is of interest to you: In the Task manager, click the "Processes" tab and then you can right-click on any process and choose "Set Affinity" to force a given process to run its threads on particular cores. You shouldn't ever feel that this is necessary to optimize your system, but it's an interesting toy. (I have been told that using this technique to restrict Microsoft Outlook 2007 to a single core does stop Outlook from locking up your machine periodically.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

XP can utilise all the cores (with the disclaimer above that a single threaded application may be bound to one core) - but what is not faster? You can speed up start up times by adding the program to the startup folder at the expense of memory. Otherwise - the hardisk may slow you down, or possibly graphics is now your bottleneck.87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like exactly what I want, but I suspect it only works for the current session. Is there any way to have Explorer always use a specific core and have my PowerDVD use another, etc. ? Then maybe the DVD I'm playing wouldn't hiccup when Windows decides to go check for updates or something. StuRat (talk) 19:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The relevant command seems to be 'start' eg at the command prompt something like "start /affinity 4 C:/powerdvd.exe" to start powerdvd on processor 4 (you can put the command line arguments in a shortcut or batch file for ease of use), priority is also set using start. I'm not sure if using affinity prevents other processes from using a core, setting priority higher might also work for your needs.87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to try that. What's the syntax for setting a higher priority ? StuRat (talk) 20:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

In task manager you can right click on a process and reset the priority - I believe this is temporary, to set priority using start it's

[23]> start /<priority> <application>, e.g. start /high winword.exe
To do the same thing from a shortcut just use: cmd /c start /<priority> <application> copied from link and modified

Note <priority> uses words (possibly you can use numbers too), in cmd.exe type "start /?" for a list of commands and accepted words - I believe that using 'realtime' priority can be problematic. So you'd type something like start /high dvdplayer.exe (or whatever the exe file is called - full path also needed I think). I've no experience of using this myself, but the info is so often repeated I assume it is accurate.

That said I echo what is said below - on XP with a many times less speedy processor I don't experience such problems - though I don't really multitask more than 2 or 3 things at once in general...87.102.67.84 (talk) 21:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh almost forgot, many programs let you choose their priority - from memory: SMplayer VLC player (also FFmpeg) either via the command line or deep within the settings.. One issue is that changing the priority for 'dvdplayer' using start might not affect the settings of programs that it itself initiates (anyone got the answer to this)? I think it's likely that your personal dvd player also will have such a setting (probably well hidden) - in the programs folders try looking at installation notes, or other readmes - I'd bet there's a way for your program too (without messing with the start command)87.102.67.84 (talk) 22:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That should definitely not happen. I usually record TV and perform a very, very lengthy mathematical simulation while playing GTA: San Andreas (and maybe a download too). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is not a relevant remark, but I think that you would love Windows 7. In addition, I believe that Windows 7 works rather well with solid state disks, which are faster than conventional HDDs. It might be a good idea to put the OS and most programs on a SSD, but I have never tried that. Actually, I am very happy with the performance of my computer, even though it has a conventional HDD. This might be because I have a very high-end CPU, a lot of RAM, and - most importantly - never shut down the computer. In Windows 7, the "hybrid" stand-by mode is great. The computer is completely silent in this mode, and you can wake it within a couple of seconds. In addition, if you would loose the power during stand-by, you can still resume your work, for the most important parts of the RAM have been saved to the HDD. It will take some time to resume, but no data will be lost. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You never shut it down ? Does that mean Windows 7 has completely eliminated the memory leaks which made periodic reboots necessary ? StuRat (talk) 04:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I never shut down my Windows Vista PC either. But due to automatic updates requiring system reboots, I did never obtain an uptime of more than a couple of weeks, so I cannot say anything about the system stability for periods longer than that. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 09:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

In general, that's not necessary: the OS will automatically distribute processes to different cores when those cores would otherwise be idle (or under-subscribed). You need to use "Set Affinity" only when you want to use some other policy, like "these two long-running processes must share a core because I don't care how long they take and I'd rather have the other cores free for other usage as it arises". --Tardis (talk) 19:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers, so far. More RAM might be a good thing to try. I'd also like to try setting priority. Perhaps it might make more sense to lower the priority on all the other processes that are always running. Are there any common intrusive processes which could stand to have a lower priority ? How about Explorer.exe ? StuRat (talk) 04:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I would not recommend chaning priorities; everything should work just fine when Windows schedules processes automatically. And I do not think that altering the priority of the Windows shell is a good idea... But I guess it safe to try; if something does not work out well, a reboot would fix the problem. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 09:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Common sense tells me not to lower priority on explorer (no explanation given) - how ever you could lower priority on stuff like windowsupdate, googleupdate, adobeupdate etc - stuff that can wait. (not sure what they are called internally)87.102.67.84 (talk) 13:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Before spending your hard earned cash on new memory I think Windows Task Manager can help you again. In the performance tab (where the CPU charts are), look at the bottom where it says "Commit Charge" (there's an article on that) - specifically look at the peak value, and compare it to total physical memory also found in "physical memory" (note "total physical memory" should be close to the amount of RAM you have) - if "peak value" of commit charge exceeds "total physical memory" then the computer will have had to use the hard disk to swap blocks of data in and out of ram - slowing it down. If the peak value is less then this hasn't happened (and you don't need more memory).

Note - look at the peak value after running windows for some time as you usually do, including all the stuff that you might do during the day. (The initial value at start up will be low).

You can monitor the effects on "total commit charge" as you open new programs. - it's always possible to max it out if you open enough browser windows etc - so just try normal activity.87.102.67.84 (talk) 12:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(I'm 99% this analysis is correct - but please jump in if I've missed something obvious else. or maybe you meant to increase the number of utilised memory channels - not total ram?) 87.102.67.84 (talk) 12:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

interested in computers

If I wanted to learn more about computers, find out how they work, write my own programs, that sort of thing, where should I start first? And supposing I studied for an hour every day, about how long might it take to learn that sort of stuff? Would it be possible to do it all from here, just using my own computer and the internet?

148.197.114.158 (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Definitely. There are tons and tons of self-taught programmers who are masters in their field. Take a look at Microsoft Small Basic for starters? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I am a self-tought programmer, and today I consider myself very experienced in Delphi and Win32 development. I learned programming at the age of 12 by studying sample code. At that time, there was a free Personal edition of Borland Delphi, but unfortunately, there is no such version anymore. But I believe that Microsoft Visual C++/C#/... Express Edition is free, isn't it? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Visual Studio Express is free, link is here. Small Basic is free at this Microsoft link. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well Wikipedia's Personal computer article has some basic stuff about computer hardware, and you can click on each of the components to get more information on each bit (see the hardware section). Once you know a particular bit of hardware exists, you can search Google for it and likely get more good information. As for learning to program things, there are lots of good internet sites for learning that sort of thing. First you need to choose a language, I'd suggest Python, it seems useful and relatively simple. There are a list of tutorials for it here.

As far as how long it'd take, I think that'd depend on how much you wanted to know, I doubt you could ever know everything about everything computer related. It's more like a journey than a destination, you're not going to wake up one day and say "oh I know computers now". But you can probably learn the basics pretty quick and get a pretty good handle on Python within a week or two of daily use. TastyCakes (talk) 18:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Python isn't unique in that sense. Most programming languages have highly similar concepts behind the structure. Once you understand the concepts, most of programming in a new language is just looking up syntax requirements. You know what you want to do (ie: use a for loop), but you just need to see what the syntax looks like. There are some languages which do not have the same general concepts as the majority of mainstream languages. You can safely ignore those and still be what most people would call a "computer expert." -- kainaw™ 22:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

True, Python uses very ordinary programming conventions, similar to C++ or Java or dozens of others. Its advantage, in my opinion, is a much more "beginner friendly" syntax and its large standard library to do all sorts of things very easily. I think Python is a good language to learn on for those reasons: you can learn the high level concepts of programming without (as many) semantic problems frustrating and slowing you down. TastyCakes (talk) 16:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

New question, I was looking around on the internet for a while and found this, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming/A_taste_of_C , thought I might give it a go. It was going well right up until the running of the example program, which my computer insists does not exist, even though I can see it saved right there, where I put it. Nothing I've tried makes it see otherwise, so either I'm already doing something silly wrong, or this is a very long way of getting me to download a virus, which I hope it isn't. Any ideas? 148.197.114.158 (talk) 11:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You should have two programs hello.c (the source file with the program text), and hello - the compile program you want to run.. Are you using windows - if so I wonder if you should compile to hello.exe - one possibility is that when you type "hello" (no quotes) into the command line windows might be thinking you mean hello is a command like "dir" or "cd".

ie try using "gcc -o hello.exe hello.c" (no quotes) - the .exe part signals to windows that the program is runnable.87.102.67.84 (talk) 12:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

emergency! need a math library for Java

For some reason I don't think a math library is installed with my programming environment so ... I get weird errors like "method pow(int, int) is undefined for the type [class name]". Uhhh ... why can't I download a standard math library anywhere? Where do I find one, and why is it so hard to search for it on google? Doesn't everyone have a math library? John Riemann Soong (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like you have a variable, I'll call it x. It is of some class type, I'll call it Foo. So, you have "Foo x;" somewhere. Then, you do something like x.pow(1,2);. But, there is no method called "pow" in Foo. This has absolutely nothing to do with a math library. It is a completely incorrect usage of pow. -- kainaw™ 00:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sun provides an excellent reference for Java. In this case, you want Java.lang.math. Note that the error message was correct: pow(int, int) IS undefined. The pow method takes two doubles. So if you convert your ints to doubles, you should be fine. Irish Souffle (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Well actually I resolved it in another way -- I have another question though -- what is the escape sequence for printing the plus sign? I tried to use /+ but the compiler rejects it. John Riemann Soong (talk) 01:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The plus sign doesn't need an escape character. Try compiling System.out.println("+"); and you'll see it works fine. Make sure the plus sign is in quotes. Your problem may be with string concatenation. For example, if x == 5, and you want to print the value of x with a plus sign in front of it, you write System.out.println("+" + x); This prints "+5". Does that help?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 01:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Booting Issue from USB Flash Drive

I'm trying to boot backtrack 4 (http://www.backtrack-linux.org/) from my flash drive, and it gives me an error every time I try to start it. It says "could not find kernel image: linux." I looked on the flash drive to see if syslinux.cfg is there, and it is. Also, I used UNetbootin to install the ISO onto the flash drive as it was recommended by the makers. Anyone know a solution? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 03:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

www0.?

Why www0. and not www. What are the differences and what does it mean? I understand that it goes all the way to 6 www0. - www6. ??????

××√× —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandonark13 (talk • contribs) 06:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

See domain name. In the website "www.cnn.com", the www. is a subdomain of the cnn. portion of the address. The website owner chose to register the www. in the Domain Name System record. There is nothing special about "www." other than everyone in the world is familiar with it. Some websites register subdomains of www0. or www1. or en. as subdomains. So, a particular website may have subdomains of www0 through www6, but this is totally made up by the website owner — it could just as well be a123.cnn.com or sdlfajs8efsdlfjs8efsl8efj.cnn.com or what have you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Historically, I think the plan was that "company.com" would point to the top level router in a company; then "www.company.com" would point to the server(s) which could deliver www content (i.e. deliver HTML pages over HTTP). Theoretically, there would also be "ftp.company.com" for an ftp server; "smtp.company.com" for an SMTP server; "gopher.company.com" for a gopher server; and so on. In practice, virtually all users only really access a network via its HTTP server - so commonly, the top-level DNS name points to the web server. Many large websites require redundancy in the form of load balancing or Round robin DNS - so while the user types "www.company.com", they actually get directed automatically to the least-busy server. That server is properly named something else - it might be something as simple as "www1", "www2", or so on - or it can be any other name at all - but it's aliased to www.company.com. This can be done transparently (and the user thinks they are connected to "www" even though they are actually connecting to "www37", or it can be done with an HTTP redirect, in which case the user sees that the exact server they are actually pointing to. Such systems sometimes persist for a long time after they are technically required, because they are public-facing - so changing details would require informing thousands of users to alter their bookmarks, etc. As far as the number of servers, "www0-www6" - this is neither a hard limit nor an exact count of the actual number of servers in use. (Each of those might be a separate round-robin DNS for an entire data center, for example). In practice, large websites such as Google have tens of thousands of WWW mirrors. It has been estimated that a single Google query by one user uses as many as 10,000 Google servers. (source: Energy limits force complete rethinking of processors, programming, Kunle Olukotun). Think how much electricity is wasted every time you click!! Nimur (talk) 06:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Qualified Dublin Core in XHTML

Hello,

I didn't find any answer on the web, so i hope someone could answer me here.

I'm implementing DC metadata on my website. I'd like to use qualified Dublin Core to add refinements to the contributor element. I know that in XML, it is possible to use Marc relators code, but i have no idea how to implement these qualifiers in XHTML.

My question is : Is the syntax <meta name="DC.contributor.ill" content="Name of the illustrator /> (for instance) a valid syntax, according to Dublin Core and Marc relator codes specifications ?

It would be wonderful if anyone could answer me.

Thanks in advance;

Patrice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.84.252.128 (talk) 07:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Excel LOOKUP function

Can anyone please help me with the correct format and syntax to be used in the LOOKUP function in Excel? Let us say that I want to use grades of A+, A, and A- in my grading scheme. (For simplicity, I will ignore the grades of B, C, and D for now.) My cut-off points are as follows: a grade of A- is from 90 to 93.333 points; a grade of A is from 93.333 to 96.667 points; and a grade of A+ is from 96.667 to 100 points. If I use the following function, it works correctly.

=LOOKUP(A1,{0,90,93.333,96.667},{"F","A–","A","A+"})

Now, let's say that I really want to use the actual "correct" cut-off points of 90; 93 1/3; and 96 2/3. (In other words, I want the exact value of 1/3 as opposed to 0.333; and I want the exact value of 2/3 as opposed to 0.667.) How can I modify the above function to accommodate for requirement of exact fractional equivalents ... and not use merely their decimal approximations?

I tried things such as these (below), but they all seemed to create syntax or formatting errors:

• I used 93+(1/3) as a cut-off point instead of 93.333;
• I used =(93+1/3) as a cut-off point instead of 93.333;
• I used 280/3 as a cut-off point instead of 93.333;
• I used =280/3 as a cut-off point instead of 93.333;
• I used =(280/3) as a cut-off point instead of 93.333.

Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions as to what is going on exactly ... and how I can fix the problem? I cannot imagine that Excel is so simplistic that it requires decimal numbers to be used (e.g., 93.333), but it will not accommodate a simplistic division operation (e.g., 93+1/3). The problem, I suspect, is in the exact typing / format / syntax of the formula (e.g., the correct use of parentheses or equal signs or commas, etc.). But, I cannot seem to figure it out. Any thoughts? Thanks! (64.252.68.102 (talk) 16:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC))

Fractions? We don't need no stinking fractions! Remember that to Excel, every number is a float, so asking for the 'real' value of 93 1/3 to be expressed is never going to happen. However, if you are interested in a 'more accurate' solution I would suggest using the cell array option for the LOOKUP function, thusly: =LOOKUP(A1,$D$1:$D$4,$E$1:$E$4). This will use the values in D1-D4 for the grade cutoffs, and the values in E1-E4 for the letter grades themselves (and the dollar signs allow dragging it down a column to check a bunch of grades without breaking the reference). In the range of cells you can input a fraction like 93 1/3 and it will accept it. It will, however, merely reduce it to the closest float it can find, such as 93.3333333333333, but at least it will be transparent to the user. Hope this helps! --Jmeden2000 (talk) 16:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh my God. Thanks. But, in all honesty, I did not understand a word that you just said. I am not that fluent with Excel. I have no idea what a cell array is. Can you please tell me exactly what I have to do ... and exactly how to type the formula? I am gathering that ... I go to a cell (let's say B5) ... and in cell B5, I can enter the exact formula =93+1/3. And then cell B5 will "hold" my exact value. Correct? OK, but then what exactly do I do with that? And, I assume that I have to do this for every single grade (A+ in cell B5 ... A- in cell B6 ... B+ in cell B7 ... etc.) ... is that correct? If that is all correct, then what will my final function look like? Thanks, if you can reply back again! Much appreciated. (64.252.68.102 (talk) 16:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC))

I should mention, before you go too far down this path, the lookup function works based on 'equal or less than' so if a grade of 93 1/3 is entered it will show you 'A-' given your current set of rules. There are ways around this but the discussion so far is just the LOOKUP function... --Jmeden2000 (talk) 17:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

OK let's step through this. Say you have ten decimal grades in column A, so they are A1:A10. You have your table of letter grade minimum values like '0, F' '90, A-' '93 1/3, A' and you put those into columns D and E respectively, so column D has F,A-, A A+ in it starting from the top at D1. Column E has the minimum value number next to the letter, so 0, 90, 93 1/3, etc starting with E1. Now, for the formula, if you put this into B1: =LOOKUP(A1,$D$1:$D$4,$E$1:$E$4) it will check the number grade in the cell next to it (a1) and compute the letter based on the table. The dollar signs are there to let you 'drag-fill' the B column by grabbing the little black square in the lower right of that cell and pulling it as far down column B as you want calculated. It will use the same lookup table against whatever number is to it's left. Finally, if you decide you want a different set of values for the letters (say you want to expand it so you can do B, C, and D; unless you are that tough of a teacher ;) you can change the formula to something like =LOOKUP(A1,$D$1:$D$10,$E$1:$E$10) if your grading rules ran from row 1 to row 10 in columns D and E. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 17:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)