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February 25

Disabling mobile facebook site on iPhone

Is there any way to permanently disable the mobile site on facebook the way you can here on wikipedia? I absolutely abhor it and am always pressing site complete / full site whatever at the bottom of the page and always it just reverts back after a page or two. Is there a way to hide the fact that you are using a phone? Please!! :) Saudade7 03:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

One solution would be to change the user agent of your mobile browser so that it identifies to Facebook as a normal browser like firefox or IE, then Facebook will serve the standard pages. I don't have an iPhone so I don't know how to change the user agent, but google search should have the information —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 14:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

thanks! I will try that! Saudade7 00:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Dell Inspiron keyboard from hell

I've got a company-issued Dell Inspiron which has the charming default setting of the function keys only being active when one holds the "Fn" key placed between Ctrl & Win, Alt in the lower left of the keyboard. To make things even more entertaining, the function keys are dual-purposed with things like brightness, battery, volume, and wireless. End result? When I instinctively hit F2 to rename a file - you know, because I'm computer unretarded and don't need to use a mouse to do that - I turn off my wireless card. HOORAY! Seeing as how this is exactly OPPOSITE all previous laptop keyboard convention that I've seen, would some kind soul please endeavor to identify a way to make my function keys ACT LIKE FUNCTION KEYS by default?

PS - F5 to refresh my webpage instead ups my brightness! YAY! unless I hold the Fn key, you know, because most people change their brightness MORE OFTEN than they use F5 to refresh webpages... or something... /me dies 218.25.32.210 (talk) 07:34, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I had this on my Dell Inspiron. Press Windows Key + X. In the box labelled Function key row, select Function key from the drop-down list. That should do it.

It can also be done via the BIOS if the above doesn't work, but it did fine for me. Hope that helps! ╟─TreasuryTag►prorogation─╢ 07:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, that doesn't seem to do anything (WK + X). I suppose I should add that I'm running a Simplified Chinese version of XP. Perhaps if you told me what sort of window WK + X opens on your laptop, I'd be able to find it another way? Otherwise I'll try the BIOS route next time I reboot... (and thank you for the prompt reply!) 218.25.32.210 (talk) 07:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't take it anymore and went the BIOS route, which worked painlessly. Thank you for the tip, TT. The Dell clown(s) that thought it'd be a good idea to launch with that as the default setup should be demoted to workstations running TabWorks for the next 3 years as punishment. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 08:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Glad you got it sorted. For reference Windows+X opened up the "Windows Mobility Centre" whatever that is, but if it works, it works! ╟─TreasuryTag►constablewick─╢ 12:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Why does Wikipedia keep thinking I'm "Doughnuthead"?

Question moved to WP:AN/I by User:Mo ainm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 14:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Hard drive size discrepancy part 2

A few months ago, I asked this question, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 December 19#Hard drive size discrepancy, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was down to my computer. However, I've looked at a few more computers, and it seems to be more than just me, take a look at [1], different computers, different users and different operating systems, yet they all have the same issue. Does anybody have the same thing? Why is this? Thanks--86.181.75.145 (talk) 16:53, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

This has some information on the problem —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 16:59, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Your "selecting all files" method (right window in every screenshot on your flickr link) is actually flawed because it won't show all the files/directories. Although by default it won't show hidden/system files (which 82.44.55.204 mentions in their link), there's also a few Windows directories that you don't actually have "permission" to view and there's no quick checkbox to enable this. One big one is the hidden system directory "C:\System Volume Information" (it's on other hard disk partitions too). This restriction is by design because poking around in there can seriously corrupt your Windows installation (and potentially the whole partition/lose all your files) and as such it's restricted to the SYSTEM user account only. These permissions can be changed/overriden, but I wouldn't recommend it. Because the "properties" window is unable to look into these directories it just skips over them hence more of a disk space discrepancy to what you expect. ZX81 ^talk 17:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(EC) It's not clear to me that you accounted for the factors I mentioned on all those computers. System restore i.e. whats in the System Volume Information could easily be a big factor, the vast majority of people would leave it on and unless you grant access or delete the directory you're clearly not account for it. It would be the first area I would look at. Windows does not display hidden files & directories OR system files & directories by default and while advanced users may turn this off, most people won't so unless you turned it off you won't be seeing these. An advanced computer user may have made some directories inaccessible to the default user or even to all users so people are less likely to stumble across them by accident (these files may or may not be encrypted themselves), and as I mentioned if there are multiple users on the computer this would often mean that no one has access to all files and directories on the computer without taking control as an admin and granting access. It's also not clear you accounted for the recycle bin. I also wouldn't consider [2] particularly relevant. A ~2 GB difference isn't much and could easily be accounted for by file system data and various other things (which I admit I neglected to mention in my previous post). Nil Einne (talk) 17:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Depending on the kind of files you're storing, filesystem cluster size can consume a surprisingly large amount. On a typical (see later) filesystem, a 1 byte file will consume a whole cluster (which can be several blocks - 4Kbytes or more). This microsoft article has more, and includes the telling line "On the typical partition, this means that on average (cluster size)/2 * (number of files) worth of space is lost in this way." Depending on the filesystem, a single directory (even if it contains just one file, or even none) will also consume a cluster. Now some filesystems try to make more efficient provision for lots of small files (although almost always for reasons of performance rather than storage efficiency) - ReiserFS stores several small files together in a single cluster (ref); I'm sure other advanced filesystems do likewise (I think Veritas does). But note the central tenet of modern filesystem design - "time is money, disk is cheap"; the breakneck pace of storage economy (which sometimes exceeds Moore's Law) means that the next disk you buy will probably be three times faster than the last one - but not three times as fast - so they optimise for read and write efficiency at the expense of the most space-efficient model. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:05, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

You probably want to change the first "faster" to "bigger" (above). When you do this, please delete this suggestion. Dbfirs 22:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Which language was used for this?

http://earlsfieldpractice.co.uk/garbage/76/762348/big_7323786_0_300-225.JPG

Judging from the fact that I've now seen three different doctor's surgeries use this exact program to arrive their patients, I assume it's a pretty widespread thing, at least in the UK. Does anyone know how to find out what language it was written in? Vimescarrot (talk) 17:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

This PDF file is a sales brochure for the system. Like almost all software marketed to consumers, the company doesn't talk about what language the software was written in, mostly because consumers don't care. You could contact the e-mail address in the brochure and ask, if you remain curious. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Vimescarrot (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The PDF file does mention that the computer runs Windows XP Professional. Naturally, if it were some sort of specialized operating system, the choice of programming language would be somewhat more limited. On XP Pro, it could be any of the popular languages. decltype (talk) 21:03, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

High-available internet service

Outside of the local telcos and cable companies, where else can I go for high available internet service? What do hospitals, big corporations, universities, and/or TV stations use? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Larger users of internet buy one or several leased line using a variety of technologies, including optical SONET connections. Depending on circumstances, the actual line itself may still be supplied by (directly or under contract) the local telco, although the underlying internet connection may or may not be. There are any number of business telephony and connectivity suppliers (that cater to large users like you list, rather than consumers). While these connections are generally very reliable, a single line is always a single point of failure, so organisations that depend on continuous service will typically buy several concurrent leased connections (maybe from different suppliers); the enterprise-grade network swithing equipment they use is capable of handling load balancing and failover, to bind these together into a very reliable connection. Note that small(ish) users can do the same - SME-grade routers (e.g. some of those made by Draytek) allow failover to another port in the event of a failure of the primary WAN connection (e.g. failing to a second ADSL connection, or to a usb 3G cellular connection). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Python Code Issues

What is wrong with my code? I wrote it in Python 3.1.1. The purpose of the code is to write all the lyrics to "99 Bottles of Milk on the Wall"

b = 99
f = open('F:\Bawtlez.txt', 'r')
f.read()
f.write(str(num))
f.write( ' bottles of milk on the wall,\n')
f.write(str(num))
f.write(' bottles of milk\n')
f.write('Take one down, pass it around,\n')
f.write(str(num))
f.write(' bottles of milk on the wall.\n')
f.write(' \n')
while b != 1:
 b = b - 1
 num = b
 f.write(str(num))
 f.write(' bottles of milk on the wall,\n')
 f.write(str(num))
 f.write(' bottles of milk,\n')
 f.write(' Take one down, pass it around,\n')
 f.write(str(num))
 f.write('bottles of milk on the wall.\n')
 f.write(' \n')
f.write(' bottle of milk on the wall,\n')
f.write(' bottle of milk,\n')
f.write('Take it down, pass it around,\n')
f.write(str(num))
f.write(' bottle of milk on the wall.\n')
f.write(' \n')
f.write('No more bottles of milk! :(')
f.close()

When ever I run it, I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Mitch\Documents\Randomtriangles.py", line 4, in <module>
    f.write(str(num))
NameError: name 'num' is not defined

Help please. MMS2013 19:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, line 4 of your code is "f.write(str(num))", but you have not defined num to be anything. You want to use b there, as that's the name of your loop variable. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(repeat answer - not paying proper attention) Change the first line from b to num - notice you never used b despite it being the "99 bottles on the wall", but you used num instead. (Also what are these lyrics - I'm familiar with "9 green bottles" or "1 man went to mow" but not "99 milk bottles"!!)87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I made the adjustment and got this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Mitch\Documents\Randomtriangles.py", line 5, in <module>
    f.write(str(num))
IOError: not writable

BTW, the desired output would be something like:

99 bottles of milk on the wall,
99 bottles of milk,
Take one down, pass it around
99 bottles of milk on the wall.

98 bottles of milk on the wall
98 bottles of milk,

...

No more bottles of milk! :(

MMS2013 19:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

See http://docs.python.org/tutorial/inputoutput.html section 7.2

f = open('F:\Bawtlez.txt', 'r')

should be

f = open('F:\Bawtlez.txt', 'w')

or

f = open('F:\Bawtlez.txt', 'r+')

using just 'r' means that the file can only be read from, and not written too.

Also you definately don't need two variables - you could just use 'num' all the way through.87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

XD My code failed because I missed one letter. Thanks! MMS2013 19:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

If you are only ever writing to the file, why do you need f.read() at all? And isn't it supposed to be bottles of beer? Astronaut (talk) 03:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Files might be missing- ExFAT Flash Drive

So I got myself a couple of Kingston DataTraveler 150s, with 64GB of space. Until I looked up ExFAT, I didn't understand why my netbook couldn't read it and my W7 desktop had no problem. So I installed the update from Microsoft, and emptied about 40GB onto the drive in preparation for a clean install of XP. I plugged it back in later (on the same netbook before the install), and it's only reading empty folders! Properties reveals that the drive has the info on it, but I can't get to it with Windows. Any ideas? Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 20:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, the data on the drive was from the netbook, not the desktop. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 20:35, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Before you pull a flash drive out of its USB port, Microsoft wants you to use the "Safely remove hardware" icon that appears to the right of the taskbar. This makes sure that the computer has completely finished writing everything to the drive, and so you don't yank it in the middle of, say, writing sectors that are critical to its directory. Did you use the "safely remove hardware" icon? (By the way, I would be surprised if this were the reason for the problem; I am under a vague impression that Windows Vista and Windows 7 are better about handling this bad user behavior than XP and previous. But I could be wrong.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I usually do that, but I'm not sure if I did in this instance. Note that 2 files stayed on, and other files that were already on have dissapeared. The netbook is running XP, by the way. Still, the data is obviously on the drive, is there any (easy) way to get it back? Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 22:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to not be specifically helpful to you with this comment or my last one, but it is not "obviously" on the drive — in one bad scenario, Windows could have marked ~40GB on your flash drive as occupied and copied over all the data, but the flash drive was pulled out while a write cache holding the directory sectors was being flushed, so the directory currently on the flash drive is missing or corrupted. Have you tried the "Tools" tab on that Properties window to check the volume for errors? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Nothing. I'm going to try playing with it on my W7 computer. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 23:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, at least I know what I did wrong. I succeeded in determining that the files got corrupted. So you were of help. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 05:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry this disaster happened to you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

There is freeware which says it can recover deleted etc material from flash drives, perhaps they would help. At least you will know if there is anything truely on there. 78.146.242.196 (talk) 13:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with 78 — you shouldn't give up just yet if that is your only copy of your data. Products like Norton Utilities or a competitor may be able to scan the sectors of the flash drive and discern what sectors comprise files, and recover your files. The Norton Utilities article has a "Competitors" section, too, and we have a list at Category:Utility software which may be useful. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:27, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, that was one of the first things I did, shortly after Comet Tuttle suggested that it might be corrupted. Nothing came up. Thanks anyway :) Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 20:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How does my browser remember what links I've clicked?

Even after restarting my computer and having purged it with Ccleaner, both Firefox and Windows show links that I had previously clicked even days ago in a different colour. How do they do that? Would they remember a link I'd clicked six months ago for example? Is it possible to view the list of clicked links they must be keeping somewhere? Thanks. 78.147.93.182 (talk) 21:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I am not familiar with Ccleaner, and you should not need to use a third party utility like that to wipe your browsing history in any browser made in the last 7 years. In Firefox (3.5.8, anyway), choose "Clear recent history" from the "Tools" menu. The browser's differently-colored links come from the history. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Ccleaner is only able to clear browser history when the browser is not running. Make sure you've completely exited Firefox and IE before running it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 22:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article on CCleaner. It's basically a tool for cleaning errors in your Windows Registry. More info here.[3][4][5] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The question is not about Ccleaner, which I only mentioned in passing. 78.151.155.128 (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

As Comet Tuttle said, this information is kept in the browser's history file. If Ccleaner does not change the link behavior, you are either using it wrong, or it is not deleting the history correctly. There are other ways to purge the history file—use one and it should change this. --Mr.98 (talk) 04:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

So does the browser scan through my History everytime I look at a new page? 78.146.242.196 (talk) 13:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It's a trivial operation for it to compare the links on your page to a list of links in your history. It's not look at the content, just the URLs. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think it has nothing to do with clearing browsing history. Try to change colors. FireFox:Tools→Options→Contents→Colors and change it. Oda Mari (talk) 14:18, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

You are mistaken, sorry. Whether a link is colored as "visited" depends on the browser history. You can change the colors of how it tags things as being "visited" or not, but that doesn't change that it does it. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Safe to delete Microsoft Office?

I have WinXP. This is an old second-hand computer and Microsoft Office was rather mangled when I got it. After spending/wasting a lot of time on it I managed to partially repair it, but it still has problems. Yes, I do use OpenOffice. Would it be safe to delete Microsoft Office without any problems? Thanks 78.147.93.182 (talk) 21:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes; an uninstallation won't screw up Windows or anything. Be sure to remove it by means of the "Add/Remove Programs" Control Panel in order to make sure you get rid of everything (rather than just deleting the appropriate folder within "Program Files"). Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I had an old computer like that, and even when uninstalled it left enough to double the start up time. It may better to format the disk and start with an XP reinstall. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

February 26

Clearing the history of Internet explorer without starting the program

I'm trying to help my father-in-law with getting internet explorer working. Symptoms: the program starts, tries to open ~10 tabs and crashes. Chrome works fine. I suspect the problem is that something on one of the pages that IE tries to load causes the crash. So it's a catch-22 situation. To get IE working, i need to clear the history and cache. To clear the history and cache, I need to start IE. How do I get around this? Thanks, 85.200.133.168 (talk) 08:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC) (NorwegianBlue, not logged in)

You could try http://www.nirsoft.net/web_browser_tools.html - these tools will delete a variety of caches - this might fix it.87.102.67.84 (talk) 10:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Because it's opening the last browsing settings you might want to turn that off (temporarily) http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/21/how-to-disable-reopen-last-browsing-session-in-ie8-internet-explorer-8/ (last resort)

The location of the files you want to delete are alledgedly here (I haven't checked for correctness) If this works I think it will be your first choice. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/21/ie8-last-browsing-session-history-storage-location-for-backup-restore-deletion-or-cleanup/ 87.102.67.84 (talk) 10:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Meanwhile, I found out about the iexplore -extoff option (starting with extensions disabled), and it turns out than internet explorer starts when extensions are disabled. There was nothing that stuck out as being the probable culprit, so I'll disable all, and reactivate them one by one. --85.200.133.168 (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

...and after re-activating everything, everything works (in the process, there was both an avg update and a vista update). So, whatever caused the problem, appears to be gone now. --85.200.133.168 (talk) 11:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

For the record, you can get to "Internet Options" via the Control Panel, which then gives you the ability to delete history, cookies, etc. --LarryMac | Talk 13:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Install and run Ccleaner. Will do eaxactly what you want very easily. 78.146.242.196 (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Simplest solution: Pull the cable or disable WiFi, start the browser, wait for timeouts, delete the tabs and/or history. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! --85.200.133.168 (talk) 20:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

MPI

Is there anything I need to take into consideration when choosing an MPI? I have set up a Beowulf cluster and I will be doing some work on the 2D Ising model. Is there benefits to different types of MPI like LAMMPI or OpenMPI, thanks. Mo ainm (talk) 13:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Angles in computers trivia

For storing and computation on angles (0 to 2pi) on a computer I've found it useful to map the range of values onto 0 to 1 ie (000000000000000 to 1111111111111 etc) (with 1 not included since 2pi=0) . ie using a single register. (I'm using a combination of lookup for the most significant n bits plus euler's formula for the rest of the 32-n bits dependent on accuracy required and formula for sin(a+b) cos(a+b) as well etc to join the two results) . I imagine the same mapping could be used for other trig. algs. such as CORDIC.

Enough about me, my question is: is this mapping of 0 to 360 onto 0 to 1 commonly used in computers, if at all; if so do we have an article on it.??87.102.67.84 (talk) 13:47, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

This article about the source code for Doom says it used fixed-precision integer math (16.16 bits), a scheme called Binary Angle Measurement. This excerpt has more details about BAMs. This article at MSDN also discusses an integer angle where 0xFFFF+1 is a full rotation, which seems to be the scheme you're talking about. These integer schemes made sense on the 80486 microprocessors for which Doom was targetted; later iD games use floating point (mostly). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:39, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks (again :) ) , I almost started writing a new article based on the links you gave me, luckily found in time that there was a short mention at Binary scaling#Binary angles so I expanded that and created redirects from places I would have expected to find an answer.

I'm familiar with software components that use milliarcseconds in their internal representation of angles. A circle = 1,296,000,000 milliseconds, so angles of 0 to +/- 2pi can be neatly represented in a 32-bit int. decltype (talk) 21:18, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Follow up "brads"

Brads and Angle#Units mention "brads" - (google isn't helping) - one section states that 1brad=1/256 degree - but I can't find any examples of use. Anyone got a good reference. Thanks.Shortfatlad (talk) 16:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Also List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Furman mentions "furman" being 1/65536 of a circle - anyone got a ref for that too.Shortfatlad (talk) 16:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Searching for "binary radians" (the expansion of brad) finds quite a lot, including this. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again, (removed cite tag) I think google must be censoring my search results - I did look..87.102.67.84 (talk) 16:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Pocket device to watch old films on?

I like watching old b&w films, and many of them are out of copyright and available to download. I have some long train journeys coming up. What device would be the best or cheapest way of watching them? A laptop would be too big. I'm unfamiliar with recent gadgets. Thanks. 78.146.242.196 (talk) 15:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I recently got a 3rd generation iPod Touch. Its screen is large enough to see the picture pretty clearly, but the device is small enough to go into a pocket or (as in my case) to be worn on an armband (when used as a music player while exercising). I use HandBrake to reencode movies to the correct size and format. There are a number of players, from various manufacturers, that compete directly with the iPod Touch (and are likely a bit cheaper). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

If a iPod is too small a netbook might be big enough - they are typically 1/2 the size of a laptop - ie half size as A5 (paper) is to A4. Also bigger than a iPod and (and cheaper than either) is a portable DVD player - nowadays these are relatively cheap with a good viewing size - all you need is to convert and burn the film to a blank recordable DVD.87.102.67.84 (talk) 15:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh and I think the recent (and still cheap) portable DVD players will take SD cards - which are a lot more compact than DVDs - they'll probably play other media formats too (eg wmv)- but you'd have to check the instructions.Shortfatlad (talk) 16:38, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

If you want to go down the portable DVD route one thing to watch out for is the screen resolution which in some cases can be quite poor - best to see one first, or check the specifications before buying.87.102.67.84 (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

An older and possibly cheaper solution might be a PSP, which uses Memory Stick Duo cards and can play .mp4 movies. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, and the PSP would be a good device to use for films because of it's widescreen. Chevymontecarlo. 08:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps a netbook would be small enough? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 00:50, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

There's also 9" netbooks, smaller than the current standard 10". I watch my videos on it. A word of advice- don't get a Celeron model, get an Atom. They tend to give better battery life (my ASUS 900HA is rated for 5 hours. I can get 4 hours watching videos, with the screen brightness on low.) Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

mcods.exe

Resolved

I am frustrated an average of 3 or 4 times a week with slowness and lagginess on my Windows XP machine. When I check out the currently running processes with Windows Task Manager, I notice that mcods.exe is generally running and taking up around 40% of my dual-core CPU, meaning almost a whole core. This is apparently a McAfee virus scan. How do I tell it to get lost without just killing the process? I wanted to do this nicely via the McAfee GUI but I don't see any indication there that the virus scan is even running. This link suggests I use services.msc to set it to run only manually, but, oddly, McAfee Scanner is already set to run only manually. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I may have answered my own question in record time. Like any security minded fellow, I normally use an account with no administrator rights. I switched over to my admin account and the McAfee icon was right there on the Start bar, in the lower right, animating to show that a scan was ongoing. I launched McAfee from that icon and there was a nice Cancel button which halted the scan. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:02, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

For the future, you might try checking McAfee's configuration to see if you can run the scan at Below Normal priority; it will still take CPU, but should relinquish it to user programs. XP doesn't support prioritized I/O so you might still have some slowdowns due to the file scan, but it shouldn't be quite as bad. If McAfee doesn't have a setting to configure, you could follow the steps given in the very last post in this thread on service priority. If you were on Vista or later, you could prevent it from interfering with other startup processes by changing the setting from "Automatic" to "Automatic (Delayed Start)", but that only deprioritizes the task's CPU and I/O during initialization, and wouldn't help once the service was up and running.

Alternatively, if you're comfortable mucking about with Windows settings, you could create a Task Scheduler task that runs the same program as the service, and the Task Scheduler will default to Below Normal priority (and with some mucking about with exporting, editing, and reimporting the config file would let you set arbitrary priorities). Then you can either set the services.msc entry to disabled, or if you're feeling daring, change the definition of the service so that it triggers your scheduled task.

Of course, this is all open to problems if McAfee does startup fixes to its services (not unreasonable for a virus scanner) or relies on communicating with the running service in a way that only works when the service manager is in control (quite likely). If that's the case, I'd consider looking into replacing McAfee with another scanner; in my experience most of the reputable virus scanners are roughly equally effective (they'll miss anything really new, but they'll catch a lot of the older stuff) and the primary differentiation is in their resource footprint. I've had decent experiences with AVG and Trend, bad experiences with McAfee and Norton. Your mileage may vary.

Of course, if you're as security conscious as I think you are, upgrading to a 64 bit OS (whether XP x64, Vista or Win7) would remove a large part of your security concerns, and if you've got a hardware firewall (e.g. most routers act as such), you might be okay with an on-demand scanner for specific files and skip the real time and scheduled scans unless you really want them. The 64 bit upgrade vastly improves your security profile: most buffer overruns (the source of worms, which anyone is vulnerable to, as opposed to trojans, which a security conscious user can avoid with on-demand scans) rely on filling a null-terminated string with executable code, but any memory address on current 64 bit machines contains two nulls, making it much harder to do anything useful with the overrun. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 21:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Japanese and similar characters in Firefox

When I look at pages with what should be Japanese characters, instead of each character I get a small box with four very small letters or numbers in it. Is there something I can download to show the Japanese characters? I do not understand any of them, but they look nicer. 92.29.32.229 (talk) 21:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

It is attempting to show Japanese (unicode) characters, but you don't have the font installed. For starters, install a basic CJK font (Chinese-Japanese-Korean). How you do that depends heavily on your operating system. -- kainaw™ 21:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Help:Multilingual support (East Asian) is our help page on this subject. It has instructions for several different operating systems. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

RAR vs. 7z

Resolved

I need to store many thousands of .html files. They don't need to be accessed often, but occasionally they do or I might like to search them. Which is the better archive format for this task; RAR or 7z? I know from my own tests that 7z has slightly better compression results than RAR, but RAR supports searching archives without extracting. I realize this is a more of opinion than absolute facts, but any input, insight into other solutions etc would be appreciated. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 21:38, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

All depends on how often you intend to extract/search them, vs. how much the compression really saves. I'd suggest compressing a representative sample of your files to compare real world compression ratios; the compression ratio for general files will differ quite a bit for HTML, given that HTML is much more structured than "typical" data. You might also try stuff like tar combined with bzip2 or gzip to see if they get better compression or faster searching. Or you skip tar entirely, and just bzip2 or gzip compress the individual files, so you can still index them by name efficiently, and decompress individually without the complexity of a full on archive+compression solution. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 22:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: HTML compresses well enough that even a solution like NTFS compression will get some decent results on it, and you can continue to use them transparently without the need to deal with manual decompression at all. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 22:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

You don't say what OS you are using, but if it's a recent Windows, you might want to just tell Windows to compress that folder. On Vista, you'd right-click the folder, choose Properties, then Advanced, then click the appropriate check box. Since hard disks are US$110 for 1.5TB these days, I suspect that the number of bytes saved is probably not the actual priority here, so just having Windows compress the folder may be the winning solution for simplicity and search capability. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI, Windows's built-in compression *is* NTFS compression. It's not an OS feature, it's part of the file system spec. So you can't copy it to a non-NTFS drive and keep the compression, but at the same time, a non-Windows OS with a good NTFS driver could still read it. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:02, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for all the helpful answers. I just did another test with 3gb of files; 7z compressed them down to 350mb (with solid compression) whereas WinRAR compressed to 530mb. So it looks like I'm going to go with 7z. I did consider NTFS compression but it doesn't compare at all to the space savings achieved with the archivers. Again, thanks for the help :)

February 27

Freeware app like Camfrog?

Is there a freeware app available that has features similar to Camfrog? I'm in China, my brother is in one state in the US, and the rest of my family another. I'd like to be able to participate in and/or host video conferencing with more than 2 accounts. Camfrog allows X accounts to all video conference together, but at the hefty fee of $45.95 per account and $200 for a server license. 207.7.138.117 (talk) 04:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

ekiga --194.197.235.240 (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

VirtualBox RDP

I am using VirtualBox for virtualization. The host OS is Windows 7 (Ultimate, 64-bit) and the guest OS is Windows Server 2008. I am trying to enable RDP connections through to the guest VM. At the moment I only have one physical system to test this on, but ultimately I will need to do enable this for external IPs. Within VirtualBox, I have enabled the Remote Display server. I have changed the port to 3390 since the default 3389 is already being used by Win7; authentication method is null to keep things simple for now. The VM network adapter is NAT. From within the guest OS, I can confirm that a class A IP is being created. (According to the VirtualBox documentation, ping does not work over NAT, so I am unable to ping the system.) The setup seems fine, but I am unable to determine the IP to connect to in RDP. Documentation indicates that this should be the host IP (not guest IP), suffixed with the defined port (:3390). I am able to successfully connect with the loopback 127.0.0.2:3390. However, as my goal is to enable external connections, this will not suffice. I checked ipconfig /all and tried all IPs given there, but none of them seem to work. Also, when I check online sites for my IP, it is yet different than what is given in ipconfig (given in signature); this also does not work. I have been looking at this for several hours but am stumped; any ideas for resolution? 124.214.131.55 (talk) 09:33, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind. After much frustration, I ended up just installing it on another partition and was able to use RDP without any problems. I'll figure out the problem another time. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 12:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I highly recommend placing any questions about VB on a VB forum. I've done much better asking on ubuntuforums, though I have ubuntu host. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

PrtSc (Print Screen)

Hi

If I have multiple windows on my screen, how do I print the one on the forefront only?

Thanks, NirocFX

41.193.16.234 (talk) 12:17, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Try Ctrl Alt & PrtSc at the same time. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 12:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

That is incorrect. You press Alt+PrtScr. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Aargh. How did I make that mistake! Corrected!. Here's the text of the relevant Windows help section in XP
"To copy the window or screen contents

• To make a copy of the active window, press ALT+PRINT SCREEN.
• To copy the entire screen as it appears on your monitor, press PRINT SCREEN."

Note that all the "forefront" screen has to be visible (not off the edge of the monitor), any part not visible won't be copied--220.101.28.25 (talk) 14:13, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The Print screen article discusses this, and covers environments other than Windows. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:41, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Guys

I'll remember that next time.

Thanks, NirocFX

41.193.16.234 (talk) 09:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Shortwave 6

I was just mucking around with my grandad's Roberts R 9967, when I flipped into SW6, or Shortwave 6. This particular shortwave makes a noise like a robot or computer from Lost in Space...beeps and boops and bops. Does anyone know why it is making this noise, it's really fascinating! The noise comes when I get near electrical equipment or ferrous metals. Please answer back!--Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 14:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The noise comes also after 15.70 MHz. Hope that also helps.--Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 14:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Shortwave is fully of communications channels - often digital - it's almost certainly one of these.

I would guess that the signal is being picked up by big metal objects, and the object acting a sort of passive boosting transmittor (like an earphone Ear trumpet except electrical).

I don't really know what you are listening to but the shortwave article mentions a time signal at 15,000kHz (that's 15MHz) (in the USA) and probably within the accuracy of your old radio. - that's the sort of time signal used to control radio controlled watches/clocks etc.

Or it might be something else completely.87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

See Time signal and the related articles WWVH , WWV , CHU (radio station) etc - see if the descriptions of the signals match what you're hearing. (like electronic birdsong ?)

87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

You can take a quick look at Utility station and High frequency too. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:31, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

PC to Home stereo

I am having a sound issue when I connect my PC to my home stereo amplifier. I get an annoying hum. I have tried different cables, different inputs on the amp, even a new sound card for my PC. I did some research about ohms matching transformers but, am not sure what to get or if that is even the answer. This problem does not exist on anything else I send PC audio to.[self amplified speakers, TV monitor, even my DeWalt work radio]What could solve this problem? Please help, I have been struggling with this for more than a year.74.47.146.203 (talk) 22:27, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Most soundcards have several sound outputs, including the normal stereo speaker output, the headphone output, and sometimes a surround-output (the rear channels). Make sure you're in the speaker port (which is usually coloured green) and not the headphone one. Also make sure the PC's sound output level is set at or near maximum (both the OS's general volume control, and that of the specific application you're using) and have the amplifier's own volume setting very low. Make sure you're not plugging the cable from the PC into the "phono" inputs on your amplifier (sounds like you've done that). Make sure the cable between the two isn't running near an obvious source of interference (cordless phone base-station, wireless router, microwave oven). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, when I say "sounds like you've done that" above, I really mean "sound like you've already tried and rejected that possibility" -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have the two plugged into different power outlets, you may have a ground loop. -- kainaw™ 22:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict - long answer, may not add much) It's also possible that you are getting a hum loop (I think the article Ground loop (electricity) may be covering the same thing), also induction from a 50/60Hz source on the loop of wire that goes from PC mains plug <> PC <> Audio out <> Audio In <> Amp <> Amp mains plug can cause hum (like an aerial).

The second can usually be fairly well elimanated by moving wires - as described above - make sure no audio wire goes near mains cable or transformer (better cables can sometimes help - ie coaxial or twisted pair, avoid cables with bare metal end plugs ie the chrome plated type)

A matching transformer might should be a solution - though it will also act as a low pass filter - removing low frequencys - so not a very good solution for audio. Other solutions include using a digital connection, or better still an optical digital connection (toslink) - I realise your amp might not have these as an option. If you get a matching transformer (aka audio isolation transformer) - get the cheapest - the devices are flawed at low frequency - it's not work spending a lot - for what you get.87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Question: are either or both of the devices earthed (ie 3 pin connector) ? Sometimes a fix is to connect an extra earth between the two devices (this isn't an option if one of the devices is unearthed) If both devices are earthed - a fix can sometimes be to remove an earth connection - you may see this suggested on the internet - it isn't a safe thing to do..

Another Question - can you test the amp to see if it works ok with other things - a CD player or whatever - it's possible that the amp is gone bad? Also check the amp connections - eg plug - if possible rewire it just to make sure that you have a good electrical connection.87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Also the amp - is it very old or obscure - if so can you say what make, or better - the input impedance on the inputs? (This is unlikely to be the problem unless the amp is over 50years old)87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The best set of advice I found was here http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/connecting-your-system/ground-loops-eliminating-system-hum-and-buzz (unfortunately it may have a dodgy flash animation that is blocked. otherwise the advice is good - but US centric)87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

February 28

File transfer from Drive C to Drive D—is that OK?

(1)Will it be OK for me to transfer all the files from drive c to drive d or will my computer not work properly if i do that?

There are important files in drive C, such as those of Windows and Microsoft which I think should remain, but I think since the drive C is running out of space, my computer seems to work so slow and so I thought perhaps transferring all the files from it to drive D would speed up the computer performance since drive D has lots of space available. What do you think about this? Am I making a good conclusion? I am hesitant to do this simply because I am afraid that my computer might break down if files are not where they ought to stay.

(2)Will there really be a difference if Windows and Microsoft files are saved in Drive C or Drive D or it doesn't matter where it's saved. Please answer these questions.. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.202.148.167 (talk) 07:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Your computer will be fine, but Windows won't be.

The advice depends on the situation. You could reinstall everything. Or you could stick in a bigger hard drive and reinstall everything on that. Or you could buy a new hard drive, format that, and then use Clonezilla to copy everything from C: of the older one to C: of the newer one, etc. Or you can pay money for a shrinkwrapped box containing some alternative to Clonezilla that has no advantage over it, and use this instead of Clonezilla. Or you could move on from Windows. -- Hoary (talk) 07:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't like the two editorializing pieces here, especially the "move on from Windows" alternative, which I believe we have all decided not to do here on RD/C. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You can move all of the files that you have created or downloaded, but you should leave all of the Windows files and software (unless you reinstall). I have done exactly this for exactly your reasons. Increasing the size of your page file (pagefile.sys) might speed things up. I'm not sure whether creating pagefile.sys on the D drive is an advantage or not. I tried it and it didn't seem to make any difference. Perhaps a Windows expert can advise here? Are your C & D drives just partitions of the same physical drive? Dbfirs 08:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

If the D: is a different disk (of equal or greater speed) then yes there's a (slight) performance benefit to putting the pagefile on that disk instead of C: where the main Windows installation is. If it's just a different partition of the same physical disk there's no performance difference except that you can free up some disk space by moving it to the other drive. ZX81 ^talk 09:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

If the computer is running slowly it could be because a lot of things are loading at start up. For my computer I only have the anti-virus loading at start-up. The freeware StartUp Control Panel by Mike Lin is one way to control what runs at start-up. 89.242.47.252 (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It's possible to just go to the "startup" folder "Start">"All programs">"startup" and just press delete for the programs. (Note having programs in startup doesn't necessaryily make it slow - but does if you start running out of ram (memory)).

What's making the computer go slow may not be the hard disk - in fact I don't think it will be (on probability). However you can move just about anything from C: to D: - as noted above the only thing that is really difficult to move is windows itself - for the others (ie all programs that appear in "Set program access and defaults" as installed on your system) - you can move to D: , however just copying across may or may not work - the failsafe way to do it would be to uninstall, an then reinstall onto D: (You can move stuff like MS Office as well)

(Try defragmenting if you haven't already) The program "Disk Cleanup" also could be worth running too - it's a windows program.

To get an idea of what might be making the computer go slow the following would be useful - programs that appear in the startup folder, installed programs, memory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.67.84 (talk) 21:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

320GB Hard Disk Drive space—inaccurate?

I wished to ask why my the sticker on my ASUS K40IJ laptop says that it has a disk capacity of 320 GB, but the total GB actually sums up only to 282.5 GB (74.5 for drive C and 208 GB for drive D). I was really confident that I would be able to store many files in my computer. That's one of the reasons why I purchased this product. Perhaps the reason why it's like that is simply because some other files are stored in other drives, but which one? I am hoping for a reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.202.148.167 (talk) 08:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

See Hard_disk_drive#Capacity_measurements, specifically the 'Formatted disk overhead' section "the operating system's file system internal usage is another, although minor, reason why a computer hard drive or storage device's capacity may show its capacity as different from its theoretical capacity" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Not really inaccurate, but more to do with marketing. You might think 320GB is 343,597,383,680 bytes (ie. 320 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024), but it is very likely to be only 320,000,000,000 bytes which is only 298GB. Astronaut (talk) 12:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Obligatory xkcd link --Tango (talk) 05:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're using Windows, you can look at disk partitions in the Administrative Tools in the control panel. That'll show you if your 320gb disk is divided up into smaller partitions. A lot of OEMs add a small recovery partition that take up a bit of space. Indeterminate (talk) 15:03, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

In Vista that's Control panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer management -> Storage -> Disk management. My 4GB SD memory card shows as only 3.75GB when formatted because formatting writes timing bytes between sectors. You could plug in an external hard drive (either direct USB or via a network) to store your large files. 1000GB drives are now quite inexpensive. Dbfirs 16:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

How do I change the user agent on iPhone?

How can I change the user agent of my mobile browser (Safari) so that it identifies to Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. as a normal browser like Firefox, Chrome, regular Safari on my laptop? Basically I hate hate hate mobile versions of pages and I can't seem to keep certain sites from constantly reverting to the mobile page no matter what I do. Nota bene: I am a computer idiot so talk down to me. I only know how to even ask this question because of someone else on this page. I Googled looking for information but couldn't find anything, probably because I don't really know what I am looking for. love, Saudade7 09:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's terribly easy. In OS X it's much easier, but the only thing I can find for the iPhone OS is this guy's solution. It looks like it might work, but you'll need a rooted phone, comfortableness with a hex editor, and willingness to probably make a terrible mess of your system. :) Indeterminate (talk) 15:00, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Again for someone technically minded, this could be achieved by operating a simple http proxy that rewrote the user-agent field of outgoing requests, and having the iPhone use that proxy rather than direct connect (I know you can set safari's http-proxy setting on a per-wifi-connection basis, I don't know about for its 3G connection). For someone with the modest technical capacity to do so, that's not a tough task. But I can't find an off-the-shelf proxy that someone who feels themselves a "computer idiot" could realistically do this task with, I'm afraid. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:47, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh No! I am too stupid to slay this particular monster! Cursed be the gods! I barely understood the technical aspects of what either of you were saying, that's the mess I'm in! C'est la vie, I do really very much appreciate your attempts to help me though Indeterminate and Finlay McWalter. Thanks so very much, love, Saudade7 01:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

IRC funding

How exactly are networks like rizon, quakenet funded? Who pays for their server costs? --Drogonov 10:08, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not clear - this might help http://www.b2irc.net/files/charter.pdf - (as an example of an IRC channel) - it looks like they use an entirely voluntary model, with servers providing help as 'sponsors' - ie mostly charitably (though it mentions a small amount of advertising).

I would guess that since text chat is miniscule in bandwidth terms compared to the average mp3 or youtube video that it's no big deal for a server provider to do some hosting.

eg http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/networks/ mentions popular nets having 10,000 users + , if they send 100bytes of text every day that's only 1Mb - it's a lot of typing to get it to 10Mb/day total! (So I'd guess you could practically set one up with an old computer and standard internet connection if you are prepared to pay the electricity bills for having it on 24hrs)

This seems to confirm it http://www.mirc.co.uk/help/costs.html - ie like P2P sharing (and a lot less bandwidth) - you only really pay the internet service provider.

The latest news on http://www.quakenet.org/ says that demon.uk is no longer a sponsor after been taken over by cable & wireless - I get the impression that this is a small scale 'close to the ground' type of thing that inviduals or smaller companies rather than big corps. would support freely. It doesn't look like they cost a lot.87.102.67.84 (talk) 22:30, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Insidious MSN messenger startup

I sometimes use this multi-user Windows XP machine. I don't use MSN messenger so I have clicked the "Do not launch at windows startup" and removed the entry from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the registry. Yet, several times I have had MSN messenger launch when I have logged in and had to go back through the hiding process again. How can I convince MSN messenger to be gone from my user and stay gone no matter what the other users might do. Astronaut (talk) 11:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Hypervisor

Is there any lightweight linux or any other platform, by which I can run a virtual machine? The platform should be very lightweight, low on system resources and no other capabilities than running virtual machines.

Have you investigated all the products mentioned in our Hypervisor article? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know which one would be a minimal hypervisor from that article. 218.248.80.62 (talk) 16:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth just trying a few out (it's a PC system right?) Did you want to pay - only Xen seems free that I could see.87.102.67.84 (talk) 22:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you seen the list Comparison of platform virtual machines which might help narrow your choice.87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:12, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Page orientation in Microsoft Word

In Microsoft Word, there are two different ways to orient a page: portrait and landscape. Thus, with a typical 8.5 x 11 inch paper, the portrait orientation sets the paper length (up and down) at the 11 inches and the paper width (across) as the 8.5 inches. With landscape setting, the reverse is true: the landscape orientation sets the paper length (up and down) at the 8.5 inches and the paper width (across) as the 11 inches. So, with portrait orientation, the page is longer than it is wide. With landscape orientation, the page is wider than it is long. My question is this. I want to create a document of several pages, in which I need to place a lot of text as well as several different charts and graphs. Some of the charts and graphs are better suited (formatted) for portrait orientation, and some of them are better suited (formatted) for landscape. Within the same document, is it possible to "switch" back and forth between different orientations for different pages? If so, how? Or must the entire document be set as one orientation or the other, without a mixture of both? Thank you in advance. (64.252.68.102 (talk) 15:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC))

I found the answer in Word 2007 by mousing over the "Orientation" icon in the Page Layout tab, then pressing F1 as suggested in the tooltip. There is a Help section called "Use portrait and landscape orientation in the same document". It says that first you select the pages or paragraphs you want to change; then on the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click "Margins"; then click Custom Margins; then on the Margins tab, click Portrait or Landscape; then in the "Apply to" list, click "Selected text". Word will automatically put section breaks before and after the text you selected for this change. By the way, another workaround that seems simpler to me, if your landscape pages are for graphics only, is to just leave the whole document in Portrait, paste the graphics as needed, and rotate them using the little green rotation handle that pokes out of the picture. Hold the Shift key while rotating to be sure it's an exact 90 degree rotation. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec):Yes, it is possible to "switch" back and forth between different orientations for different pages. You would need to put a 'section break' wherever you want to change orientations(among other things), this allows the setup of that section to be set differently to the rest of the document. In Word 2007 select Page Layout, Breaks, Section Breaks then type of break you want. If you want to change back to you normal orientation you need another section break ie. one at the start and end of each section. (or as Comet Tuttle says above. More than one way to do it!) --220.101.28.25 (talk) 16:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I just realized a big problem. When I am "switching" back and forth ... I assume that Word, by necessity, will leave a lot of extra blank white space when changing orientations from one page to another. So, my document will not really flow very smoothly at all. It will look like this: text ... a lot of dead blank white space ... my chart ... a lot more dead blank white space ... more text ... a lot more dead blank white space ... another chart ... etc. Is that what will happen? Thank you. (64.252.68.102 (talk) 16:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC))

Also, I like the idea of the simpler alternative way to do this ... by simply rotating a graphic by 90 degrees on a portrait page. So, is a chart/table considered a "graphic", with which this alternative method may be used? Or is a chart/table something that is different than a graphic? Thanks. (64.252.68.102 (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC))

I've just tried this with Word 2000, and there is no blank space. I can change from a full page of portrait text to a full landscape graphic, and back to normal portrait text with no gaps. Just make your table fill the page. I can't imagine that this has been lost in more recent versions of Word. I used only section breaks. You can create a Word table to fit any space you wish. It is not a graphic. Dbfirs 16:59, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Dbfirs ... but I don't understand. Are you saying that I need to make each chart/table fill an entire page? (What if they are smaller charts that don't need such large space as a full page?) ... Or are you saying that, within the same page, Word will toggle between landscape and portrait, as needed? Thanks! (64.252.68.102 (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2010 (UTC))

!! I think what the question is saying that they can't get text to flow across two pages when the orientation changes from portrait to landscape (and neither can I) - because a page break is used to change orientation..87.102.67.84 (talk) 19:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It isn't normal practice to allow text to flow from a portrait page onto a landscape page, though Word 2000 will do this (I've just tried it). Usually, the only reason for changing from portrait to landscape within a document is to allow a wide table which would be too compressed on a portrait page. If this is not necessary, then why use landscape at all? Now I don't understand. Dbfirs 20:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I've just realised that you want a DTP-style table (say down the LHS, but read sideways) with text flowing in the remaining space to the right. Really, software such as Publisher is designed for this, but you can achieve the same effect in Word by saving the table as an image (sideways), then inserting it into the document and formatting it with layout left or right (not in line). A slightly messy alternative is to create the table down the side with rotated text, then insert a text box beside it with text flowing from text boxes on adjacent pages, but this would be more difficult to get right. Dbfirs 20:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

yes, I was just going to point out that it's a desktop publishing type of request - and maybe word is not the easiest way (though it can be done) - one example is to have a table which fills a whole page (and landscape too) and have text wrap (literally skip) around the whole page - I think there are better ways than importing the table as a graphic - eg getting the table as an OLE object (possibly withing a 'frame') allows you to attach that table to a page, - and the text will then flow round (after selecting flowing text in an option) (as you type) (this might have been the original request)- unfortunately I'm using openoffice at the moment so can't give exact instructions for word - though I'm sure it will do a similar thing. Maybe someone else can give the specifics for word.87.102.67.84 (talk) 20:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

... agreed ... "Insert -> Object ->Spreadsheet" does this, and you can then format the object as for image above. The only problem is that you still need to rotate all the text to get a landscape spreadsheet, which is why I would find it easier to turn it into an image, but experiment to see which works best for you. The big advantage of inserting as an object is that a double-click allows editing as a spreadsheet. Office 2000 doesn't seem to allow rotation of the spreadsheet object, but perhaps your version of Office does, in which case, this is your best option. If you don't like spreadsheets, then you can insert a table as an object by inserting a second document as an object where the second document is just a table. The text can then be made to flow round this. Dbfirs 21:57, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Youtube insights for other people's videos

Is there a way to see the insight statistics for videos that other people (not me) uploaded? --Belchman (talk) 19:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No, the information is only available to the uploader of the video (or access to the uploaders account) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 22:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Getting imagemap codes from archived websites

Hi! I tried using the image map to access other language sites for AirUK at http://web.archive.org/web/19961029013136/www.airuk.co.uk/index.html - The image map does not properly direct people to the other language sites.

Am I able to use the source code of the main site or of any image map codes to try to find the URLs that the image map is trying to point me to? I really want to find the URLs of the other language sites to see if web.archive.org archived them. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 21:53, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

The URLS aren't in the source file, it uses

<a href="Flag.map" target="_top"><img ismap src="Flagbar2.gif" border=0 height=27 width=278></a>

for clicking on the country flag image - ie this should redirect to http://www.airuk.co.uk/Flag.map which I couldn't find - that might be because it was sending data about where you clicked to a server which would then convert the coordinates into a new URL - this server program probably wasn't archived.87.102.67.84 (talk) 00:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Correction : http://web.archive.org/web/*/%20http://www.airuk.co.uk/Flag.map

What it looks like is that they archive the html result of the ...Flag.map page as it appears when it isn't sent any coordinates - hence it's just archive the error message.

In fact

Server side image maps -- Like any functionality on the web, if it needs to contact the originating server in order to work, it will fail when archived.[6]

Looks fairly impossible to solve, (unless you can find the old webmaster or site designer, and contact them.) Sorry.87.102.67.84 (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

KLM acquired AirUK, so I hope that KLM would be able to answer my inquiry. Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 07:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

HTML card file

I've seen several sites where a card file appears to be displayed with visible tabs for every card but the cards overlayed as in a real card file. When you click on the tab for a particular card it is displayed while the previous card is hidden. How is this accomplished using HTML? 71.100.5.197 (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It isn't just HTML. It is a combination of HTML and JavaScript (likely with CSS tossed in). -- kainaw™ 22:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Are there reference templates and examples for a simple card file I can use? 71.100.5.197 (talk) 22:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Find one you like and go to "View Source" in your web browser. -- kainaw™ 23:05, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

If you just want a card file to use yourself, then the old windows Microsoft Cardfile is downloadable here http://northshorepc.com/download/cardfile.zip or available as an add-on from the instalation disk in older versions of Windows. 89.242.47.252 (talk) 23:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

For stuff like this it's often a wise idea to use a pre-existing web interface library, rather than cook your own (that should take care of all those evil JavaScript and browser incompatibility problems or weird browsers you don't own). jQuery is a popular choice - see this documentation (which includes an example about a third of the way down the page). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

How do websites that don't advertise make money?

Like this one for example http://www.nutritiondata.com/ I did see a link to an article about how free websites make money recently, but I cannot remember where I saw it. 89.242.47.252 (talk) 23:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

? There are actually ads on that site.. (lots) Most site have ads nowadays - often added by the host. They even have a sub section for advertisers which links to http://www.condenastdigital.com/nutrition.html and explains the whys and how of advertising ! 87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Also note that web hosting is very cheap. So some people will simply sponsor it as a public service or to have platform to distribute their message. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not notice any ads. Looking more closely I see they have unobtrusive brief text links to other websites, which I suppose are the ads. Does anyone know where to find the article I mentioned above? 89.242.47.252 (talk) 23:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, e-commerce. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

There is also a big animated image ad on the right hand side (Adblock hid it from me until I disabled it - perhaps you are unknowingly hiding ads?). If you don't want to advertise, there are three main options. Ask for donations (works for Wikipedia!), sell something (merchandise or an actual product) or fund it out of your own pocket. --Tango (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

See Ad serving and Website monetization. As for the article - there are many like that - you'd need to give more info.87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

For a website without ads there's Affiliate marketing though really in those cases the whole website is one big ad : though they do provide a valuble service in many cases - people actaully do need to buy things anyway ... :) . Maybe that's what you were thinking of - eg a review site might operate without any ads - but make money on clicks to the sellers website coming from hyperlinks on the review website.87.102.67.84 (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

And for some sites, the users are the revenue. I know a dot-com guy whose business model is basically: make a site (any site!), try to get thousands of users, sell the site to someone else, who will then either try to direct it into another pre-existing site (thereby basically buying users), or "point" the user-base at something they'd like (e.g. add specialized, targeted advertising that would appeal to the particular demographic). Which, in the end, devolves into ads or selling a product—but depending on what "stage" you see a site, it might be aimed at just increasing its size and impact, with the goal of being sold off to someone who will then have the hard job of actually monetizing the content. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Not the most ethical of business practices... --Tango (talk) 00:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A user-base is a commodity like any other, in a way. Nobody is being force to be a user, nobody is forced to buy the site... --Mr.98 (talk) 01:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

When a user visits your site, they expect to find a particular thing. That's why they went there. If you suddenly change it away from what they want to something designed just to turn their visit into money, that is rather deceptive. --Tango (talk) 05:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Um, it's annoying, but it's not deceptive. If the user has not paid for anything I'm not sure that any kind of contract has been entered into. I'm really not sure what your argument is here. Do you think Facebook cares about your visits other than the fact that they are visits? They've tried to find a way to get you to visit their site, put in your info, and return again. Not because they like you or your expectations—because they want to make money off of it. As a user you are free to walk away at any time in such a situation. If they do things that radically offend your sensibilities, by all means, don't frequent them. But there's nothing unethical or deceptive about such things—that's just how business works. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Here is another example of an ad-free site http://www.techsupportalert.com/ although in the FAQ it says it is supported by donations and t-shirts. I am using Firefox with AdblockPlus running so that must be why I did not see the adverts. 89.242.47.252 (talk) 00:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You are assuming that all websites DO make money - yet right here, Wikipedia is one of the top ten most visited web sites on the planet - and there is not one teeny-tiny scrap of advertising anywhere on it. You can host a pretty decent/complex website for under $10 a month (I do that) and there is really no need for advertising to fund it. SteveBaker (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

No I'm not. 89.243.202.10 (talk) 17:51, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia unfortunately does have some advertising for a time, see Category:Spam pages for speedy deletion or Category:Articles with a promotional tone. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

March 1

Computer numbers

How many computers are in the world? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lib214724 (talk • contribs) 02:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

PCs : http://www.worldometers.info/computers/

If you included routers, pocket calculators and mobile phones etc there are a lot more.87.102.67.84 (talk) 03:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I counted the number of computers in my home a few years ago - there were about 30 - in addition to the obvious desktops and laptops. Moreover, modern "computers" generally have lots of smaller computers inside them - at least one in each disk drive - probably one each in keyboard and mouse, another in the monitor. The GPU on your graphics card probably contains dozens of simple computers. So the total is clearly vastly more than the number of deskside or laptop computer boxes. SteveBaker (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on your definition of a computer, but "...one each in keyboard and mouse..." is quite a stretch. Just how little functionality is required before it is no longer considered a computer? The question is quite poorly phrased with a wide range of possible meanings, but I would guess the OP means he would consider a laptop to be one computer, a desktop to be one computer, a server at his ISP or place of work to be one computer; without breaking down the individual devices into components and calling each of them a computer as well. As for cell phones, mp3 players, game consoles, some newer TVs, CD/DVD/BluRay players/recorders, cable/satellite TV decoders, some kitchen appliances, the GPS/Satellite navigtion and fuel injection computers in the car, etc. I doubt the OP even considered them when asking the question. Astronaut (talk) 04:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The usual definition of "computer" is any device which can receive input, perform computations on the input, and provide output. That means that there are many things that fit the definition of computer that we don't normally refer to as computer. I had a student once who made a compelling argument that a toaster takes bread as input, performs quantum calculations on the atoms in the bread until the heat causes the surface of the bread to toast, and then gives back toast as output. I told him that when he could define the computations as a discrete formula that provides the one-way function from bread to toast (since we know you can't go back), I would accept that answer. -- kainaw™ 04:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's throw Turing completeness into the definition. That should deal with the toasters! --Tango (talk) 04:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Computers are not necessarily Turing complete. A universal computer is Turing complete (meaning that the instruction set is Turing complete). -- kainaw™ 05:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

That's why I said we need to explicitly include it in our definition. That way we're more likely to get a result the OP will appreciate - the number of general-purpose computers (or computers that could be used for any purpose if you really wanted to). (I am, of course, excusing finite memory.) --Tango (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Well then, we could simplify by asking how many general CPUs have been sold in the last 5 years. That will put a reasonable cap on the number of universal computers. For the most part, computers are 1 CPU to 1 Computer. Then, the number can be made more accurate by getting statistics on how many computers have more than one CPU, what is the average age of computers currently in use, how many CPUs don't get into any computers at all, etc... However, it would be much easier just to get a list of computer sales for all major vendors over the last few years. -- kainaw™ 05:35, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of Turing complete processors that aren't general CPUs. The GPUs that Steve mentioned, the various special purpose computers that still have a Turing complete processor in them (cars, for example), etc.. If we want to interpret "computer" as "PC" (with the broad definition that includes Macs, etc.) we can get an answer fairly quickly, but it will be at least an order of magnitude smaller than an answer with a more general definition. --Tango (talk) 05:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How to turn a GIF image into a JPG image

Hy there, I recently found an image on the net. Sadly it's in the GIF format. How can I change it into a JPG image? Much obliged. Flamarande (talk) 06:35, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I recommend the free Windows program Irfanview. You open the GIF file, then when you save it you can save in a plethora of formats. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

On Linux or any real operating system, make sure ImageMagick is installed and type "convert image.gif image.jpg". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that installing ImageMagick on a unix-like operating system will probably take half the day if you have to compile it from binaries. On a Windows OS it takes about five seconds to download the compiled executables. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

fink install imagemagick only takes half a day if you have a really really slow CPU/network. Of course, on most Linux systems, ImageMagick will be installed by default. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:30, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're on windows, you could open the gif in MSPaint, then save it as jpg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 09:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that in most situations conversion of GIF to JPG will result in quality loss, especially if done from a program that doesn't let you specify quality (like MSPaint, at least last time I used it, in XP). Conversion of GIF to PNG is probably recommended if you have the option. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with the remarks made above. Microsoft Paint can do the conversion (XP and later). Also, whereas both GIF (obsolete for static images - for instance GIF normally only supports 256 colours) and PNG are perfect for illustrations, screenshots, etc., JPG employs lossy compression suitable only for photographs. So unless the GIF was the wrong format to start with, I would not recommend converting the image to JPG, but to PNG. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

In fact, pretty much any image editor would be able to convert gif to jpg. Spending minutes downloading and installing a new new program, or a day making it from source code (if the OP doesn't know how to convert gif to jpg, are they really going to know how to make an image editor from source code?), is not necessary when the OP probably already has one installed which would be adaquate for the job. The usual procedure is to open the gif file in the image editor and immediately choose "Save as..." from the menu. The save dialog usually lets you choose the output file format. Astronaut (talk) 03:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

NORTON 360 or NORTON 2010?

Which one is better for laptop? Thank you very much.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.202.148.167 (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Norton 360 is a suite that includes backup utilities and anti phishing things, as well as all the features from Norton 2010, whereas Norton Internet Security 2010 is just an antivirus and malware detection suite. It follows that Internet security will use less resources although I'm unsure. However if you can chose other anti virus programs and are willing to pay may I suggest Nod32? It's about the same price as norton antivirus, uses less resources, and is better at detecting them. They also have a smart security suite similar to Norton 360. There are also free anti viruse programs from AVG Antivirus and Avast which work quite well especially considering their price. Gunrun (talk) 12:48, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Is it true that one Norton 2010 Package is good for use only in one computer? If I format my computer, will i not be able to use it anymore to reinstall it to my computer? Can I share it with other computers? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.202.148.167 (talk) 13:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I have had a look around on google and have found that while Norton Internet Security is by default valid for just 1 PC it seems to be for concurrent installs. It appears that reformatting will allow you to install it again fine, and probably even if you installed it to a totally different PC as long as you uninstalled the old one first. I may be wrong though, and I don't use the product myself otherwise I would test it. By the way if you follow your post with 4 "~"s it will make your posts be signed and thus look slightly neater. Gunrun (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't pay a penny and get all the features for free with AVG Free...! Chevymontecarlo. 17:03, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

non-linear waveshaping

what is non-linear waveshaping in electronics? what is the use of it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geethikachaitanya (talk • contribs) 15:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Did you read Waveshaper? Used to change tiranular wave to sine wave, or in electronic music. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Kodak Easy-share Picture Program Issue- Library Back up

I would like to copy my entire picture library from my Easy-Share program onto an external hard drive, but I cannot seem to locate where the pictures are hidden inside the software's program folders. The program itself allows one to copy the files on to discs, but I really don't feel like burning twenty or more discs. I know I can also place photos one by one into the editing program and save to the hard drive, but again, that would take an incredible amount of time. Is there a way to simply copy the library with a couple of clicks? What is strange is that I discovered some much older pictures on my external already, so I MUST have done this somehow a few years ago. As always, any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks, 10draftsdeep (talk) 15:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

(assuming you are using Windows) The easiest solution to finding where Easy-share is squirreling away your pictures is to write down the exact filename of one of those pictures, then click the Start button, select Search, and type it in there. It should have no trouble locating the exact folder location. I judge from your post that you're savvy enough to take it from there. :-) 218.25.32.210 (talk) 04:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Requirements for watching videos using YouTube HD

Just wondering, what do you actually need to watch videos in HD on YouTube? Clearly you'd need a computer and an internet connection good enough, but what else? Would you need a special monitor or something? Chevymontecarlo. 17:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they are available in HD are they? - though you could watch them on a HD TV, but you wouldn't be using the available resolution. Dbfirs 17:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake, they are now! - but the 1080p will need a better bandwidth than my internet connection, or much buffering!Dbfirs 17:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Many Youtube videos now offer the option to display as 320, 480 or 720 vertical pixels. 480 is roughly equivalent to a 480p video, while 720 is roughly equivalent to a 720p video. Computer monitors usually have much more densely packed pixels than TVs, so even a 20" monitor will often display at 1280x800 or 1680x1050, both of which will display the full detail of a 720p video. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Virtually any computer monitor can display 720p video. 720p is equivalent to 1280x720 screen resolution, so if your display is configured to display at that resolution or higher, you'll get some benefit from the HD resolution. You also need a CPU and/or GPU powerful enough to display it; many netbooks won't be able to play it without pauses or skips, but any machine capable of, for example, running the Aero interface on Vista/Win7 will probably be able to handle HD video. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Additional note: Even if your monitor runs at a lower resolution than the video, as long as your CPU/GPU is up to it you will still be able to play the higher resolution video, you just won't get as much out of it. You might even lose a little detail; if the video is fit to your screen by subtracting lines, you might have been better off with the lower resolution picture. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Isn't true HD (widescreen) at least 1920x1080? Don't we need a fairly fast processor to display this? Dbfirs 18:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

720p is considered HD, even if it's not the highest HD quality. 1080p is gravy; on larger computer monitors you might be able to display that level of detail but you probably won't be able to see the difference. You need a decent processor to display it, but if your codec is GPU accelerated, the GPU can handle most of the work. Virtually any non-integrated graphics solution from ATI or nVidia can handle GPU accelerated decompression; the most recent netbooks can display 1080p with minor stuttering if the decompression is GPU accelerated (using CoreAVC). So yes, there are minimums, but they're as much about the strength of the software as they are about the hardware. My point remains salient; if you can run Aero smoothly, you're probably fine. 1080p might need a bit more juice, but it's rarely beneficial to display at that resolution and the requirements aren't that much higher in any event. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:30, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Odd CD-Burning Question

I use the built-in CD burner of Windows 7, to create a CD with the following structure:

Root of CD
   |- myapp.exe
   |- User's Guide
   |  |- manual.pdf
   |- Examples
      |- pic1.png
      |- ...
      |- picN.png

Windows 7 makes it really easy to create the disk, but after the CD is burned, it is not finalized, so more data can be added, and it is identified as a CD-R rather than a CD-ROM. I want it to be a finalized, high-compatibility, non-appendable CD-ROM, so I use Roxio Easy CD and DVD Burner to finalize the disk. This works fine; when Roxio is done, the CD identifies itself as a non-appendable CD-ROM. But, and this is really strange, the entire Examples directory is now missing! Comments? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've had issues with Roxio trying to add a file, failing, and failing fairly silently-ish. In my case it was filenames that weren't compatible with the CD disk filesystem (I think paths were too long); perhaps that's the case for you, or maybe it's a filename charset issue. Make sure you've got Roxio configured for Joliet rather than plain ISO 9660. I've found InfraRecorder to be a bit friendlier than Roxio, so you could try that. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I have found CDBurnerXP to be quite reliable. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Also DeepBurner —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.204 (talk) 23:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

March 2

Key exchange with no shared secret?

Diffie-Hellman key exchange requires that the parties first be able to establish a shared secret over a secure channel. Is there any way to perform key exchange if the parties have never had and will never have a secure communication channel? NeonMerlin 00:15, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Diffie-Hellman allows a shared secret to be established over an insecure channel. decltype (talk) 00:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

No, you're wrong, Diffie-Hellman does not require that the parties establish a shared secret over a secure channel first. THat would be called Symmetric-key cryptography, and it is what people did for thousands of years before Diffie-Hellman and RSA was discovered. The the whole point of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange is that even if you hear every single thing communicated, you will not be able to figure out the key if you're not one of the parties.

There is a big problem with Diffie-Hellman though: the man-in-the-middle attack. If we ask "assume you can communicate over a insecure channel where the eavesdropper can listen in but is unable to change the messages", then Diffie-Hellman, or even RSA (you could just send the other party your public key) pretty much completely solves that problem.

However, that's not the real world. People often can change the message in transit, so then you need to authenticate your messages. This problem has absolutely nothing to do with Diffie-Hellman, they apply to any kind of public key cryptography, and the solutions are the same. Most commonly, this is solved either by a PGP-style web of trust, or (as is the case with SSL, for instance) by using Certificate authorities. Neither of those methods are perfect, but they're pretty much the best we have. Belisarius (talk) 01:27, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Importing TiVo files into Windows Movie Maker

I have a HP Pavilion DV6646us, running Vista 64, 2 gb memory, 160 gb HD. Started using Tivo Desktop to import movies into Windows Movie Maker, edit out commercials, then export to WMV to burn onto DVDs. I've used this Tivo Desktop/Windows Movie Maker combination for a few years now, and have had no problems with it up until a few months ago.

However, now, when I import into WMM, I get a 1:1 aspect ratio rather than the normal 4:3 ratio. The strange thing is, when I simply play the files using Windows Media Player, they look just fine. It seems to be ONLY in Windows Movie Maker that the aspect ratio gets "squared up."

I know it's probably something to do with the codecs, but I'm by no means an expert. I've done Google searches on every combination of "Tivo, Desktop, Windows, Movie, Maker, Aspect, and Ratio" that I can think of, and have come up with very few relevant results, none of which have solved the problem. I found and installed tbe "Cole2K" codec package that was suggested on one site, and I downloaded a "Tivo Desktop Codec Manager" ("TDCM") that I found on the Tivo Community forum. No dice on either.

I also uninstalled TiVo desktop and reassociated the ".TIVO" extension with Windows Media Player, but the video is all scrambled and the files don't play. I then reinstalled an older version of TiVo Desktop, also to no avail.

My main goal here is to be able to import TiVo files into Windows Movie Maker and preserve the existing aspect ratio. That's it. Help! Thanks much, Kingsfold (talk) 03:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Deleted E-mails

Hi

1.Is there a way to recover deleted e-mails after you've emptied your DELETED ITEMS folder?

2.Is there a way to see whether someone has opened up one of your e-mails without you suspecting? Like opening it and then using the MARK AS UNREAD feature to avoid suspicion.

3.How do you send one of those e-mails where you open it and after closing still looks like it hasn't been opened? Like the one that you get from time to time that says YOUR MAILBOX IS OVER IT'S SIZE LIMIT.

Thanks, NirocFX

41.193.16.234 (talk) 05:31, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

1. If an only if the email was stored on your harddrive and you know a hell of a lot about file systems, you can get back deleted emails. It is not something can do if you don't really know what you are doing.

2. No. The email doesn't contain any "I was opened on" date. It is just text.

3. The server is refusing to accept the "been opened" change to the email. It isn't the email itself.

I hope that helps. Keep in mind that email is just text. It is a very insecure format designed in the old days when messages didn't need to be highly secure. So far, nothing has been able to replace it and fix the blatant problems with the entire email system. -- kainaw™ 05:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

(1) If you're on a corporate network, e.g. using Microsoft Exchange Server, then your system administrators may be able to recover deleted messages. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:30, 2 March

2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Kainaw and AndrewWTaylor

So you guys are telling me that this is the one department (for as long as it has existed) that hasn't really made progress?

Thanks, NirocFX

41.193.16.234 (talk) 11:07, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Remove Security Tool

Okay, I guess I clicked on something that I shouldn't have, and so I let this un-godly fiend onto my machine. It comes up with its stupid messages every 15 seconds or so, but far worse is that it won't let me run many programs (including my word processor. Grrr). What's the best way to get rid of it? I'm running Windows 7. I have legitimate antivirus software (McAfee, provided by my University); is that likely to get rid of it? Or do I really have to boot up in safe mode and go after this myself? I'm totally incompetent on these new-fangled computer thingys, so if I do need to go on a search and destroy mission, I'm going to need step by step instructions. I promise to be more careful in the future. Buddy431 (talk) 06:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)